Category: What I’m Reading

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Grace and Serenity by Annalisa Crawford (Rating 5) – Honest and Unapologetic. Kafka said, “We ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it?” Grace and Serenity, by Annalisa Crawford, meets that criterion. The novel’s ironic title is derived from its young protagonist and the name she gives her daughter, but the unlucky character finds neither. Her life is a bleak chain of curtailed dreams, domestic violence, homelessness, and hopelessness. Crawford nails the details of how abusive partners behave: the sudden bursts of cruelty, followed by protestations of remorse and gifts to make amends. She evokes an indelible image of flowers that haven’t even wilted before her husband’s next volcanic rage erupts. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I appreciated Crawford’s unblinking courage in tackling a difficult subject. Grace and Serenity is a painful and difficult book to read, but the author’s honest and unapologetic writing will earn readers’ trust and propel them to the inevitable end.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Rating 5) – Human Experience Refracted Through the Lens of an Ordinary Day. After reading two recent articles about how Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf revolutionized the novel, I was chagrined that as novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I’d never read it. Having now repaired this lapse, I am in awe of what Woolf wrought. Barely stopping for a page break, the book fluidly transitions from past to present, exterior to interior, delight to despair, comedy to tragedy. Woolf passes the narrative baton between Clarissa Dalloway and others, eventually returning to the party whose preparations consume her morning and whose arrival consummates her evening. Human experience — thoughts and feelings, memories and dreams, regrets and rewards — is refracted through the lens of an ordinary day. From this mundane microcosm emerges a world of teeming complexity. As Clarissa Dalloway’s erstwhile beau Peter Walsh opines, “Having done things millions of times enriched them.”

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Winter Light by Martha Engber (Rating 5) – As Darkly Bleak and Crystalline Bright as its Title. Winter Light by Martha Engber can be as darkly bleak and as crystalline bright as its title. Fifteen-year-old Mary has nothing going for her except grit. She also has good looks and a brain, but the first makes her a target while the second makes her smart enough to see what a bad hand she’s been dealt. Mary’s mother died when she was five, her alcoholic father is abusive, her friends are burnouts. She’s poor and shivering through the harsh Chicago winter of 1978-79. Desperate to escape her life for one she can’t even define, Mary reaches out to Kathleen, a prissy classmate from a storybook world. To their mutual surprise, they click. But Winter Light is not a simple rags to riches, loser to winner tale. Bad luck dogs Mary, dragging her back two steps for every step forward. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I’m impressed by the agile plot turns. Although promoted as a YA novel – not a genre I typically read – the depth of Engber’s characters and her insights into the conflicted feelings of two girls fascinated by their divergence as well as their points of connection, make this a compelling book for readers of all ages.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Monogamy: A Novel by Sue Miller (Rating 5) – Under Small Tremors an Earthquake of Emotions. Monogamy: A Novel by Sue Miller is the story of a community anchored by a marriage. At the center is Graham, expansive, enthusiastic, greedy by his own admission, but equally generous. Readers also hear from his first wife Frieda, who still loves him, and their son Lucas; Graham’s best friend Bill, with whom he owns a bookstore in Boston; the many friends who frequent the store and attend Graham’s parties; and Graham’s daughter Sarah, who he had with Annie, his demure wife of thirty years. Ultimately, however, this book is Annie’s story. When Graham suddenly dies (not a spoiler; it happens in the first chapter), Annie a photographer, is plunged into grief. The world she inhabits was constructed by Graham, and despite momentary twinges, she was willingly absorbed into his orbit. How will she exist without him? Months after Graham’s death, Annie discovers he was unfaithful. Her grief is obliterated by rage. As others continue to mourn, Annie distances herself, like a photographer hiding behind a camera. A seemingly small encounter finally allows her to reclaim her grief, and her life. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Miller’s interweaving of voices, attention to the details that build our individual and shared lives, and above all, her gift for quietly probing small tremors beneath which lie an earthquake of emotions. Monogamy is a snapshot that, when developed, reveals a big picture.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of This is How We Leave by Joanne Nelson (Rating 5) – Learning When, and Why, to Stay. Joanne Nelson’s memoir This is How We Leave, is about saying goodbye to a past that was far from good and accepting that the present doesn’t have to be perfect to be good enough. Nelson reveals the ghosts of her childhood with refreshing, and sometimes uncomfortable, honesty. As a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I appreciated the authenticity of her prose as she invites readers to accompany her on this searching journey. Generations of people in Nelson’s family left: the men physically; the women, including the author, emotionally; and her mother absenting herself in alcoholism. Although her home was plagued by physical abuse and drinking, readers from a variety of dysfunctional families will recognize elements of theirs in Nelson’s childhood struggle to understand why hers differed from that of her peers, and her adult need to belong. Without sugar coating or sentimentality, Nelson’s journey arrives at a satisfying place that doesn’t entail denial, withdrawal, or running away.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Actress by Anne Enright (Rating 3) – The Stage Curtain Stays Down. Anne Enright’s novel Actress is three fictional biographies in one. First is the life story of Katherine O’Dell, the title character. Second is Norah, her daughter and the memoir’s “author.” The third, and Norah’s motivation in writing the book, recounts their mother-daughter relationship. Norah undertakes this task upon reaching the age at which Katherine died. She excavates the verifiable details of her mother’s life from an early and fast rise to stardom to the too-early decline imposed by a youth-hungry public. In Katherine’s case, public humiliation was accompanied by private descent into madness. Norah’s overriding question is “Where did reality end and performance begin?” Applied to her and her mother, were they as close as she imagined or was it an act and, if so, by whom? Norah reaches a satisfactory conclusion about her own life as a wife, mother, and novelist. But to my mind, she never answers that question in regard to her mother and their relationship. As a writer who has often tried to unravel the complex dynamics between mothers and daughters (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I know that pat answers are neither possible nor rewarding. Yet allowing for, and even welcoming, ambiguity, Actress never raises the stage curtain more than a few inches. In dramatizing this story, I wish Enright had lifted the curtain higher and better filled the stage.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of In the Fullness of Time by Carolyn R. Russell (Rating 5) – Transporting and Transforming. Carolyn R. Russell’s fantasy novel In the Fullness of Time will transport you to the near future, make you mourn for a lost past, and transform your beliefs about how to rise above devastation. Inventive and imaginative, the book is intricately plotted, populated with intriguing characters, and set in strange yet eerily recognizable environs. As the plot shifts, so will your loyalties and expectations. Abandon yourself to the author’s machinations. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I can vouch for the fact that Russell has the literary skill to earn your trust on this fantastic and frightening journey.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Apeirogon: A Novel by Colum McCann (Rating 4) – As Exhaustive and Exhausting as the Search for Peace in the Mideast. Colum McCann’s Apeirogon, about a pair of grieving fathers — one Palestinian and one Israeli — who have each lost a young daughter, moves like the Middle East peace process itself. The novel stumbles forward, stalls, retreats, goes off on tangents that alternately fascinate and bore to the point that you want to ignore and push past them. Mixing rat-a-tat revelation with lengthy exposition, the book inflames your brain, wrenches your gut, and ricochets your emotions from despair to hope. The last of these, hope, remains alive because of the unexpected bond between the men, friends and brothers who cross boundaries in the pursuit of peace. As a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admired the inventiveness of this hybrid form of storytelling, a complex weave of straightforward narration, backwards loops, and intricate, superimposed embroidery. In truth, reading the book is as exhaustive and exhausting as the search for peace in the Mideast. Don’t give up.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Time is the Longest Distance by Janet Clare (Rating 5) –As Stark and Breathtaking as the Australian Outback. Time is the Longest Distance by Janet Clare is a journey of self-discovery as stark and breathtaking as the Australian Outback. Lilly, in her mid-forties, having led an unexceptional and unsatisfactory life in California and New York, learns a secret about her birth that upends her world. In search of a past she never knew was hers, she heads to that other end of the world to meet her unknown father, half-brother, and niece. The surprises continue to come but Lilly, no longer a passive recipient, is now complicit in generating them. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I appreciate Clare’s masterful pacing in introducing each shock. Embarking on the adventure of a lifetime, Lilly, the pampered city girl, crosses the rugged Outback to find out what kind of person her father is and instead learns who she is. The answer is not what she, or readers, expect. Nor is her basic nature easily accepted by Lilly, or us. Yet each revelation rings true. After all, if we’re honest with ourselves, we too never cease to ask “Who am I?” “How did I get here?” And most important, “Where am I going?”

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (Rating 3) – Not Enough Rounds on the Watchman’s Shift. Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman, which tracks the lives of a Chippewa elder and his niece, was disappointing. I wanted more chapters (rounds) devoted to Thomas, the title character, and his fight against the U.S. Government’s Termination Bill to “emancipate” Indigenous people from their land. The novel is set in the 1950s, with an historical nod to the 1890s, but it echoes today. Erdrich makes clear what the Turtle Mountain clan will lose if the bill passes, namely a way of life that cohabits with nature, respects tribal wisdom, relishes language, and survives on irreverent humor and serious love. Erdrich wrote this book as an homage to her grandfather and her reverence for his strength and determination flow like spring sap through its pages. That said, the story of young Patrice is less compelling, even though hers ends on a hopeful note. Erdrich has a talent for weaving recurring characters within and across her books but in The Night Watchman, she is overextended. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I know that “killing your darlings” is hard, but necessary. Like the ghosts that populate her writing, however, Erdrich can always make these other characters come alive in future books. I just wish she’d given them a diminished role in this one.