Sonja’s Pick
December, 2023
Women in Sunlight
Frances Mayes
Crown Publishing, April, 2018
Perhaps I chose this book because we met Frances and her husband Edward on our recent trip to Italy, Cortona to be exact. She was an absolutely charming lady who approached us with a genuine smile on her face; her husband following. Many of you know her book and movie “Under the Tuscan Sun”. Mayes will be making a movie of this novel soon as well, so perhaps that is #2 why I chose to read and report.
The plot: Three 60-year-old women, two widowed, one sort of divorced, meet while attending a sales pitch for a retirement village. None feel they are at this crossroad of their life, but family and society has suggested it as the place to be with lots of options. Their friendship grows quickly, and they decide they do not want to sit and watch but rather grab life by the coattails and fly! Tuscany for a year!
Frances told us she likes to write about friendships and people in situations with choices given to them that they should investigate to make life sweeter. And that this book does.
It’s a beacon of hope in what seems like a dismal end. A new beginning for all. The narrator is a younger 44 who, with her architect husband, moved to San Rocco some time ago. She owns a villa and now these three ladies come to join the neighborhood in a villa left empty due to the passing of owners. The women become a vital presence in the small town, hosting dinner parties, visiting local shops, lunching at cafes. Their friendship is almost too good to be true, but nice to see. Simple but real, they enjoy each new discovery whether an architectural archway, new pasta recipe, or the surrounding scenery.
There is money available to buy things to spruce up the villa, take trips to Venice and Florence, and follow a previous passion. Each of them reach out in their own way. There is always a little bit of sex on the couch or the back seat of a car. Dream on, we are allowed. Does it go on and on too often, yes, but I smiled every time I turned the pages. Hopefully you will enjoy as much as I did.
Pete’s Pick
November, 2023
Homecoming
Kate Morton
Mariner Books, April 4, 2023
Introduction
This novel is about a person’s sense of home, as in a place to come home to, and the sense of identity each of us develops based on our genetic background as well as the sum total of our life experiences. It is an extraordinary examination of how our concept of home is very much conditioned by our life experiences and what can happen when something challenges those experiences.
Author
Kate Morton is an award-winning, international best-selling NYT and Sunday Times #1 author of seven novels. Her novels have been translated into 38 languages and sold in 45 territories. She was born and raised in South Australia and earned her degrees at Trinity College, London. Her novel HOMECOMING was selected as a LibraryReads pick for April 2023.
Story
This story is about a 40-year old journalist, Jessica Turner-Bridges, living and working in London being called back home to Sydney, Australia when she receives a phone call that her grandmother has taken a fall and is in the hospital. This grandmother, Nora, virtually raised Jessica after her mother Polly left her in the care of her grandmother when she was very young.
The story begins with a story about another family 59 years earlier (1959) which experienced a tragedy no family should ever experience. The facts and circumstances of that family experience will end up affecting Jessica in ways she could never have imagined.
We follow Jessica as she encounters her grandmother in the hospital. Unconscious and unable to communicate, Jess is forced to try to understand what is happening based on her interviews with Nora’s housekeeper and her care giver as well as going through her papers and correspondence back at the home where she grew up and then left 20 years earlier. Through her retrospection, we come to understand her sense of identity gained from her experience growing up in Nora’s home in Sydney. We also follow her as she reflects on the role her mother Polly played in conditioning Jess for who she has now become. And, we follow the story of the family tragedy that occurred 59 years earlier and how that ultimately affects who Jessica is today.
The story has a surprise ending which I did not expect and underscores the incredible feat of telling a homecoming story that Kate Morton achieved in writing this novel.
Evaluation
This is the first novel of Kate Morton’s that I have read and I have become a great fan of her writing style. I found the storytelling absorbing and intriguing in a manner similar to what I’d experience in a who-done-it mystery such as an Agatha Christie mystery, yet with much more of a hold on my emotions. I was captivated by the character development as the story unfolded and found the inter-relationships between the characters compelling. The points made throughout the story of the critical nature of self-identity in how we are able to relate to the world around us I found very challenging as I looked back over my own life experiences and how they have formed my sense of self identity. I have become a fan of Kate Morton’s writing style and look forward to reading her other novels.
Chris’s Pick
September 2023
Tom Lake
Ann Patchett
Harper Publishing, August 1, 2023
Tom Lake begins in a high school in New Hampshire, where teenaged Lara is registering people who have come to try out for the classic 1938 play Our Town, a play which she knows and loves. The auditioners are so bad that she decides to step in and audition for the crucial role of Emily. Her success as Emily indicates much of the rest of her life.
Some thirty years later, Lara‘s twenty-something three daughters have all come home to the family’s farm in Michigan to ride out the pandemic. Without the normal farming help, the family has taken on the cherry picking themselves. To make the chore of less odious, the three girls begin to badger their mother with unanswered questions about her youth and short-lived acting career. So, Lara begins to tell the story of a long-ago romance with a man who would become a world-famous actor, and a summer stock theater company in Tom Lake.
As Lara’s tale unfolds throughout the book, the three daughters bring their own life concerns into the story. Unlike Lara’s generation, the worries of these young people are unique to them; climate change, the pandemic, the right to love who you love, and how a happy future can feel unattainable. But, as Patchett explains, “The beauty and the suffering are equally true.” We all hold those opposite truths, that there is a lot to feel terrible about but there is much to feel joyful about. We watch as the daughters puzzle out who Lara is as a separate person, apart from the mother role, and it is a fascinating journey.
Each of our lives is, of course, a compilation of our stories that we tell ourselves and others over the course of years. Lara is not going to tell her daughters the whole story, but as Patchett says, nobody tells anybody the whole story. All our stories are edited. It’s not that you’re lying, it’s just you shape your story to fit your audience.
Tom Lake is classic Patchett, and those of us who love her work will recognize her reflections on the road not taken, on relationships and their maintenance, and on confinement narrative—a favorite theme of hers. As always, Patchett directs us to other works of literature and artists throughout the book, each of whom inspire the story. But the quote from Our Town “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?__every, every minute?” seems to be the underpinning of this novel… that your life is a compilation of small moments and either you are awake and paying attention to each moment or you are always looking ahead to the future and therefore missing your life.
Finally, although wonderful to read, the Tom Lake audiobook is narrated by the incomparable Meryl Streep. That is a special experience.
Karen’s Pick
September 2023
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Lisa See
Scribner- June 6, 2023
357 pages
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, by Lisa See, a work of historical fiction, is based on the true and profound story of a woman physician in 15th century China, Tan Yunxian. See’s writing is highly detailed and does an amazing job of informing the reader of the structure of imperial families during the Ming Dynasty. Her characters come alive, and her skillful writing transports the reader to the time and place of her book.
The story’s main character, Tan Yunxian, is a child from a highly educated elite family, As a young child Tan is taught her place in her world. “When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son.” However, life begins to change for Yunxian when her mother dies. She is sent to live with her grandparents who recognize her precociousness and suggest she pursue a medical education to be fostered primarily by her physician grandmother, Lady Ru, a doctor of “great skill and wisdom”. Yunxian is allowed to apprentice with a mid-wife and her daughter Meiling, who becomes a life-long friend, though they are from different social status. It is during this time as an apprentice that Tan begins to clearly see the disparity between medical care for commoners and the discrepancies in the medical treatment of women by male doctors. She quietly makes it her life mission to defy the Confucian value, “ an educated woman is a worthless woman”. Through unrelenting study she becomes an instigator and facilitator for improved medical care for the women in her life, especially those confined within the gilded compounds of her family homes. She was a practitioner of better health practices for suffering women feeling anger or despair whether they were of titled elite, concubines, or common women, oft times to the disdain of family and members of her society.
As a reader, one needs to be prepared for the very specific cultural and medical practices of the Chinese during the Ming Dynasty era like foot binding. See spends an elaborate amount of time on the pain women endured for the purpose of enticing husbands and obtaining cultural status and the beauty ideals of the royals. Yunxian accepts this cultural practice of foot binding but establishes a protocol of continual foot care for women throughout their lives to prevent an infection much like the one that killed her mother.
See allows us to be part of Tan Yunxian’s (Lady Tan) life journey from childhood to her death; from that of a child student to a respected health practitioner and writer of a medical journal with remedies that are still practiced five centuries later. Most importantly, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is the story of women helping women, female friendships, and women overcoming the odds in a culture that readily dismisses them.
I highly recommend Lady Tan’s Circle of Women and look forward to reading other books by Lisa See.
Barbara’s Pick
August 2023
The Cloisters
Katy Hays
Atria Books, November 1, 2022
I saw this title mentioned in the New York Times Book Review; when I saw it in the Lucky Day section of our library it practically jumped into my hands. The plot starts with Ann, a recent college graduate majoring in early Renaissance texts, moving across the country to work as a summer intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A snafu in the interns’ office leaves Ann without her slot–but then she is picked up by Patrick, the curator at the Cloisters. Her beautiful, wealthy coworker, Rachel, becomes an unlikely friend, as does the gardener, Leo.
Patrick acquires a set of Renaissance tarot cards and becomes obsessed with reading them and discovering their origin. A tragic accident starts the summer’s spiral that twists until the very end. Seriously.
I’d been to the Cloisters many years ago and wondered how it would feature in a novel. What a remarkable experience it was!
Sonja’s Pick
July 2023
West With Giraffes, A Novel
Lynda Rutledge
Lake Union Publishing, Feb 1 2021
For now, we may not have the chance to ride cross-country with a pair of giraffes, falling in love with them and each other while learning secrets to life, but we can still be charmed and inspired by them. They are still with us. Here's hoping that will never, ever change.
And me too. I was charmed. What a delightful story that occurred in 1938 when Woodrow Wilson Nickel drives the truck that is scheduled to transport two giraffes cross-country. He is writing about it now at 105 as he sits in a nursing home after being reminded of that trip while seeing some giraffes on TV and he recalls that there is someone who needs to hear his story..
It’s full of suspense and brings one back to those uncertain times, before roads were smooth and Hitler was marching into Europe. It explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals and the kindness of strangers.
Pete’s Pick
June, 2023
Spare
Prince Harry
Random House, January 10, 2023
Introduction
This is Prince Harry’s own account of his life from birth through his marriage to Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex.
Author
Prince Harry is the second son of King Charles of Great Britain and the brother of Prince William, the Prince of Wales and the next in line to the monarchy of Great Britain.
Story
This is Prince Harry’s own story of his life to date. It is a rigorous look at his growing up years as the second son of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. He is quite forthcoming in what it was like in the years before his mother died, and he is excruciating in the effect his mother’s death had on his personal development from the time of her death until now. Her death significantly impacted his own development, and he is very upfront on how he suffers greatly from anxiety and depression as a result of her death. He talks freely about his time in the British Army and that time seems to have helped him tremendously in his maturing. He is also very forthcoming in his love of Africa, particularly of Botswana. The story becomes very difficult after Prince Harry meets and falls in love with Meghan Markle. The description of the British press and the paparazzi are enough to cause one to think there ought to be a law governing such relationships.
The story is really quite an open look at Prince Harry’s life and he seems willing to share some of the most intimate details in an effort to have readers understand how difficult it was and is to grow up in that world and continue to try to live in it.
Evaluation
I have followed Prince William and Prince Harry since their births to Prince Charles and Princess Diana. I was horrified when Princess Diana was killed in the Paris car accident. It was mildly upsetting to hear and watch the press coverage of Prince Harry’s teenage years. After reading this book, I realize how one-sided and jilted that perspective was. I have been a fan of Prince Harry’s since he began his relationship with Meghan Markle and I am one who feels they have been given a raw deal by their family, the press, and the paparazzi. I believe this book presents a needed fresh look at Prince Harry’s life and an appreciation for the people and causes he holds dear.
Chris’s Pick
May, 2023
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
John Green
Penguin Random House, 2021
A few years ago, Fresh Air’s Terry Gross conducted what would be the last interview with the author Maurice Sendak, in which Sendak said, “I’m finding out as I am aging that I’m in love with the world.” That interview moved me to tears.
John Green, touched by the same interview, writes:
It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world …. (it) isn't to ignore or overlook suffering both human and otherwise. ...To fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars… to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. I want to fall in love with the world … to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.
The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this collection of essays, adapted from his same-named podcast, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet. It is an unironic reflection of humanity: how we grow, build, destroy. Funny, complex, well-researched, rich with detail, the essays display the contradictions of contemporary humanity.
I have my favorites. I loved the stories of “The Lascaux Cave Paintings”, and “Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance”. I loved “Googling Strangers”, “Auld Lang Syne”, and “Monopoly”. All the essays, though, offer the reader something—a reminiscence, a smile, a puzzlement, an understanding. Each end with a star rating between one and five, which is amusing--the conceit of the book is that these days we consumers are asked to review everything we buy, touch, or experience, often within a five-star scale. So, Green has chosen to review the Anthropocene.
Here is a confession: I first discovered this book as an audiobook, a great way to keep me company during my daily walk. And the special thrill of this one is that John Green narrates his own work. His voice is often tender and emotional, so it is clear how and why he responds to a particular subject. (This is an author that is generally considered a YA (Young Adult) author. Luckily, I didn’t know that when I picked up his Turtles All the Way Down some years ago and fell in love with it.) When the audiobook concluded, I returned it to the Libby App and promptly bought the signed-by-the-author print book from Amazon.
A last thought: A mentor of Green’s once told him “For anyone trying to discern what to do with their life: pay attention to what you pay attention to. That's pretty much all the information you need.”
This book is John Green’s paying attention. It may be that I would not necessarily pay attention to the same things, like Kentucky bluegrass, or Diet Dr Pepper, or the Indianapolis 500. But his storytelling is compelling, and so delightful it is easy to settle into his world for a while.
And it has alerted me to pay attention to what I pay attention to as well. Good book.
Karen’s Pick
April, 2023
Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver
Harper Publishing; October 18, 2022
Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead is a brilliantly conceived novel that has been compared by critics to Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Both novels are about a young man “subjected to poverty and abuse of the existing social systems”. Kingsolver’s story of how she came to write a tale of such abject misery is notable and explains the authors direction for this book.
She told the New York Times that while she was in England, she stayed
where Charles Dickens had stayed while he was writing Bleak House. Immersed in ideas, Kingsolver had a “conversation” with Dickens who told her to write the book from a child’s point of view because 'no one doubts the child'.
The setting for the story is in rural Lee County, Virginia, in Southern Appalachia and begins at Demon’s birth to early adulthood. It is the story of the tumultuous journey of the copper-penny-headed Damon Fields aka Demon (childhood moniker) and Copperhead (for obvious reasons) and not because of coal country’s woodland inhabitants.
Demon is a wonderful multi-dimensional character and is the novel’s narrator. He not only uses the vernacular of the locale, but graphically describes its environs, and the patched-together existence of its citizens. Due to Demon’s skill, the reader is often transported to places we'd rather not go.
Being just ten years old, Demon is orphaned and homeless after his mother’s drug overdose. From this point, he is victimized by a corrupt foster care system, substandard schools, food deprivation, pervasive opioid addiction, and habitual losses.
The author’s development of the plot “never takes a breath” and the circumstances Demon endures take the reader on a literary emotional rollercoaster. Fortunately, when Demon’s fate seems like too much to bear, Kingsolver senses our angst and shows us there is also humor, resilience, and fearlessness in Demon’s life. As noted In a Book Browse review:
Demon claims to be “a worthless, throwaway individual who describes himself as ‘the Eagle Scout of trailer trash’” while at the same time exhibiting admirable self-reliance and a steely determination to rise above his circumstances even when so much lies beyond his control.
As the story develops one questions if Demon’s skills, talent, survivor instincts, good looks, charm, and athletic abilities should be enough to protect him.
Simply stated - sometimes yes, and other times no.
At first glance, one might question the necessity of reading a 560-page work of fiction. For this reader, every page was a gift from the author and I was exhausted by accompanying Demon on his journeys, however, I did not want the book to end!
I highly recommend Demon Copperhead and would go as far to say it was one of my favorite books of 2022!
Barbara’s Pick
March 2023
Gilded Mountain
Kate Manning
Scribner Publishing; November 1, 2022
I must admit that when I saw this book’s title, I was thinking more Edith Wharton than Upton Sinclair. But from the first sentence I realized I could not make generalizations about this novel.
Gilded Mountain is set in nineteen-aughts Colorado and details the dangerous world of mining marble for statues. The main character, seventeen-year-old Sylvie, is headed to a nunnery if her French-Canadian mother has her way, but the young girl wins an essay contest and parlays that into a job at the local paper and then a summer job working for the local tycoon’s French wife. Real historic characters such as “Mother” Jones drop in as the workers flirt with unionizing to improve their horrible working conditions.
This compelling book exposed a world I had little knowledge of. Sylvie and her family will stay with you. Enjoy!
Ken’s Pick (Guest Reviewer)
February 2023
The Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Mystery Novels
Tony Hillerman 1970- 2006
Harper Collins
Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee are two fictional Navajo Tribal policeman whose crime fighting adventures can be followed in an 18-volume series crafted by superb writer Tony Hillerman. The series starts with The Blessing Way and concludes with The Shape Shifter, written 2 years prior to his death in 2008. These contemporary detectives created by Hillerman are reminiscent of the masterminds of Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle.
Hillerman was born and raised in Oklahoma and attended school with many native children. This formed a deep and respectful admiration for the Navajo culture and way of life. Hillerman began writing the novels while teaching journalism at the University of New Mexico in 1970. His experience as a journalist is evident in the manner in which the stories unfold. Often, they begin with a murder and then proceed through the unraveling of bits and pieces of evidence discovered by the actions of the brilliant Leaphorn and Chee. This narrative structure at first glance may seem formulaic. However, each novel is filled to the final pages with geological and geographical atmosphere, human relationships of all sorts, and personal failures and triumphs all seen through the vital modern Navajo culture of the American southwest.
I highly recommend this series to be read in the order of the original publication for clarity of the characters and development of their unique relationship. I found this series of novels to be some of the most enjoyable works of fiction I've had the pleasure to read in many years .
Note : For fans of this series, his daughter Anne Hillerman has written 7 more Leaphorn and Chee mystery novels. Her newest will be published in 2023!
Vicki’s Pick(Guest Reviewer)
January 2023
The Rise
Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery
Sarah Lewis
Simon & Schuster, March 2015
From celebrated art historian, curator, and teacher Sarah Lewis, a fascinating examination of how our most iconic creative endeavors—from innovation to the arts—are not achievements but conversions, corrections after failed attempts. —Simon & Schuster
Perhaps this is one of the most influential & relevant non-fiction (but easy reading) books I have read in decades.
Researching broadly from parenting to extreme sports & scientific Nobel Prize winners, Sarah Lewis writes about how “failure” supports & motivates us to achieve our greatest successes in whatever endeavor we choose.
From the parent who asks his children (with the excitement we associate with success) what their “near misses/failures” were that day to Andre Geim (Nobel Prize recipient) who stated that the way to win a Nobel is to first win the Ig Nobel Prize. (The Ig Nobel is a sort of “roasting” of the scientist with the most spectacular “failure” of the year.)
An amazing & insightful read!
Enjoy!