Category: literary fiction

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Literary Fiction)

Writing: 4.5/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 4/5

A long and highly complex book following three elaborate storylines, all influenced in some way by the Epic of Gilgamesh — the epic Babylonian poem from about 2000 BC. Arthur Smythe — also known as King Arthur of the Sewers and Slum — is born into abject poverty but has an extraordinarily keen mind, an eidetic memory, and an absorbing passion for the artifacts in the British Museum. His story runs from his birth in 1840 to his death 36 years later in Iraq. Zaleekhah is a passionate researcher who focusses on the study and conservation of the Earth’s water in 2018 — focused on theories that would earn her derision were she to try to publish. She is also is pulled in to a fascination with the region through her own Iraqi heritage and feels a despair at the state of the Earth, both politically and environmentally. Narin is a nine-year old Yazidi girl whose village is to be subsumed from flood waters once a new, large dam is completed. A trip to Iraq in 2014 before they must leave the area exposes her to the cruelty of ISIS. Woven throughout the story are themes and entangled details about Mesopotamian history, antiquity looting, modern ISIS, grand scale pollution, language processing and the underpinnings of water throughout.

Shafak’s brain is many orders of magnitude more erudite and complex than mine. The way she can pull together an apparently disjointed collection of data points, commentary, and occurrences and create an interconnected narrative of great scope is inspiring. Her facility with language is impressive — she has a lyrical style that nevertheless manages to convey real content. An example of a one sentence physical description that manages to combine visual depiction, origin, and impact: “… neither grey nor white, the air is a soupy ochre that glows green in places. Particles of soot and ash float above, as domestic coal fires and factory chimneys belch sulfur-laden smoke, clogging the lungs of Londoners, breath by breath.”

I have mixed feelings about how much I enjoyed reading this book. I loved all the detail — giving great depth to so many aspects of the world and bringing so many pieces of information — that could have easily remained hidden — to the surface. These days it feels like we have access to so much information, we are forced to have strong opinions based on a very shallow understanding of the topic, so I appreciated the deep dives on … everything. I loved all the unusual minutiae that came into the story — underground lost rivers, Ashurbanipal’s lost library, a tattooist who works only in cuneiform. However, a real sense of impending doom suffused the pages, and that only got worse at the story went on. It’s hard not to feel as though the world were hopelessly hurtling towards a bad end, with genocidal maniacs (real ones, not Israel, and if you don’t know the difference do some research), environmental disasters, and a generous helping of greed, power-hunger, cruelty, cynicism, and general disregard pervading the text. I freely acknowledge that the world has many, many, problems, but I prefer to read about the many ways we continue to try to improve the many problems and not to succumb to melancholy and hand wringing. I also had a real problem with the ethical dilemma presented at the end. I felt the character’s resolution (clearly representing the author’s opinion) was surprisingly poorly thought out given the depths of her big picture thinking through the rest of the book.

So — if you can read for the history, the beautiful prose, the increased awareness of the interconnectedness of the Earth and the people running mad upon it, you will probably love this book. If your mood is one that is highly influenced by what you’re reading, you might want to pop a Prozac or two before diving in.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on August 20th, 2024.

The Radcliffe Ladies Reading Club by Julia Bryan Thomas (Literary Fiction)

I loved this quiet, but powerful, novel about a group of four Radcliffe students who join a book club devoted to discussing the classics — particularly those focused on the roles, experiences, and opportunities for women. Set in 1955, the discussions of historical classics such as Jane Eyre, The Age of Innocence, A Room of One’s Own, Anna Karenina, and others are superimposed on each girl’s individual background, goals, and experiences. This leads to some well written dialog, reflection (always my favorite), and action, all revolving around the evolution and personal impact of social norms for women. I’m not introducing the four girls here, as I like the way author introduced each. I’m also not describing some of the events that took place — they are important, but best left unintroduced IMHO.

The writing is straightforward, but never simplistic. For me personally, being only one generation behind the students in the book, the stark contrast between the lives and opportunities for the women in the book club selections, the 1955 Radcliffe students, and myself was illuminating. Social norms are embedded in us at an early age, and it is sometimes difficult to have an awareness of how our thoughts and beliefs are forged before we aware of the process. As an aside, I was impressed by how the various male characters were portrayed. The narrative was never strident, and the men ran the gamut from pretty awful to quite decent. It became clear to me that the men, too, were a product of the expectations of the time — not as an excuse for any behavior, but as an understanding of how it might have evolved. The whole thing was fascinating and (for me) never dipped into cliche or melodrama. It simply focussed on the life each girl chose, why she chose it, and how she made it happen.
For the younger among you, Radcliffe was a woman’s liberal arts college in Cambridge founded in 1879 and absorbed into Harvard in 1999.

Some great quotes — some from the classics the girls read:

From the discussion of Anna Karenina: “She had more temptations than an ordinary girl would have had. A handsome count was never going to fall in love with someone less beautiful and exciting than Anna. Which makes me think it wasn’t her fault as much as some might think.” I never thought about it that way.

From Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: ”As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” Ha!
“Jane Eyre was meant to be read at all stages of life, and each reader must glean what she could from her own study of the book.“

“Ah, but you see, there are no right or wrong answers in book club. It’s all about how a book affects you and how it makes you feel.”

From Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: ”As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” Ha!
“Jane Eyre was meant to be read at all stages of life, and each reader must glean what she could from her own study of the book.“

“Ah, but you see, there are no right or wrong answers in book club. It’s all about how a book affects you and how it makes you feel.”

Tough Luck by Sandra Dallas (Historical Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 4.5/5

I’ve been reading Sandra Dallas’ books since 1998 and have read (and loved!) all of them. This one is already one of my favorites — captivating characters, wild adventures, and a full sense of the time (1863) and place (Western territories).

Dumped in an orphanage by their elder brother once their mother died, Haidie (14) and Boots (10) Richards manage to escape, taking one of the more reluctant caretaker nuns with them. They head West in search of their long missing father whose last reported location was a mining town past Denver.

Diving into some fantastic storytelling, we join them on an adventure laden trip, sharing the camaraderie of a slew of characters who are as realistic as they are individualistic, intriguing, and somewhat morally curvaceous. The feel of the time and place is intensely real, with the focus on how these people are making their way through the harsh realities of the time. It’s the characters who make it for me — card sharks, con men, mule packers, members of the clergy, and (my favorite) a pair of “old maid” sisters (at the ancient ages of 27 and 29!). I love the way they are each making his or her own way in a harsh world following individual definitions of what it takes to survive in an acceptable fashion. I love the way Dallas’ books tend to include people aggregating into tight knit groups bonded by their experiences. It’s a part of human nature that I genuinely enjoy.

Gobbled this up in one session. Hope the author’s book tour lands in my town because I would dearly like to meet her.

Good for fans of Paulette Giles (though Dallas has been at it longer!)

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 29th, 2025.

The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood (Literary Fiction)

Writing: 5+/5 Characters; 5/5 Plot: 5/5

This woman can write! The eponymous “one in a million” boy is dead (at the age of eleven) before the story starts. In fact, we never even know his name — he is always “the boy.” But we learn about him extensively — his (odd) mannerisms, his fascinations, his earnestness — through the effect he has had on a number of characters: his grief-stricken mother Belle; his father Quinn, twice-divorced from his mother, and a complicated presence (or absence) in the boy’s life; and his new friend Ona, the 104-year old woman who is a service target of his boy scout troop. The boy is the only scout Ona has ever allowed to help her for long. He is different. She trusts him and he has managed to extract from her stories, thoughts, and even some fluency in the language of her birth (Lithuanian) — a language she has never knowingly spoken. Most importantly, he has elicited some enthusiasm on her part for a goal for her remaining (!) years. Well versed in the Guinness World Records and utterly enthralled with the possibilities, he believes she has a shot — with his help — at attaining more than one age-related record for the Guinness record keepers.

The book moves on — exploring the characters, their memories, their confusion, sadness, remorse, and regrets, and ultimately their ability to patch the holes in their souls and move forward. The narrative is so real — full of thoughtful characters reflecting on life intelligently with the latent understanding that comes with time; relationships that grow; and characters whose ability to have good relationships keep growing. It’s a bit of a celebration of the utter uniqueness of individual people. I just read David Brooks’ book “How to Know a Person,” but honestly I learn more about how to know a person by reading books like this. Good fiction always feels more truthful to me than the best non-fiction when it comes to people.


At the moment, Monica Wood is my (newly discovered) favorite author. So many possible quotes on this one — I’m probably including too many but I already pruned the list so much! FYI, I absolutely loved the end. I would love to include the whole section but that would just be cheating:

“To Quinn, for whom alcohol was a touchy simile, the truth was this: playing guitar was the single occasion in his slight and baffling life when he had the power to deliver exactly the thing another human being wanted.”

“They stood together in the dripping world, sizing each other up, the boy appearing to marvel at the weight of a century-plus, Ona wondering how in hell she’d unearthed two unrelated words in a tongue she couldn’t remember ever speaking.”

“He enunciated beautifully, though his diction contained barely perceptible pauses in the wrong places, as if he were a foreigner, or short of breath.”

“Normally, Scouts bored her, with their Game Boy stats and soccer scores and lazy, shortcutting ways. This one, though, brought a literal sense of second childhood: she felt as if she were speaking to a child she might have known when she herself was eleven. How easily she placed him at McGovern’s, installed at the white marble soda fountain, sipping a chocolate phosphate. She could see him amid the white-shirted boys playing stickball on Wald Street, tagging the door of Jose Preble’s black REO. There was something vaguely wrong with him that made him seem like a visitor from another time and place.”

“He reminded her that she’d once found people fascinating. That she’d lived more than one life.”

“Ona loved English from the get-go and paid strict attention, noting the cause-effect of language: her parents’ syntactical shipwrecks, the tin peddler’s casual profanity, Maud-Lucy’s pristine enunciations. Style could move listeners to pity, to reverence, to the purchase of a stewpot they didn’t need. Maud-Lucy taught Ona to compose a sentence with intention, and eventually she chose for herself a high-low hybrid that matched her ambivalence toward humankind.”

“Belle managed something like a laugh despite her sorrow, for the boy’s syntactical oddities had always pleased her. He’d read obsessively — instruction manuals, record books, novels far too old for him — picking up linguistic baubles like a crow mining a roadside.”

“I’m good at secrets,” the boy said, studying her so intently now that she began to feel stripped after all — in a good way, stripped of decrepitude and shame.”

“He did wait, observing in silence as Amy padded back and forth with an array of cleaning supplies. From their mother, the Cosgrove girls had learned to scrub their way out of despair. There was no detergent in existence for what ailed them now, but Amy heaved into the old standby nonetheless, with an alacrity bordering on violence, much sloshing and clanging coming from the adjoining rooms. He listened to these sounds — like an animal crying hard, he thought — until she appeared again, hands red and raw.”

“As she opened the menu, Ona felt momentarily unborn, as if her long life had been a warm-up for the real show, on which the curtain was about to rise. She ordered a grilled cheese and a strawberry shortcake, expecting to eat it all.”

“How could it be that Ona Vitkus after so many years alone, had been netted by the maneuverings of lovers and interlopers, tangled into their grief and envy and clumsy efforts at peace? And oh, weren’t they a show: their puzzling wants, their cross-purposes, their own mundane, ticking-down minutes.”

“She looked small and translucent, like a baby turtle from a nature documentary. He fought an impulse to pick her up and carry her to safer ground, As she stood there, fading before his eyes, he extracted the details as if through an old telegraph, dots and dashes that he gathered into a story.”

“He loved that they loved him. He loved the hollow he filled. It was the boy who’d understood this. The boy, whose lists and lists filled his own hollow, the one his father had left behind. A loosening in his chest, like sliding rocks, took him so abruptly that he doubled over, trying to hold it in.”

Last House by Jessica Shattuck (Literary Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Plot: 5/5 Characters: 5/5

This is a brilliant epic of a book. It spans a period of 90 years (~1950 to 2040) via the trajectories of a single family — each member ensconced in his or her own cultural context while engaging with the others who are firmly planted in their own contemporaneous but often dissonant contexts. The story begins with Nick and Bet Taylor — he a junior lawyer attached to an American oil team negotiating deals in the Middle East and she a WWII cryptographer who gave up her dreams of a PhD to become a wife and mother (as women did in the 50s). From this stability and cultural conformity came two children — Katherine and Harry — who grow up in a clash between the middle class values of their parents and the anger and rhetoric of the 60s, complete with Marxist hyperbole and anger-fueled violence in the name of peace and justice. Decades later, by the time the third generation comes of age, their social cohort is beset by the overwhelming angst from the imminent collapse of society from climate change, war, and shifting values.

What impresses me about this book is how well Shattuck captures the feelings of the time(s) from so many different perspectives. Anger, fear, bewilderment, passion. Sometimes it was hard to read because she captured it so well; other times it was chilling to read because the activism of the 60s (the good, the bad, and the ugly) is blatantly mirrored in what is happening today. She must have finished writing this book before the Israel / Hamas war began and yet she captured the mix of intentions, propaganda and stupidity of the current situation perfectly.

I loved that the multiple viewpoints were captured via highly reflective characters — their feelings of joy, frustration, rage, and angst appearing in response to a rapidly shifting cultural landscape. I love that they pondered, each in his or her own way, the responsibilities that are incurred simply by being alive. The pages are full of insight with regard to parenting, political attitudes, alliances, friendship, and familial support.

I was (pleasantly) surprised by the lack of cliche and manipulation in the narrative. If the author has a strong opinion on climate change, greed, politics, democracy, or activism, I couldn’t tell you what it was. She covered several competing thoughts on how a person chooses to live in the world as it is. One of my favorite parts (towards the end) was a 2-3 page summary of an optimistic and pessimistic view of the same world. Perfectly crystalized (IMHO) into personal attitudes and interpretations. This book could have been depressing but came off to me as more wistful — the wistfulness that always accompanies the passage of time, regardless of how sweet that passing is.

Some good quotes:

“That’s what civilization is,” Brent said. “Living with people outside your tribe. All those rules and norms and structures that allow you to coexist. Right? Without those, we’re just – cave dwellers, protecting our own turf. You escape civilization, you escape back into your tribe. “

“The Weather Underground had gone off the deep end. They had aligned themselves with history’s most violent killers, people who thought the righteousness of their cause gave them the right to make decisions about life and death: Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson. In the name of justice, how could you choose that?”

“Still, Katherine‘s knee jerk cynicism, annoyed him. She had never even been to the Middle East. She knew nothing about Iran. She knew nothing about the oil industry or the complicated politics of resource distribution. She had never even taken an economics class. She did not grasp that she was on the top floor of a great complicated structure with her lofty ideals while he was in the basement, stoking the boiler, making sure she would not freeze to death. Her generation took so much for granted! All the peace and plenty they had grown up with wasn’t given — it was protected by a sheath of young men’s bones strewn across Europe and the Pacific“

“How will it work when everyone is exactly equal?” my mother wanted to know. “Is there enough, really, to go around?” I was appalled by this sentiment, so chauvinist, racist, survivalist. I railed at her about the capitalist racket, the smallness of her Depression-era mindset (“But I don’t have a mindset,” she protested. “I have questions”). She was a good sport about it, really, mild-mannered in the face of my patronizing. But she persisted: Wouldn’t there always be some way people sorted themselves? If it wasn’t race or gender or class, would it be intelligence? Physical strength? Blood type? Weren’t there always bound to be haves and have-nots on account of finite resources? The constraints of weather and geography, for instance? Who got the high ground with fertile soil versus who got the desert?”

“My father wanted calm and safety, not emotion. Everything in their life was set. That was her generation, I guess. Their households clean, tidy, and immobile, built to last. So, too, was their concept of the relationships of the people who populated it: mother, daughter, neighbor, housecleaner — these were static entities. I can see now that for my father, this was vital, the best protection he knew against all that was ugly, tangled, and difficult. My mother, though, longed for something different. She was forty-seven years old, and she’d been living the same life since she was twenty-three.”

“Conflict avoidance is a luxury of the bourgeoisie,” I said as if this were a well-known quote. Maybe it was. My head was awash in edict and directives and liberal platitudes.

“The idea disturbed him. They were raising a daughter who felt free to be unpleasant when she was unhappy? He would have been caned by his father if he’d ever been ‘unpleasant.’ ”

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on May 14th, 2024.

Lucky by Jane Smiley (Literary Fiction — Audio Book)

Ostensibly the story of a Jodie Rattler — from childhood until her 80s — who achieved moderate fame as a folk/rock singer/composer and, due to some clever investing of the money she had, was able to live her life and create her music without having to make herself a slave of the music industry. I never get the impression that she has any particular plans or goals. Instead she does what she wants to at the time, gathering (and enjoying) experiences that she often embeds into her music. This takes us from her birthplace in St. Louis to England, to recording studios, to tropical beaches, to New York City, and often back home to St. Louis. It takes us through her 25 lovers and their stories. The book is highly reflective with Jodie clearly describing her experiences, her feelings at the time and upon later reflection, and her thoughtful musings on life as a result. It’s really a personal voyage of self-discovery and ongoing development but without the cataclysmic events that often send people into these states. While it sometimes felt a bit slow moving (especially as the audio book reader spoke at a measured pace) I found myself consistently interested. By the end I felt like I knew what it was like to be Jodie. At the same time, I didn’t resonate with her — we are very different kinds of people — which made it even more interesting to be her for the duration.

There is a theme throughout the book where she reflects on how lucky she is every step of the way — chance meetings, being seen by a promoter etc. Hence the title. There is a lot of interesting detail on how she writes her songs, where her ideas come from, how she develops them, and what kind of experimentation she does to get a particular sound — all of which was completely accessible to me as a non-musician. Because the book spans about 80 years (from 1955 – 2030), we also get to watch (through her eyes) the evolution of the music industry, the political scene, and the planet. The worries about climate change and political instability float about the book, settling into something more solid by the end of the book as Jodi ages.

Now — I very much enjoyed listening to this book and thought the end was reasonable. But. I hated the epilog and I would honestly suggest you just don’t read it. It’s short and has a very interesting twist to it (and a tie in to the name of the book), but it has a complete downer of a future prediction that honestly has nothing at all to do with the story and just left me in the worst mood for no good reason! I don’t want to include a spoiler so I’ll say no more except that I really found it both emotionally draining and literarily gratuitous.

How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley (Fiction)

I loved this book. It was hysterically funny and I found myself laughing out loud on almost every page, multiple times on some. I definitely got some looks on the subway.

A community center housing a senior citizens social club and a daycare is threatened with closure when the board gets greedy for development money rather than making the effort to fundraise for repairs. But the senior citizens (and one desperate teen father) will do anything to keep that from happening and come up with some pretty interesting long shot ideas. FYI these are not senior citizens living up to society’s (pallid) expectations! We’ve got the larger than life Daphne whose future is bleak but whose past was “extraordinarily colorful;” Art, the actor who specializes in playing dead bodies while managing a small kleptomania problem; Ruby, the Banksy of knitting; Anna, the ex-trucker with quite a number of dead husbands to her credit; and William, the retired Paparazzo who puts his (IMHO sleazy) skills into useful practice. All supposedly organized by the 50 something Lydia, whose life has been drained of purpose but filled by an utter a*hole of a hubby. There is something very appealing about old cranky people getting a new lease on life, and this intensely uplifting book has that in spades.

I loved the characters (a teen father? how often does that happen?), loved the humor and excellent writing, and loved the random thoughts on aging — like how to take advantage of the apparent invisibility of the aged for your personal aging benefit. I loved the author’s note where she claimed she still did not feel like a “grown up” despite her “advanced” age — I so relate to that! Lastly, I loved the reference to the Dylan Thomas poem “Do not go gently into that good night.” How many times have I heard of that poem without ever bothering to actually read it and think about what it means? Here are the first lines:

Do not go gentle into that good night 
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

There is more — it is good — go read it if you haven’t …

Some great quotes — only a tiny fraction!
“She appeared to have jumped out of the frying pan of sexism and into the fire of ageism. The final frontier of isms.“

“There was nothing better than listening to someone else’s guilty conscience being offloaded.”

“Her comfort zone was exceedingly spacious, but this experience lay well outside of it.”

“She needed to turn over a new leaf. Become an entirely new plant, even.”

“Despite her age, Daphne seemed to have the hearing of an adolescent bat.”

“Why on earth, when there were so many more important things they could be teaching their children, would parents waste their time reading stories about an insect with a dysfunctional relationship with food?” (about the Hungry Caterpillar)

“Daphne wrote texts, he’d discovered, just the way she spoke in proper full sentences and with perfect grammar and an under current of condescension.”

“She leaned forward and gave the man she was with a peck on the cheek, an incidental comma nestling up to a bold exclamation mark.”

“Art had tried to call his new pet Maggie, as instructed by Lydia, but her surname lurked in the ensuing pause like toxic waste.” (pet’s full name was Margaret Thatcher)

Thank you to Pamela Dorman Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on June 11th, 2024.

Within Arm’s Reach by Ann Napolitano (Literary Fiction)

I can’t fault the writing of this book and I’m guessing that it will be very popular because people today seem to like melodramas about unhappy people and this book has that in spades. It’s a giant soap opera about the generally dysfunctional relationships within a large, ethnically Irish, Catholic family and all the ways the individuals seem bent on making themselves and their loved ones even more miserable. It is told from six viewpoints — Catherine, the matriarch; her eldest daughter Kelly; Kelly’s husband Louis; their two children Gracie and Lila; and the nurse who attends Catherine after a fall (who has other unexpected connections to the family). I was hoping the end would either be uplifting or teach me something but I got … nada. There was also a pattern of emotional women being “saved” by decent, well-grounded, men. While there is honestly nothing wrong with that, it doesn’t seem like something to aim for.

I really loved Napolitano’s “Hello Beautiful”, and heard wonderful things about “Dear Edward” (I could not bring myself to read that book because it sounded so depressing), but while the writing was good and the characters well-drawn, the only characters I liked at all were the ones that had tied themselves voluntarily to this troubled family and I honestly couldn’t figure out why they ever would have done that…

Some quotes that I think illustrate my point:

“… there’s little point in drawing all of my brothers and sisters and their families together. What you get when we are all in the same room is not love. It is a potent combination of our childhood, my father‘s anger, and my mother’s deliberate silence and pointless, barbed comments. It is the long, thin, thorny end of the rose.”

“Why would I be working hard? And for what? For Gram? That isn’t enough of a reason. Life isn’t supposed to be hard. F*** that. Gram is wrong. I’ll end up like uncle Pat, sitting like a popsicle on the edge of a folding chair, feeling nothing. And Gram wouldn’t want that. I picture Weber’s face, bright with happiness.”

“She has the ability to make a decision and then inflate her emotions like a bicycle tire until they back up the decision with no wiggle room.”

Thank you to Dial Press Trade Paperback and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 30th, 2024.

How to Read a Book by Monica Wood (Literary Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Plot: 4.5 / 5 Characters: 5+/5

Violet, a young woman released from jail after serving 22 months for manslaughter for driving while intoxicated and killing an elementary school teacher; Harriet, a retired librarian who runs the best book group in the world (IMHO) at the local prison where Violet has been incarcerated; and Frank, the retired tool & die guy whose wife was the one killed. A chance meeting in the local bookstore brings these three together in a pretty wonderful way.

This book was well-written, hits the sweet spot between humorous and deep, and is overall uplifting. I love uplifting! Especially when it isn’t stupid (honestly what isn’t better when it’s not stupid?). With broad themes of forgiveness and regret along with kindness (the genuine kind, not the saccharine type which is far more focused on the person being kind than the person in need of kindness), the book is full of dynamic dialog, slowly gained self-understanding, and relationships — the good, the bad, and the ugly types. Also some capital F fun-to-read sections that aren’t essential to the plot but are engrossing and plot-supporting. For example, Violet ends up with a job supporting a crazy / crotchety professor studying the higher cognitive abilities of African Parrots (based on the real life research of Dr. Irene Pepperberg (www.alexfoundation.com). Absolutely fascinating. I also LOVED every scene concerning the book club at the prison. From Harriet’s planning and selection process to the questions she asked and the way the (female) inmates responded to the emerging personality of the club itself. Some questions she asks: If you were God, would you alter the facts for these characters? Do books change, depending on when and where we read them? Why do people tell stories? Or more specifically, if Gatsby had a brother like Ethan Frome, would he have made the same mistakes?

While probably not the primary purpose of the book, it did make me consider the (always muddied) purpose of our justice system. I wish we had a better understanding of the goals of prison: Punishment? Deterrence? Rehabilitation? Safety (in case of recidivism) of the public? Sometimes sentences just don’t seem to make sense. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions after reading.

Lastly, though there is little in common in terms of messaging or plot, the style and tone reminded me of Lessons in Chemistry. Really enjoyed this book.

Quotes:
“From her years in the classroom, Harriet understood that any group, no matter how diverse, eventually acquired a personality; Book Club had decided they were misunderstood souls born to the wrong era, and William Butler Yeats was their proof.”

“… the days when the place feels not like a dementia unit on Mars, but like an animal shelter filled with calm dogs. I can almost see them, our Reasons, small smoky thicknesses in the air. Like guardian angels, in a way. Guarding our memory of them. They float among us, quiet and uncomplaining, and they refuse to disappear.”

“Lorraine fell for Frank the defensive lineman, but he was a team chaplain at heart. He’d given her love, patience, stability, and her only child. These gifts had turned out to be the wrong gifts.”

“But these kids, who had acres of poetry committed to memory and the mechanical skills of an aardvark, they needed him.”

“Was Baker shucking the chains of patriarchy, or emulating a pop singer? Harriet genuinely wanted to know.”

“The youngster had a cuddly laugh; if hamsters could laugh, they would sound this way.”

“She’d begun their marriage as lead, soft and pliable, elastic and forgiving, but over the years she’d transformed herself into a high-carbon steel, strong and hard and resistant to wear.”

“They remained in this magical silence for a little while, as their separate pasts floated harmlessly between them”

“Retired people were often thought to be lonely, but it wasn’t that. It was the feeling of uselessness, of being done with it all.”

Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on May 7th, 2024.

Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj (Literary Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 4.5/5

This is a beautifully written novel composed of interlinking stories about characters in a Palestinian-American community in Baltimore. Most are members of three families: the Baladis, Salamehs, and Ammars. The stories move linearly forward in time, while bouncing between different individuals and their points of view. This means that the narrative slowly moves from first generation immigrants to younger family members born in the U.S. Influences from their ethnic heritage and the American culture surrounding them drift downward through the generations, melding uniquely in each individual making for nuanced, discrete characters. This creates a kind of narrative arc through the stories so that it did feel novelistic despite the clear boundaries of the stories.

I enjoyed the diversity of the characters — more akin to the everyday “diversity” of different human beings than to the diversity of skin color or ethnicity since (almost) all the characters were Christian Palestinian-Americans. Some wealthier, some poorer, some professionals, some working class, from real estate moguls to housekeepers. Many stories dealt with some aspect of being a woman within this culture, ranging from pregnancies to divorce to education — basically different ways that women might make decisions that did not align as well with family expectations as some families might expect. However, family reactions were not all the same — sometimes the father would be unhappy (to various extents), sometimes the mother (or the aunt, siblings, etc). Sometimes things escalated badly, and in others acceptance and adaptation was the name of the game. Real people — all in the same “place,” all with different stories. Topics run the gamut include generation conflicts, teenage afflictions, racism (in multiple directions), domestic abuse, cultural misrepresentation, etc. From minor issues to major. Some sweet and uplifting, and some not, but all moving towards understanding and growth.

Beautifully written, wonderful characters, little or no political statements — see some quotes below.

Quotes:
“The day he dies, Baba looks skinny and surprised. When he sucks in the last breath, his mouth opens in an O, like America has shocked him at last, and freezes there. It’s like he finally understood he was never meant to win here.”

“Americans like to talk about everything, I know. They like to share their feelings, like purging old clothing, or dumping clutter. But when you’re like us, you purge nothing. You recycle or repurpose every damn thing. Nothing is clutter.”

“Arabs are ridiculous; even if they live a dream life, they want to star in some tragedy. If there is no tragedy, they imagine one.”

”Sometimes I think that is why I like science. Science doesn’t mind when you make a mistake. Instead, science gets kind of excited.”

“No, with the baby, with Baba fading, with ever-present work stress, now is a time to lie in the weak surface of water, to trust that its fragility could nevertheless keep her afloat. It could even, despite its transparency, carry her great distances.”

“Marcus realized then that, while some people talked about growing up poor, his parents had been a whole different level of poor. Barefoot poor. Starving poor. Babies dying from diarrhea poor, like Mama’s little sister, Amal, who had died before she was a year old. Sleep on rooftops in the summer poor. Go to mass at two different times so your siblings can share the good shoes poor. Boil weeds to make tea poor.”

“Americans like to talk about everything, I know. They like to share their feelings, like purging old clothing, or dumping clutter. But when you’re like us, you purge nothing. You recycle or repurpose every damn thing. Nothing is clutter.”

“Arabs are ridiculous; even if they live a dream life, they want to star in some tragedy. If there is no tragedy, they imagine one.”

”Sometimes I think that is why I like science. Science doesn’t mind when you make a mistake. Instead, science gets kind of excited.”

“No, with the baby, with Baba fading, with ever-present work stress, now is a time to lie in the weak surface of water, to trust that its fragility could nevertheless keep her afloat. It could even, despite its transparency, carry her great distances.”

“Marcus realized then that, while some people talked about growing up poor, his parents had been a whole different level of poor. Barefoot poor. Starving poor. Babies dying from diarrhea poor, like Mama’s little sister, Amal, who had died before she was a year old. Sleep on rooftops in the summer poor. Go to mass at two different times so your siblings can share the good shoes poor. Boil weeds to make tea poor.”