Tag: See what Ann S. Epstein Writer is reading

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.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of A Plan in Case of Morning by Phill Provance (Rating 5) – Master of Intensity. In A Plan in Case of Morning, Phill Provance wields words, minces memories, and excavates emotions with agility. His amalgam of poems, prose, epigrams, and enigmas is filled with dreams and questions about youth, manhood, and the final accounting. Bubbling up from the flow of words is the push-pull of human relationships; anger bumps into love, tough rubs against tender, and hope flickers in the face of disaster. Provance has a gift for imagery. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I savored creations such as “teeth a perfect replica of Nebraska” and “crow’s feet [that] cinch like drawstring bags.” This collection is intense; take it one entry at a time. Do NOT plan when you’ll read the next piece, just grab and wrestle with this roiling and rollicking volume when you will.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Rating 5) – A Father’s Caution and Pride. For years, I felt guilty that I delayed reading Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates after it came out in 2015. Now I’m glad I waited until 2020, when America is confronting its embedded racism with unprecedented intensity. The book’s impact on me was jarringly powerful in the aftermath of the recent deaths of so many Blacks at the hands of police, their disproportionate number of COVID-19 cases and mortality attributable to inadequate health care, the children unable to “attend” school virtually because they lacked access to the necessary technology, and countless other injustices. The statistics are long-standing, but awareness of their enormity by non-Blacks is new. I am among them. As the mother of an adult daughter, I have been especially haunted by the murder of Breonna Taylor. When her mother, Tamika Parker, described Breonna’s death as a slap in the face, I felt the blow. During my forty-year career in early education, I worked with Black children a decade younger than the son who Coates writes to, but I saw the same hope and fear in their faces. As a fiction writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I portray characters of diverse backgrounds, including Blacks, imagining the ever-present threats they face. Coates cautions his son, but also imbues him with pride and courage. This honest, painful-to-read book reminds me that I, that we as a society, have barely scratched the surface understanding the insidious effects of racism. We need to dig deep within ourselves and our systems to root it out.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler (Rating 4) – Methodical Man Edges Toward Human Mess. Meet methodical, meticulous Micah Mortimer, the protagonist of Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road. Tyler has a knack for making off-putting and slightly off-kilter characters sympathetic. Micah is not unlikeable, just not particularly endearing, until you find yourself liking this earnest but clueless forty-something computer tech a lot. Micah is the neat, reserved member of a large, messy, and affectionate family. His search for the right woman is plagued by bugs he cannot detect, let alone solve. Tyler is herself meticulous rendering Micah’s routine-driven life from his early morning runs to which day of the week he assigns to each housekeeping chore. She assigns him quirky traits: an imaginary internal traffic cop (rather like a lonely child’s imaginary friend) who pats him on the back for nicely executed driving maneuvers; talking to himself using “zee Franch acksant” when he cooks his simple meals. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Tyler’s ability to create a total life for her characters. I suspect that she, like me, moves in with them while she settles them on the page. Above all, Tyler is adept at taking a small life and finding its universal measure, in Micah’s case the search for human connection. At a time when readers are satiated on Zoom and hungry for in-person contact, Redhead by the Side of Road is a satisfying and lively companion.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey (Rating 5) – Re-Dreaming a Nightmare in Order to Awake. Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir did not initially draw me in. Author Natasha Trethewey employs her skills as a Pulitzer prize-winning poet to circle at a distance rather than directly confront her mother’s death at the hands of Trethewey’s abusive stepfather, three decades ago, when Trethewey was nineteen. As a prose writer (see my Amazon author page) and Goodreads author page), I craved more narrative. Yet, once the story became more personal and engaging, I realized the style of writing mirrored the author’s reluctant journey into the past, finally summoning the courage to face a horror she long avoided. Only by re-dreaming the nightmare can she wake up to her loss. More moving than the facts of the murder itself are Trethewey’s reminiscences of her bond with her mother. Although these held special resonance for me, any reader can relate to the push and pull, longing and guilt, that passed between them. Having seen, Trethewey can never unsee, but she can remain awake.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of American Dirt: A Novel by Jeanine Cummins (Rating 5) – A Flight From Terror Into Horror. As a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I bristle at the charge of cultural appropriation levied against Jeanine Cummins for American Dirt. Authors have the right to address any topic from any POV they want; it’s called empathy. With that right comes an obligation to research and write an engaging story about believable characters. Applying those criteria, Cummins fully meets this obligation. In her suspenseful story, a mother fleeing el norte with her young son faces dilemmas anyone, anywhere, can recognize: how we feel when someone we thought we knew turns out not to be who we thought; the lengths a parent will go to in order to protect their child; how terror simultaneously clouds and clarifies our thoughts; the sense of community that develops among threatened people; the unspeakable horrors we inflict upon one another; and the unexpected acts of kindness that restore our faith in humanity. Although a disappointingly brief epilogue glosses over what fresh horrors await once migrants arrive in the U.S., the novel vividly details the perils of their journey to get here.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser (Rating 5) – Deft Interweaving. Benjamin Moser’s personal and bibliographic biography of Sontag: Her Life and Work deftly interweaves these two inextricable facets of a literary and cultural icon. I was most engaged reading about Sontag’s life, but also impressed by Moser’s insights into its influence on her work. As a developmental psychologist specializing in how childhood and families shape the people we become, I appreciated Moser’s thorough research, compilation of myriad perspectives, and comprehensive interpretations, even when I occasionally questioned them. As a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I found his analysis of “metaphor,” the theme Sontag continually returned to, lucid and provocative. Writers strive for the perfect metaphor to illuminate reality and bring a person, object, or event to life. The irony, as Sontag repeatedly cautions, is that metaphor can distance us from reality. It’s an insoluble dilemma, which is why it proved such a rich vein (metaphor alert) for Sontag’s life’s work.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (Rating 5) – Burning Children as Burning Bush? What will become of ten-year-old twins, their mother dead, unwanted by grandparents, and ignored by a rich and politically powerful father, now remarried, who rejected them years ago? In Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here, the girl and boy are further handicapped by a genetic affliction whereby they spontaneously combust. The fire doesn’t harm them, but incinerates whatever else it touches. Enter twenty-eight-year-old Lillian, a poor but smart layabout, called on by the twins’ stepmother to look after them. Despite the children’s fanciful condition, the novel is a realistic examination of what it means to be a parent. What is the metaphor here? Do the burning twins represent the rage within all children, adults too, for the injustices committed by their parents? This book has no good ones. Parents are absent, indifferent, manipulative, or downright cruel. But that interpretation is too facile. A better analogy of something that burns without being consumed is the Burning Bush in Exodus. Moses alone sees it. A reluctant leader, he is nevertheless asked by God to deliver his People from slavery to the Promised Land. Moses accomplishes the impossible because he has faith. Not blind faith; he is full of doubt, especially self-doubt. Yet Moses stumbles along because God chose him and besides, who else will do it? So it is with Lillian. After a lifetime of messing up, she has no reason to believe she can take care of these damaged children. Yet, Lillian has the passion and guts to try, without deluding herself that she’ll do a perfect job. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I was impressed by Wilson’s ability to make the bizarre believable, and the insurmountable attemptable, the very skills that parenthood demands.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Rating 5) – The Truth, Push, and Hope of Fiction. Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys would have had hit me regardless, but because I was reading it when yet another African American was murdered by the police, it whipped me as thoroughly as the book’s protagonist was beaten at the Florida reform school that gives the novel its title. Elwood Curtis, the impressionable and idealistic black teenager at the story’s center, tries to hold onto the inspiring words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The pain of his inevitable disillusionment must be buried for him to survive, while it simultaneously acts as an irrepressible force that drives him to achieve and prove his white tormentors wrong. Yet only by confronting his past and calling out the abuse, can the truth literally be unearthed and the seeds of change sown. Whitehead’s writing is unsparing, whether he is probing the minds of his characters or the horrors of the scenes he depicts. What he leaves unsaid is perhaps more vivid than what he says; readers don’t have the option of turning away. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I was in awe of both his courage and his craft. In a time that calls for systemic and collective change, one wants to believe that this fictional account of one individual defying the odds can become a reality for multitudes. Yet, nearly six decades after The Nickel Boys is set, racism’s realities remain devastating. Does Whitehead’s story offer a glimmer of hope? The power of fiction is that it can not only moves us within, but also propel us out onto the streets. The Nickel Boys forces us to ask why we haven’t taken that step, and whether we finally will.