Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour

I read Black Buck on a trip, straight through in a few hours. It was everything I’m looking for in a good read: smart, entertaining, thought provoking, funny, both heart-breaking and uplifting, ultimately about love and full of Truth with a capital T. Mateo Askaripour quit his day job to write, which is super inspiring. This is his debut, and he notes it “was written just for Black readers, though white readers are welcome to ‘come along for the ride.'”

Black Buck opens with a note from the main character, Darren Vender, known as Buck. He tells readers he wants to teach us how to sell, but he particularly wants to teach Black people how to sell. To white readers like me, Buck says, “I want you to think of yourself as an honorary Black person. Go on, do it. Don’t go don blackface and an afro, but picture yourself as Black.” If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that a) that’s why I read, to put myself into another life for a few hundred pages and try to learn something about being human from their perspective and b) I’ve been working on being antiracist and one way to do that is to try to understand the experiences of people of color from their points of view. So I appreciated this invitation.

Buck is a delightful narrator. He is honest about himself and his own foibles. He’s a lot like most of us — good at some things, bad at others, mostly kind but sometimes hard-hearted, a good son, boyfriend, and friend . . . except when he isn’t. Askaripour makes it clear when the novel opens that Darren is also someone with untapped potential; he’s 22, was a valedictorian at a magnet school for science, but he’s working in a Starbucks, moving up, but not really fully fulfilling the promise others saw in him as a teen. And still see in him: Rhett Daniels, the charismatic leader of a tech startup called Sumwun that aims to upend the mental healthcare world, recruits him one morning in the Starbucks.

Rhett is wealthy, successful, narcissistic, and from their first encounter, seems brash to the point of being somewhat unhinged. Initially, Darren isn’t interested. Pressured by his girlfriend and mom to at least hear about the opportunity, Darren, nicknamed Buck during his sales training week at Sumwun, ends up getting drawn into the tech startup atmosphere — the swag, the free food, the partying, and frankly, the success he enjoys in sales. But he is also aware from day one that there are no other Black employees at Sumwun, and that Clyde, the man who trains him, and others at the company expect him to fail. Rhett, however, believes in him, even seems to love him, and Buck is flattered. Who wouldn’t be?

As you can guess, this is just the beginning of the story. As Buck spends more and more time with his Sumwun coworkers (which reminded me of this great article on why workplaces should not call themselves a “family”) he spends less with his mom and girlfriend and friends he grew up with. As in any coming of age story, Buck faces some trials — some bad things happen in those relationships — and then he has to show what he’s made of. Some reviewers called this “formulaic” to which I would say, go read The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell; human storytelling has patterns, which make storytelling and listening/watching a delight when done well, as it is in this novel. Anyway, in the process of realizing he could help a friend he nearly left behind in his precipitous climb to wealth and success, Buck ends up inadvertently starting a movement. Which, as sometimes happens in real life, makes him the target of some pretty nasty folks.

Anyway, I don’t want to spoil the plot for you by giving too many details, but I will say, what makes Black Buck uplifting even though it shines a light on all the excesses of capitalism, consumer culture, and gentrification, and the sins of racism, ableism, and other kinds of bigotry, is that Buck grows as a character. In the process, Askaripour examines the classic conflict of whether to take action against the forces of evil in our world with kindness or to fight fire with fire. His characters — and Buck is great but there are many terrific minor characters who advance the action in the story in different ways — make the social commentary happen, a la Jane Austen, which means you get so caught up in the story that it helps you understand the issues at hand. The ending is a bit wild, but unfortunately, probably not unrealistically so.

Ultimately, Black Buck is about a young man growing up in a world where inequity of all kinds stacks the deck against him and many of the people he cares about, who learns that what will really make him happy isn’t just doing well for himself, but being part of a community that can do well together. And that his own success will be richer for being part of something that helps others; Buck learns that there is no zero sum game when it comes to opportunity. (Yep, here is where I tell you again: read The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee). And as I mentioned, it’s also really funny, and a love story. If you’re looking for a good read, this is it. If you want something for your book club that is both a great deal of fun and also ripe for discussion, again, this is it.

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The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald

I downloaded The Gate of Angels, by Penelope Fitzgerald, when I went on an unexpected trip recently. I didn’t read it on the trip, but I enjoyed it this week. A short novel, set in 1912, it takes place over a brief time in the lives of Fred Fairly, a fellow of the fictional St. Angelicus College at Cambridge who studies physics, and Daisy Saunders, a young woman whose parents have died who has recently been forced out of nurse training when she tried to help a patient in a way that violated the hospital’s rules. Daisy, trying to make her way to a private mental hospital in Cambridge run by a doctor she knows in hopes he’ll hire her, and Fred are both hit by a farm cart while bicycling, along with another bicyclist who disappears after the accident.

When they each wake from the accident they are in a bed together; the well meaning lady whose house they are in thought they were married. Fred is entranced and sets out to convince Daisy they should be. Fitzgerald tells us a little about each of them, how they grew up, what their families are like, how they’ve tried to make their ways in the world. Daisy’s story illustrates how difficult it was to be a woman in the early 20th century, particularly a woman who is alone. She navigates a dangerous world where she survives by working hard, keeping alert, and staying one step ahead of those (mainly men) who would prey on her.

Fred’s had an easier life, but early in the book he goes home to tell his family he has lost his faith — and his father is a parish priest. When he arrives his mother and sisters are busy making a banner for a suffragette march and no one much cares about this faith. His college, St. Angelicus, doesn’t allow fellows to marry and he spends much of his time following arcane traditions and rules. When he meets Daisy, and more importantly when the truth about the night of the accident comes to light, his questioning takes a different turn, and he realizes, and tells his undergraduate students, that “there is no difference whatever between rational thought and ordinary thought.” He goes on to say that what they are there to study — “energy and matter” — are part of their own selves, too, and that “scientists are not dispassionate. Your judgement and your ability to do good work will be in part dependent on your digestion, your prejudices, and above all, your emotional life.”

In addition to this emotional awakening by a man previously devoted entirely to science, there’s an element of mystery as the pieces of the story come together, there’s a sort of gothic ghost tale told by an elderly don as he considers the strange accident, and there’s a ridiculous scene where Fred, who has accidentally knocked out someone who has done Daisy wrong, carries the unconscious man through the streets of Cambridge with a fellow scholar, who chats away about other things and then suggests they leave him in a pile of grass clippings. And the writing is so delightful — descriptive, pointed, and wise. There’s a passage where Fred has asked for Daisy at the mental hospital, and the receptionist imperiously replies that there is no nurse named Saunders; technically true, since Daisy’s job is to iron linens. The doctor overhears and comes out of his office and scolds:

“Don’t, in your ignorance, amuse yourself by turning away my callers. You are the receptionist. Receive!”

And here’s a description of Daisy, towards the end of the novel, carrying a bag on her way to the station:

“Out in the road, carrying the overfull Jemima, she felt she looked like someone taking kittens out to drown and changing her mind at the last moment. The rain threatened to get worse. At one point, she had had a good, strong umbrella, but not now. She had lent it to one of the two cooks at Dr. Sage’s, and she hated asking for anything back. It took all the good out of it.”

The Gate of Angels is described as a historical novel, but is also very funny, and warm in its way. The ending is ambiguous but hopeful. A really delightful read.

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Summer’s Lease by John Mortimer

A friend recommended Summer’s Lease by John Mortimer, the author well known for Rumpole of the Bailey. It’s not available to download from my library but my mother gave me a copy for my birthday. My grandmother used to say that when the news was awful, a mystery was just the thing (and this week, the New York Times affirmed her wisdom by running a piece on Agatha Christie’s books at time when we are certainly up to our ears in bad news). So I pulled Summer’s Lease out of the to read pile and devoured it in a couple of sittings.

Apparently, Mortimer knew the setting of this novel well, having regularly rented houses in an area of Tuscany he facetiously called Chiantishire, because of the presence of so many English tourists and ex-pats. Summer’s Lease is a mystery but it is also quite sharply humorous. The story is about Molly Pargeter, who uses her inheritance from a great aunt to book three weeks in an Italian villa for her family of five, and then unexpectedly ends up hosting her father, Haverford, as well.

Mortimer captures all the little nuances of family life — the power imbalance in Molly’s marriage to Hugh, a divorce lawyer (like Mortimer) who has been having flirtatious lunches with one of his former clients; the triangulation that occurs as children enter adolescence and at once need their mother and want to bring her down a notch; the vulnerability and insecurity behind old Haverford’s raucous and, even in a time when “PC” was not a thing yet, often inappropriate rancountering. For all this human interest, Mortimer also delivers an interesting mystery and does so with great humor, poking fun at both British and Italian society.

As I was telling the friend who recommended it, the ending took me aback, and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. But It was a good read, entertaining and a delightful if brief escape from the news. And I’m intrigued by Mortimer, who seems like he was quite a character. I have never seen Rumpole, and may look for some episodes. And Summer’s Lease was also a four part series which aired on Masterpiece in the early 90s, with John Gielgud as Haverford, which sounds wonderful.

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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

I was looking for a break from heavy fiction (War & Peace, which I’m still reading a bit at a time for #Tolstoytogether) and nonfiction (see my last blog post) so I browsed the library’s apps for eBooks. Olga Tokarczuk‘s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a darkly funny mystery, featuring a former bridge engineer, Janina Duszejko, whose Ailment (possibly diabetes?) caused her to give up her exotic international work. She now works very part time as a cartetaker for other people’s country homes and as a primary school English teacher in a Polish village near the Czech Republic border. She also works on translating Blake with a former student, calculates horoscopes (who knew there was so much match in astrology?) and defends animal rights to the aggravation of the area’s hunters. Because sometimes she destroys their hunting pulpits.

When three prominent local men die in the area, Mrs. Duszejko sets out to determine who the killer is, and becomes certain that astrology holds the answer. She sees several signs in the dead men’s horoscopes that indicate animals may be the killers, and she tries to alert the police to this, despite her friends’ warnings that this makes her appear even more eccentric than she already did. Even though the book was first published in 2009, it feels both older and newer; at first I thought perhaps it was taking place in the 80s, but then I realized that one of the characters used a mobile phone early in the book. And towards the end, Mrs. Duszejko notes, “Newspapers rely on keeping us in a constant state of anxiety, on diverting our emotions away from the things that really matter to us.” Which felt like something we just talked about this week at my house.

In some ways Mrs. Duszejko is a sympathetic character; she seems to be very loyal and kind to her friends, is somewhat sweetly quirky, and stands in opposition to cruelty and toxic masculinity. But in other ways she is hard to like; cranky, rude, irrational. The book was enjoyable, but as is usually the case, I found it hard to get through, because e-reading is not my favorite. The ending was not what I was expecting, which is good where murders are concerned.

I’d say, look for it in print, from your local bookstore. It would be a really interesting read for a book club.

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The Comforters by Muriel Spark

A couple of years ago I spied The Comforters at a coffee and book shop in Maine and remembered how much I liked A Far Cry from Kensington. When I was looking for a quick read for the holiday season, I saw it on my shelf and decided to give this book, Muriel Spark‘s debut novel, a read. It was just the thing for this busy time, short and satisfying.

It was interesting to read so recently after The Life You Save May Be Your Own because Spark was a Catholic convert and Catholicism features heavily in The Comforters. It’s the story of Caroline, a writer working on book about the novel form. She’s a recent convert and has decided to put her relationship with Laurence, a BBC football commentator and heir to a canned fig company, on hold until he returns to the faith, although they remain friends.

When the novel opens, Laurence writes to Caroline from his grandmother Louisa’s home to tell her he thinks Louisa is in a gang. Caroline is on a retreat and is driven away by the odious Mrs. Hogg, a former servant for Laurence’s family and a very nosy and unpleasant woman. Mrs. Hogg decides to read the letter, rather than just forwarding it on to Caroline. In the mean time, Laurence and Caroline try to get to the bottom of what Louisa is up to, and Caroline is visited by a ghostly narrator whose typewriter only she can hear.

Caroline, crazily enough, feels sure this means they are all in a novel. She comes to view herself as superfluous to the plot — the mystery surrounding Louisa, Mrs. Hogg, Mrs. Hogg’s estranged husband Mr. Hogarth, and their crippled son, Andrew, as well as a friend of Caroline’s and Laurences, known as the Baron, Laurence’s mother Helena, and his Uncle Ernest, who, in good English novel fashion, happens to be in business with Caroline’s college friend Eleanor, who has been involved romantically with both the Baron and Mr. Hogarth. But in the end it turns out, Caroline is really key to the whole story.

Confused? I was from time to time, but it all became clearer as I took more time to read — it’s not a book you can pick up for a few pages a night before bed, unless you want to spend time backtracking to figure out who is doing what and how they know each other again. However, once I gave it proper attention, The Comforters was hilarious in a dry, and pretty dark way — there is a crime at the center of the story, plus some injuries, a death, and at least one of the characters may or may not be involved in diabolism (I had to look it up, too — devil worship). The supernatural aspect worked for me because it seems like a nod to the creative process — why wouldn’t writers possibly be visited by voices, and aren’t they, even if most of the time they don’t literally hear them out loud?

A delightful read, a little wacky and fun but also a novel that talks addresses women’s roles in society, creativity, religious practices, morality, and relationships. A book club could have fun with this one.

 

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An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

When I read The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair couple of weeks ago, the section on heliotrope included notes Oscar Wilde makes in his play An Ideal Husband about the villainess Mrs. Cheveley when she enters a party at Lord and Lady Chiltern’s house in Grosvenor Square: “She is in heliotrope, with diamonds.” Just as I followed the trail from A Month in the Country to Under the Greenwood Tree, I decided this afternoon to read Wilde’s play and see whether Mrs. Cheveley, who St. Clair’s describes as Wilde’s “deliciously immoral antiheroine” and one of the many “badly behaved characters . . . often described as wearing the color” in literature is as wicked as all that.

And she is. I think I’ve only ever seen one play by Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest. I’d forgotten how funny he is. An Ideal Husband could be about rich politicians today . . . in fact I think it would be fun to see a contemporary setting. Lord and Lady Chiltern are pillars of London society, he a member of Parliament, she his political partner and very involved in worthy causes. They are widely thought of as good people. At a party, Mrs. Cheveley shows up, fresh from Vienna where she’s been living, and promptly blackmails Lord Chiltern. She has evidence of Chiltern selling insider information to a rich Baron when Chiltern was a young man, “well-born but poor.” She wants him to make a speech promoting a project he is set to denounce, which would make her a fortune. She threatens to expose his earlier misdeed if he doesn’t do what she wants.

Chiltern is terrified, not of losing his own position, but of disappointing and possibly even losing his wife. He turns to his dear friend, Lord Goring for advice. Goring is a vain young man whose father thinks he is lazy (his equally silly love interest, Lord Chiltern’s younger sister Mabel, counters this by noting that among other things he “changes his clothes five times a day and dines out every night of the season” and is therefore not “leading an idle life”). But he is a loyal friend, and does his best to help, to great comic effect.

The play moves along at a good pace and covers only one twenty-four hour period, so it was a quick read. Wilde skewers London’s “season” and comments acerbically on marriage, wealth, and greed — Mrs. Cheveley is really a nasty, selfish, mean-spirited person who has apparently despised Lady Chiltern since they were young and has stolen jewelry which she has the audacity to wear. But he is gentle on Chiltern, or so it seems to me. I could see how tempting it was for the young Chiltern to do what he felt necessary to put himself in a position of influence, and how he’d spent his life trying to make up for his ill gotten gains by using his ambition for good.

Wilde also writes fairly bitterly about relationships. At one point Chiltern is addressing his wife, after telling her about how he couldn’t admit his crime to her because she’d built him up into something he was not: “Women think that they are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely. You made your false idol of me and I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses.” That’s a pretty dark view of marriage.

I also appreciated this bit of Goring’s advice: “Well, the English can’t stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits that he has been in the wrong. It is one of the best things in them. However, in your case, Robert, a confession would not do. The money, if you will allow me to say so, is  . . . awkward. Besides, if you did make a clean breast of the whole affair, you would never be able to talk morality again. And in England, a man who can’t talk morality twice a week to a large, popular, immoral audience is quite over as a serious politician.”

That to me is painfully funny — I love the understated ” . . . awkward”  and isn’t it true that politicians love to moralize, especially the ones who’ve done immoral things themselves? This passage seems to me to relate to much of what’s still wrong with politics and public perception of politicians today. An Ideal Husband was a really fun Sunday afternoon read. I’m interested in reading more — we have a a book of Wilde’s complete plays, so the next time I’m between books and casting about for something short and entertaining, I’ll know where to turn.

 

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A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr

In more than one article where he’s asked about favorite books, Michael Ondaatje cites J.L. Carr‘s A Month in the Country.  That was more than enough endorsement for me to add it to a list of books to look for . . . and then I found it on our ramble through the used bookshops of Portland at the beginning of the summer. I read it today and it was just the balm I needed after a tough couple of weeks of hard thinking at work about my research project and the new semester and at home about my project for my final year of grad school.

It was also the perfect book to read after The Secret Lives of Color. In A Month in the Country, the main character, Mr. Birkin, is a WWI veteran who arrives in 1920 in a northern English village called Oxgodby, where he’s been hired to uncover a medieval painting whitewashed over centuries earlier in the local church. As he works he notes various pigments, like ultramarine and hematite and verdigris, and as he commented on their richness, colorfastness, scarcity, or cost, I understood.

Both Birkin’s work and that of his fellow veteran and “southerner” Mr. Moon are funded by the recently deceased Adelaide Hebron, whose last wishes include hiring someone to uncover the artwork and to find the tomb of her ancestor Piers, who was excommunicated and so isn’t buried in the churchyard. Moon, an archeologist, suspects the meadow also holds even more ancient remains and the foundation of a much earlier church, dating back to the 7th century. He stays in a tent (and a hole he’s dug under it), Birkin stays in the bell tower, and between them they work and observe the locals and discuss the vicar, Rev. Keach and his lovely young wife, Alice, who seem mismatched. Which of course provides room for speculation, but there’s no sappy or simple love story here. Just tension, well told.

Birkin ends up being absorbed into village life as he is pressed into officiating local cricket matches and looked after by the stationmaster, Mr. Ellerbeck, and his family. As their teenaged daughter Kathy notes, “Mam says you’re over-much on your own and traipse around like a man in a dream and need to be got into company.” They are “chapel” rather than church people, and out of appreciation for their kindness and their generosity (Mrs. Ellerbeck feeds him regularly) Birkin ends up attending their Wesleyan services and helping with Sunday school. He even takes an uncomfortable turn at preaching in a nearby chapel when Ellerbeck is overextended, and helps his new friends shop for an organ for the chapel in the nearby town, in scene which is a hilarious send-up of sectarian snobbery.

The humor, the portrait of village life, the commentary on post WWI England’s cultural, social, and religious landscape, and the mysteries of Birkin’s and Moon’s work are all delightful. The story is certainly entertaining, but the deeper threads about healing from war wounds visible and invisible, and finding one’s way in a world that seems both completely changed in some ways and very much what it’s always been in others, make for a thoughtful read that explores the kind of “big T” truths that I enjoy in fiction.

Moon tells Birkin, as summer draws to a close and their work is nearly done, “You can only have this piece of cake once; you can’t keep munching away at it. Sad, but there it is! You’ll find that, once you’ve dragged yourself off round the corner, there’ll be another view; it may even be a better one.” Later than evening, Birkin reflects on this and thinks, “And he was right — the first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.”

That’s what A Month in the Country is about — that feeling, and how we respond to it. Birkin has decisions to make. Moon has plans. The story ends without our knowing precisely what they intend to do, but with a delicious sense of “a precious moment gone” as Carr writes. This is a book I’ll read again, and one that I picked up at just the right time.

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The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay

This was an impulse buy — I saw The Towers of Trebizond at my local independent bookstore and immediately thought I’d always intended to read it, so I should get it (it was a nice used copy, so I even felt virtuous about my purchase). Little did I know the devotion some readers, such as Joanna Trollope, feel towards this book and its author, Rose Macaulay. I am still reeling from the ending, which I read a couple of hours ago. I can see why this book might bear re-reading well, because I am so caught up in the end that I’m struggling to describe my overall feelings about it.

Essentially this novel is the story of Laurie, a young woman (Probably? I struggled to find any gender reference and Laurie can be male or female. The only indication I find is that when Vere, Laurie’s lover, comes to stay, her Aunt Dot’s servant Emily is not shocked, because Laurie’s sister is also at Aunt Dot’s house. Regardless, I think it doesn’t matter which gender Laurie is.) traveling with Aunt Dot, a woman in her fifties, and Father Chantry-Pigg, a recently retired Anglo Catholic priest. The trio are in Turkey in the fifites, where Aunt Dott and Father Pigg want to convert people to Anglicanism and bring attention to the plight of Turkish women (Aunt Dot’s special interest is the condition of women). They seem to be losing the opportunity to convert people because Billy Graham’s people precede them by a week or so as they travel.

Laurie is along to help Aunt Dot with a book she is working on. Most of the their circle of friends are working on some version of a book about traveling in Turkey, and Macaulay pokes gentle fun at this tendency of a certain class of British traveler to write about their journeys. At a certain point, Aunt Dot and Father Pigg disappear — I’ll leave the details for you to find out yourself — and Laurie is left with their gear and luggage and the camel Aunt Dot has brought along from England for the journey. (Again, would a young woman be left to travel alone? I’m not certain.)

So — eccentric British people, a lot of musing on and analysis of Anglicanism, subtle humor, exotic locales. So far, so good. But this book goes way beyond being a funny send-up of British travelers and missionaries. Laurie struggles deeply with “adultery” — Vere is Laurie’s lover, and Laurie refers to not wanting to give that up, but clearly feels it would be right to. Father Pigg seems to know of Laurie’s struggle, even counseling that a return to church would be a solution. So readers have an incomplete picture, but understand there is something forbidden about Laurie and Vere’s relationship.

As the book unfolds, Laurie thinks a great deal about faith, religion, and the state of each in the mid twentieth century. That part of the novel is interesting — Laurie is curious and well spoken about various Christian denominations, and learns more about Islam. There is a lot of reflection on why church and faith diverge and while claiming not to know much, is actually quite wise. Laurie tells a friend who thinks Christianity odd, “The light of the spirit, the light that has lighted every man who came into the world. What I mean is, it wasn’t only what happened in Palestine two thousand years ago, it wasn’t just local and temporal and personal, it’s the other kingdom, the courts of God, get into them however you can and stay in them if you can, only one can’t. But don’t worry me about the jewish Church in Palestine, or the doings of the Christian Church ever since, it’s mostly irrelevant to what matters.”

There’s a lot to think about in that one reply, and it sums up Laurie’s crisis — Christian faith is everything, but is at the same time beyond reach. Readers (at least this one) might pass this off as troubled youth (Laurie is young, although how young is also unclear) in a post-war world, where communism and baptists both draw off Church of England members, until the shattering end of this novel, when the enormity of Laurie’s struggle comes into focus.

I loved The Towers of Trebizond. It’s neither a quick nor a simple novel, and I suspect I’ll be mulling it over for some time.

 

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Seconds, The Purple Swamp Hen and One Man Guy

I read a couple of good books and listened to a third last week as part of the book bingo challenges I’m doing at the library where I work and my local public library. But, The Computer Scientist has planted the idea in my head that maybe it would be good for me to deliberately not finish either book bingo. I haven’t decided for sure, but I’m reading whatever I want this week whether it fits a bingo card or not.

I read a graphic novel from the offspring formerly known as Teen the Younger, Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley, who wrote the Scott Pilgrim series. It’s the story of Katie, a young woman who is a chef with a successful restaurant, about to open a new one. Things are not going well with the renovation (something I, in the midst of a kitchen remodel that hit a much more minor snag this week, can identify with), or with the rest of her life. A strange encounter in the night leaves her with mushrooms and a note that tells her she can write down a mistake, eat a mushroom, go to sleep, and wake up with a new life.

Like any good fairy tale there’s are a couple of “witch” figures — house spirits, in this case. The heroine has to make several mistakes with the magic and things have to get much worse before they get better. It is a very enjoyable read, with interesting and vivid art, that moves along quickly.

The other book I read, The Purple Swamp Hen is a short story collection by Penelope Lively, whose How It All Began I loved, as well as Dancing Fish and Ammonites.  I love short fiction and this collection did not disappoint. The title story is one of my favorites; it’s told from the point of view of the unusual bird depicted in a Pompeii fresco, who tells about the decadent and mostly unkind humans in villa before the Vesuvius eruption. Which is not as weird as it sounds. I enjoyed the whole book really, but another standout was “The Bridge,” which deals with a long married couple living separate lives mainly because they have parallel memories of a tragedy, which allows one to move on and the other to remain stuck with holding that memory at bay. Lively is a genius at depicting human nature in all its faulty glory in a few brief pages.

I listened to the audiobook version of  One Man Guy by Michael Barakiva. It’s the story of Alex Khederian, an Armenian American teen whose strict parents are both a source of pride and frustration. Alex has to go to summer school even though he passed all his classes, because his mom and dad want him to be in honors classes like his older brother. There, Alex gets to know Ethan, one of the charismatic older students from the rowdy crowd at school known as the drop outs. Alex admits they’re not much in the way of troublemakers given that he lives in a fairly affluent school district in New Jersey. But Ethan drags Alex on a forbidden adventure in the City and in no time they are inseparable and Alex is taking chances he never dreamed of.  It takes Alex’s best friend, Becky, to help him see how he really feels about Ethan. As in any good romantic comedy, a mishap causes a minor disaster — Alex’s parents ground him, possibly ending his relationship. Will love prevail? Will the Khederians trust Alex again? Will he make honors? A funny, sweet, but not overly treacly, love story that attempts (fairly successfully) to deal with multiple cultures: suburban New Jersey high school, gay New York, and Armenian American. I was hungry after listening as Barakiva includes mouth- watering details about the Khederians’ favorite meals.

I’ve moved on to a book I heard about on The Readers earlier in the summer, that I don’t think actually fits any book bingo squares. I can resist the urge to fill every square. Really.

 

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Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple

I absolutely loved Where’d You Go, Bernadette,  so I was excited to read Maria Semple‘s latest novel, Today Will Be Different. Eleanor Flood, the protagonist, was the animation director on an edgy TV show. She does freelance illustration in Seattle; she has a book deal for a graphic novel (which is embedded in Today Will Be Different) based on her childhood, but it’s eight years overdue. Her husband, Joe, is a famous hand surgeon who works with the Seahawks. They have a son, Timby, who applies makeup when he thinks his mother isn’t looking, and a dog, Yo-Yo. She knows her life would be the envy of most people, but she’s at loose ends, feeling middle aged, useless, and lost.

For one thing, she hasn’t seen her sister Ivy in years, because of her controlling, unhinged brother-in-law. For another, she gets the sense that Joe is up to something. On a morning when she vows that her day will be different — she’ll be her “best self” — she instead ends up on a madcap adventure around Seattle, with Timby, who says he has a stomach ache but is really being bullied at school, and Yo-Yo, at least part of the time, in tow.

It’s impossible not to root for Eleanor — who among us hasn’t meant to be our best selves, and found it perpetually impossible? And if you enjoyed Semple’s gentle but persistent humorous critique of upper middle class privileged angst in her earlier work, you’ll laugh at it again here. But Today Will Be Different, like Where’d You Go Bernadette, isn’t just wacky and fun, it has a deep vein of emotional, and this time even spiritual, truth to explore. It’s a book about love in many forms, and about being who we are in a world that constantly tempts us to be otherwise. And in Eleanor’s case, it’s about healing from a past that comes back to stir up her psyche no matter how much she tries to let it go, or sometimes, to banish it.

“Deep down, Eleanor knew she must have been born a warmer soul. She wasn’t meant to be so self reliant.” And deep down we know that as much as we may giggle at her exploits, and roll our eyes at some of the ridiculous ways people in this book act, Eleanor’s warm soul will lift her out of the funk she’s in. We get the sense that Eleanor will let herself rely on Timby and Joe and even Yo-Yo, who love her and know they can count on her even when she’s “mean,” one of Timby’s frequent complaints. I won’t tell you the plot twists or how things end, but I will say that despite everything, readers come to the final page feeling love can prevail over just about anything, even Eleanor Flood. And don’t we all need a little reminding of that?

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