This is my symphony

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell: review

Laurie Larson

July 19, 2018

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell
Nadia Hashimi
William Morrow

Be honest.

photo credit@National Geographic

How much do you really know about Afghanistan? That it’s the site of one of the United States’ longest foreign wars. That it was the seat of Osama bin Laden and el Qaeda. Maybe you read The Kite Runner, so you have at least a better-than-average understanding of what life in Afghanistan might be like. And everyone remembers the Girl With the Green Eyes on the cover of National Geographic in 1984. But if you’re like me, I’m guessing that’s the extent of it, right?

Nadia Hashimi’s novel The Pearl That Broke Its Shell tells the story of Rahima, one of four sisters in a poor family at the turn of the 21st century. Her Pader-jan is off fighting with the war lord; the Taliban rules the streets. And without a brother to escort the girls to school and the marketplace, they are virtually prisoners in their own home. (What makes matters even worse is that Pader-jan is an opium addict who is–let’s just say–less than helpful when he is home.) Rahima’s Mader-jan suggests that the nine-year-old become bacha posh, a custom in which a young girl takes the role of a male child. After all, Rahima’s great-great-grandmother was a bacha posh, too, so there is family history to consider. So the girl’s hair is cut short. She wears pants. Barters with the shopkeepers. But even better? As Rahim, she plays soccer, walks freely down the street, looks neighbors in the eye, and gets out of any woman’s work around the house. A stranger on the street would think Rahima really was a boy.

Hashimi alternates between Rahim’s story and Shekiba, her great-great grandmother–and reveals the lives of ordinary (and extraordinary) women in Afghanistan over one hundred years. We experience life in a family compound with farmers who barely eke out a living. We shrink at the blows overbearing mothers-in-law rain on young wives. We live in a war lord’s harem. We feel what it’s like to be number three wife and backhanded by an angry husband for some insignificant infraction.

Those stories laid a groundwork for understanding modern day Afghanistan, at least through the eyes of a the women. So readers learn how powerful husbands enter a wife’s name in the running for a seat Parliament because western powers had dictated that a certain number of ministers be women. How those female ministers had ‘minders’ who signaled to them how to vote. How even in 2007 women were not to watch television or use a computer. And how bearing children is still a woman’s greatest worth.

In every society, no matter how repressive, there are always women who slip through the gender-role cracks. In The Pearl that character is Khala Shaima , Rahima’s elderly spinster aunt who is old enough (and she herself would probably say ugly enough) to say anything to anyone and go where she wants when she wants to. Khala Shaima is always there to fight for Rahima and push her to think beyond the confines of her life–to some day find a way to a better life.

But exactly how that pearl breaks its shell is yours to discover.

So many books, so little time …

Laurie Larson

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July 4, 2018

That’s actually not entirely true–while I do have many books on my TBR pile, I also have a lot of time now that I’m retired! But instead of reading and blogging in an orderly manner–posts planned and scheduled as good bloggers are wont to do–I launched myself into a frenzy of reading on June first. It must be the giddy freedom I feel staying up until (*gasp*) midnight with a book in hand. Or sitting on the deck with a cold drink in the middle of the afternoon, for goodness sake. To play a little catch up, this post is a two-fer.

The Figgs
Ali Bryan
Freehand Books

This is a family who put the fun in dysfunctional. (And they’re Canadian! I thought those Canadians had their shi stuff together compared to Americans, that they operated on a higher plane–but apparently not.) June and Randy Figg live with their three twenty-something children under one roof. Tom, Derek, and Vanessa have finished at university. Or not. They are employed. Or not. And their parents are out of their minds with frustration. Or not. Because if any parents are just asking to have their adult children boomerang, it’s the Figgs. They cook the “kids” breakfast, lunch, and dinner on demand. Do their laundry. Pick up after them. And drive them to and from their (mostly) part time jobs. All the while complaining and lecturing the “kids”. (Can you say ‘enablers’?!)

And then the poop really hits the fan. Derek finds out a young woman he hooked up with is in labor. With his baby. It’s fair to say that chaos ensues and the Figg’s lives are turned inside out when the baby’s mother decides that she doesn’t want to raise baby Jaxx and Derek brings the newborn home. To mom and dad’s, that is.

Author Ali Bryan is a master at capturing the put-upon whining of millennials and their martyr parents and I found myself hooting out loud at times at the banter. But underneath the humor, Bryan asks us to think about the life-changing ramifications of adoption. Not too far into the novel, the reader discovers that June was adopted as a child. A little farther in, we learn that Randy has been keeping a painful secret–nearly thirty years ago, his high school girlfriend had given his baby up for adoption. Randy is determined to find his son, but June never had any interest in looking for her parents.

Until the arrival of little Jaxx.

It’s fresh. It’s funny. It’s a peek into a dysfunctional family who somehow make it work. Read The Figgs this summer.

Remind Me Again What Happened
Joanna Luloff
Algonquin Books

Claire wakes up in the hospital and she has no idea why she is there. She can remember very little of the fever that caused the seizures from which she still suffers and her husband Charlie is a stranger. She can’t even remember their first kiss. Frightened and very sick, Claire asks Charlie to call Rachel, her best friend–their best friend, really–because she senses she “needs an ally”. Charlie seems always angry with her. He is at once controlling and distant.

But like many who suffer brain trauma, Claire’s distant memory is fairly intact. She can describe the bedspread in her room when she was eight. She remembers the snack her mother made her each afternoon. And she can tell the story of her grandparents courtship when she searches through a box of old photos. The gaps in Claire’s memory frustrate them all.

We learn early on that Claire and Charlie had lived apart for a few years before her illness. And while Claire doesn’t remember any of this, she does have flashes of memory: Michael; Pondicherry, India; Turkey. What do those fragmented memories mean, if anything? Her apartment in New York was packed up and boxes are waiting for her to sort through: Work. Grad school. Childhood. Boxes that might answer Claire’s questions.

And although the story of Claire’s memory loss does capture the reader, it is the questions author Joanna Luloff asks about memory that are most compelling. The story is told alternating narrators, so we hear the same story told by three different people. Except the stories aren’t the same at all–so what is reality? How can we determine if what we remember is accurate or not? How can three people remember the same incident so very differently?

If like your novels tied up with a neat bow at the end, this book probably isn’t for you. But if you want to ponder some Deep Thoughts and wonder if you really remember what caused the end of a love affair or the loss of a dear friend, I’d give it a go.

An evening with Stephen Mack Jones: GR Reads

Laurie Larson

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June 24, 2018

Anyone can write a book. Just tell yourself a story a pebble at a time. Stephen Mack Jones

Stephen Mack Jones: GR Reads

In most circles of friends there’s that One. You know, the one who tells great stories–and acts out all the parts. That friend who is self-effacing, no matter how successful they might be. The one who has a strong moral compass, yet never acts holier-than-thou. The one who is often the butt of the jokes they tell.

The Grand Rapids Public Library recently hosted An Evening with Stephen Mack Jones as part of their summer GR Reads program. Jones is the author of August Snow a crime novel that pairs a rollicking whodunit with insightful social commentary all set against the backdrop of Detroit. (Read my review of the novel here.) And if I had to guess, Jones is that One for his family and friends.

Dressed casually in jeans, a black tee, and sport coat, Jones began the evening by talking about the process of writing the novel. Joking that after he retired (Jones was a copywriter by trade) there was never anything new on Netflix, he set about to tell himself a good story. While mowing the grass one day the words “August Snow” popped into his mind, but it meant little to him at that moment. When he later looked back at some ideas he had jotted down for a story, he realized that August Snow was the hero’s name. Jones said as he wrote, the story moved him, making him laugh … and cry.

Readers of August Snow know August holds dear the memory of his parents and feels their influence daily. Jones said that during an early interview when asked who the story is about, it came to him that August Snow is the story of his father, the hero “that makes the hero yet never asks for any glory.”

After Jones told the story of writing the novel, he took just as long to answer audience questions. This is one author who was not stingy with his time, one who thanked the readers sitting in the audience again and again as being the source of the book’s success. Of course he was asked about a second novel (Lives Laid Away set to be released in January 2019), and of course he was asked about a film version of the novel (and the answer is probably–the novel was recently optioned).

Now to wait six months for that second August Snow novel …

Ordinary Grace: review

Laurie Larson

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June 19, 2018

Ordinary Grace
William Kent Krueger
Atria/Simon & Schuster

A born and raised Midwesterner, I am drawn to novels set in my part of the world. Ohio. Michigan. Wisconsin. Minnesota. There is something magical about stepping into a world you know, of finding a story that captures the ethos of a place you love. When I turned to the blurb on William Kent Krueger’s novel Ordinary Grace, and read “Minnesota” and “1961” I knew it was a must-read.

The narrator of the story is thirteen-year-old Frank Drum, a pretty typical “PK” as we used to call them. Preacher’s Kid. He balked at authority, pushed limits, and tried to circumvent just about any punishment his parents meted out. His father, Pastor Nathan Drum, is a WWII vet who traded studying law for the ministry when he returned to the States. Frank’s mother Ruth was less than thrilled with the prospect of being a pastor’s wife and she shares Frank’s rebellious spirit. She smokes … on the porch, in clear view of everyone. She drinks martinis. And she’s not so sure about this God-thing her husband is all about. Ariel, Frank’s older sister, is an accomplished pianist and composer with great promise who is about to set off to Julliard. Frank’s nine-year-old brother Jake is a quiet boy, in part because he lives with a stutter that makes speaking difficult.

The story begins with the death of one of Frank’s classmates, Bobby Cole. Daydreaming as he sat on the trestle over the Minnesota river, he was killed when he didn’t hear an oncoming train. Police officer Doyle suspects his death was not an accident–that maybe one of the homeless who lived by the river had something to do with Bobby’s death. Or maybe it was the Indian Warren Redstone, a Native man with a rap sheet. (His charge? Protesting for Indian rights.) His recent reappearance in town (by Doyle’s account anyways) could only mean trouble.

But Bobby’s death was just the beginning of an awful summer of loss. One that would both pull Frank away from his father’s faith and pull him closer. After Bobby’s death, the brothers discover one of those homeless men, dead by the river; Ariel’s mentor and close family friend Emil Brandt tries to commit suicide. And then comes the death that nearly destroys the Drum family.

Although I think it’s evident that Krueger loves us Midwesterners, he doesn’t shy away from uncovering our ugliness. Racial prejudice. Gender stereotypes. Abuse. Alcoholism. But he does so with understanding of our frailty–he looks at us honestly and without condemnation.

Krueger is able to do this, I think, with the cooperation of Nathan Drum. We are privy to a couple of Nathan’s sermons in Ordinary Grace and we learn that his God is a God of love. A God who promises light over darkness, who gives us humans the grace to “endure our own dark night and rise to the dawning of a new day and rejoice.” When Nathan learns that a young person in his life is gay, he reassures the young man he is a child of God–loved, not sick; made in God’s image, not a freak. It’s not what you’d expect of a rural pastor in Minnesota at the beginning of the sixties. But sometimes those of us in the Midwest even stereotype ourselves, and I’d venture a guess that Nathan’s view of the world was more common than we assume.

That’s what I love about reading novels written by authors in the Midwest. Our faith, our optimism, our love of family–and hot dish casseroles!–is not mocked or derided. Instead, our spirit is celebrated.

When Breath Becomes Air

Laurie Larson

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June 6, 2018

When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
Random House

So much has been written about Paul Kalanithi’s meditation on living and dying When Breath Becomes Air–reviews in every newspaper and magazine, a Super Soul short by Oprah, NPR interviews, a TED talk. What more could I possibly add?

Not much.

Kalanithi does with words what he did as a surgeon–takes two pieces seemingly torn apart and stitches them seamlessly together. As a surgeon he removed brain tumors and fixed broken spines, then sewed muscle to muscle and skin to skin so that the patient was once again all of a piece. As a writer he took an idea that frightens many–death–and connected his past and present, bringing the reader to understand that death does not separate us from our lives, but instead merely moves us along a kind of continuum. In her Ted Talk, Kalanithi’s widow, Lucy, recites the poem “Separation” by W. S. Merwin: Your absence has gone through me/Like thread through a needle/Everything I do is stitched with its color. I can only hope that it may be so for my loved ones.

Strange that I read When Breath Becomes Air only three days into my retirement. Such an event is frought with thoughts of mortality and life’s work and self-worth. I’ve most likely lived, at best, two-thirds of my life already. And I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that some days that remaining slice of the pie seems terribly small.

I could also say that Kalanithi wasn’t so lucky.

Or I could say he was the luckiest man alive–because Paul Kalanithi experienced a marvelous grace that enabled him to live a good death.

On Brassard's Farm: review

Laurie Larson

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April 20, 2018

On Brassard’s Farm
Daniel Hecht
Blackstone Publishing

Ann Turner wants to get away from it all–her job (middle school teacher), her ex-husband (cheating scumbag), her city life in Boston (harried and superficial). With a small inheritance, she looks for a piece of land. Just a little place in the middle of nowhere. Vermont, maybe. Breathe the fresh country air. Meet some down-to-earth folks. Buy fresh corn and blackberries from a roadside stand.

Well … don’t we all?!

But most of us aren’t dealing with Ann’s mess of a life. Her dismissal for ‘inappropriate touching’ of a student. Friends who abandoned her. The brother who went missing several years ago.

Daniel Hecht’s On Brassard’s Farm is the story of how Ann made sense of it all. By buying an (almost) inaccessible piece of land on a farm in Vermont. Tent living in the woods for six months of the year. Working on a dairy farm to pay off unexpected debt. And questioning, always questioning, how she came to that place in her life. The property on Brassard’s farm was the means to confront “[her] own bramble patch, [her] own deep woods.”

And the hard work paid off.

She faced fear. Physical exhaustion. Utter loneliness. Even her rage. Gradually, she begins to feel “as if I possessed some degree of luminosity again. I felt a strand of resilience inside, strong yet supple, in body and psyche, as if I’d been at least party woven back together.”

Of course she finds love, again, too. It’s probably Ann’s revelations about love and loneliness that touched me the most. Like always, I’m so taken by a novel where a male author speaks with such accuracy about women’s inner lives–and Hecht did this well. Like chick lit on a deeper level.

(I also learned a lot about farming, dairy cows, trimming trees, and growing hops. Sometimes, quite frankly, a little too much, but still.)

On Brassard’s Farm is a good read.

[Not] Lost in translation: Hotel Silence (review)

Laurie Larson

2 comments

April 15, 2018

Hotel Silence
Audur Ava Olafsdottir
trans. Brian FitzGibbon
Grove Atlantic

Jonas Ebeneser built his life around the narrative of family: husband, wife, and child sustained by a Great Love. But then his wife reveals a secret that causes him to question everything. They divorce. Add to this the fact that nearly every day Jonas visits his querulous mother in a nursing home where he must confront the loneliness and despair that so often accompanies old age and life simply becomes too much. Jonas decides to take preemptive action–and end his life.

Will the world miss me? No. Will the world be any poorer without me? No. Will the world be any poorer without me? No. Will the world survive without me? Yes. Is the world a better place now than when I came into it? No. What have I done to improve it? Nothing.

Pretty dire, no?

But even in his misery, Jonas can’t bring himself to kill himself in his home town where, most likely, his daughter Waterlily would find him. (And Jonas adores Waterlily.) So he leaves for an unnamed country in the Middle East ravaged by war, but recently quiet under a cease fire. Jonas buys a one-way ticket and writes a letter to Waterlily.

And it’s here that the magic of Hotel Silence begins.

One of three guests at the Hotel Silence, he is met with rusty water, out-dated furnishings, and broken fixtures. The proprietors, a brother and sister gradually–very gradually–come to be his friends. He is warned of the mines. Learns of mass graves and the soccer killing field. Witnesses the bullet-pocked buildings. Jonas takes his meals at Restaurant Limbo, where he is the only diner. And despite his personal despair, he begins to serve as the hotel’s handyman: rewiring, refinishing, and re-plumbing the rooms.

While Jonas rebuilds the Hotel Silence, he also begins to rebuild his own life. As he reflects on his life, we come to realize that his Great Love Story probably wasn’t. That as a young man he had felt unmoored. That his mother had always been difficult.

I nearly abandoned the novel not too far in. It’s a depressing subject, to be sure, but I was leery that it was rip-off of A Man Called Ove. And there was the language–the book was translated from Icelandic, and something about how the book read was slightly out-of-kilter. Nothing I can identify specifically–no odd diction or awkward syntax–but something just a little off-putting.

Hotel Silence won’t be for everyone, but Olafsdottir has a powerful message for us all: “Everything can happen. It can also be different than what one expected.” And one can still have a life well lived.

Paris By the Book: review

Laurie Larson

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April 7, 2018

Paris By the Book
Liam Callanan
Dutton

Paris By the Book is a love story, plain and simple.
About a girl and her guy.
A reader and the author.
A bookseller and her shop.
A mother and her children.
An artist and Paris.

Leah was trying to finish her masters thesis on Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 movie The Red Balloon when she met her husband in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “Met” is just a half truth–he actually chased her down after she shoplifted a copy of the picture book The Red Balloon from a Milwaukee bookstore. One thing led to another, then they were in a bar, discussing which author did Paris more justice: Lamorisse or Ludwig Bemelmans, author of the Madeline stories. It didn’t hurt Robert Eady’s appeal that he was an author in his own right. After publishing a few YA novels, he was trying to make his way in the world as a writer. So how do the poor student and the starving artist spend their courtship when they can’t afford to travel to Paris, France? They travel to Paris, Wisconsin–as well as Stockholm, Cuba, Montreal, and Berlin. All small towns in Wisconsin.

The rest, as they say, is history. Leah never finishes that masters thesis. She’s too busy working as a speech writer for a university president, supporting the couple while Robert tries to get his Next Big Novel finished. They have two daughters, Ellie and Daphne, and life is a whirlwind of birthday parties and university functions and neighborhood gatherings. Robert sometimes needs to retreat from the day-to-day grind to focus on his writing. He always leaves a note (“I’ll be back soon!”) and stays away for a few days at most. Leah lovingly calls them his “writeaways”–just a quirk of life when one lives with an artist.

That is until life begins to disintegrate. Because there has been no Next Big Novel. Money is tight. The couple argues. And Robert withdraws. So he leaves, presumably on one of his writeaways–but there is no note or phone call. Robert is gone a week, then two. Leah alerts the police and tries to stay calm, but there is no activity on his bank account or credit cards. No contact with friends or colleagues. He vanished. But after four months of limbo, Leah shakes a cryptic note out of a long-forgotten box of granola. It’s a confirmation number, her good friend Eleanor guesses–and within a week, Leah and the girls are on their way to Paris, France. On a flight Robert had booked before his disappearance. Because if he hasn’t shown up in the U.S., he’s sure to turn up in Paris, right?

As if that’s all not a crazy enough plot line, Leah buys an English language bookstore called The Late Edition. The three make some small headway into life without Robert–the girls attend school, Leah finds satisfaction in running the store. But there’s a strange sense that Robert is close at hand. Leah finds a copy of one of his books in the store with a scribbled “I’m sorry” in Robert’s handwriting. And the girls catch a glimpse of him on crowded streets.

The story’s ending fits where author Liam Callanan wanted to take Robert and Leah. And us, the readers. Oh, you might be frustrated. Vexed. And you might not know much more than you did at the beginning of the novel … but it’s a very writerly unwinding.

Paris By the Book also offers a brutally honest picture of a threadbare marriage that will either rip wide open or be darned back together. In fact, I could see my own life reflected in so many ways. I’ll let Leah speak for both of us here:

“I do want many things … to have raised brave independent daughters; to have read and loved every book on the shelves in my store. But more than anything, I had for the longest time, wanted Robert to be healthy, to be happy. To be here. He wanted to be elsewhere.”

“… I think [Robert] was afraid … of how much we loved him. Of how much that love required his presence.”

“I do know what I saw in his eyes … I saw love, longing. What’s certain is that bodies, celestial or human, have a pull. It’s impossible to imagine he doesn’t still feel our tug. It’s impossible to imagine his fully gone.”

And finally:

“I don’t so much read anymore, but rather teeter, wonder, take flight … Like anyone who has ever started or finished a book, or a love affair, or confused the two, in sweet anticipation of the fall.”

August Snow: review

Laurie Larson

3 comments

March 27, 2018

August Snow
Stephen Mack Jones
Soho Press

This one was a can-I-read-all-day Saturday followed by a maybe-I-should-skip-church Sunday kinda book. Good thing I finished before the workweek started or it might have been a I-have-a-little-cough-cough-cold Monday. Stephen Mack Jones’ first novel August Snow is that good.

August Snow is a former Detroit police detective who blew the whistle on the city’s mayor, was unceremoniously fired–and later won damages for wrongful termination. He’s filthy rich. And determined to transform the lives of his neighbors and the street he grew up on in Mexicantown. After August turns down a request to help a wealthy white socialite, he is quickly drawn into investigating her suspicious death just a few days later. (Actually, it’s suspicious to August–the police call it a suicide.) Like so many other crime novels, the story turns on the tropes of the trade: cars with blackout windows tailing, surprise visits by thugs, gun fights, and a mysterious computer hacker thrown in for good measure.

But the genre wasn’t what made August Snow so fun–for this Michiganian it was the references to the Motor City and all things Michigan: the Tigers and Lions, Fisher Theater, Eight Mile, and Woodward Ave. The crooked mayor serving time for his crimes. Even a peek at our up North with a trip to Traverse City. (Nancy Pearl, NPR librarian extraordinaire, even said she briefly considered moving back to Detroit while reading it.)

Even that wouldn’t be enough to carry a novel, though, no matter how much it felt like home.

No, the reason to read August Snow is the man himself. He is a smart ass who leaves no dig undug, a rebel who is more interested in what’s right than who’s in charge. He loves children and old ladies alike with the same good heart, and his friends are as dear as brothers. He wants his neighborhood safe so kids could once again play ball in the street. He thinks more about his neighbors than he does himself. But heartache is no stranger to August, and he has walled his off against any more loss. August Snow is a Real Man–and I say that without a trace of irony. I loved the guy.

After listening to an interview with the author on Michigan Public Radio’s show Stateside, I have a hunch that writer Stephen Mack Jones might be just as interesting as his characters.

Good thing Jones isn’t sure he and August are finished playing yet.

Read my post about a chilly spring trip to Detroit here.

I was Anastasia: review

Laurie Larson

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March 18, 2018

I Was Anastasia
Ariel Lawhon
Doubleday
release date: March 27, 2018

I read Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra in high school when I measured books by length–the longer the better–and by heft. At nearly 700 pages (Amazon tells me the hardcover weighs just shy of two pounds) the book kept me captivated for at least a few days. I read it in a rush, transported to tsarist Russia. I sighed over the love story of Nicholas and Alexandra, despised Rasputin for the dastardly sway he held over Alexandra. I longed to live in their grand homes, to wear beautiful gowns like the tsarinas. It’s probably safe to say I wouldn’t have been one of the peasants shouting at the gates of Alexander Palace.

Massie’s book read like a novel, and I still recommend it to a certain sort of my students today: the dreamers, the romantics, the lovers of fairy tales. It is, in fact, the whole of my understanding of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Anything I read about the events in a history book is lost in the cobwebs.

Story is that powerful.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia

Ariel Lawhon’s recently released novel I Was Anastasia is the first person account of Tsar Nicholas’s youngest daughter Anastasia, and her life in exile with the family. It is also the story of her life as the only surviving Romanov, a woman who lived as Anna Anderson but claimed to be Anastasia. Anna tried for years to get the courts to rule in her favor so that she could inherit what was left of the Romanov estate. The story she tells is compelling: surviving the execution, she became a refuge smuggled out of post-war Europe. Anna came under the care of a number of wealthy benefactors. Some truly believed she was Anastasia; others were only interested in trading on her social cache. She spent time in a sanitarium in Germany and was later institutionalized in a mental asylum after a suicide attempt. Her fervent supporters included Gleb Botkin, the son of the Romanov’s physician who was murdered with the family. It was Gleb who arranged Anna’s move to the United States and her marriage of convenience to retired history professor Jack Manahan. As Anna’s memories unfolded in the novel, I was right there with Gleb–frustrated that others didn’t see the obvious truth of her claim.

I don’t think there is a Nicholas and Alexandra devotee who hasn’t wondered at one time or another if the tales of Anastasia’s survival were true. There have been at least six Anastasia contenders throughout the years, and our fascination with the story produced countless books, a movie staring Ingrid Bergman, and a Disney film. What a perfect ending to a fairy tale that would be–and the tale Anastasia tells in I Was Anastasia is believable and captivating.

Or is it?