Public, secret lives
I finally got around to reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Although she has written some other well-received books (Daisy Jones and The Six, Carrie Soto Is Back), this was the first of hers I have read. I’m always a bit skeptical about reading “popular” books, because I have been let down so many times by the promise created by all the hoopla, but I have to say that this one actually surpassed my expectations.
For those who have managed to avoid the book clubbers’ raves and have remained oblivious to this book, the basic outline is this: Evelyn Hugo is a Hollywood icon in her late 70s—retired, wealthy, and reclusive—who made it out of Hell’s Kitchen in the 1950s as a teenager and did whatever it took to become a Hollywood film star. Some of that meant entering into marriages for a variety of purposes that included true love, lust, ambition, politics, and money. Her relationships helped to shape both her career and her legend, but the men she married weren’t all of them the most important people to figure in her life—there is a story behind all the stories, and this is what Evelyn, now alone for many years, is ready to reveal while she still can.
She selects as her biographer a young journalist, Monique Grant, for reasons that are somewhat but not wholly connected to Monique’s writing abilities (and that’s another story) and gives her exclusive access. They spend days and nights together as Evelyn unpacks her entire glamorous and scandalous life—all the turning points, decisions, triumphs, and tragedies—until she finally reveals something that sets Monique back on her heels.
I’m not going to say much more about the story, because it’s one of those that you need to experience for yourself as you go along, rather than having it wrapped up in a couple of summarizing paragraphs. I will say that Jenkins’s writing style and the creation of the character and story of Evelyn are so evocative that you feel like you’re in the room with her as she tells it, as well as accompanying her to every movie set, red carpet, shop, motel, mansion, beach, or city street. It’s an enthralling look at Old Hollywood with its studio contracts and glitzy movie stars. The narrative creates a rich tapestry woven of ambition, betrayal, love, and a search for identity and authenticity. It’s full of historical detail and paints a colorful picture of the woman, her companions, and their backdrops.
My one caveat is that I would have liked to know just a little bit more about Monique Grant. Although we do get her basic story line, her character is so eclipsed by that of Evelyn that you tend to forget she’s in the room until Evelyn says “let’s stop there for today” and someone else’s hand reaches out to turn off the recording device.
Aside from that, I was captured and fascinated by this book and character from beginning to end, with no detail feeling extraneous. That’s a rarity, in my experience.
Busybodies
The Busybody Book Club is my first experience of the novels of Freya Sampson, and I think I will need to read at least one more just to verify what other reviewers on Goodreads had to say about them. Some loved this book, others said it was her least successful; if the latter is true, then I look forward to reading one/some of the others, because I found this a charming story with much to enjoy.
Nova Davies has recently moved to Cornwall to start a new life with her fiancé, Craig, and has found a job at the St. Tredock Community Center. She is attempting to revive a previously popular book club run by her predecessor, but so far it’s an uphill task. There are to date only five members including herself, and two of the five are distressingly silent, while the other two are all too outspoken. Arthur wants to read romances, because he is tasked at home with reading aloud to his wife, Esi, who has lost her sight and much of her mobility, and that’s what she likes. But Phyllis (accompanied by her smelly old bulldog, Craddock) insists that romances are rubbish and the club should focus on mystery, preferably the works of her favorite, Agatha Christie. She prefers Miss Marple (quietly brilliant) to Hercule Poirot (too pretentious), but is adamant about genre. Because they take turns suggesting each month’s read, however, opinions are also solicited from painfully shy teenager Ash, who is a science fiction fan, and from their new member, Michael, who is largely inarticulate and, of course, from Nina, who tries hard to keep selections eclectic and discussions moving despite Phyllis’s loud and frequent exclamations, interruptions, and wholesale scoffing.
On the night of their meeting, the only people left in the club are Nova and the four other members. At some point during the lively discussion of Where the Crawdads Sing, someone enters the center’s office and steals the petty cash box, which happens to contain ten thousand pounds allocated for a new roof. This isn’t discovered until the next morning, when the police are called by director Sandy to interview the book club members; everyone immediately focuses on the odd behavior of Michael, who received a text on his phone halfway through the meeting, looked distraught, and ran out of the room. He never returned to the meeting, and is instantly suspect; but Nova is also under scrutiny because it was her job to lock the office, thereby preventing the opportunity for the theft.
Losing that money is a disaster for the center and may actually precipitate its closing. The club members are immediately up in arms, Phyllis most of all, and are determined to figure out the puzzles of who could have stolen the money and for what purpose, and what has happened to the mysterious Michael. Theories abound, suspects are scrutinized, and meanwhile the relationships between the members change and grow based on their collaboration. Some things turn out exactly as you would expect while others are a total surprise, and the fun of the book is figuring out where you (and the characters) got it right.
This is a sort of hybrid; it’s a cozy mystery, but it’s also a story about people and their relationships with one another, their secrets, their memories, their hopes. And it’s a book about books, and who among us can resist that? I loved that the members ranged so widely in age, interests, and taste in books, and that there was “book chat” throughout. There are so many elements to this story—from coming of age to confidence issues to loneliness and grief—that kept the narrative lively and interesting. It’s not a “significant” book, but it is a well crafted and witty one that provided great entertainment and made me want to know what happens to the characters after. What more could you ask for, on a solitary rainy afternoon?
Memorable
I just finished Say You’ll Remember Me, by Abby Jimenez, and it seems that I am among the few who enjoyed it more than some of her other popular titles. I think I did because it was a simple story with mostly believable obstacles that came from real-world issues and not from elaborate mind games on the part of its protagonists.
The problem I frequently have with these contemporary relationship novels is that they require so much suspension of disbelief. Every trope comes with its moment where you think “Oh, c’mon, nobody would be that obtuse!” So often there are massive misunderstandings that keep couples apart, but the story relies on the reader accepting that, despite being in a relationship, these people never talk to one another, that they make blanket assumptions they don’t check out, then refuse to believe credible evidence, etc., and after a while I become impatient that I’m reading a book whose whole premise depends on two people not initiating one simple conversation.
This one was refreshingly different. It did have its flaws—but for the most part it felt believable to me.
Samantha has been living in Minnesota, having been drawn there for her work. She finds and decides to adopt a kitten, and takes it to a veterinarian who gives her advice she absolutely does not want to take. She is incensed by his attitude, which feels defeatist, and decides to prove him wrong, but when she actually pulls it off, she is surprised to discover that he readily admits he was mistaken and apologizes. Then Dr. Xavier Rush asks her out. Since his revised attitude comes along with Greek god-like good looks and a particular intensity that appeals to Sam, she decides to accept. They have one absolutely perfect date, and then everything blows up. Samantha had learned that her mother’s early-onset Alzheimers is advancing at a rapid rate and realized that she needs to be spending time with her and helping her family with her mom’s care, and she is scheduled to move back home to California the very next day.
That’s the real-world conflict that keeps them apart: geography and bad timing. They resolve to forget what might have been if they could have continued seeing one another…but neither Sam nor Xavier seems able to move past their undeniable connection.
The problem is, neither can change their circumstances to make a move. Xavier just opened his veterinary clinic a couple of years previous and is in debt for the start-up in an amount greater than he could get for selling it. And he can’t just hire someone to work there and run it in his absence, because he can’t afford to pay them—he’s been living on the leftovers after the loan payments are made, but no one else would do that. He’s stuck in Minnesota until circumstances change, but that could take a decade. And Samantha can’t and won’t shirk her responsibilities and cut her ties just to be with him.
But having a long-distance relationship with the burdens under which each of them is operating is nearly impossible, and although they give it a try, the thought that this situation might last for years is so daunting that neither of them is happy.
What happens when the person you have realized is “the one” for you can’t be in your life for more than a weekend every three months?
There were some features of the story that were less believable than others, and it does bog down in the middle when the angsty stuff becomes somewhat repetitive, but the attention to the details of Xavier’s back story, Samantha’s relationship with her family, and their undeniable chemistry when together keep it going. If you’re looking for a less formulaic relationship story, try this one.
The last?
I just finished what has been billed as the “last installment” of the Gunnie Rose story by Charlaine Harris—The Last Wizards’ Ball, number six in the series. And although I thought that it was appropriately told, with plenty of drama and intrigue and some fascinating new characters, I admit I am feeling a little puzzled. There was no cliffhanger as there was at the end of previous installments, but everything was left more than a little unsettled and open-ended, and I could see this series going on for several more books, based on the impression I received from this one. I can’t decide whether Harris likes an open-ended story, or is hedging her bets just in case.
Of course, one could posit a spin-off or two that, for instance, followed Felicia to New York City and then to Europe, or trailed Lizbeth to a possible new home in a place both greener and less fraught than Texoma, or followed the fortunes of Eli as he resumes his services to the Russian Tsar of California…
Just to inform those who are unaware of this series…
The setting is the former United States, but one event—the assassination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—has significantly altered the history of the country. Without Roosevelt’s guiding hand during the Great Depression, the crippled country fractures, and various states were either absorbed into surrounding countries, taken over by former rulers, or banded together to form small nations. The original 13 Colonies pledged fealty to the British Empire; a few of the “top” border states became part of Canada; the south-eastern states are now “Dixie” while Texas and Oklahoma formed “Texoma”; the “flyover” states remained “New” American territory; the rest of the southwest was annexed by Mexico; and the biggest surprise was the Pacific Northwest, which was taken over—by a combination of invitation, treaty, advantageous marriages, and magic—by Tsar Nicholas and the remains of the Holy Russian Empire, which is now its new name.
The main protagonist, Lizbeth Rose, lives in Texoma and makes her living by hiring herself out as a “gunnie”—a combination of escort, guard, and gunslinger paid to protect people and/or cargos being transported by land or rail from one territory to another. It’s an unusual profession for a young woman, but Lizbeth is a crack shot used to relying on no one but herself, and takes all the risks to keep her clients alive and her cargos safe. Here is my full review of the first two installments, which also further explains the magic part of the tale.
In this the sixth book, Lizbeth Rose’s half-sister Felicia, a powerful wizard, is 16 and attending her first Wizards’ Ball, described by Lizbeth as similar in nature to the “Season” in a Georgette Heyer novel, otherwise known as the Marriage Mart. The most prominent grigoris, wizards, and magic-makers from around the globe send or bring the eligible members of their families (unattached youth under 30) to a week-long series of garden parties, tea parties, balls, theatricals, and what-not so that they can all meet one another and make suitable marriage matches. The aims are power (both magical and political), wealth, and the acquisition of a bloodline that will match well with, freshen, or diversify a perhaps played-out heritage.
Felicia is much in demand but also at great risk, since some would do anything to “acquire” her and her power for themselves, while others are bent on keeping that power away from those people, regardless of Felicia’s personal wishes. But Felicia is no pushover when it comes to defending her own rights, and she has her gunslinger sister and her grigori brother-in-law, Eli, along for protection and observation.
The time period in this book is during the build-up to what was, in another timeline, World War II—the ascendence of Hitler—and all negotiations are colored by political loyalties and intentions as it becomes apparent that war is in everyone’s future. This is part of the reason why I find it confusing that this is the last book, because in a world where there was no strong, unified American government with its military that jumped in at the end to turn the tide of the war, the possibilities are endless, and Harris has set it up with the added detail of magical abilities being in play on both sides.
While the book was entertaining, full of plots, drama, and detail, I was left feeling that if this was the end of the story, we have been dumped just as things were about to get truly intense. I’m hoping that Harris has a segue up her sleeve, as she did when she wrote the Midnight, Texas stories based on a character from her Harper Connelly series. If not…I have quite enjoyed them anyway, some more than others.
Short but jam-packed
As I have mentioned here before, I am generally not a reader of short stories. The last time I blogged about a couple of them that I picked up for my Kindle, I commented that in the future I would resist temptation even if they were written by authors I admire (those two were by Alice Hoffman and Margaret Atwood, so the star power was bright) because I found the brief format unsatisfying, no matter who wrote them. But I didn’t keep that resolution, and this time I’m glad I didn’t, although, alongside the satisfaction they gave me, I still feel a little frustration for the attenuated content.
First I was offered one by John Scalzi, who is one of my latest favorite science fiction authors and, when I saw it was about time travel (a particular fascination of mine), I couldn’t say no. Then one popped up by Alix Harrow, who has written three books since 2019 all of which enthralled me when I read them. This one had a knight in the title, so I assumed it was fairy tale-ish and therefore likely to please me, but it turned out to be something I like even better—a dystopian story.
Why, then, did these impress me so much? In trying to dissect that, the first thing that occurred to me was their immediate impact. In less than a page I knew that I couldn’t stop reading. Part of this is due to something novelists and readers have discussed for years (or millennia or eons): the first line.
When I think of a famous first line, the one that most immediately comes to me is “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” That’s the opener for Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, and if you ask readers on a Facebook page dedicated to books, it’s one that is often quoted. Others that crop up frequently are “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” (Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen), and “Call me Ishmael” (Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick), “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy), or “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens). These are all from classics, but there are many others nearly as famous that source from books that are popular, perhaps well known, but not considered in that pantheon, such as “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink” (Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle), or “When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen” (The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett) or “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold” (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson).
I cite all these because they have the unique ability to cue you to a lot of what’s coming in one simple phrase. You immediately want to know: What or where is Manderley? who is the dreamer? Why did they leave Manderley in the first place? You want to argue that perhaps the last thing a single man with a good fortune might either want or need is a wife to spend it! If you have any Bible knowledge, you get all the deep connections to the name “Ishmael.” You instantly begin debating whether that statement about families and happiness or lack of same is true—you think about your own, and then you want to know why the author has embraced this premise. If you know that A Tale of Two Cities is about the French Revolution, then it must have been a bad time, but then wonder how being in the middle of a war could also possibly be the best. You ponder why someone would write while sitting in a sink; you immediately perceive that this person might be out of the ordinary and therefore worth cultivating. You want to know why Mary had to go live with her uncle, and what it was that made her disagreeable—was it that, or something else? You think about someone driving across Interstate 40 in a drugged state and are presuming you probably know what will happen next, but you don’t…so you keep reading.
Alix Harrow’s story, “The Knight and the Butcherbird,” begins:
Once upon a time,
a knight came riding into the holler.”
It is immediately arresting, because it’s like that game where you see a group of pictures and are asked the question, “what one thing is not like the others?” The “Once upon a time” and the “knight” immediately set you up for the expectation of fairy tale; but there are few areas in the world where someone would call a small, v-shaped, riverine type of valley a “hollow,” and when that gets transmuted to “holler” you know you are in southern Appalachia, most likely in West Virginia. So, what is a knight (presumably wearing armor to distinguish him as such) doing riding into Appalachia? The disconnect drags you in and glues your eyes to the page.
In the next paragraph you find out it’s been 300+ years since “the apocalypse,” that the knight is expected (people are standing around waiting for him), and that the protagonist is a misfit in her community (“I stood among them like a tumor at a birthday party: silent, uninvited. Likely fatal.”)
In the third, you get a picture drawn of the knight—specifically his armor, sewn of fine black steel-corded tire treads, the rusty state of his pauldrons, and the fact that he was “crazy old, maybe even fifty.” He is a Knight of the Enclaves, “tall, raised on multivitamins and clean meat.”
This is all on the first page, and tells us that: something terrible has happened to the world; there are survivors in a backward corner of it who are in need of assistance; and from “somewhere else” there is a person characterized as a knight who has come to help them with their problem. I could immediately, viscerally picture the poor, raggedy, sickly people (the ones raised without the vitamins or untainted protein) standing around at the mouth of their small valley home, waiting patiently for a hero to arrive; and I could also perceive the colossal impact of the knight’s presence.
Wouldn’t you want to keep reading?
John Scalzi’s story “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years” doesn’t start with quite such an arresting contradiction, but for a science fiction fan and time travel junkie, it still dragged me in:
The time machine is, in itself, not much to look at.
The remainder of the paragraph goes on to describe its physical appearance, concluding with “At the far end is a portal. One takes the client away. The other brings them back.” With this it is established that time travel has become a business (thus the clients), and that the narrator is probably the operator of the machine (confirmed in the next paragraph). The next page and a half describes in extremely simple terms what happens in the chamber when someone takes a trip and comments that, once the client has returned, “Where they go after that, like where they go when they walk through the first portal, is not specifically my concern. I am here to run the time machine.” The client, however, “has aged three days, or nine months, or twenty-seven years. They have been through a time machine, after all. This is how the time machine works.” Then, however, the operator, who sounds like he is describing the daily duties of a fairground carousel operator, comments that this is the theoretical process, but that is almost never what actually happens. “Theory is almost never practice.”
Could you put it down after that leading sentence? I couldn’t.
I’m not going to go into any more detail here on either story; I will just say that there is an exception to every rule, and I’m glad I made these exceptions to my “no short stories” one. They are special cases because they do absolutely everything that a good novel does: They each have a clearly worked-out premise; they are both amazing at both world- and character-building in the space of a few short sentences or paragraphs; there is a set-up, a conflict, and a resolution; and, best of all, they made me think about issues I had never considered, despite being a long-time reader of fairy tales, dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction, and time travel theories. I finished both of them two days ago, and they keep on wandering through my mind, inspiring more questions. And yes, one of these is to ask the authors “Why not write the BOOK?”—but many more of them are diverting inquiries into the nature of time, anomalies, and serendipity, or thoughts about the eventual evolution or dissolution of humankind, depending on the paths taken (or not).
Thank you, John Scalzi and Alix Harrow. Keep writing.
Age and time
After 900+ pages of frustrating and confusing murder mystery, I needed a break from the serious, so I picked up two books in a row by Sophie Cousens, whose books are billed as romantic comedies. I don’t know that I would go that far, although there are comedic elements and/or moments. But I did find them enjoyable, one more than the other, although the one I liked second-best is apparently her most popular.
First I read Is She Really Going Out With Him?, mainly because I am a big fan of Joe Jackson. If you don’t get that reference, you are probably too young—Joe made his mark in the 1970s. But do go to Spotify and dial up his song by the same name—you might find a new favorite musician, who knows? If you like the song, then follow up by playing his album Night & Day.
Anyway…the premise of this one is engaging, although you sort of know what will happen at the end by pretty early on. Still, it’s amusing the way the story takes you there. It’s the tale of a divorcée with two children and not much interest in (or success with) renewing the dating game. Anna is a columnist for a popular but struggling arts magazine that has just been bought by a larger company, and she’s nervous that her job is on the line; the new publisher wants material that is more social media-attuned than her traditional approach—more personal, more anecdotal, more relateable. She is doubly alarmed when she gets the idea that her office rival, Will, may be trying to poach her column.
She ultimately has a contest of sorts with him, when he proposes to the publisher that they do a dual column. Anna decides that Will will write about going out with seven women he discovers on dating apps, while Anna will give up the details of the same number of dates with men chosen by her children. Since they are young and enthusiastic (seven and 12) and not particularly discriminating in their choices, her dating pool is a weird one, but Anna gamely holds up her end of the competition. But working together with Will presents more problems than just fending off his job takeover…
Yes, it’s pretty trope-y, and yes it’s been done before, but Cousens does have a gift for character development and for comedic moments that keep this one pretty fresh. And yeah, an author who references Joe Jackson…
The second book, The Good Part, reminded me of a few other books (in a good way), foremost being What Alice Forgot, by Liane Moriarty. In that book, Alice gets conked on the head and forgets about the past decade of her life, in which significant things happened (she had kids, she got divorced), which makes it awkward and sometimes comical when she keeps trying to relate to people the way she did in the moment to which she has been returned by amnesia. The Good Part is sort of the opposite of that, because Lucy Young doesn’t forget her past, precisely, she just anticipates her future so hard that she suddenly wakes up there one morning.
Lucy is 26, a downtrodden TV production assistant who is tired of fighting for the promotion that never comes, tired of living in a dump with three inconsiderate roommates and a ceiling that leaks on her bed every time the upstairs neighbor takes a bath, and one night when she takes shelter in a news agent’s during a downpour and discovers a curious wishing machine, she puts a coin in the slot and wishes hard to be past all this and into the “good part” of her life.
Next morning she awakens with a ring on her finger that the handsome man downstairs apparently put there, and a closet full of really expensive designer shoes. But she also has two children about whom she has no memory, a high-powered job she doesn’t know how to do, and a shockingly old (40-something) face confronting her in the bathroom mirror! She has apparently been transported ahead 16 years but retains only the memories of her life up to age 26, which in her mind was last night.
Not wanting to be diagnosed as mentally ill, she tries for a while to “fake it until she makes it,” but with variable success (especially with her older child, who thinks an alien has possessed his mummy). At first she firmly believes that the mysterious machine has transported her here, and that she will wake up the next day back in her grotty apartment, but when this doesn’t happen, she also has to confront the idea that she may simply have amnesia and has conjured a crazy reason for it.
The most interesting part of the book is Lucy’s inner debate about what she really wants. She has it all—but at the cost of missing the entire experience of getting there. Her husband remembers them falling in love, the birth of their children, her climb up the professional ladder, but inside Lucy is still that single girl who has never been able to afford nice things, doesn’t know if she wants to have kids, wonders if she should ditch her career for something different…and now that she is seemingly in the middle part of her life, she has to decide whether she will settle into the wonderful achievements and relationships she doesn’t remember establishing, or try to get back to her past so she can experience them all first-hand—or possibly make different decisions? This quandary is complicated by the fact that what she ends up doing (if she is able to figure out how) may impact not just the lives but the very existence of the husband and children staring at her with so many questions in their eyes…
These books were a great way to while away a few days. I might even read more Cousens the next time I get burned out on long, serious, and complicated.
Hallmarked for letdown
I recently completed The Hallmarked Man, number eight in the Cormoran Strike detective series by “Robert Galbraith.” (I wish J.K. Rowling would just let go of the alias and publish these under her own name; it’s messing with my alphabetical filing.) More than once I harked back to the previous book, The Running Grave, while reading this one, because with that book I had a “Frenaissance” (as Phoebe Buffay calls it) with this series, and was so hopeful that things could only get better from there on out. Alas…no.
You have to maintain a real and dogged commitment to this series if you are going to read it, because each book is more than 900 pages long. I don’t mind a long book; in this series, it has made it possible not only to thoroughly explore the main mystery but also to feature other, minor ones that take up the daily functioning of the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency, while leaving ample room for personal relationships not only between the two protagonists but also among all sorts of hangers-on, both staff and client alike, and I usually enjoy the variety contained within the larger story.
The series has, for the most part, kept a nice balance between the professional and the personal and, even if I didn’t enjoy a particular story line, I was always drawn in by the continuing evolution of the relationship between Cormoran and Robin. But this book felt like a giant misstep on almost all fronts and, while I enjoyed parts of it moment to moment, I was left feeling frustrated and dissatisfied with where we arrived by the end of it.
The mystery was so convoluted and the cast of characters so confusing that it felt like Rowling should have created the equivalent of one of those family trees that historical fiction writers often include in their books so that you can keep all the generations and their spouses and children straight. Someone is murdered and gruesomely mutilated and, because of the method, it’s hard to figure out who it is. The police have settled on one theory, but a woman comes to the agency convinced that the victim is her missing boyfriend and wants them to prove that it’s him, not the person the police have identified. In the course of the book, potential victims multiply until there are four or five possibilities, and to each of the victims is attached a cast of characters that must be interviewed to try to determine if he is the one; but the witnesses are almost as elusive as the putative dead men, and the story becomes an exercise in frustration. Add to that some red herrings about secret societies, the porn industry, human trafficking, and MI5 involvement, and it’s all just too much.
As if to take a cue from that, the personal lives are likewise chaotic, and the most disappointing part of the relationship between Cormoran and Robin is its repetitiveness. In the last book both of them seemed to have grown and, with the cliffhanger last time, I expected their relationship to be resolved or at least moved along. Instead, Robin’s boyfriend Ryan Murphy becomes her husband Matthew 2.0, if a bit nicer and less whiny, and Robin has reverted to all the self-deception and self-doubt she exhibited several books back, but with a new partner. She knows, deep down (or maybe not even that deep!) that she doesn’t want to be with him or have his children, yet she keeps deceiving herself that she loves him (as well as stringing him along). She also spends far too much time doubting Strike and putting moods and motivations on him without either his knowledge or participation.
On Cormoran’s side, the dithering becomes maddening. He has come to realize what he wants (Robin) and plans to reveal this to her, but he lets every minor misstep come between him and that revelation, and makes things exponentially worse with every hesitation. It’s all miscommunication, misunderstanding and angst. The upshot is that we end up in almost the same place we left off and, with the acknowledgment that they have now worked together for almost seven years, I for one wonder if continuing to ship them is even worth it.
The problem with a review like this is that it may turn people off to reading the series if they haven’t begun it, or to stop before assaying this chapter. I wouldn’t go that far; it’s not an irretrievably bad book, and it is, of course, necessary in order to understand the progression of both the agency and the relationship…but I’m not enthusiastic about it. When I first finished it I felt the need to turn around and reread it to pick up on all the stuff I had missed, but I didn’t love it enough to do so. That pretty much says it all. Disappointed after such a long wait, and hoping for a better outing next time…
Post-mortem
I rarely read nonfiction any more. Life has been so fraught for the past few years (escalating to seriously effed up for the final nine months) that my goal for reading is escape from—not analysis of—current events. But I must admit I was a little excited when I heard Kamala Harris’s book 107 Days, the recap of her run for the presidency, was coming out. It was a combination of desires for me: I hoped that she could give a more definitive idea of what happened (i.e., how we ended up watching masked men in camo gear kidnapping citizens off the streets instead of celebrating healthcare for all), and I also, probably along with many others, hoped she would “dish the dirt” of all the behind-the-scenes machinations of the political campaign that was the shortest in history, with the most abrupt of beginnings, that so very nearly succeeded.
Some of what I was hoping for was there. She talked somewhat candidly about being a Vice President who was associated with an undeservedly unpopular administration and what it was like to try to remain loyal to Joe Biden for the remainder of her tenure while simultaneously attempting to differentiate herself for the voters. It was clear from this part of the narrative that her loyalty (despite how—in my perception—she was ignored and downplayed for her substantial contributions during Biden’s four years) ended up hurting her. She had limited control over his administration’s agenda, but was held accountable for all of it by many and, despite her team’s desire for her to speak out about that, her realization that she still had to work with him in her VP role for another three months inhibited her characteristic forthrightness.
I enjoyed the format of the book, which narrates the campaign day by day and gives a realistic look at the unbelievable schedule kept by a candidate for the highest office, particularly constrained as this one was by an impossible time-frame for making a good and lasting impression before the polls opened. In this respect it was engaging and felt like a quick read because of the short “chapters” encompassed by one day’s activities.
We did learn some things about the other actors—Biden, her list of candidates for vice president, people who campaigned for her, and some of her close friends and family—but a lot of that information was revealed in quick asides rather than being the subject for candid discussion.
She talks a little bit about how her lack of a definitive stance on Gaza affected the campaign, and also how frustrating she found it to bring up her multitude of talking points about what she was excited to accomplish once in office, only to be shunted back into her current role and criticized for a lack of distinct policy differences from Biden. And she talked, of course, about other barriers—racial bias, misogyny, a massive disinformation campaign on the part of her opponent’s campaign.
I’m glad I read the book, but I admit I had hoped for more. I was looking not only for reflection, but for a little more critical self-analysis. There were reasons she didn’t prevail, and although these included outward forces, they also involved her platform, which apparently failed to engage crucial segments of the population. I wanted to read about whether and how she accepted accountability for some of these things, but it just wasn’t there. The narrative was insightful, but not particularly revelatory of weaknesses alongside her admittedly many strengths.
Reading it also gave me a sick feeling in my stomach all over again to realize what we could have had versus where we ended up. No matter what you might have considered Harris’s flaws or disliked about her policy positions, I can’t imagine anyone (although they apparently exist) who doubts, after nine months of this new regime, that we would have been exponentially better off if our country was currently being shepherded by Madame President. No disappearing of people to prisons in El Salvador or the Florida swamps. No National Guard troops strolling our streets opposing our right to protest.
We’d have ongoing health care with an eye to improving it, paths to citizenship, student loan forgiveness, substantial infrastructure jobs, a strong economy unfettered by tariffs, and a good ongoing relationship with our allies. We’d still be exporting soybeans to China and supporting Ukraine in its war with Putin. And I like to think that there could have been a breath of fresh air as regards encouraging the younger, more outspoken generation of liberal politicians to begin, finally, to take their rightful place in the halls of government as the previous dominant power structure retires.
But I digress. I’m glad I gained what insight was available from reading 107 Days; I simply wished for more.
Scary season
It’s Decorative Gourd season, and I should be coming up with a great list of scary reads to share with you. But…I’m going to be exceedingly lazy here and post a link to last year’s book recommendations for the spookily inclined. I am not a horror reader and, although I do like a good ghost story, I haven’t read any new ones this past year except for Wyrd Sisters and Mort, by Terry Pratchett and, while they do have a resident ghost or two (not to mention Death) as characters, they aren’t exactly fright-inducing! So if you haven’t read any of last years’s selection, try one, and if you have, you could always suggest one to me! Be convincing about its merits and I might post it!
Go HERE to find them.
Culture war
In Hazel Says No, by debut novelist Jessica Berber Gross, we explore the intricacies of the MeToo movement and the consequences of cancel culture in a small town in Maine. This author is being hailed by many as a new voice in feminist contemporary fiction, but for me it was an interesting exercise that didn’t quite make the transition to a leap-off-the-page story. There were fascinating nuances that explored areas I think no one considers, and for that I appreciated it, but the story dragged out far beyond the original dilemma and became less impactful as it did so.
The basic premise also had me wondering, Would this really happen at this moment in time?
The Greenberg-Blums, a Jewish family from Brooklyn, move to a small town in Maine after the father, Gus, receives an attractive job offer from a college there. His daughter, Hazel, is 18 and will start her senior year in high school in the fall, and his son, Wolf, is going into middle school. They move at the beginning of summer, and the kids spend most of it at the public pool, where Hazel encounters the high school principal, Richard White, there to supervise his daughter, Gracie, a future classmate of Wolf’s. He strikes up a conversation with her after noticing that she is reading a variety of fairly high-level literary novels while basking on her lounge chair, and suggests that perhaps Hazel should consider initiating a reading or writing club when she starts school in the fall. Their encounters are friendly but strictly surface, confined to a casual greeting or comments about reading and classes.
On the first day of school, a voice over the P.A. system calls Hazel Blum to the principal’s office. When she arrives, the principal chats with her for a few minutes, then sits down beside her, puts his hand on her knee, and informs her that each year he chooses one student with whom he will have sex during the year, and this year he has chosen Hazel. Her mind whirling with all the responses to this unbelievable statement, Hazel finally blurts out “NO!” and runs out of his office.
The rest of the story involves what happens when Hazel tells her parents, they confide in the college dean (a feminist studies scholar), and from there the news becomes public.
The first thing that hit me about this set-up was, Who in their right mind, in the aftermath of the immense blow-up of MeToo in the media, would actually do this? Smith not only propositions Hazel, but also explains that he has done this repeatedly in the past; although he has apparently gotten away with it up until now, does he really think that, after the profound cultural shift that came about as a result of the “outing” of sexual predators in powerful positions, his behavior could continue to go unremarked? Or that, once acknowledged, there would be no repercussions? Part of the MeToo phenomenon was the public scrutiny and accountability it promoted, paired with support for the survivors of sexual harassment and violence. For that reason, I was unable to overcome my disbelief that anyone would so blithely and transparently risk exposure by trying this on.
The parts of the book that I did like were how everything played out to conclusions that were not always expected. For instance, it explored the insular nature of a small town unable and unwilling to believe this accusation of a beloved public figure and how, for some, it provided an outlet for bigotry as they not only slut-shamed Hazel but also targeted her family because they were outsiders. It took into account the effects on Hazel and her family, but it also explored the consequences of being the wife and young daughter of the sexual predator. And, as Hazel’s story goes wide, we were also privy to how a story like this is taken up by the media in ways that go far beyond the initial scandal to perhaps exploit the situation to enhance their own agendas.
On a separate note, there is a scene in the book that was reminiscent of something that happened to me when I was a professor of library science teaching Young Adult Literature. The father, Gus, is an American Studies professor who teaches a class that considers the historical evolution of the family on television, as a microcosm of the larger culture. In his first class lecture he begins with Leave It to Beaver, the picture of 1950s traditionalism, then transitions through a few other sitcoms to All in the Family, with Archie Bunker’s misogyny and racism battling against his daughter and son-in-law’s wider sensibilities. After this, he moves to The Cosby Show as an example of the shift in the way black people are portrayed on television, featuring a family in which the father is a doctor, the mother a lawyer, and the children are benefiting from a lifestyle not previously seen on TV as part of the black experience. But although the show was a legitimate historical landmark, the minute he mentions the show in his class, certain of his students are outraged that he would dare to represent Bill Cosby in any way except as the outed serial predator we all later discovered him to be. Dr. Blum attempts to explain that the show, which aired from 1984 to 1992, could be looked at separately from the later discoveries about its star, but his students are unwilling to consider Cosby in any context, and several of them promptly start a petition to “Fire Gus Blum” that goes college-wide and then begins to attract attention that threatens his position.
In my YA Lit class, several students took issue with the fact that the first few weeks’ reading list consisted of books by and about white people. They demanded that I feature books by and about people of color, people of different socioeconomic status, and so on. I explained that since the first few weeks were dedicated to the history of young adult literature, which began to be considered a separate segment of fiction early in the 20th century, the assignments were consistent with the books that were being published at the time, which were written for white teens and did not begin to include people of color or LGBTQ+ as characters or talk about real-life issues until the 1960s.
I did however (like the father/professor in Hazel Says No) take a good, hard look at my syllabus and came to the conclusion that while i stood by my decision to represent those historically significant books, I could have done a better job with diversity when it came to updating my selections for the rest of the quarter, so I revised the choices by adding or substituting more inclusive works, both as regards authors and characters/stories. I also allowed the students themselves to suggest and select alternative books to read, if they found one that spoke to them. But, as happened in this novel, a certain small number absolutely refused to give up their first conclusions about me as an old white woman who was, at best, tone-deaf, and at worst, discriminatory and offensive. They felt free to gossip about me with each other, complain about me to my supervisor, and malign me in written comments that affected my livelihood.
The incident in this book that was reminiscent of my own experience of feeling canceled made me consider so many issues that are confronting our culture, and wonder how they will ultimately be resolved. On the political front right now, the current regime is intent on hurting people: They are whitewashing the past by removing historical websites about slavery, refusing to provide healthcare to women and others who don’t strictly conform to their restrictive view of humanity, and considering everyone not exactly made in their image to be “other” and open to attack. But there is also the faction who refuse, for example, to read the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of its lack of “political correctness,” despite historical context, or the fact that the main character rises above his culture with an epiphany that causes him to choose empathy over “doing the right thing.” (See my review, here.) These are the people who refused to vote for a candidate who represented 90 percent of their views because they disagreed with the other 10 percent, despite the fact that their refusal would plunge us into fascism. My hope for us is that we can manage to keep dialogue open, and calm the extreme pendulum swings so that both reason and empathy may prevail.
At any rate, Hazel Says No is definitely a conversation-starter (with others or in the privacy of your own mind!).
