Tag: See what Ann S. Epstein Writer is reading

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Ever Rest: A Novel by Roz Morris (Rating 5) – Moving Past the Refrain of Loss. In Ever Rest, Roz Morris forges an unlikely alliance between rock climbing and rock music to create an absorbing novel about an outsized figure whose life shaped people’s identities and whose death leaves them hanging off a cliff, teetering over an emotional abyss, and grasping for an artistic foothold. Twenty years before the book opens, rock star Ash perished while he and his bandmate Hugo were climbing Mt. Everest. Ash’s body was never recovered, leaving his girlfriend Elza, Hugo, and another band member Robert, equally lost and bereft. Grief counselors use the term “ambiguous loss” to describe the absence of a loved one when there is no body to offer definitive proof they have died — they may have disappeared in a disaster, never come home from school, or not returned after running an errand. The book’s central question is whether recovering Ash’s body will allow those who revolved around him to move past the refrain of his death to compose new verses for their own lives. As a fiction writer myself who balances multiple points of view (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admired Morris’s deft blend of perspectives, which provide insight into those driven by their obsessions and the loved ones they in turn drive to anxiety and despair, exasperation and confusion. Her impeccable research into music-making music and mountaineering ground this soaring novel in both worlds. The memorable characters in Ever Rest will remain on readers’ playlists long after the book’s last peak is summited and its final note is sung.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Girl A: A Novel by Abigail Dean (Rating 5) – Dodging Shadows from the Past. Girl A by Abigail Dean is the indelible story of the aftermath of extreme child abuse on a family of siblings, told from the adult POV of the second oldest. Thirteen-year-old Girl A, the identity given her in the initial police report, is the one who escapes from the house where she and her six siblings are held hostage by their parents, leading to the release of the others, their father’s suicide, and their mother’s incarceration. Although we learn the horrors of their imprisonment, the novel’s focus is on how the surviving children reintegrate into society, with varying success. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I was impressed by the earthly complexity of the almost other-worldly characters Dean creates. “Survivor” is the term applied to a person who emerges from a trauma, alive. But the word is less a noun than a process, a fluid state that ebbs and flows as the individual steps forward while dodging shadows from the past. Although Girl A (Alexandra, or Lex) is the narrator, she initially tells us more about the siblings she reconnects with after the death of their mother than about herself. Perhaps that’s the point. If Lex survives only by running from herself, how can she possibly tell others who she is? Is she a reliable observer of her siblings, or is her view tainted by distorted memory and blocked by the walls she has erected? We do eventually discover the illusion Lex must maintain to sustain her fragile existence. Extreme as this falsehood may seem, acts of denial enable us all to survive after pain we would otherwise find unbearable. Even after closing the book, readers will be shadowed by Girl A.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Truth Like Oil by Connie Biewald (Rating 5) – Thoughtful, Deep, Honest. Connie Biewald proves in her thoughtful, deep, and honest novel Truth Like Oil, the Haitian proverb that “Truth, like oil in water, rises to the surface.” We meet Nadine Antoine, a Haitian immigrant who is the single mother of two teenage sons, and the Boston-area friends who replace the family she left behind. Nadine’s big secret is that her sons have different fathers, neither of whom the boys have met. She has devoted herself to raising them alone, on her small salary as an aide in a nursing facility, where she cares for a once-feisty white woman felled by a stroke. Nadine frets about her capabilities as a mother, her children’s well-being, romantic overtures from her patient’s son who was also the boys’ high school coach and mentor, memories of an uncle’s abuse, and loneliness. Her sons navigate their own push-pull worlds. For the older son, this means deciding whether he can accept a white girlfriend; for the younger son, resolving a debate between aligning himself with his drug-dealing friends or choosing the respectable future his mother envisions. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Biewald’s deft interweaving of opposing forces: old and young, Haitian and American, mainstream and marginal. Biewald strings together three phrases — I love you. I’m sorry. Thank you. — and astutely observes that they say it all. I loved this book, was sorry to reach the end, and thank Biewald for a compelling story.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight by Julia Sweig (Rating 4) – Believability and Surprise. I have always been fascinated by LBJ. I was a college freshman when he became president following JFK’s assassination. LBJ’s Great Society, notably the Head Start program, was the impetus for my lifelong career in early childhood education. Like other youth opposed to the war in Vietnam, I turned against LBJ. Years passed before I was able to credit his compassionate and far-sighted social and economic agenda. Julia Sweig’s biography, Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight, enriched my perspective. For example, like others, I assumed LBJ’s decision not to run for a second term in 1968 was forced by the backlash against his foreign policy, unaware that (spoiler alert) he and Lady Bird first discussed his exit back in 1964. Although he chose to run then, bowing out in 1968 had been in their plans for years. Likewise, I discovered that Lady Bird’s campaign for “beautification” (a term she despised) was inextricably linked to the Great Society’s broader recognition of the physical, emotional, intellectual, and creative toll of living in a blighted environment — her true concern. Readers of this detailed account will also learn about Lady Bird’s vital role managing her husband’s black moods and speaking on behalf of women’s empowerment, and feel the heartbreak of seeing their hard-won domestic legacy dismissed. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I value the ability to combine believability with surprise in a narrative. Sweig’s behind-the-scenes look at Lady Bird provides both. Her absorbing history remains relevant in the ongoing struggle to balance domestic needs and foreign policy.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of My Heart: A Novel by Semezdin Mehmedinovic (Rating 5) – Life’s Irregular Beat and Steady Flow. Semezdin Mehmedinovic’s autobiographical novel My Heart is literally and figuratively about the life-giving organ of its title. Divided into three sections, the book begins with Sem’s heart attack, ends with his wife Sanja’s stroke, and in the middle recounts a long road trip Sem takes with their adult son Harun, whose restless heart pumps with an energy that is dwindling in his aging parents. Threaded through the book is the intense love that beats in the author’s heart for this tight-knit family. My Heart is also about memory. In the first story, the author remembers little of his heart attack. Told the medication he must now take may cause further memory loss, Sem is obsessed with remembering the first place the family lived after emigrating from Bosnia. This prompts the trip from Maryland to Arizona with his son, a photographer who creates, rather than retrieves, memories. Harun’s time-lapse pictures reveal wonders the eye alone cannot see. Sem’s insight on this journey is that while we remember places, they retain no memory of us. Recall, or its lack, is most prominent in the novel’s third section. Sanja’s stroke has obliterated large swaths of her memory. Sem hopes that returning from the hospital to the familiarity of home will restore the missing images and events, but again place is not a repository for memory. Robbed of once-known words and ideas, Sanja, like their son, creates new, often entertaining ones. Finally, the novel is about place itself. An immigrant, Sem is forever an outsider in America. His identity cannot be rooted in a place. Fortunately, the core of his being is the family he carries in his heart. A model for a person who ages well, My Heart is gentle and reflective, but not passive. As a fiber artist and writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admired Mehmedinovic’s ability to interweave multiple themes in a subtle tapestry that will touch the heart of readers who contemplate the irregular beat and steady flow of their own lives.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Angle of Flickering Light (Rating 5) – Addicted to the Addicted. Gina Troisi’s honest and unsparing memoir, The Angle of Flickering Light, is a slant approach to addiction. Less about her own substance abuse problems, this brave journey instead looks at why she was attracted to men whose love affair with drugs exceeded their love for her. Her self-worth damaged by an abusive father and stepmother, Troisi compensated by rescuing others. Inevitably her ministrations failed to heal either them or herself. Addiction, be it to heroin or heroism, is an escape route that eventually hits a roadblock. Troisi’s feat is that she finally stops trying to circumnavigate her inner barrier and uses pointed writing to chip her way through it. Flickering light alternately casts shadows and illuminates. Troisi chooses brightness over darkness. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I applaud Troisi’s literary gifts as she clears a path for herself while paving a connection with readers.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Fake Accounts (Rating 2) – False Hype for a Worthless Recounting. The nameless narrator in Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts comments, “I can’t help but feel the books of collected tweets you occasionally see displayed on tables at Urban Outfitters would be better as novels or memoirs that contain no tweets.” Oyler should have taken her protagonist’s advice. The fake accounts in this book — her boyfriend’s conspiracy blog, the outlandish profiles the narrator creates on dating apps, her rambling observations about life — don’t attain novel or memoir status. Noteworthy characters and a memorable story are absent, while the social media posts lack originality and insight. I offer this judgment not only as a disappointed reader, but also as a conscientious writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page). The raves for Fake Accounts strike me as “false” hype for a worthless “recounting.” Reading it was akin to wasted hours scrolling online.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Things That Crash, Things That Fly (Rating 5) – A Good Storyteller with a Good Story to Tell. Scott Gould’s memoir, Things That Crash, Things That Fly, speaks to everyone recovering from an experience — in his case a divorce — that has left them blind-sided and angry, in search of explanations and revenge. On the eve of a trip to Italy, including the small village where his wife’s family is from, she announces that she will leave him when they return. Readers recognize her sadism, but in his desperation to remain married, Gould is in denial until a “piercing” revelation (I won’t spoil it by revealing more) releases his rage. Wallowing in post-divorce misery, Gould returns to Italy to investigate the death of a young American World War Two bomber and tarnish his ex’s reputation. A good storyteller, with a good story to tell, Gould has an outward-looking eye for detail and an inward-looking eye for reflection. As an author myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I appreciate the dexterity with which Gould interweaves these two perspectives. In search of revenge, he experiences gratitude. In search of closure, he instead opens himself to new people and possibilities. Gould discovers that the dead soldier is kept alive by the stories of the villagers. Likewise, this return journey is a resurrection for the author. He tells his own tale and in the end, the book and its author soar.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of My Year Abroad: A Novel by Chang-Rae Lee (Rating 3) – Bifurcated, Half Good. My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee, is the story of a year in the life of Tiller Bardmon, a twenty-year-old, motherless, one-eighth Asian, upper middle class dropout from a New Jersey college town. In this bifurcated tale, part of Tiller’s year is spent living semi-anonymously with an older woman who is in a witness protection program and has a young son. The unlikely threesome form a quasi-family, and Tiller becomes a father figure to the boy, who possesses an uncanny talent for cooking. Tiller has spent the earlier part of the year in China, taken there by a wealthy Asian-American businessman, who is both mentor and father figure. His adventures abroad range from exotic to kinky to torturous. “Adventures” implies an exciting journey for the reader, but Lee’s overlong and fanciful descriptions of bizarre figures and unbelievable events were boring. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I found the author’s riffs to be self-indulgent. By contrast, Tiller’s tame domesticity, in the company of fully drawn characters, especially the young boy, was moving and engaging. A better book would have truncated the unconventional experiences abroad and remained stateside, delving deeper into the creation of an unconventional family.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Weather: A Novel by Jenny Offill (Rating 3) – Reader Interest as Unsustainable as the Planet. Weather, a novel by Jenny Offill, is as satisfying as twee appetizers without a main course. In other words, not at all nourishing. Lizzie is a happily married woman with a well-adjusted young son and a brother who struggles with addiction, although not in crisis mode. Having dropped out of graduate school, she works in a university library and assists a former professor obsessed with climate change. Nothing changes for Lizzie. She has momentary twinges of fear about how to prepare for ecological disaster, but her life remains inert. The existential dread isn’t even very dreadful. Perhaps that’s the book’s message, that we fret yet do nothing. But as packaged in a somewhat random assortment of social-media length blurbs, the readers’ interest is no more sustainable than the planet. This quippy style seems to be a trend in recent fiction. It’s no longer experimental, and in the case of Weather, not even very imaginative. As an author myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), who prefers books with well developed characters and engaging narratives, I worry that writers and readers like me are doomed to extinction.