tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73470326476526937942024-03-17T13:28:53.417-04:00Allure of DeceitSuspense novels about charity, religion, literacy and women fleeing controlAllure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.comBlogger348125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-88170912490672364542024-03-17T13:28:00.000-04:002024-03-17T13:28:01.267-04:00Game of chance<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiorYxBgxqWDEu3ROdLzHFRept5h9hYrJ1qQMPFzv4qVVmMaSMr0k15GWs5Wfd0YkvZCPPwiKu7Cpp7ugVvIIZQw7CWU5wBzxLVKKRdQ195UyDlGT3WV8S4Bawmt2rBxUPyhGPJVao2RCtox4o7Wn4oTPyPbB4KbMOV6ummqBP5WCqWQUbxoQa6dd-K8JE/s551/Pachinko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="364" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiorYxBgxqWDEu3ROdLzHFRept5h9hYrJ1qQMPFzv4qVVmMaSMr0k15GWs5Wfd0YkvZCPPwiKu7Cpp7ugVvIIZQw7CWU5wBzxLVKKRdQ195UyDlGT3WV8S4Bawmt2rBxUPyhGPJVao2RCtox4o7Wn4oTPyPbB4KbMOV6ummqBP5WCqWQUbxoQa6dd-K8JE/s320/Pachinko.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><i><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/min-jin-lee/pachinko-national-book-award-finalist/9781455563937/?lens=grand-central-publishing">Pachinko </a></i>by Min Jin Lee covers a Korean woman’s life from 1932 through 1989, how she endures poverty and class discrimination after the death of her father at age 13, Japanese occupation, World War II, the Korean War and life as a marginalized citizen in Japan. The first line of this beautiful book notes, “history has failed us, but no matter.” A century of occupation, war, ethnic hatred uprooted and divided Korean families. Though gambling was illegal in Japan, Pachinko is hybrid pinball-slot game that offers recreation, dreams of fast earnings, and refuge from loveless homes. Like a game, Sunja’s survival hinges luck, timing and the ability to quickly adapt.</p><p>Sunja’s mother gets by renting cramped spaces in her small home to local workers and travelers, and the daughter helps with cooking and cleaning. While at the market, Sunja catches the eye of Hansu, a Korean mob boss with connections in Japan. “Hansu did not believe in nationalism, religion, or even love, but he trusted in education. Above all, he believed that a man must learn constantly.” </p><p>After Sunja becomes pregnant. Hansu won't leave his wife but offers support. Instead, Sunja accepts a proposal from one of her mother’s roomers, Isak, an intelligent and sickly pastor traveling to Japan to stay with his brother and work as a missionary. Skepticism runs high about such missionary work, and one character notes, “the whole religion thing was a racket for overeducated men who didn’t want to do real work.” </p><p>Both Korean and Japanese societies have rigid expectations for marriage. Sunja’s mother is criticized for marrying a man with a cleft lip. The roomers criticize Sunja for marrying a man with tuberculosis. Isak’s supervisor questions his motivation for marrying a woman pregnant with another man’s child. The older pastor warns that coincidences cannot be mistaken for the will of God. “It’s dangerous to think that everything is a sign from God. Perhaps God is always talking to us, but we don’t know how to listen.” </p><p>Koreans in Japan cannot become citizens or enjoy full rights. Minorities of any category are expected to be perfect role models: “One bad Korean ruins it for thousands of others. And one bad Christian hurts tens of thousands of Christians everywhere.”</p><p>Chance is a theme throughout the book, and the most successful characters take risks to progress. With the cusp of World War II, Sunja and her sister-in-law risk the wrath of their husbands by selling candy in the market by the train station to pay off the debts associated with Isak's travel from Korea. </p><p>Sunja’s has two sons who are opposites – Noah, son of the mob boss, is a brilliant student who assimilates into Japanese culture while Mozasu, son of the intellectual preacher – struggles in school and eventually takes a job at one of Hansu’s pachinko parlors. “Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes – there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game?”</p><p>Japanese society largely disdains pachinko and the Koreans who often run the parlors. Despite the discrimination, Japanese and Korean characters fall in love, including Mozasu and Etsuko. Etsuko’s daughter struggles with addiction and disappoints her family, and Etsuko realized that she had “not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps-absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.” </p><p>Discrimination divides the family. Noa, the oldest son, is devastated to learn that he's the son of a gangster. The young man abruptly ends his studies, stops speaking with his family, moves to another town, and passes as a Japanese man to secure work: “Noa realized that this was what he wanted mot of all: to be seen as human.”</p><p>With Hansu’s help, Sanju finds Noa years later and has one last meeting before his death. Decades later, she can still feel holding the child’s hand. “The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned…. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.” </p><p>Life and games of chance are about the dreams and hopes associated with winning and losing. As an elderly grandmother, Sunja reflects on her life and determines it was good. Time and time again, it's reconfirmed for Sunja that what others think about her do not matter. “Beyond the dailiness, there had been moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, even in this ajumma’s life. Even if no one knew, it was true.”</p><p>When it comes to assessing a life, only one judgment matters. </p><div><br /></div>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-67888962875859949912024-03-06T11:02:00.001-05:002024-03-06T11:02:00.241-05:00A cure for many woes <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwyHquTRkr_0oLJzcVChGUn0-Zv09u0EX58mtWEDsWqSJQ8CmE5sCm0P4ezaKR8S34Hisq03pZI1eCAEnwNtiv6FD1STUMsweyhrGztZtZkAvOIHz_oaGGnpGcvHXaeK_rJ7NSA-3voE4ly9d2UY4pPNJxfM0_s1hlh95PHUCbfeZg3PuJwombLl8calo/s781/640px-Ferdo_Vesel_-_Prijateljici.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="781" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwyHquTRkr_0oLJzcVChGUn0-Zv09u0EX58mtWEDsWqSJQ8CmE5sCm0P4ezaKR8S34Hisq03pZI1eCAEnwNtiv6FD1STUMsweyhrGztZtZkAvOIHz_oaGGnpGcvHXaeK_rJ7NSA-3voE4ly9d2UY4pPNJxfM0_s1hlh95PHUCbfeZg3PuJwombLl8calo/s320/640px-Ferdo_Vesel_-_Prijateljici.jpg" width="262" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Longstanding friendships are the cure to many woes. Friends share confidences, memories and strategies. They listen, scheme and solve problems together. They comfort and shape each other. </p><p>The short story "Inconspicuous" is about two elderly neighbors who renew a close friendship after years of estrangement. Both have come to realize that good friendships are a treasure as "Society writes older women off as invisible and disposable." One friend, a retired librarian comes to the rescue after the other woman falls prey to a guardian scheme and a scam artist who "befriended the vulnerable, isolating them and destroying hope,
committing murder in slow motion."</p>
<p>A good friendship reminds one to feel free and whole again, and perhaps even young. The original version included multiple excerpts from poems by Robert Frost. Those were cut for the final version of the story, but some of the imagery remains. </p><p><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: justify;">We make ourselves a place apart<br /> Behind light words that tease and flout,<br />But oh, the agitated heart<br />
Till someone really find us out.</span></span></i></p><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Revelation" by Robert Frost </span><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2023/10/inconspicuous/" style="font-size: medium;">Read "Inconspicuous" in the Saturday Evening Post.</a> </span>Painting of <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferdo_Vesel_-_Prijateljici.jpg">"Two Friends" </a>by Ferdo Vesel, courtesy of Slovenia National Gallery of Art. </div>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-18559921994471312072024-03-03T10:57:00.002-05:002024-03-03T11:46:43.484-05:00Private space<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia0cBeDjPGqj8wliYTGuQtwKi0wZe5uRlQo3zgIhaK2nYIektQdEHVvGTg40_vuT3sYR30x-SeiYXFhl0wjLUmjH8lJBLgla68x7p6niPog1qojdqZTwlWPFZJNoPR3F34CZgbsgz7DXD0kpQ6alw_8zh88Oj7yroczmqOm2HHtT86DbsHZBYqvDtHz3c/s650/fiction%20writer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="433" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia0cBeDjPGqj8wliYTGuQtwKi0wZe5uRlQo3zgIhaK2nYIektQdEHVvGTg40_vuT3sYR30x-SeiYXFhl0wjLUmjH8lJBLgla68x7p6niPog1qojdqZTwlWPFZJNoPR3F34CZgbsgz7DXD0kpQ6alw_8zh88Oj7yroczmqOm2HHtT86DbsHZBYqvDtHz3c/s320/fiction%20writer.jpg" width="213" /></a></p><p>In <i><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-fiction-writer-jillian-cantor?variant=41024389185570">The Fiction Writer </a></i>by Jillian Cantor, Olivia Fitzgerald is a published author, but her second novel failed and her agent struggles to sell the third. After her boyfriend dumps her, Olivia is desperate for money and agrees to explore a ghostwriting job with recently widowed billionaire Henry Asherwood who lives in Malibu not far from Los Angeles where Noah, her good friend from college lives. </p><p>Olivia and her agent sign a nondisclosure agreement about the task, and from the start, Olivia is insecure, testy and often deceitful. In a form of self-sabotage, she withholds information from Noah, frequently poking him with questions when she already knows the answer. </p><p>Strange parallels emerge. Olivia’s own failed novel,<i> Becky, </i>was based on Rebecca, the novel by Daphne du Maurier. The billionaire suggests that du Maurier may have stolen the plot of her famous novel from his grandmother. His late wife also had a fascination with du Maurier. Likewise, both the wife and grandmother had cousins who were close friends. Clara, cousin to Asherwood's wife, works as a housekeeper when Olivia arrives and shows keen interest in the billionaire's affairs. Everyone in the Asherwood home lies, and Olivia grows stronger as she becomes more truthful with Noah. </p><p>More than one woman associated with Asherwood dwells on the Rebecca story, and there is more than one fiction writer. The result is a novella inside <i>The Fiction Writer</i>. In that novella a cousin confides that she understands and envies “what it must feel like to have creativity in your soul, words in your blood, a private space all your own.” </p><p>An intriguing idea can be told in more than one way. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-91388419956822510052024-02-19T14:33:00.005-05:002024-03-03T11:46:11.784-05:00Cheating<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhba6WJX4EIT2_l5x_5BPm0Ad0AtBxpAE4C9byrclJjJG_bsQhlDRc8a0hibhy_cna7ZGnPXd0hSHWxkvIDhNGqT0TZm2JEHJmuJxO-O2PArMShUKp5DjGzn9PXSsTE_7wt9lyE9VnKwGg_ibTUNH4OXl4e8cWJtL56bC0GwPBJn6o6LO2ohk0tldaOw9A/s400/the-peacock-and-the-sparrow-9781797155548_lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhba6WJX4EIT2_l5x_5BPm0Ad0AtBxpAE4C9byrclJjJG_bsQhlDRc8a0hibhy_cna7ZGnPXd0hSHWxkvIDhNGqT0TZm2JEHJmuJxO-O2PArMShUKp5DjGzn9PXSsTE_7wt9lyE9VnKwGg_ibTUNH4OXl4e8cWJtL56bC0GwPBJn6o6LO2ohk0tldaOw9A/s320/the-peacock-and-the-sparrow-9781797155548_lg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><i><a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Peacock-and-the-Sparrow/I-S-Berry/9781797155548">The Peacock and the Sparrow </a></i>by I.S. Berry is set in Bahrain in 2011-12, with the Shiite-majority population energized by the Arab Spring, restless under a Sunni-minority monarchy. “The government does not publish statistics regarding the breakdown
between the Shia and Sunni Muslim populations. Most estimates from NGOs
and the Shia community state Shia Muslims represent a majority (55 to
65 percent) of the citizen population,” reports the <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-report-on-international-religious-freedom/bahrain/">US State Department.</a> Bahrain's population is small, 1.4 million, or as many in San Antonio, Texas. The US Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, is a non-NATO ally, but stability with the king and regional security take priority over <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/bahrain">human rights.</a> </p><p>Protagonist Shane Collins works for the Central Intelligence Agency, and like most spies, regularly lies, a habit that seeps into his personal relationships. He manipulates informants, colleagues and lovers for his own purposes, at one point smugly noting: “A spy was a spy, and at fifty-two I could still lure a fish into my net.” </p><p>Collins poses as a diplomat, a role that should raise eyebrows among any of his contacts. His third month into Bahrain, he is unhappy: “The point where any extant novelty or exoticism has worn off. Where you sink deeper into foreign soil but it repulses and rejects you, shuns your alien roots. Where you become trapped in the amber of the transplanted elite.” A slacker, lacking self-esteem, he fails to rise through the ranks over the years and works for a polished and younger boss with Ivy League credentials. Collins centers his life around alcohol and when he plays music for a lover, it “like I was hearing it myself for the first time, its euphony fresh, a first sip of whiskey before it descends from pleasure into routine into necessity.” </p><p>The writing is strong, the noir tone compelling, and it’s hard to believe the book is the author's first. Still, the book has problems. </p><p>First, Collins engages in excessive stereotyping, about gender and nationality. For example, he describes his love interest, Almaisa who is an artist: “She had none of the triviality or false femineity of American women; neither did she have the humorless affectation of European women.” He goes on: “A feminist some might call her (though one, I learned, who recoiled from the label.)” Such labeling often leads to cliches: “She was the living product of East and West, a combination that often seemed as fraught with conflict as the two hemispheres.” </p><p>Collins prides himself on breaking down Almaisa's Muslim sensibilities, convincing her to ride in a car with him, try some wine, discard the veil and spend nights in a secluded place. She wears colorful hijabs and he gets her to admit: “mother had never worn a hijab, that it was nothing more than custom, the Quran silent on the subject, that she mostly wore the garment to blend in rather out of religious conviction. Despite Almaisa’s disdain for Western mores, her aversion to becoming like my female compatriots (whom she accused of hedonism and exhibitionism – and was she in truth so far off?), she eventually gave way.” </p><p>He assumes that he is in full charge of the relationship: “Not so different, after all, from the delicate give-and-take dance with an informant, an unending alternation between obeisance and control.” </p><p>The book fictionalizes details and damages of the Bahrain <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/bahrain">uprising</a>. The plot also takes a long, strange turn as Collins travels to Southeast Asia, raising questions for this reader about why any supervisor would send or trust him. Collins meets reader expectations by transporting a packet for an informant, scheming against supervisors and arranging documents that later assure his own survival. </p><p>Collins as spy becomes target. Belatedly reaching this conclusion, the character escapes the destruction unleashed by his actions and that of US policy, but not without betrayal on multiple fronts. In his world, everyone cheats.</p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-35200190795445998232024-02-09T16:00:00.029-05:002024-02-09T16:00:00.134-05:00Invisible<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1r6ikRgSP7FmSXbw34hO0k_bnNXoq4OGpehE3LuwJsAvY4qc40apwXpafsUG1dtS0TDGXuqwkX9D767StD1R-KjN0lP4id_cuUpX2Jn0nHqgwL5aNVr76v3XO949jc2RoGlr1wY3HcHKlpDU7GJYkFxVR4Zrw0Ccsf6PUL5S6pSip1rbTrhhy4NYfj-o/s509/InvisibleWomanHCfinal-340x509.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="340" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1r6ikRgSP7FmSXbw34hO0k_bnNXoq4OGpehE3LuwJsAvY4qc40apwXpafsUG1dtS0TDGXuqwkX9D767StD1R-KjN0lP4id_cuUpX2Jn0nHqgwL5aNVr76v3XO949jc2RoGlr1wY3HcHKlpDU7GJYkFxVR4Zrw0Ccsf6PUL5S6pSip1rbTrhhy4NYfj-o/s320/InvisibleWomanHCfinal-340x509.png" width="214" /></a></p><p>Two women, an actress and a film director, make a pact to keep a secret about a brutal sexual assault from years earlier in Hollywood. Val recognized one man, a studio CEO, but not the other. The arrest of the CEO more than 25 years later in <i><a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/invisible-woman/">Invisible Woman,</a></i> a page turner by Katia Lief, triggers pain for the victims and panic for the unnamed rapist.</p><p>The secret goes undiscussed by the two women and erodes the friendship. “Val wanted to forget what had happened, so they avoided talking about it. It was like trying to dance around an open pit – nearly impossible. Eventually the calls stopped.” </p><p>Joni, an occasional screenwriter who abandoned her directing career, is trapped in an unpleasant marriage masked by an oversized and gawdy home. She drinks to vanquish unhappy memories. Val, more content, teaches school. “They’d started off in the same place, young and hungry, but only Joni had gone on to a degree of real success and … what? Not fame – it was her husband who was famous now. Riches maybe.” Val’s memories are more vivid than Joni's, wonders how Joni could possibly be happy. </p><p>News of the arrest prompts Joni to reflect on her past and recognize her life is a mess, “the gluey sensation of having lost track of Val and time and herself, of having become invisible.” Family photos once signaled a full life, but then Joni noticed that “somewhere along the line, the grin and bear it smile worn by the women of her mother’s generation had found its way onto her face.” She considers reaching out to Val and offering support, but is uncertain: “Of not knowing how far she should go to find her old friend – or if she should leave her alone in what she hoped (but doubted was a comfortable obscurity.” </p><p>Joni finds Val on Facebook and the two women arrange a meeting at a restaurant near Joni’s Brooklyn home. But Val is viciously attacked beforehand, sent to the hospital in a coma. Waiting, Joni drinks herself into an angry, vulnerable stupor and is later retrieved by her controlling husband who pays the housekeeper and dog walker to keep tabs on his unstable wife. </p><p>Continuing to drink, Joni rashly breaks free from a miserable marriage. The price is another secret, another mean memory, the loss of career, family and perhaps her self-delusion. Joni only becomes more invisible.</p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-26043707097830824802024-01-24T11:19:00.000-05:002024-01-24T11:19:07.244-05:00Hunt for sinners<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhmq2oMpATpqusNbj0m4l3ChsOg3A2Mb18ew6nVV8wdVulCXTLVAYg6BAPLzrZSva0P4C-DJtL52JYFn_oS8yh6Avuu-t3bCkjVNmSUZki3Olp7SPYUOs4RNfiOfPuzD1QOrFzTwox5HssNUy_GZ6LEpYgVbsI07BDMO92nAqFeAdr0EnubhCEEQYm1_A/s1368/sinners%20bleed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1368" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhmq2oMpATpqusNbj0m4l3ChsOg3A2Mb18ew6nVV8wdVulCXTLVAYg6BAPLzrZSva0P4C-DJtL52JYFn_oS8yh6Avuu-t3bCkjVNmSUZki3Olp7SPYUOs4RNfiOfPuzD1QOrFzTwox5HssNUy_GZ6LEpYgVbsI07BDMO92nAqFeAdr0EnubhCEEQYm1_A/s320/sinners%20bleed.jpg" width="211" /></a></p><p>Titus Crown, elected first black sheriff of the fictional Virginia county of Charon in <i><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250831910/allthesinnersbleed">All the Sinners Bleed </a></i>by S.A. Cosby, has years of experience investigating terrible crimes. Even in the rural community, Crown tends to expect the worst from others, constantly on the hunt for motivation.</p><p>Many residents of such rural places argue that racist wrongdoings are part of the past, “washed away by the river of time that flows every forward” and “those things should be forgotten and left to the ages.” Crown knows better. “The South doesn’t change. You can try to hide the past, but it comes back in ways worse than the way it was before.” </p><p>Racism and religion thrive side by side in the South, and Crown generally declines to argue with men of God, noting “I left that abusive relationship a long time ago.” The death of a beloved parent often prompt children to question their faith, and after his own mother died from a debilitating disease, Crown realized “adults didn’t really know more than kids. That everyone was making it up as they went along and religion was just another crutch, like liquor or weed.” </p><p>Despite strong opinions and volatile emotions, Crown presents a stoic front. He cares for his elderly father, even as Crown cannot forget, “that the night his mother died his father had left two little boys alone to fend for themselves with just a vague notion of salvation for their mother.” To himself, Crown admits “there was still a thirteen-year-old inside of him that hated his father just a little bit.” But there is love, too. A simple action of a hand to a shoulder, “gentle words, was why he loved his father more than that little boy hated him.” </p><p>Crown’s conflicted past as an FBI agent and his history as an investigator, including the recent discovery of seven children tortured and murdered, reinforce his religious skepticism. For Crown, religion had thousands of years and chances to stem evil, instead falling prey to human interpretation and manipulation. As he explains to one man of God, “the devil is just the name we give to the terrible things we do to each other.” </p><p>Overqualified for the sheriff position, Crown is meticulous, certainly not as eager as town officials to close cases quickly and protect tourism. Every clue must be collected and analyzed. “Might be nothing, might be everything. Titus thought that summed up the startlingly random nature of most police investigations.” </p><p>The writing is strong and personal opinions are delicately inserted, never interfering with the plot. The protagonist is a keen and moral observer of human behavior and emotion: “That was often how crimes were solved.” That does not exclude analyzing and dwelling on his own motivations and connections. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-90987669070801070212024-01-18T11:09:00.027-05:002024-01-18T11:09:00.129-05:00Collateral damage <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhglGX8Uw2_-NWOpopi7wD7pUNqgBb9AyTUhL6IATv4C3JMMfxE0rKyh3CUqJ22zykmJXrVdBxHNWuNgtqjV3hvxIHRfkicsvXlBFN3KEqB82O9GLfmFv5qJrrAwXp2OTWcatIryzAZldeu7a1Wol3QDISFivpDT1D6Y28b_AGcMsZ2Y_IJifUdqSd8S2k/s500/The%20wren.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="338" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhglGX8Uw2_-NWOpopi7wD7pUNqgBb9AyTUhL6IATv4C3JMMfxE0rKyh3CUqJ22zykmJXrVdBxHNWuNgtqjV3hvxIHRfkicsvXlBFN3KEqB82O9GLfmFv5qJrrAwXp2OTWcatIryzAZldeu7a1Wol3QDISFivpDT1D6Y28b_AGcMsZ2Y_IJifUdqSd8S2k/s320/The%20wren.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Despite or maybe because of his self-centered ways, an Irish poet attracts female fans in <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005681"><i>The Wren, The Wren</i> </a>by Anne Enright. After the wife falls ill, Phil McDaragh leaves home and two daughters who are left wondering what they did wrong. Pain, distance and a tolerance for abuse reverberate through three generations. The poet leaves the country, conceding his writing is nostalgic. He writes only about Ireland because “You can’t leave a place like that,” Phil said. “It’s always with you.” He travels to Italy, where it’s claimed he abused another poet, and to the United States, where he marries a student. </p><p>Phil disappoints any who admire and support him. His daughter, Carmel, and his only granddaughter, Nell – conceived by a mother with no husband as a means to defeat loneliness – narrate most of the story, with Phil’s poetry scattered in between. Midway in the novel, Phil describes a childhood that includes animal cruelty, an abusive brother, rejection of a neighbor girl whom he once adored and a mentor’s disappointment with his decision to become a poet rather than join the priesthood. “I thought, at twelve years old, that I would never forget the look on the old priest’s face, that I would set my course by it. Now, I now the indelible thing was the glance I exchanged with the badger pup, as he waited for the fatal blow to fall. Nothing in my life, before or since, has matched that connection. It was a peak of understanding from which my whole existence, with its loves and false joys and tedious losses, has slowly fallen away.” Only Phil’s feelings matter, nothing else. Beautiful words cannot compensate for brutal ways.</p><p>Despite irregular correspondence with his family, the daughter and his only granddaughter ponder the man's legacy and words, often troubled by sweet words and descriptions of nature masking the lies and suffering of a restrictive community. “Phil's hands shaped the air in front of his rotting chest as he talked of the little Irish wren, and there as just a whisper of alcohol there, softening his tongue and wetting those mischievous, fond eyes. It was so easy to hate this man - the facts spoke for themselves - but it was still hard to dislike him. And it was devastatingly easy to love him. To flock around and keen when he died, because all the words died with him.”</p><p>The internet exposes bad behaviors that are far less tolerated decades later. Carmel searches online for an interview with her father broadcast in the early 1980s and discovers the hypocrisies of another era. The interviewer fawns, suggesting that Phil has a great understanding of women and Phil agrees. Laughing, Carmel decides that her father is "slightly creepy” and perhaps she was better off with him removed for so long from her life. Such observations contribute to breaking the family's cycle of adoration and self-abuse. </p><p>Letting go of the past, Carmel welcomes her free-spirited daughter while acknowledging that “She had not been a good mother…. All the love in the world would not make her a good mother. It was always such a wrangle. She could not hold her daughter, and she could not let her go.” The two women move on from past quarrels and contradictions, misunderstandings and painful memories to regard each other’s emotions and work a bit harder at getting along. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-50262306651315319522024-01-07T15:54:00.004-05:002024-01-07T16:04:06.831-05:00Meaning<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivRGvXhsRbH-rcvEaRSaOCBdDSuScU3zlQZ_0YaKbayJ9s34ekYHewINv1FJ1-sZTlMwE9Oe44CJHuUEq87ygTBvOfTVrdAOs8P4g6TSeI02MesRY4jvp_UxhNkyTXiWfmW1PCXGDipOeyJ0atMtzOy7v-X2_-Igwi1wAmt9oSK0xPoN7MmKWfsRgkaRA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="291" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivRGvXhsRbH-rcvEaRSaOCBdDSuScU3zlQZ_0YaKbayJ9s34ekYHewINv1FJ1-sZTlMwE9Oe44CJHuUEq87ygTBvOfTVrdAOs8P4g6TSeI02MesRY4jvp_UxhNkyTXiWfmW1PCXGDipOeyJ0atMtzOy7v-X2_-Igwi1wAmt9oSK0xPoN7MmKWfsRgkaRA" width="159" /></a></p><p>Many will give up on <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324065401"><i>Dayswork</i> </a>by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel for its odd quality, a hodgepodge of observations and facts mostly about Herman Melville, arranged in brief, chatty sentences and paragraphs. <i>Dayswork </i>reads like a combination of documentary and poetry, or perhaps a couple playing six degrees of separation with Melville as base.</p><p> A husband-wife team wrote the book; he’s a novelist and she’s a poet. The title page lists his name first, though strangely, most of the text is poetic with a first-person point of view, a woman chatting back and forth with her husband about her research on Melville during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the course of her research, she discovers other writers who revere Melville’s work, whether Nathaniel Philbrick who called <i>Moby-Dick</i> “the one book that deserves to be called our American bible” or a David Gilbert who suggested it was “bible written in scrimshaw.” According to Bachelder and Habel, Gilbert relies on the book “When in doubt, or simply in need of something,” and "opens the book at random and reads aloud, his voice ‘hauling forth the words like a net full of squirmy fish.’”</p><p>The book analyzes Melville’s themes – time, whales, friendships and more – in haphazard ways while embracing Melville’s sentiment that “Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational.”</p><p>The book examines the dreamy quality of a writer’s dreams and disappointments, explaining that Melville was fascinated by the sea – endless, masterless – even while spending much of his life on land, often quarreling with his family. The authors quote from the Odyssey: “For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is / for breaking a man, even though he may be a very strong one.” The researcher-protagonist ponders how Melville endured a series of hardships – the death of his oldest son at age 18 and another dead at age 35 as well as a daughter who could not bear her father’s name.</p><p>One devastating sentence, albeit from another writer, captures uneven and tragic portioning of luck in life. “‘It’s brutal,’ writes poet Robert Haas, ‘the way some lives / Seem to work and some don’t.’” And the reader understands, though wondering whether Melville would agree that literary greatness is enough. </p><p>The characters yearn for meaning in the midst of forced isolation and the style suggests that the authors set out to play a game with words and plot even as the pandemic had a way of making everything people did seem both more notable and mundane. At one point, a character notes. “Even a quiet person says a lot in a day, almost all of which is forgotten. Not forgotten, I suppose, but unremembered.” </p><p>We can use more care with our words, whether meant for everyday conversation or destined for posterity. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-75390254068788605232023-12-21T15:46:00.007-05:002023-12-26T18:02:29.616-05:00Secrets in an unhappy marriage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDstYBt1DL2VI-k8tjW7YMlVevIulvyBPF7t1d3MLq9fryqzKdRyriGaAiX1vRqTMk-ibs9_eqMbOJJONejYpmyeoV_HsGnXQ22EqWgiUYICBRZ1ZvB8R-LrdtcErVt_doR9xF5StiVd5nbNlNhfvobIPOPET0xsuFzW1JH3llRtJybTNVGnngtc95AzY/s400/what-we-kept-to-ourselves-9781668004821_lg.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDstYBt1DL2VI-k8tjW7YMlVevIulvyBPF7t1d3MLq9fryqzKdRyriGaAiX1vRqTMk-ibs9_eqMbOJJONejYpmyeoV_HsGnXQ22EqWgiUYICBRZ1ZvB8R-LrdtcErVt_doR9xF5StiVd5nbNlNhfvobIPOPET0xsuFzW1JH3llRtJybTNVGnngtc95AzY/s320/what-we-kept-to-ourselves-9781668004821_lg.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><p><i><a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/What-We-Kept-to-Ourselves/Nancy-Jooyoun-Kim/9781668004821">What We Kept to Ourselves</a></i> by Nancy Jooyoun Kim starts with a Korean American father discovering a body of a homeless black man in the yard along with a nearby note addressed to his wife who went missing a year earlier. The husband tears the note into pieces, placing them in the trash, but his daughter retrieves it, hoping it offers some clue to finding her mother.</p><p>From there, the book delves both into the couple’s background, the reasons for their estrangement and the father’s distance with his children. While John, the father, wants to bury the past, his two children work with the dead man’s daughter to unearth the connection between the dead man and a missing mother. The three adult children suspect a crime has been committed, but police questions are odd. John and the three children lie to the police and one another. </p><p>John and his wife, Sunny were college-educated and upper middle class when they emigrated from South Korea to the United States. Both families fled the North when they were children before the war’s end in 1953, though John did not realize he would never see his mother again. The man abandons his literature studies, assuming a conservative mindset and methodically adapting. In selecting Anglicized names, John rejects his wife’s choice of Anastasia and insists that she become “Sunny.” </p><p>The two children grow up in Pasadena, immersed in American culture. Meanwhile, Sunny, daughter of a famous artist and trained as an artist, struggles with English and finding fulfilling work. John works long hours to ensure their comfort, though memories of the war linger, and joy is missing: “there were so many… disappointments and tragedies in their lives cumulatively, how could you delineate one from the other when they overlapped like watercolors?” Alienated, she becomes increasingly homesick for Korean culture and activist professor who was her mentor. </p><p>John purchases a gas station in South LA without consulting his wife. He works long hours, and she immediately loathes herself for criticizing the location in a black neighborhood: “It was so much easier to be angry at, to blame people we didn’t know, wasn’t it? Because being angry at people whom we knew intimately was like being angry at ourselves. We had some great stake in it.” </p><p>Pregnant with her second child, Sunny begins labor at a bus stop and a black man comforts her until her husband arrives. Touched by the man’s kindness, she names her son Ronald after RJ, but tells her husband that the boy is named after the current president. Arranging for a sitter, she regularly returns to the bus stop and enjoying conversations with RJ who is patient and attentive. She expresses love for him, but he regards her as a sister and has other goals that include finding his estranged daughter in Alabama and researching police corruption. </p><p>RJ and Sunny meet again later years later in a grocery store parking lot. He is homeless and she purchases him a meal, knowing they won't meet again. Sunny cannot invite RJ to her home because her husband simply would not understand. She agrees to keep a box containing RJ's research. </p><p>Losing the friendship is hard for Sunny. Her husband has since purchased a nursery business, but the relationship does not improve, and she determines her children do not need a broken woman. She “once believed she would literally do anything for her children, until she realized the one thing she would not do is surrender to the prolonged and certain death of living as someone else.” </p><p>She returns to Korea, reuniting with her professor and pondering what it means to be human, deciding it was “not how well they behaved or followed the rules, because even ants in colonies could be tremendously organized and productive, but how much we could contemplate and create beauty for its own sake.” For her, creating beauty was essential for daily life and not limited to art. She concedes that her art was simply a safety net that prevented her from living a good life: “There were artists and there were people like her who viewed art as a hobbyist’s escape.”</p><p>The children mistrust one another yet work together, risking their lives while asking questions about their parents’ relationship. At one point Sunny’s and John’s daughter, Ana, determines that the entire country, not just their backyard, is a crime scene: “She had always thought of herself as an activist, but how had she also been an accomplice, complicit in a society that actively harmed, erased, killed those who challenged its mythologies of fairness, meritocracy, exceptionalism?” A librarian is most helpful while the police are not. RJ’s former co-worker urges them to give up, suggesting that people “want a story that makes the, feel safe so they can sleep at night. They’ll take any story they can, even if it’s a total lie.” </p><p>Relationships are doomed for those who cannot be honest. In this book, more intriguing than mysterious, death ends problematic relationships – between father and son, wife and husband, father and child. Only with death can others move on. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-72091717843078282352023-12-18T14:40:00.005-05:002023-12-18T14:57:23.991-05:00Free thought<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIXnFG36HUdO6YZdSzRUcr8QfrxscuaofteVg2UB7R-C2ipAIr_P-d1W9lyPAHSSs6YEueJe0YQNOpNMEeKWfSjBvvUWtbFRKfsVBDH9d0kJvTd5OcXNWxbOyEKXkToUNsvruOQcLApvVmxokd_-ELs4vUEgqfFVCVv1Fp8BxRAb9xckOLeEoQoV6BlAA/s400/Invisible%20Hour.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIXnFG36HUdO6YZdSzRUcr8QfrxscuaofteVg2UB7R-C2ipAIr_P-d1W9lyPAHSSs6YEueJe0YQNOpNMEeKWfSjBvvUWtbFRKfsVBDH9d0kJvTd5OcXNWxbOyEKXkToUNsvruOQcLApvVmxokd_-ELs4vUEgqfFVCVv1Fp8BxRAb9xckOLeEoQoV6BlAA/s320/Invisible%20Hour.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In <i><a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Invisible-Hour/Alice-Hoffman/The-Practical-Magic-Series/9781982175375">The Invisible Hour</a> </i>by Alice Hoffman, Ivy Jacob grows up in Boston, beautiful and wild, spoiled yet neglected. An unintended pregnancy prompts her to rebel against her parents' plan to send her away and put the child up for adoption. Instead, Ivy runs away with an acquaintance to a farming commune in rural Western Massachusetts, where she gives birth to a daughter, Mia, and marries the cult leader, Joel. The cult separates mother and daughter and Ivy’s life becomes small, hard and contained. Members of the secretive Community keep close watch on one another to prevent escapes or infractions. “Ivy had begun to think that life was made up of a series of accidents and drastic errors. The unexpected became the expected, you made the right turn or the wrong turn and all of it added up to the path you were on. Happiness was there and then gone, impossible to hold on to.” </p><p>The commune educates the children just enough to follow Joel's directions and produce goods sold in the nearby town. Joel forbids contact with the outside world, whether chatting with strangers or reading books. While selling goods at a community farmstand, Mia discovers the library and begins removing books, including a first edition of <i><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Scarlet-Letter-novel-by-Hawthorne">The Scarlet Letter </a></i>by Nathanial Hawthorne<i>. </i></p><p>Of course, cult leaders resent and fear free thought. Ivy warns her daughter to be careful, while the librarian pities anyone living in a place that outlaws reading, musing “In a place where books were banned there could be no personal freedom, no hope, and no dreams for the future.” The librarian’s philosophy: “Turn someone into a reader and you turn the world around.” And reading enthralls Mia. “Take one risk and you’ll soon take more. It’s an addiction, or it’s bravery, it’s foolishness or it’s desperation.”</p><p>After her mother’s death, Mia understands she has lost her only ally in the world. Ivy had long warned the girl to avoid picking a fight with Joel due to his unwillingness to back down. Mia tries to fade into the background, recalling a line from Shakespeare’s <i>Henry IV</i>: “We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible.” Invisibility was the only way to control her life and resist the Community’s rules: “Her life was in her own hands, to do with as she pleased, the one thing that belonged to her, the only thing she could claim for herself.” </p><p>She considers running away, the night before Joel plans to brand her as punishment. “Sometimes walking away is the bravest thing you can do.” The librarian assists, delivering Mia to a close friend who lives in Concord, where Mia attends school and thrives, even as Joel continues to follow and threaten her.</p><p>The second half the book takes a strange and surreal turn as Mia travels into the past for an encounter with Nathanial Hawthorne. The writer is handsome, philosophical and ambitious, coddled by his two sisters yet he also anxious about failure, injustice, and his struggle to write. Nathanial and Mia first meet in the forest and he wonders if she she is dream, perhaps even a ghost, a witch or an angel. “In his writings, women were often principal characters, independent, with minds of their own, often truer to their emotions and to the natural world than the men around them.” </p><p>Mia carries her copy of <i>The Scarlet Letter, </i>a book that Nathanial has yet to write, and she becomes both lover and muse for the author. Mia is forthright about her journey while recognizing the danger of becoming too close, thinking “how one person could save another’s life or ruin it without meaning to. She had already said too much….” Mia returns from the past, suggesting that an unmarried Hawthorne writes his famous novel soon afterward. Such details do not mesh with Hawthorne's <a href="https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/nathaniel-hawthorne">biography, </a>considering that Hawthorne published <i>The Scarlet Letter </i>in 1850. As a scholar, Mia describes a loving, supportive relationship between Hawthorne and his wife, Sophie, yet the woman does not enter Hoffman's plot. The actual couple married in 1842 after a long courtship. Oddly enough, Hawthorne spent time on a farm run by the Transcendentalists, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He took a political job soon after marrying and, after being fired in1849, only then did he have time to write <i>The Scarlet Letter. </i></p><p>The transition between modern and 19th century settings is rough and not just because the historical issues. The ending is abrupt, rushed and confusing much like the end of a strange dream. An inscription in the first-edition cherished by Mia reinforces this notion: “To Mia, If it was a dream, it was ours alone and you were mine.” Readers are justified in wondering if everything about Mia’s life is a figment of her imagination, that she is free only because of the books she had read.</p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-19477499086015583472023-12-11T15:41:00.002-05:002023-12-11T15:48:09.205-05:00Hunt for a happy ending <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgly7KjsK2eFYu6jHlcTWWoX83twl7eb907FP0Zwp77c7-Wf5tOMK-9AOIcV3iOSf-AKY8TFrv7rCpGdXVRquw1m4ZwvJSWmX85ct3lsJ-o7aC7Ikliz_54S8Ql4E9GwqKRXxSkDt8akFsM1_QPz2YoIjl5JuflSdBRcj5eQ7XakYo8xtQl3PQwwpvFVqU/s634/Dark%20Ride.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="634" data-original-width="425" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgly7KjsK2eFYu6jHlcTWWoX83twl7eb907FP0Zwp77c7-Wf5tOMK-9AOIcV3iOSf-AKY8TFrv7rCpGdXVRquw1m4ZwvJSWmX85ct3lsJ-o7aC7Ikliz_54S8Ql4E9GwqKRXxSkDt8akFsM1_QPz2YoIjl5JuflSdBRcj5eQ7XakYo8xtQl3PQwwpvFVqU/s320/Dark%20Ride.jpg" width="215" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Hardy Reed, nicknamed Hardly, in <i><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/dark-ride-lou-berney?variant=41007956820002">Dark Ride</a></i> by Lou Berney, is content to slacker. Stuck in a Midwest town, he gets high with friends and watches television, living in a garage while working a minimum wage job as a scare character at an amusement park. Hardy grows up with an indifferent foster family after losing a loving and supportive mother, not an easy childhood, but he is happy. And he is also kind. While paying off a parking ticket at city hall, he notices two quiet children with signs of abuse and he refuses to rationalize the injuries and just move on. Instead, he figures out the family’s name and address to reach out to Child Protective Services. </p><p>But the agency is overwhelmed, and Hardy keeps investigating. The more he learns, the more he knows that Pearl, 7, and Jack, 6, are enduring hellish treatment, and Hardy is frustrated by “every other person in the world who sees a problem and just wants to walk the other way.” </p><p>He asks questions, tracks the parents and makes new friends along the way. An amateur, he also makes mistakes and becomes a target, falling for a trap. After a vicious attack, Hardy wonders why he "stupidly believed." Knowing his limitations, he reflects, “I’m the kid in the back row, moving his lips and just pretending to sing. I’m the dude with a fake badge and a toy gun. The dumbest thing you can do if you’re like me, is believe you can be more than you are. Don’t ask for anything and you won’t be disappointed. I should have listened to my foster father.”</p><p>But the mission to save two children transforms and motivates Hardy, so much so he hardly recognizes himself. “The previous me would waffle, would let doubt wish and wash him back and forth. And then finally he’d do nothing. He’d keep on keeping on. But that’s not me anymore.” </p><p>During a fast-paced plot over the course of a few days, Hardy finds courage, comradery, love and satisfaction, and readers must decide for themselves if Dark Ride has a happy ending. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-25650389456427359882023-11-13T16:26:00.001-05:002023-11-13T16:26:20.206-05:00Breakable<p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jUFGZljdrORGu7jYKZzJ4Fy8gwV9Kz6nVi1jrhF-D7TztBszUDNGUABdGnf88biLm2-Vk1ZyZ6jm1I_S6Vm118uvYbYqvb_wxyOTCtL6KU-uLTjPn9-fNWQwasUOpB4l1piQZKbuVapBsdmB7FChyphenhyphenY4ghLEaNxaBk7JU3tk36xE6u2D6v9GfkY-kuMI/s506/Oliva.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="506" data-original-width="337" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jUFGZljdrORGu7jYKZzJ4Fy8gwV9Kz6nVi1jrhF-D7TztBszUDNGUABdGnf88biLm2-Vk1ZyZ6jm1I_S6Vm118uvYbYqvb_wxyOTCtL6KU-uLTjPn9-fNWQwasUOpB4l1piQZKbuVapBsdmB7FChyphenhyphenY4ghLEaNxaBk7JU3tk36xE6u2D6v9GfkY-kuMI/s320/Oliva.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p></p><a data-jsarwt="1" data-usg="AOvVaw1sV6kJ4DpZBdooh8n9ONQ0" data-ved="2ahUKEwj-2N3Y78GCAxWImokEHfjECs8QFnoECDEQAQ" href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-unbreakable-heart-of-oliva-denaro-viola-ardone" jsname="UWckNb"><span jsaction="rcuQ6b:npT2md;PYDNKe:bLV6Bd;mLt3mc" jscontroller="msmzHf"><h3 class="LC20lb MBeuO DKV0Md"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></h3><h3 class="LC20lb MBeuO DKV0Md"><br /></h3></span>
</a><p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif;">Oliva Denaro
in 1960 is on the cusp of adolescence, adhering to the numerous rules
imposed on girls in her Sicilian village, but the rigidity only underscores the
arbitrariness. She loves to draw and help her father gather snails to eat. She
is a good student who enjoys competing and playing with her friend, Liliana,
the daughter of a communist activist who encourages his daughter to pursue an
education and dream of a career in politics. Oliva </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">helps her parents, longs for more freedom, and chides the chickens: “You love a cage more than your freedom.”</span></p><p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> She understands that her limited freedoms will end with adolescence. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unbreakable-Heart-Oliva-Denaro-Novel/dp/0063276887/ref=asc_df_0063276887/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=652428956527&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13961359193293585642&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9017203&hvtargid=pla-2060757793082&psc=1&mcid=3c2c82c7a62a323c9220e91612f4106a">The Unbreakable Heart of Oliva Denaro</a></i> by Viola Ardone is based on a true story and Oliva worries. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">“My body
didn’t want to mature into a woman’s but the outside world already saw me as
such. I was no longer invisible: I could be watched and judged.”</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The family
struggles to get by with a small patch of land. The father is lackadaisical,
yet loving. The mother, a newcomer to the village as a young bride years
earlier, constantly frets about what others think – and serves as a constant critic to
her family, especially after Oliva's older sister was
forced into an unhappy marriage. The prize for obedience is a mother’s
love.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Gossip is
cruel in the small village, and Oliva concedes that words are weapons. “Even
everyday words can be hurtful when they rattle around in the mouths of the
ignorant.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Her mother
insists that girls must suffer for beauty, and Oliva muses: “Beauty is always
in the eye of the beholder. Maybe that’s why we love eyes.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Protecting a
beautiful daughter is challenging for the poor, and a wealthier
young man in the village takes a liking to Oliva, kidnapping and raping her to force
a marriage. She reports the crime to authorities who are dumbfounded that the
family rejects the marriage offer. An officer who is a family friend advises,
“The law is for people with money.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">That incident
ends Oliva's childhood and dreams of being an artist, and many readers will take issue with the book's title. The girl endures a humiliating trial, during which she
feels more like defendant than victim. Activists, teachers and Liliana support her during the trial and years later, helping her bear the shame of injustice. Oliva’s
mother questions a teacher's involvement in the politics of women's rights, and the woman
replies, “We’re all involved in politics, one way or another…. Everything is
politics: our choices, what we are willing or unwilling to do for ourselves and
for others.”</span></p><p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Two decades later, Italy criminalizes rape marriages and honor killings. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Taking no
action on such matters is tacit approval. </span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Oliva eventually returns to the village to teach and she holds her head high. “Home is where you
hope one day to return, I think to myself, even if it has rejected you. Home is
where you want to escape from, even though it taught you to walk and talk.”</span></p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-40936171641913726942023-10-25T15:24:00.026-04:002023-10-25T15:24:00.150-04:00Quest<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXaVvyjpnwXswTM9T3Q-7AvubfzaioyvhUyQ5qDDzK6Eu2K_x1_cs0YN7GX9RkEqXRIHvSDpCRy4R8giM_dOWbgLw5_C_mz71r6CK1VUjPShZizxJ6Utlnj_AlxG1wHwOY6xCHHVyJjTiEE8RNHTGBl0HnwT5h5nP7yI_V7hRdFAX4fUft-UvDPKQzOU4/s655/trackers.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="432" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXaVvyjpnwXswTM9T3Q-7AvubfzaioyvhUyQ5qDDzK6Eu2K_x1_cs0YN7GX9RkEqXRIHvSDpCRy4R8giM_dOWbgLw5_C_mz71r6CK1VUjPShZizxJ6Utlnj_AlxG1wHwOY6xCHHVyJjTiEE8RNHTGBl0HnwT5h5nP7yI_V7hRdFAX4fUft-UvDPKQzOU4/s320/trackers.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><i><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-trackers-charles-frazier?variant=40620768067618">The Trackers </a></i>by Charles Frazier has a dual personality – the story’s beginning is slow as a young, ambivalent protagonist arrives in Dawes, Wyoming, in 1937 to paint a WPA mural for the post office. The artist, Valentine Welch, stays on the expansive ranch of John Long and his wife, Eve. John holds ambitions for a US Senate seat, though soon after Val’s arrival, Eve takes off, presumably to take up her old life of singing with traveling Western bands. John asks Val to pause the mural project and discreetly track Eve to figure out whether she is still married to a previous husband and if she plans to return. </p><p>The search goes from Seattle to Florida to San Francisco. The three major characters are unlikable and impulsive, each oscillating between fascination and disdain for wealth and power while accusing the others of holding similar motives. The men make assumptions that hinder the search. </p><p>Eve relishes her background, having left home as a teen, riding the rails, surviving and keeping old secrets with a network of loose connections. She knows what it's like "Being pushed out of the house as a teenager.... to be a burden to your family, more trouble than they think you're worth." </p><p>Val questions one of her old friends who advises, “On the road one of the things you learn to do without is certainty.” John warns that Eve lies whenever it’s convenient. “She tells whatever story suits her at that minute. I don’t know whether she convinces herself it’s the truth or not.” Still, the wealthy rancher wants her back. </p><p>John, uncertain if Eve ever married or divorced, does not want embarrassing disclosures disrupting his Senate bid. Val travels to FL to question her threatening and ignorant in-laws. Val worries whether “Estafa County might be the bellwether of the entire country. If the Depression never ends, if everything keeps falling apart, crumbling like watching the geometry of the Pyramids dissolve grain by grain into smooth humps of sand dune, then maybe Estafa is already one step further into the future than the rest of us. Maybe its purpose is to demonstrate how foolish we’ve been to put so much effort into all the [WPA] physical work and the airy ideas of building the nation, all the swat and science and poetry and philosophy gone back to dust and mud.”</p><p>Over the course of his travels, Val falls for Eve and loses interest in the mural. “With creative work, surely doubt and disappoint are inevitable. If you have ambitions, the thing you create will always fall short of what you intended.” </p><p>The end of the book picks up pace once Val finds Eve and gradually secures more answers. He readily agrees after Eve asks if Val wants to join her for a brief love story, despite the warning that “Every love story has an end.” </p><p>Still, dialogue throughout is evasive and cryptic, as the characters withhold details and tell outright lies. One ranch hand points out that people regularly make up stuff, expecting others to take their words for truth. </p><p>The characters stoically embrace a tough, lonely form of realism. When an optimistic immigrant cab driver describes his goals in life, Val goes off on a rant. “Part of me wanted to press on, to set him straight about his land of dreams, but the other part of me decided against it. After all, the nation’s big, beautiful strength had always been dreaming forward against the brutal, ugly undertow of reality, the violence in the heart of the human animal, the gluttony and greed.” </p><p>A cowboy who works on Long’s ranch rescues Val and Eve from two violent husbands and helps preserve Eve’s new secrets. During the Depression, many had good reason to doubt whether others told the truth. Even more had no desire to hear the truth. </p><p>Paintings capture a moment while stories shift with time. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-61482438412470110232023-10-16T16:17:00.006-04:002023-10-16T16:17:42.689-04:00Customs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaZquiKBogRSsFttmLVV_wYEuToTXLh-EVvSUayXrVR_A3XhGD-fncR7cJptNo3cGkLBUdUyvfswxos_N4-M1x8UO-WR3vTA_ySdMWh4jdQ-UNzmwhaMA5zxO5LjGjFsLq5Wi6uhb9hzZtMg0LqKD8q7TJLQaDxfc3x4Np_ADN0Q-aNWUL_U4WCCrGukw/s450/Disenchantment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaZquiKBogRSsFttmLVV_wYEuToTXLh-EVvSUayXrVR_A3XhGD-fncR7cJptNo3cGkLBUdUyvfswxos_N4-M1x8UO-WR3vTA_ySdMWh4jdQ-UNzmwhaMA5zxO5LjGjFsLq5Wi6uhb9hzZtMg0LqKD8q7TJLQaDxfc3x4Np_ADN0Q-aNWUL_U4WCCrGukw/s320/Disenchantment.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/711634/the-disenchantment-by-celia-bell/">The Disenchantment </a>by Celia Bell starts off slowly despite the setting of 1680 France and volatile politics. Characters make the mistake of expecting their lives to unfold much as they always did, but a few poisoning cases put spouses, aristocracy, servants and police on edge. Grudges lead to accusations and informants who lie to give police what they want and avoid torture, trials and brutal executions.</p><p>Men control households, finances and their children’s destinies. Baronne Marie Catherine de Cardonnoy lives with the shame of holding her deceased mother in low regard throughout her childhood, due to her lower-class background. “She had thought that her mother cared for nothing but money and clothes, but perhaps she had simply looked at her child, destined for the convent school, and known that her daughter would grow up a stranger to her.” </p><p>Trapped in an unhappy marriage to an older man with higher social prestige, Marie Catherine spends freely, too, distracting herself with new dresses, new furniture, vases and perfumes, orange trees and horses – “anything that would remind her that the money was hers, even if her person was not.” </p><p>Throughout marriage, Marie Catherine loves and misses her volatile father, because he controlled her life, mixing kindness with whippings. His advice to her: “You may think whatever you want in private, my dear, but do your duty and keep those beliefs that might upset decorum to yourself. Your spirit is free, but your speech and your conduct must be ruled by custom.” </p><p>She ponders how to “cross that gap, into the mystery of another human,” one who may feel as she does about rejecting social conventions.</p><p>A busy social life and popularity with aristocrats who appreciate her storytelling skills shield Marie Catherine from her husband's wrath. She pretends the stories are from her mother rather than inspired by the nursemaid who raised her: “If her mother had never told stories, then she’d simply invent a different mother.” </p><p>The wealthy, including her friend Victoire de Conti, worry less about rules and convention. The two women become lovers after a furtive drunken encounter at a soiree, and Marie Catherine wonders how Victoire had the courage to take the first step, without worrying about another individual’s desires</p><p>Victoire occasionally moves around town freely in male attire, visiting Marie Catherine. A servant sees a kiss and blames an artist painting her portrait. Servants beat the man nearly to death, and the husband threatens his wife with the loss of their children and banishment to a convent. </p><p>That same evening the baron is assassinated. Servants and police suspect that the killer sympathized with Marie Catherine for being trapped in an unhappy marriage. Marie Catherine poses questions to learn the truth and concocts a tale to evade questions and prosecution. But others lie, too. </p><p>Before her husband's murder, Marie Catherine meets Mademoiselle de Scudery who writes about a land where women hold power and asks, “Do you ever believe that your life would have been happier if you had not imagined that land and had it to compare with this one?” The woman insists that life would have been much worse without the imaginary land. Imagination is the first step to finding freedom and changing old customs that might hold us back.</p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-29150760316122681792023-10-05T15:30:00.004-04:002023-10-05T15:37:58.601-04:00Witness protection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6agviuq8R9f33cC3sFD_9McCzWXI5vsKnNjSmL1vFQIO2SrFRH45G1GEEidkUwXtGBsuRunsX9-OmLD1cVB16-RPfPFY44wTJEys91SmDG0u4zrbsqSstHVhSA6uLOP3xox8gI51q7cfdz9vAzPP4b6OZwHpOEHewdzx_JXSfpRiuiLRJKZFXz1qEj2Q/s602/lie.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="393" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6agviuq8R9f33cC3sFD_9McCzWXI5vsKnNjSmL1vFQIO2SrFRH45G1GEEidkUwXtGBsuRunsX9-OmLD1cVB16-RPfPFY44wTJEys91SmDG0u4zrbsqSstHVhSA6uLOP3xox8gI51q7cfdz9vAzPP4b6OZwHpOEHewdzx_JXSfpRiuiLRJKZFXz1qEj2Q/s320/lie.png" width="209" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In <i><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-lie-maker-linwood-barclay?variant=40901622726690">The Lie Maker </a></i>by Linwood Barclay, Boston journalist and novelist Jack Givins is down on his luck. He’s fired before even starting a new job, his car blows up and his publisher rejects his third novel. So Jack is receptive when his literary agent visits with a burner phone that eventually delivers a lucrative job offer: write histories for people entering the US Witness Protection Program. </p><p>“The Witness Security Program was authorized by the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 and amended by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984,” notes the <a href="https://www.usmarshals.gov/what-we-do/witness-security">program site.</a> “The U.S. Marshals Service has protected, relocated, and given new identities to more than 19,000 witnesses and their family members, since the program began in 1971.” The program provides witnesses with new identification and documentation, initial support that leads to self-sufficiency.</p><p>His new employer, Gwen Kaminsky, tough and demanding, repeatedly reminds him that she has a stable of writers. A condition of the new job is that he keep his employer's identity secret. Their meetings are clandestine, and she runs operations out of an office labeled as an import firm. Jack strives to please. After writing and rewriting a profile, he asks to meet the witness and Gwen makes elaborate arrangements, requiring that Jack wear a blindfold. On the return trip, he asks how thoroughly she had checked him out and how far back she went. </p><p>She explains that, with no criminal record or inappropriate associations with groups on the US watch list, he checked out. Jack responds, noting he found it “one hell of a coincidence that you’d pick someone like me… Someone with more than a passing acquaintance with the witness protection program.” </p><p>Gwen blows up, assuming that Jack is a witness under protection, but he quickly assures her that the witness is his father- a former hitman who testified against his employer who ordered the hits. Michael Donahue left his wife and child when Jack was nine. The mother remarried and changed their names years earlier. Gwen expresses alarm, fearful of being fired, adding “There’s no way I shouldn’t have known this.” Then she asks why he told her. </p><p>“I wanted to clear the air,” Michael explains. "I wanted to be sure there wasn’t something fishy about you coming to me.” He goes on to ask that Gwen help arrange meeting with his father. “I don’t know how to find him, but I figure you do.” </p><p>At one point, Jack learns the subject of his first profile was murdered. But he should have checked the program website: “No Witness Security Program participant following pro-gram guidelines has ever been harmed or killed.”</p><p>Jack is surrounded by deceitful characters – including the woman who hires him, the girlfriend who covertly tries to figure out his new employer, a stepfather who consistently has money problems, an agent who misleads about the novel's rejection, a father who abruptly makes brief appearances over the years, lying to protect his son. More than one dies. </p><p>Jack also withholds information, but with time and trust, eventually releases truth in pieces. </p><p>The characters may have flaws, but are earnest and funny, often doing the right thing at the end. Tone and plot are fast-paced and noir. The writing is witty, sharp, excluding unnecessary details. </p><p>Some lies land characters in more trouble. Others are essential for survival. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-69285508326501500952023-09-28T14:28:00.004-04:002023-09-28T14:29:45.280-04:00Small town II<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlu1ivopUfwlKs7TWHAHQq9CaoFn2tQ6nYcun_bO2cPdLRzgwbZQq0QkKHbUC6NRLOCko9L3UMGaZfcwYipCj_S0-DzHljooIAkKEzxTwipAoc1bGrhxZJNMfQElqCYao9O3y8cPo85-e2Srq5-J0CHpxxm2MqGTMMaG-6ETiIQAsz0k923_9cliPpkEo/s400/river.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlu1ivopUfwlKs7TWHAHQq9CaoFn2tQ6nYcun_bO2cPdLRzgwbZQq0QkKHbUC6NRLOCko9L3UMGaZfcwYipCj_S0-DzHljooIAkKEzxTwipAoc1bGrhxZJNMfQElqCYao9O3y8cPo85-e2Srq5-J0CHpxxm2MqGTMMaG-6ETiIQAsz0k923_9cliPpkEo/s320/river.jpg" width="212" /></a></p><p>Small towns are miserable places when they let the bullies take control. The bullies are unhappy and yearn for everyone to feel the same. The bullies in The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger openly despise a Japanese immigrant, Native Americans and other minorities. “People who make other people unhappy are generally pretty unhappy themselves,” one character observes. But the opposite holds true, too, that happy people spread happiness.</p><p>The characters of Jewel, Minnesota – imperfect like so many people – keep past transgressions a secret. Many of those characters walk along a quiet stretch of the Alabaster River to reflect – the setting for more than one death. That river, tinted brown by day, glows white under the moon, and for one of the narrators, the river is like an old friend. </p><p>Lying is often only way protect privacy in small towns. Sheriff Brody Dern invents an out-of-town girlfriend to hide a long-time love affair and keep townspeople from talking. Of course, one lie is never enough, “One lie to kill another,” Brody concedes, understanding that his life is nothing but "a rickety framework of lies.”</p><p>Set in 1958, many of the male characters have returned from fighting in World War II and Korea. A young boy asks one veteran about killing and the newspaper editor tries to explain. “In the end, a soldier kills because all the circumstances of a moment drive him to it. It isn’t for freedom or God or for the people back home. It’s because he has no choice but to kill. And in that moment, he’s not thinking of it as a good thing or a bad thing…. And in all that mess , the only thing he wants is for it to end and for him to be alive to see that end.” </p><p>Some characters lie for the same reason, to stop questions and survive never-ending scrutiny and incomprehension. </p><p>The boy understands the man was trying to communicate a "truth that was essential … of what it was to be a man, to be a soldier,” and he responds politely. But the editor “knew he’d failed in what he’d tried desperately and sincerely to pass down to the boy.” </p><p>Most of the imperfect characters find peace though years later they continue to ask what if and wonder why their lives constantly seemed to point in one direction over which they had little control. Some experiences influence a life forever, even for characters who leave town, as suggested by Kent Krueger's beautiful text: “Our lives and the lives of those we love merge to create a river whose current carries us forward from our beginning to our end. Because we are only one part of the whole, the river each of us remembers is different, and there are many versions of the stores we tell about the past. In all of them there is truth, and in all of them a good deal of innocent misremembering.” </p><p>Sharing truth about past transgressions with loved ones can soften memories and reduce shame, allowing individuals to push forward and appreciate that their past is behind them. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-59551385822349391212023-09-25T14:02:00.003-04:002023-09-25T14:09:50.013-04:00Small town I<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyUPs1epSsZUKxy4Prmf7Y8s_f_YacEEQp_N8YztSp7GNjxrpoUdOng1lQkkBk_OZ1RSaerAq3nexmo8vI2e6V4zV3r37khl375fH-Oe0gK5xP71NaQPKqA8nQSZsm95Rn_MEfpa67b1a2KVY_MeeOLqZF1_WJk4K_FNKXBd2kVksH-TiUrB4PLZo1tVw/s1000/Time%20come.jpg" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="663" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyUPs1epSsZUKxy4Prmf7Y8s_f_YacEEQp_N8YztSp7GNjxrpoUdOng1lQkkBk_OZ1RSaerAq3nexmo8vI2e6V4zV3r37khl375fH-Oe0gK5xP71NaQPKqA8nQSZsm95Rn_MEfpa67b1a2KVY_MeeOLqZF1_WJk4K_FNKXBd2kVksH-TiUrB4PLZo1tVw/s320/Time%20come.jpg" width="212" /></a></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Seven people happen
to be in Lindbergh’ s Pharmacy on the evening of June 24 in the small college town
of Athens, Georgia, when a would-be mass shooter with a grudge plans to strike. Former
elementary teacher Tina Lamm, beloved by her students, claims that her
secret to being a terrific teacher was “always remembering that, at the end of
the day, they’re someone else’s problem. You do the best you can, you care of
them, you try to educate them, you try to help them, but when the bell rings,
you hand them off to someone else…” She treats them like “temporary amusements,”
knowing “they’re ultimately on their own like the rest of us.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p><i><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-time-has-come-will-leitch?variant=40855522508834">The Time Has Come</a></i> by Will Leitch </o:p></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">describes
a community confronting the Covid pandemic, climate change, inequality and divided
politics. Tina admits she is disturbed. “How can you look around at everything
and not be disturbed…. To be disturbed is to be human.” </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">She reflects on small-town life: “The thing
about this little town is that everybody knows everybody, and if you’ve been
one of those everybodies longer than people like us have been nobodies, you can
get away with whatever you want.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Tina is wrong though and the novel describes a diverse set of characters who do
pull together:</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">the drugstore’s owner, a judge’s
widow, a lawyer who is also an activist for youth, a nurse who is also an army
veteran, a local contractor and his gifted son – and an aging music fan who
tends bar at an Athens club.</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Only a few
characters lack regrets, and some are more engaging than others.</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">David, the
character with the least potential, has the most intriguing story. The
middle-aged man has devoted his life to an Athens music club, tending bar and
long recognizing that “everyone was right in his face, all of them drunk,
mocking him with their perfect youth and their whole lives in front of them,
constantly reminding him that everything he was doing was wrong and probably always
had been.” His substance abuse prompts his wife to leave with their young
daughter and that eventually prompts sobriety. “Part of recovery is
understanding that, that you’re just another helpless addict like everybody else.
One of the first things you have to do… was recognize that there’s nothing
special about you.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">During the
pandemic, David helps other addicts with an online group – and one of the most
hopeless and belligerent members drives hundreds of miles seeking David’s help.
David also revives and treasures his relationship with his daughter, an
aspiring musician with a “clear rock-star energy that David knew all too well.
That she wanted to talk to him didn’t make him feel like a good dad. Honestly?
It just made him fee sort of cool.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Jason, a contractor
and proud parent to a gifted teen, is Republican and often argues with his more
liberal son. He concedes that even in a small town, people can generally be
unfeeling. “The hardest thing about being a parent, in Jason’s view, was that
your children weren’t nearly as special, as protected, as you thought they were….
to you, they were everything. But to the rest of they world, they are just
another lump of flesh – one more tick on the tote board, one more person you’re
stuck behind in traffic…. If he ever lost any of them, he would crumple into a
heap on the floor and never get up. But the rest of the world wouldn’t do anything.
Everyone would just walk around like nothing had happened.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Daphne, the
nurse who is also army veteran, has returned to hospital work after five years
in the service. The country has changed in those five years, especially with
politics representing a bigger part of daily life: “when she got back, out of
nowhere, people were screaming whatever their political views were in your face
at every opportunity. An they were screaming at you for not screaming yours.”</span></p>
<p class="Standard"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">People were
angry, carrying concealed weapons, and “everyone was just on the edge of losing
it, all the time.” Daphne is determined to do her small part to restore order in
her world, “keep everything in front of her safe, if the person in her care
could be better than they had been when they’d come in that room with her.” And
perhaps “bring the world back to what it was before.”</span></p><p class="Standard"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">The book captures the angry despair of our era with a light touch. Kindness,
understanding, listening, cooperation – a rare moment of strangers coming
together to achieve understanding – prevents tragedy from compounding and
spiraling out of control.</span></p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-55657322650810144852023-09-21T14:46:00.008-04:002023-09-27T15:37:38.284-04:00The ever-present past<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXJD_U8mjZopAIMZiBJJxBLGMM6AHulxNTZg_SG48Nlbvok3W4SiOGAmukBHPRRh0IFrmSGhmMGORmU1p5ELKo9rr0IMeA1OkIL3DrxpPDB7GUmdb6-SJWJvXgPja7hOCN4OsNQbg4SSOwv1zI5hKKc_PNdLiQt6KS0ZrRDixwUIomu36wJjpNczlIVrA/s500/sea.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="336" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXJD_U8mjZopAIMZiBJJxBLGMM6AHulxNTZg_SG48Nlbvok3W4SiOGAmukBHPRRh0IFrmSGhmMGORmU1p5ELKo9rr0IMeA1OkIL3DrxpPDB7GUmdb6-SJWJvXgPja7hOCN4OsNQbg4SSOwv1zI5hKKc_PNdLiQt6KS0ZrRDixwUIomu36wJjpNczlIVrA/s320/sea.jpg" width="215" /></a></div><br /><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250854384/beyondthatthesea">In Beyond That, The Sea</a> </i>by Laura Spence-Ash, Londoners Reg and Millie Thompson disagree but ultimately decide to protect their daughter at the start of WWII, sending Beatrix to live with a family they do not know. The mother is less sure about this plan, sending the teen to the United States. and the couple frequently argues. Beatrix feels a distance: “I stopped being a child on the day war was declared,” she thinks. “And you both disappeared even as you stayed by my side.” </p><p>The novel follows the connections between two families - the choices, mistakes, dreams and regrets. From all appearances, the Gregory family enjoys a comfortable life in the Boston suburbs with long summers on their own island in Maine, a home Nancy inherited from her wealthy parents. The father teaches at a private school, and the family lives on campus. Nancy always longed for a daughter and embraces Bea as her own, buying her new clothes, praising her schoolwork and anticipating every concern. There is no jealousy, and Bea gets along well with the two Gregory sons, William who is a year older and Gerald a year younger. This family relishes the guest, truly caring about her opinions, and the two boys compete for her attention. </p><p>Maine in summer is one of the world’s gentle places with routines as steady as the waves beating against the shore. As war rages, the three children feel guilty about their good fortune, and each contributes to the war effort in small ways. Bea, the best student of all, understands her family cannot afford college. She especially feels guilty about her parents’ proximity to the war and also not missing her parents more as she falls in love with a new family and way of life that allows freedom and access to the natural world. Her guilt intensifies after her father dies in 1943, and the two boys respond in contrasting ways. Gerald asks what she thinks happens after death: “Do you believe in that stuff from church, about heaven and hell and all that? Or is it just over. Is your dad just gone?” At another point, William overhears her talking with her father in a local cemetery and, blunt like his father, retorts, “He’s not there…. He’s dead.” William, blunt and opinionated like the father with whom he clashes, long regrets his impulse to hurt. </p><p>With war underway, the teenagers are uncertain about a benevolent God and struggle to accept religious teachings. Gerald confides he wants to believe and imagine Bea reuniting with her father. Likewise, he confides that all he wants in life is to return to the island summer after summer and be buried there. Bea understands. “To think that she could have lived her whole life and never seen this island. This place that feels like home.”</p><p>The war ends before the males are called to serve. Bea returns to London where she takes up work as a child care provider, remaining upset that her mother remarried before her return and restless about the limitations for her in Britain. She worries about William squandering potential as his letters switch from excitement over classes to parties and bars. After college, while William is in France, his father dies – severe wound for the entire Gregory family. Returning for the funeral, William takes a detour to London to visit Bea and admits that he has a pregnant finance. The two revive their romance, a feeble attempt to revive memories of idyllic childhood, and Bea’s mother arrives home early from a trip, interrupting the couple’s final hours together. During the brief encounter, Bea recognizes how neither fully understands the other’s goals or state of mind, and she muses “how difficult it is to know someone’s past.” And perhaps William could not understand because “she had let her past slip away. She had instead, become part of his world, of the Gregory world.”</p><p>Bea sees only a few hints of the William she once knew, admitting that she is at odds, too. “My favorite place? Maine. My favorite food? Your mother’s muffins. And yet here I am. This is my home…. I belong here and yet I’m in limbo, really, caught between two worlds. I can’t seem to find where I fit.” </p><p>By his mid-thirties, Will finds himself stuck in a deadening job and a loveless marriage. He drinks to excess, wandering around beaches and dance clubs, watching others and wanting to warn them: “Enjoy this, he wanted to say. Try to stay in the moment. He wished he could be one of them, to still be in the place where everything seemed possible.” William, having lost all purpose, knows that an idyllic childhood does not guarantee happiness. </p><p>Bea senses William’s darkness from correspondence. “He never said anything, specifically, but under and between the words, she could feel his uneasiness. Not unhappiness, per se, but a feeling that nothing was quite aligned. That the life he’d wanted, the one he’d expected, had failed to appear. It was as though that fire that had once been in his belly – his desire to be in the world – had somehow been extinguished. She wondered whether he’d ever been truly happy.”</p><p>William and the rest of the family remain a constant puzzle for Bea. “I just wanted – we all just wanted – you to be happy,” she says out loud, talking up to the blue sky. Why is that difficult for so many people to achieve?” </p><p>The novel’s chapters are brief – each told from the point of view of one of the parents, children or spouses but most often Bea and William – most ending with characters reaching new insight. Bea visits New York again seventeen years later, yet avoids reaching out to the Gregorys. That following Christmas, she sends gifts to the family and the clerk asks if she has family the States. “No, she starts to say and then changes her mind. Yes, she says, Yes, I do.” </p><p>Millie, long jealous of Bea’s attachment to the Gregorys, accompanied her daughter to New York and gradually begins to understand the attraction. “There was something being there in America, that made Nancy come alive to Millie in a way she never had before. Her openness was a classic American trait, one that Millie had never quite believed. And yet here they were, all these Americans, being loud and friendly and willing to talk to you about almost anything.” Millie admits to admiring Nancy and admits that, had the tables been turned with war in the States, she could not have embraced a stranger’s child as her own. </p><p>Millie and Bea slowly forgive each other with weekly walks in the park. “There’s something to be said for talking while walking. You don’t have to look at the person. You can keep your eyes on the path, on your shoes, on the landscape. And somehow that means that more gets said.” </p><p>After William’s death, Bea attends his funeral and reconnects with Gerald. Nancy observes them together and thinks about how strange it must be for them without William. “Those summers in Maine, those few sweet summers when the three of them were thick as thieves. Those days that passed by far too quickly and that she can only remember snippets of now. The three of them, racing out to the dock, King following behind. Picking blueberries in the hills. Camping out in the woods. Late at night, the world quiet around them, the lights from the house reflecting in the dark sea. Oh, why can’t time be stopped in those moments. Why is it so hard to understand how fleeting it all is?” Desperate to connect with the past, she feels the “need to scramble back in time, to pull up old memories, to regret words, to re-create moments.” </p><p>After finding love with a third husband, Millie feels secure enough to release Bea, and the newlyweds encourage Bea to attend William’s funeral. Bea confides that the Quincy house is “the place that feels like my home” and Gerald asks her to stay, to truly make it her home. Holding his hand, Bea responds, “Let’s take a walk, she says. Let’s take a walk.” </p><p>William’s untimely death along with an incomplete tale from Bea – some might call it a lie, others would argue that the entire past need not be exposed – end the ruthless competition between two brothers. Gerald and Bea marry and repurchase the island home in Maine, presiding over another stretch of perfect summers with Nancy, their child and William’s children. It may be distressing to ponder whether we are each at our purest, our finest, during childhood. Still, this exquisite book on family relations has a happy ending, as Bea lovingly, naturally resumes the matriarch role for the next generation of Gregorys. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-90424318918538066762023-09-12T16:36:00.007-04:002023-09-13T11:16:16.564-04:00Trust<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVBvlTI847JwugNumVcpSwEc2wuTvSSX5ynoHZTueUyBF9s8_LwzkBj90HKY13LHwepXDvXxb-wFgifdJFNSBqoTUxmIOlRI2PKlpLd4hanxjHS-kOk8Wvwr24t9XtDMRDzO-JMmSxpo4ZyUBC2WxIOAXMAvP7BbZ1oU9aB7oVBSH075cth-vKhvyab0/s425/yellow%20face.jpg" style="clear: left; display: block; float: left; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="282" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVBvlTI847JwugNumVcpSwEc2wuTvSSX5ynoHZTueUyBF9s8_LwzkBj90HKY13LHwepXDvXxb-wFgifdJFNSBqoTUxmIOlRI2PKlpLd4hanxjHS-kOk8Wvwr24t9XtDMRDzO-JMmSxpo4ZyUBC2WxIOAXMAvP7BbZ1oU9aB7oVBSH075cth-vKhvyab0/s320/yellow%20face.jpg" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yellowface-Novel-R-F-Kuang-ebook/dp/B0B9SN8K6H"><i>
Yellowface </i>by R.F. Kuang</a> is a provocative examination of race relations and career ambitions in the publishing industry that lead to ruthless competition, lying and cheating. More outrageous than humorous, the book garners extra attention by focusing on the publishing industry. <div><br /></div><div>Athena is a successful author and her former classmate and longtime acquaintance June Hayward is not. Athena is Asian American; June is not. A few years after graduation, the two have a rare get-together when Athena suddenly chokes to death and June does little to save her. June pockets the sole draft of Athena’s latest novel, does extensive revisions and sells it as her own, adopting her mother’s maiden name. “This is what I love most about writing – it offers us endless opportunities to reinvent ourselves, and the stories we tell about ourselves.” Juniper Song becomes the “good friend” who was with Athena during her final moments. “The best way to hide a lie is in plain sight…. I’ve never made a secret of my relationship to Athena… I play up our connections. I mention her name in every interview. My grief over her death becomes a cornerstone of my origin story.” </div><div><br /></div><div> A white woman writing about an obscure part of Chinese history prompts the editing team to worry “cultural authenticity” and getting “ahead of any potential blowups.” June is abrasive about questions and suggestions for a sensitivity review: “Are you saying we’ll get in trouble because I wrote this story and I’m white?” The editor responds, “Of course, anyone should be able to tell any kind of story. We’re just thinking about how to position you so that readers trust the work.” </div><div><br /></div><div> The book is wildly successful and June insists she never lied. “I never pretended to be Chinese or make up life experiences that I didn’t have. It’s not fraud, what we’re doing. We’re just suggesting the right credentials, so that readers take me and my story seriously, so that nobody refuses to pick up my work because of some outdated preconceptions about who can write what. And if anyone makes assumptions, or connects the dots the wrong way, doesn’t that say far more about them than me?” June trusts no one, recalling a philosophy student whom she once dated arguing that the living owe nothing to the dead. “Especially when the dead are thieves and liars, too.” </div><div><br /></div><div> The author cleverly critiques the publishing industry by speaking through a manipulative protagonist: “author efforts have nothing to do with a book’s success. Bestsellers are chosen. Nothing you do matters. You just get the enjoy the perks along the way.” Still, June finds herself missing writing before meeting Athena and making it her career: “suddenly writing is a matter of professional jealousies, obscure marketing budgets, and advances that don’t measure up to those of your peers.” Personality takes priority over content: “You, not your writing, become the product – your looks, your wit, your quippy clapbacks and factional alignments with online beefs that no one the real work [cares] about.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The industry and readers force writers into narrow genres and roles, “And once you’re writing for the market, it doesn’t matter what stories are burning inside you. It matters what audiences want to see, and no one cares about the inner musings of a plain, straight white girl from Philly. They want new and exotic, the diverse, and if I want to stay afloat, that’s what I have to give them.” </div><div><br /></div><div> Huang also relies on June to criticize ethnic authors who transmit stories that belong to ancestors. Athena once pointed out once that she was ethically troubled by telling stories lived through by her parents and grandparents, worried about “exploiting their pain for my profit” – but not enough to find her own stories: “I remain aware that I can only do this because I am the privileged, lucky generation. I have the indulgence to look back, to be a storyteller.” </div><div><br /></div><div>Early on while in school, June relished her friendship with Athena. “For it was so nice to know someone who understood this exact dream, who knew how mere words can become sentences can become a completed masterpiece, how that masterpiece can rocket you into a wholly unrecognizable world where you have everything – a world you wrote for yourself.” But the friendship deteriorates. While freshmen at Yale, Athena turns a confidential conversation about a sexual encounter into a short story. Years later, June observes Athena chat up an American POW from the Korean War at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History – and is blunt with her assessment. “There’s no need to dress it up. We are all vultures and some of us – and I mean Athena, here – are simply better at finding the juiciest morsels of a story, at tripping through bone and gristle to the tender bleeding heart and putting all the gore on display.” Even Athena’s former boyfriend notes, “as time went on all I could think was that she was mining me, using me as fodder.” </div><div><br /></div><div>Writers are so hell-bent on keeping up with publishers’ demands that many forget to live life. June frets that she lacks an original voice, capable of only presenting others’ tales. Readers turn pages in horror, waiting for her to get caught – but she is slippery and manages to reinvent herself time and time again, desperate to avoid the mundane lives of her mother and accountant sister: “Living their little and self-contained lives, with no great projects or prospects to propel them from one chapter to the next.” She later admits, “I want my words to last forever, I want to be eternal, permanent; when I’m gone, I want to leave behind a mountain of pages that scream, Juniper Song was here and she told us what was on her mind.” </div><div><br /></div><div>The goal is petty, echoing the publishing industry’s embrace of social media and expectations for authors to endlessly build a presence, nurturing popularity and connections with readers. As June points out, “your time in the spotlight never lasts. I’ve seen people who were massive bestsellers not even six years ago, sitting alone and forgotten at neglected signing tables while lines stretched around the corner for their younger, hotter peers…. The rest of us have to keep racing along the hamster wheel of relevance.” </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, social media’s ability to lift or ruin reputations, the pathetic neediness of users, has become a tired literary trope, making these chapters drag. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the end, June sets out to write a memoir. “I will craft, and sell, a story about how the pressures of publishing have made it impossible for white and nonwhite authors alike to succeed. About how Athena’s success was entirely manufactured, how she was only ever a token. About how my hoax – because let’s frame it as a hoax, not a theft – was really a way to expose the rotten foundations of the entire industry. About how I am the hero, in the end.” And she hopes that some reviewer might ask, What if we got it all wrong? and, What if Juniper Song is right? </div><div><br /></div><div>Juniper Song is a product of the publishing industry, and both have squandered all trust.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In 2014, I wrote more about the publishing industry and readers imposing <a href="https://blog.froetschel.com/2014/01/rigid.html">rigid "purity tests"</a> on storytelling that expl</i>o<i>res other culture</i>s. </div>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-31149996839000954322023-09-01T15:38:00.001-04:002023-09-13T11:59:32.677-04:00Battles at home
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHk97_GpHzJn4B2PxLQAWAnXdjgaUC7GGJA0qib1K5C0iqAlT9WFU62V5iCttJ4DePkckMkXnbmVhLjvBgXRnXCfJgY8NM2Upu5-2I4Y9ZbTms7W_x6hMMaZIjAwp0DWcQ1YQxOD77UcYggqLxAqPYzzRYbFMChRRcX6xFDU0NnBrM_ktl4OZP2PYOe6I/s450/Only%20Beautiful.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="298" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHk97_GpHzJn4B2PxLQAWAnXdjgaUC7GGJA0qib1K5C0iqAlT9WFU62V5iCttJ4DePkckMkXnbmVhLjvBgXRnXCfJgY8NM2Upu5-2I4Y9ZbTms7W_x6hMMaZIjAwp0DWcQ1YQxOD77UcYggqLxAqPYzzRYbFMChRRcX6xFDU0NnBrM_ktl4OZP2PYOe6I/s320/Only%20Beautiful.jpg" width="212" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667326/only-the-beautiful-by-susan-meissner/"><i>Only the Beautiful</i>, by Susan Meissner, </a>begins in 1938 with Roseanne Maras, a caretaker’s daughter at a
Sonoma Valley vineyard who sees colors upon hearing sounds. The condition distracts her at school, and her parents
urge her to keep it a secret and eventually allow her to leave school early. Years later, she recalls
“A dim memory of my father praying at my bedside when I was little…. He pleaded
for a miraculous favor…. For the colors to leave his daughter. He was afraid
for me. People will always distrust what they don’t understand. And what they
distrust, they cannot love.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">After her parents die in an accident, the owners
of the vineyard become guardians, keeping the 16-year-old on as a maid, and the
family’s son remembers their childhood and her descriptions of the colors. She becomes pregnant and
though she denies seeing colors, the guardians send her to a state home,
where she is stripped of all possessions, including an amaryllis bulb that was
a gift from the sister of her child’s father. Helen works as a governess
for a family in Vienna with a disabled child and regrets her failure to recognize the depths of Nazi evils at the start of World War II and the inability to rescue her charge from the Nazis. The child dies soon afterward, and Helen devotes herself to rescuing and delivering other disabled children to Switzerland. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">In California, an escape attempt by Roseanne fails, and soon
after delivery, her infant is sent to an orphanage to await adoption. Roseanne
is then sterilized by doctors who worry about her condition being hereditary,
and she must wait until age 19 for release to a group home. Upon leaving, she softly
tells the nurse, “It’s not right what you’re doing here…. I know you’re probably going to say what do I know about what is
best for people, but I had to say this before I left.” </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">She settles in at the group home and finds work
at a hotel, where she meets a neurologist who identifies her condition as synesthesia.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">The narration resumes with Helen who returns to
Vienna at the close of World War II and learns that the father of her young
disabled charged arranged for his daughter's mercy killing to avoid experimentation and institutionalization.
The father, a Nazi officer himself, argues that “Power like that can’t be
stopped,” but Helen disagrees. “Of course it can…. It was stopped when the rest
of the world finally said, ‘No more. But we waited too long.”</p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Helen returns to California and starts asking questions
about Roseanne, a child she once befriended, challenging her sister-in-law, the vineyard’s
owner, later the doctor who sterilized young women. “But how do
you know her life was miserable…. What gives you the right to
judge whose life has value and whose doesn’t as if you were–“ The doctor finishes
for her: “As if I were God?” He goes onto defend himself to a woman who observed
Nazi atrocities first-hand: “I’ve heard that before from people like you who haven’t seen
what I’ve seen.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">The doctor refuses to divulge information about
Roseanne, but his son who lived on the premises at the time and originally alerted
security to the inmate's attempted escape, provides details about the placement.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Helen learns that she is the child’s biological
aunt, confronting the doctor and others that, though single herself, she should have been given the chance to adopt the baby. Those
involved with Roseanne's case justify their actions by suggesting that they had far more work than time. When leads result in dead ends, Helen does not give up and does find Amaryllis, Roseanne's child, later becoming an activist, speaking out at churches and civic clubs about mistreatment of the
disabled including forced sterilization: “I realized I had a story to share
about the disabled children of Austria, and at the end of my tale was the
perfect entrée to telling people what was happening right here in California….”
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">A publisher invites Helen to write a book about her experience, which leads to finding Roseanne and reconnecting the small family.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">The novel, like Helen's activism, demonstrates the parallels between the Nazi quest for their version of a perfect population with US medical goals of reducing disabilities through sterilization and poverty associated with young unwed mothers. <span>The historical research is solid, and the characters' circumstances ring true. But </span><span>Roseanne and Helen - sensible, practical, motivated, generally unflappable and cooperative when confronting horrific injustice and bad luck - are idealized protagonists, almost too good to be true. Such choices perhaps make the story more bearable for readers.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">The novel's acknowledgement points out that more than
20,000 people were sterilized in California between 1909 and 1964, one third of
all the sterilizations nationwide.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">"Eugenic laws in 32 states empowered government officials in public health, social work and state institutions to render people they deemed 'unfit' infertile, explain Nicole L. Novak and Natalie Lira for <a href="https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-programs-in-california-once-harmed-thousands-particularly-latinas-92324?xid=PS_smithsonian">The Conversation.</a> "California led the nation in this effort at social engineering." The magazine also reports that such programs also targeted specific ethnic groups. </p><p></p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-45782059547300644152023-08-08T14:30:00.077-04:002023-08-08T15:02:50.310-04:00Protection <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSDGWESC02RHT18WCINQSBP8PFWS-dIfmMZA8V897ES2YI_7WiNgv4zBWzipzMsL-qVJOgIIiMY87oy2ZeNhvHRKZdrdc-DKq3Qetah8iciAvfXGrLC85IW1mt3vd9D5lasqwYvzyQQ2XcQ-HAet7_fe4ANf4Zb0ERJUv2pFfJDEN6sfLOIfiHeXA9ZRI/s1000/small%20Mercies.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="663" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSDGWESC02RHT18WCINQSBP8PFWS-dIfmMZA8V897ES2YI_7WiNgv4zBWzipzMsL-qVJOgIIiMY87oy2ZeNhvHRKZdrdc-DKq3Qetah8iciAvfXGrLC85IW1mt3vd9D5lasqwYvzyQQ2XcQ-HAet7_fe4ANf4Zb0ERJUv2pFfJDEN6sfLOIfiHeXA9ZRI/s320/small%20Mercies.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Segoe UI, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Segoe UI, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Segoe UI, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Segoe UI, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Segoe UI, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Segoe UI, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Segoe UI, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">South Boston prepares for school busing in summer 1974, the setting for <i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7347032647652693794/4578205954730064415">Small Mercies</a></i> by Dennis Lehane. The neighborhood is poor, tight and corrupt, the racism constant and overt. Protagonist Mary Pat, middle-aged and tough, finds money for cigarettes and beer, but struggles to pay the utility bills. Her first husband died and the second one left home after finding work at Harvard University’s mailroom. With access to one of the finest libraries in the world, he devours books and develops new interests. He parts by noting, “Your hate embarrasses me.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Mary Pat gets it, describing herself as “happiest when she’s opposed, most ecstatic when she’s been wronged. But she also insists the neighborhood’s anger about busing is not simply about race. “She’d be just as angry if they told her she has to send her kid across the city to Revere or the North End or someplace mostly … Just another case of the rich … in their suburban castles (in their all-white towns) telling the poor people stuck in the city how things are going to be.” At times, she even surprises herself by feeling some kinship with Boston’s black residents. “As a project rat herself, Mary Pat knows all too well what happens when the suspicion that you aren’t good enough gets desperately rebuilt into the conviction that the rest of the world is wrong about you. And if they’re wrong about you, then they’re probably wrong about everything else.” She rails about inequality. “They’re poor because there’s limited amount of good luck in this world, and they’ve never been given any.... There are way more people in the world than there is luck, so you’re either in the right place at the right time at the very second luck shows up, for once and nevermore. Or you aren’t.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Mary Pat is not lucky. She has already lost a son to a drug overdose and frets about a pretty, gentle daughter, hoping that Jules will find a somewhat better life, if similar to Mary Pat's. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The book begins with Mary Pat grilling the quiet teenager after the two enjoy a rare good moment shopping for school supplies. Both are restless, worried about the changes busing will bring. “Change, for those who don’t have a say in it, feels like a pretty word for death,” Mary Pat muses. “Death to what you want, death to whatever plans you’d been making, death to the life you’ve always known.” Jules wonders about not feeling the way others around her do: “You just, you know, you ever have the feeling that things are supposed to be one way but they’re not? And you don’t know why because you’ve never known like anything but what you see?” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The conversation is their last. The daughter does not come home that night and Mary Pat storms the neighborhood with questions, impatient with platitudes offered by family and friends: <i>“G’bless… It is what it is </i>and <i>Whatta ya gonna do.</i> Phrases that provide comfort by removing the speaker’s power. Phrases that say it’s all up to someone else, you’re blameless. Blameless, sure, but powerless, too.” She reflects on her own role in her daughter’s choices. While questioning a niece, Mary Pat notices the girl is no longer aware and joyful and confident. <i>“What takes that from them?</i> Mary Pat wonders.<i> Is it us?”</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Mary Pat soon discovers that she did not know her daughter or the neighborhood all that well. Jules was last seen with a group of friends on a train platform where a young black man is found dead on the tracks. Mary Pat detests Jules’ boyfriend who <i>“thinks he’s kind of smart, and the ones who are like that grow mean when the world laughs at them.” </i> But Jules' predicament is far worse, as the young man merely served as cover for a secret relationship with a ruthless neighborhood power-broker. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Neighbors and friends resist Mary Pat's questions. All her life, she relied on the Southie code, neighbors watching out for one another. But she realizes the code really meant protection for the neighborhood hierarchy of corruption and the ease of casting blame on outsiders. Angry, with no one to trust, Mary Pat confronts her own racism, the insistence that <i>“We’re not the same. We’re just not.” </i> Suddenly, the divisive hatred seems so pointless. “She sits there, overcome suddenly with a fresh horror of the self. Her daughter is dead. Auggie Williamson is dead, the lives of several teenagers on the platform that night are ruined, and her mind grasps with grubby desperation for ways to feel superior to them.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">She shares her anguish and doubt with police investigator Michael “Bobby” Coyne, a recovering alcoholic. “When you’re a kid and they start in with all the lies, they never tell you they’re lies. They just tell you this is what it is. Whether they’re talking about Santa Claus or God or marriage or what you can or can’t make of yourself…. you can’t trust them…. And they tell you that’s the Way.” And a child thinks,<i> “I want to be part of the Way. I sure don’t want to be outside the Way. I gotta live with these people my whole life.” </i>Home is warm and the outside world is cold. “And then you dig in because now you got kids and you want them to feel warm.” Mary Pat continues, “And you spread the same lies to them, mainline them into their blood. Until they become the kinda people who can chase some poor boy into a train station and bash his head in with a rock.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Mary Pat blames herself, suggesting the children recognize the lies at a young age. "But you keep repeating the lies until you wear them down. That’s the worst of it – you wear them down until you scoop all the good out of their hearts and replace it with poison.” At the book's end, Coyne points to a hard reality – parents cannot protect their children. All they can do is consistently model and pass along values and methods for making decisions while keeping baser emotions in check and hateful people at a distance.<i> “I can do what I can, teach you as much as I know. But if I’m not there when the world comes to take its bite – and even if I am – there’s no guarantee I can stop it. I can love you. I can support you, but I can’t keep you safe.”</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i>Small Mercies </i>is a masterpiece, terse and compelling, from an author driven to expose racism's sources and motivations much as Mary Pat longs to understand the reasons behind the deaths of her two children.</span></p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-58082784100716865952023-08-03T12:22:00.003-04:002023-08-03T12:22:00.136-04:00Resilience<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXTztlVPCYdIG94o8b7-nPhs3Z6yZUViXc-v5a0XdiZmSPkx6__L4-aauGATyBgsjYd28jACs0lA0M_r0Smckcmp3j-eRY_azlnLMs1t0QmqYkLtgdUyBMtiORk0J7HAKeMtxQoxLr513TgRth8cOrUKeZSfN_ZomMoKwr1pe2wJ08Or-J1LSMhaWWuEs/s400/hang%20Moon.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXTztlVPCYdIG94o8b7-nPhs3Z6yZUViXc-v5a0XdiZmSPkx6__L4-aauGATyBgsjYd28jACs0lA0M_r0Smckcmp3j-eRY_azlnLMs1t0QmqYkLtgdUyBMtiORk0J7HAKeMtxQoxLr513TgRth8cOrUKeZSfN_ZomMoKwr1pe2wJ08Or-J1LSMhaWWuEs/s320/hang%20Moon.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>A child can develop resilience despite domestic violence, neglect and abandonment, poverty and inequality.</p><p>In <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hang-the-Moon/Jeannette-Walls/9781501117299"><i>Hang the Moon</i> </a>by Jeannette Walls, Sallie Kincaid is born into a comfortable life in a small, early 20th century Virginia town that is run by her father, known as the Duke, and his sheriff brother-in-law. Soon after her mother dies, the Duke marries a woman who resents Sallie, especially after she has a son who prefers music and education to fishing, hunting, risk-taking and rough-housing. </p><p>Tough and matter-of-fact, never bitter, Sallie adores her father and accepts that he wants a strong son to resume control of the family business – a general store that organizes county moonshine sales. After the death of her mother, the Duke's second wife, all Sallie wants is to be part of a tight family. So she respects and gets along with her half-brother, Eddie. She follows her father’s orders to mentor Eddie on toughness, and the two have a wagon accident that nearly kills him. Her father sends Sallie away to live with her mother’s sister, providing minimal support. The child assumes the move is temporary, helping her aunt scrub wash to get by. </p><p>Education is an afterthought in the poor community, though a teacher takes a liking to the intelligent girl and relies on her to help with younger students and offering advice that Sallie remembers years later: “teachers don’t know everything, but as long as they stay a step ahead of the students, the students think they do.”</p><p>The father sends for Sallie a decade later after the stepmother’s death. Teenaged Sallie is resourceful and loyal, but the father envisions one path for girls, and that is marriage. He expects her to tutor the brother, but Eddie knows far more than she does. She takes advantage of his lessons, but also worries about his values, once asking, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, is it always smart to let everyone know it?” The boy replies, “Absolutely. Nothing is more important than the truth.” </p><p>The father marries a third time. Eddie adores the new stepmother and a baseball player friend, and Sallie longs for a “paycheck job,” one where she showed up, worked the hours, and collected a paycheck, allowing her to send money to her struggling aunt. Sallie convinces her father to let the stepmother tutor the brother and make Sallie wheelman – collecting payments from the many land tenants. </p><p>As an adult, Sallie learns her father kept many secrets. A black tenant is another half-brother. Her aunt resorted to prostitution after losing the wash business and is mother of half-sister/cousin, a long-time servant. Her father shot her mother after a domestic dispute. </p><p>After the Duke’s death, the stepmother quickly remarries the baseball player and agrees that Sallie invite the maternal aunt, a “fallen woman,” into the family home. Eddie and the Duke’s sister protest, and Sadie argues for forgiveness. “People who’ve never gone without find it easy to pass judgment on those who’ve struggled.” </p><p>The Duke’s sister and her sheriff husband take control of the business, battling with the stepmother, regarded as an outsider, for guardianship over Eddie. The aunt makes the stepmother’s life unbearable, prompting the woman to flee and Eddie to commit suicide. </p><p>Next, an older half-sister and preacher husband take control of the family business, insisting on enforcing Prohibition rules and hiring a ruthless security officer to end moonshine production. Profits plummet and tenants become desperate, testing Sallie’s conscience as wheelman. “It’s when the boss asks you to do something you know to be wrong and you do it anyways. That sort of work whittles away at the soul.” </p><p>The sister dies of cancer and Sallie takes control of a failing enterprise, remembering old lessons as she struggles to learn who to trust. She recalls trying to save up for a gun when leaving with her impoverished aunt and a schoolmate offering to let her help his family harvest and sell chestnuts for six cents a basket. “The frost had knocked the nuts out of the trees and the ground was thick with them. Mr. Webb told us we had to make haste, seeing as how bear, deer, boar, and people would all be fighting over these chestnuts and in a couple of days they’d be gone.“ She needs thirty-four large baskets to buy the gun, but comes up a bit short.</p><p>Sallie visits the family to collect her share, fulling expecting them to avoid payment. The quiet, stern man advises that the price of chestnuts was not what he had expected, with a blight killing off trees to the north and chestnuts in short supply. The shortage means chestnut prices went up, and he pays her seven cents per basket. “Some folks say they hate to be proved wrong, but I was never happier to be mistaken.” </p><p>Based on such experiences – at times, the novel reads as though a series of short stories – Sallie develops her own moral code, running the illegal business but discouraging lies, corruption and long-time disputes. She is quick to forgive and move on, and that policy applies to the paternal aunt who long made life difficult for Sallie, her mother and her aunt. Sallie leads the family and tenants on producing and running moonshine into nearby Roanoke. “Outlaw. Rumrunner. Bootlegger. Blockader. I don’t for one second forget that what we are doing is illegal, but legal and illegal and right and wrong don’t always line up. Ask a former slave.” She adds: “Sometimes the so-called law is nothing but the haves telling the have-nots to stay in their place.” </p><p>She maintains the operation doesn’t involve stealing or coercion. “Just helping out the people of Claiborne County who through no fault of their own are in an awful bind. Obey the law and starve. Or break the law and eat. Not a lot to ponder there.” </p><p>For Sallie, family is sacred, and she realizes her father “whose approval I so craved” did not feel the same. The Duke “loved being loved, but he never truly loved anyone back. He took what he wanted from people, then once he got it, cast them aside.” </p><p>The historical novel is bittersweet, optimistic and certainly idealistic about bootlegging and a woman running a business in the 1920s. Sallie succeeds by embracing all members of her family and community, wayward in so many ways, as long as they get along and work to love and protect the whole. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-83198494414913100892023-07-20T13:52:00.027-04:002023-07-22T13:08:52.352-04:00Predator or prey<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPomA7jrihVfHxL18H4bD2e27iv0Yduph8UPq9kEPG5Mby8mFCnapTBOjEgsPq0jf8l9DgInyvKp2Ex1dJzAXF3vJVhue_R--encilc_kYVipSfPO0JJhnneu2iY2JMZqsK7vVPVZ9hSpfcPfTfoP9p6TN7kTonVX2tAg6p_oinOIcTv0FCAZBIP_edvI/s510/white%20Lady.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="341" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPomA7jrihVfHxL18H4bD2e27iv0Yduph8UPq9kEPG5Mby8mFCnapTBOjEgsPq0jf8l9DgInyvKp2Ex1dJzAXF3vJVhue_R--encilc_kYVipSfPO0JJhnneu2iY2JMZqsK7vVPVZ9hSpfcPfTfoP9p6TN7kTonVX2tAg6p_oinOIcTv0FCAZBIP_edvI/s320/white%20Lady.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Elinor De Witt in <i><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-white-lady-jacqueline-winspear?variant=40985835339810">The White Lady</a></i> by Jacqueline Winspear lives a quiet life, retired after volunteering for the resistance effort in Belgium during World War I and returning to spy for Britain during World War II. Her father leaves the family to join the war effort in the first war, and Elinor makes a silent vow that “she, her mother and sister would do all they could to arm themselves against their obvious weakness; the vulnerability of being female.” After realizing the father has perished at the front, the mother befriends a member of the resistance and allows Elinor and her older sister to observe German train movements and even sabotage the tracks.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Elinor, though younger, is more serious, agreeing to weapon training after the recruiter convinces her that a citizen can either be predator or prey. Elinor soon recognizes that “being a predator filled her with as much fear as being prey,” and the recruiter points out that such fear could keep her safe. Elinor views herself as “a predator who understood what it was to be prey” and armed “with that knowledge, she knew she would survive…” </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">After World War I, the three women head to Britain where Elinor excels at her studies and wins admission to Cambridge. Her mother rejects that plan and urges her to remain close in London. The young woman’s curiosity and drive to learn are not vanquished so easily. Elinor masters multiple languages and, feeling distant from her less academically oriented mother and sister, moves to France to work as a teacher. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Hitler’s rise spurs fears in France, and Elinor returns to Britain, teaching at the boarding school where she often struggled with teachers, including the woman who went on to become headmistress. The older woman viewed Elinor’s behavior as demonstrating resolve and resilience rather than disrespect: “our women in the making will need such qualities to see them through.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">The headmistress points out the tumultuous years of war have been hard on the young, “giving rise to an element of doubt, of unknowing that can in turn lead to undesirable words, thoughts and actions.” She warns, foreshadowing, that “Some of our pupils are the daughters of bankrupt men – and women – and I don’t’ mean bankrupt only in a financial sense…. The years after the war changed our society, and that is reflected in the attitudes and behaviors…”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Elinor is expected to set an example and support high standards that will “become the backbone of everything they do in life. Every. Single. Decision.” The headmistress concludes, “I have found that when one remains true to one’s established values, life’s squalls, storms and doldrums become easier to navigate.” </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Elinor leaves her teaching post to work as an intelligence officer in Belgium, hoping that such values will protect her and villagers who have joined the resistance. Some colleagues, though, are in league with men in the pursuit of power. They betray their country not by cooperating with Nazis, but by prioritizing their careers, adjusting war plans to support a competing group of spies without alerting the full team.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">The team barely escapes after a partner orders Elinor to shoot a small child threatening to reveal the position. Elinor refuses, and subsequently endures a month in a mental hospital. She is intelligent enough to cooperate, later awarded with a comfortable cottage in a quiet village. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Elinor learns the full story about her last day as a spy after mob family attacks a brother, her neighbor. Jim yearns to escape his criminal past, but the family has friends in high places, the same men who betrayed the Belgium villagers. Elinor befriends the mobster’s widowed sister to gather evidence that might end the harassment. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Protagonists or antagonists – police, spies or mobsters – err by underestimating the capabilities of women. </p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-57271378454378193712023-07-13T11:11:00.218-04:002023-07-14T14:57:07.326-04:00Weeds<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI_4s_iFtxe7UUVxl_4MppytwofMrAMgiBtQ3dl5Eb4BzGdC5LzSp2BSZrQoUB08P9u2pafHFKr8d0WLVtW-0p3KVMWXOdtJf3_w04Cqaz7zDGKMj9-AlotbkTchfTSvsMeKe72vRhDi1oEh1OPNUXq5vk4sbCQ3rWxugzN2CMoT_3opqKO1DR16id2Gg/s1361/Weeds.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1361" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI_4s_iFtxe7UUVxl_4MppytwofMrAMgiBtQ3dl5Eb4BzGdC5LzSp2BSZrQoUB08P9u2pafHFKr8d0WLVtW-0p3KVMWXOdtJf3_w04Cqaz7zDGKMj9-AlotbkTchfTSvsMeKe72vRhDi1oEh1OPNUXq5vk4sbCQ3rWxugzN2CMoT_3opqKO1DR16id2Gg/s320/Weeds.jpg" width="212" /></a></p><p>Two women document flora of the Colosseum in Rome, one in 1854 and the other in 2018 in <i>The Weeds</i> by <a href="http://katysimpsonsmith.com/the-weeds/">Katy Simpson Smith</a>. The first toils for Richard Deakin, a botanist, and the second is a grad student from Mississippi, struggling to win respect from her advisor and approval to conduct similar research in the Coliseum and fairgrounds of Jackson, Mississippi. Detailing how male superiors belittle the women's observations, the book may upend assumptions about adequate feminist responses across cultures and time periods. </p><p>The first woman, who lacks education and viable career prospects, relishes the work and suggests that definitions uphold sanity. Nuance is key as well as who decides and defines. “The point of botany is not to distinguish between value and waste. (There is no waste.) It’s to be honest about what something is. A part, a whole, a root, a bloom. Conditions, habits.” </p><p>The women lack mentors, role models and intellectual nourishment. The woman in 1854 lost her mother to opiate addiction. The other mother provided solid memories of fortitude, and before her early death, urges her daughter: “Truth is all you have.” The graduate students mulls the female tendency to move through life by rote, automatically pursuing education, marriage, children, “Like I was hoping to prove I deserved the space I took up.” Love is elusive for each woman. Disrespect in work relationships sows mistrust and challenges in other relationships. The first woman longs for another woman who has since married moved abroad, and the second struggles with commitments, even though her mother once advised: “Know what you want before it comes, so you can get it without being gotten.” For her, finding love is secondary, and her priority is securing research funding, a career. Yet the mentor rejects her observations, and she wonders, “If I can no longer say true things, and am prohibited from saying false things, what … is left?” </p><p>Both narrators remain anonymous, so often the case for women in science. The women strive for creativity, exploration and novel connections that are discouraged by superiors. The modern-day advisor could well speak for both men when publicly admonishing his graduate student: “Scientists don’t arrive at projects with conclusions in mind; we’re passive. Humble. Unresisting. That’s how you open yourself to answers.” </p><p>The narrators give weeds equal attention in a plot interspersed with species names and descriptions. Great care is used in distinguishing common species like <i>S. oleraceus</i> and <i>S. tenerrimus</i>: “Two sides of a genus, a plant that any ordinary passerby would fail to notice, or, if noticed, would call a dandelion,” notes the woman of 2018. She insists on distinguishing the two. “the only lesson I carry from Deakin – every thing deserves its name.” </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg63nru17-EDSuq9ijuWen3_HMpa0DlDJxvmy-p85HbC22u_jkKNsDG7dBPGvJWGcSHc0QqkGikza5LnP4k9tgwCK1dpdghxT3bBZRoNxFbNXewiaNATgbyBr7OV7rdgghfEGm8briDo2Fv5P5jJpNH2ozwqu1vS3e3pYh1kAkG6BejctN8yTSuwen6Lxs/s1346/Beal%20Garden.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="MSU Beal Garden" border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="1346" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg63nru17-EDSuq9ijuWen3_HMpa0DlDJxvmy-p85HbC22u_jkKNsDG7dBPGvJWGcSHc0QqkGikza5LnP4k9tgwCK1dpdghxT3bBZRoNxFbNXewiaNATgbyBr7OV7rdgghfEGm8briDo2Fv5P5jJpNH2ozwqu1vS3e3pYh1kAkG6BejctN8yTSuwen6Lxs/w400-h158/Beal%20Garden.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>The discomfort the limited options in responding to bias are similar in 1854 and 2018, so much so that the identity of the narrator is at times unclear: “You can’t demand love. Nor expect it, nor wait for it, nor want it. It comes on air like a scent.” The more poetic comments likely come from the woman with the broken heart: “With lyrate leaves, shaped like those instruments of old, I wonder at their purpose. If they are accompanying songs too green for us to hear. If this is a signature to mark our deafness.”</p><p>The woman of 2018 marvels that Deakin, as a man, wrote about the Colosseum’s plant life in such a charming, thoughtful way: An excerpt from <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7347032647652693794/5727137845437819371#">Deakin's actual book</a>, not mentioned in <i>The Weeds</i>: “Flowers are perhaps the most graceful and most lovely objects of the creation but are not, at any time, more delightful than when associated with what recalls to the memory time and place, and especially that of generations long passed away. They form a link in the memory, and teach us hopeful and soothing lessons, amid the sadness of bygone ages.” The graduate student finds herself wishing that she had such an advisor, not realizing that, according to the novel, Deakin died before the flora is published and the apprentice applied extensive edits before submission. Deakin published one book, and biographical information about him or a female apprentice is limited. </p><p>Both narrators are fascinated by plants’ defensive mechanisms, especially those that might harm humans. The modern-day woman marvels: “How easy, to eliminate something living from the earth. As simple as turning up the temperature, or slipping a pill in a drink, or touching a leg, or doubting.” One woman sabotages herself, and the other sabotages her superior, slipping bits of a plant that he fails to recognize into his drink. “He hasn’t done the work, so he’s missing all the signs.” </p><p><i>The Weeds</i> has a weary tone for more reasons than one. The woman stronger in spirit is raped. And each woman senses that she documents a massive decline resulting from a changing climate, feeling an urge, “Write it down before it’s gone.” In keeping their respective lists, the woman from the 19th century observes how vetch transformed from staple to “crop of last resort,” and the modern-day woman wistfully recalls cattails, her favorite plant as a child: “brown and whistling with red-winged blackbirds. The pond is gone; it became a football field. Could I slow my town’s unrolling ruin by naming what exists? Is that what we’re doing here with these lists, slowing death?” </p><p>The science of botany is in decline, too, even though there are about <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-species-are-there">300,000 species</a>. "M]ore and more, colleges and universities are getting rid of their
botany programs, either by consolidating them with zoology and biology
departments, or eliminating them altogether because of a lack of
faculty, funds or sometimes interest," reports <i><a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/11/12/the-academic-decline-how-to-train-the-next-generation-of-botanists">U.S. News & World Report.</a> </i></p><p>Some species survive development and destruction, and others go extinct. The same is true of the human spirit. Some women refuse to be broken by inequities and, one way or another, ensure their voices live on. </p><p><i>Michigan State University's <a href="https://bealbotanicalgarden.msu.edu/about">W. J. Beal Botanical Garden,</a> is the oldest, continuously operated botanical garden in the United States, featuring a collection of more than 2000 plants. The photo is courtesy of MSU Today. </i></p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347032647652693794.post-90633193777249744242023-07-06T15:38:00.004-04:002023-07-12T13:16:34.968-04:00Shame<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvvALmR4dQ3DEtNUSAcSX8sfSkiC3KYdLTIeR5eIaA5TMrgYZ67Xg2P79KWQNFjTm-sVdqFJl0qGxBg76JrPXGaRh5BxaJxGaDQxAwKOiVlpS_Pyqck-MFVIZQjOKN86jkMOn0eyM7UBTy4n0vzKflw0os_ZZe4mKRWzOlhlp8nq2uhNs_4KsD-qCOyw/s450/Shame.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="296" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvvALmR4dQ3DEtNUSAcSX8sfSkiC3KYdLTIeR5eIaA5TMrgYZ67Xg2P79KWQNFjTm-sVdqFJl0qGxBg76JrPXGaRh5BxaJxGaDQxAwKOiVlpS_Pyqck-MFVIZQjOKN86jkMOn0eyM7UBTy4n0vzKflw0os_ZZe4mKRWzOlhlp8nq2uhNs_4KsD-qCOyw/s320/Shame.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Social media allows individuals to explore feelings about unwanted behavior in both themselves and others. </p><p><i><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710383/the-society-of-shame-by-jane-roper/">In Society of Shame </a></i>by Jane Roper, a woman’s world falls apart after she arrives home early from a work trip to discover her garage on fire, her US Senate candidate husband hurrying to dress and conceal an affair. Topping off the bad day, photos focus on a menstrual stain on Kathleen Held’s pants. The photograph goes viral, and women become outraged that a period accident captures more attention than a husband’s infidelity. Activists, including Kathleen’s young daughter, embrace the new #StopPeriodShaming movement. Kathleen, annoyed after her husband expresses concern about damage for his campaign, moves out of the house and gives her daughter permission to participate. </p><p>Leaving home, Kathleen steals an elegant invitation from a secret Society of Shame, intended for her husband. All members, shamed over social media for various offenses, hope to restore confidence and reinvent themselves, and Kathleen wonders, “If she was a stronger, more fulfilled version of herself, maybe her marriage wouldn’t have fallen apart.” Maybe she would have published the book she had written years earlier. </p><p>Maybe. </p><p>Shame can be about self-evaluation and social-evaluation, according to philosopher <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/abs/making-sense-of-shame/3DE0D6DEA1BBFE8752956AD03810C416">James Laing</a>, who urges rejection of “the widespread assumption that the other-oriented dimension of shame is best understood primarily terms of our concern with the way we appear to others.” He instead urges treating “shame as manifesting our desire primarily for interpersonal connection.” Shamefulness, he maintains, can be used for merited avoidance or rejection. </p><p>But the society in Roper's book turns to shame for the sole purpose of winning attention by any means necessary. The society’s founder orchestrates makeovers, activities and social-media messaging to repair reputations. For Kathleen, that means leaning in to support the new cause while emerging from the most embarrassing and painful moment of her life. Reluctance transforms into reflection and passion, as Kathleen, who decides to go by Kat, realizes that women “were bound together, all of them by this strange and mysterious biological process they shared, with its inconveniences and embarrassments and messes; its power to bring relief (<i>not pregnant!</i>) and heartbreak (<i>not pregnant</i>); the thresholds it marked between child and adult, youth and middle age.”</p><p>With new clothes and haircut, Kat becomes an instant celebrity, juggling television appearances, newspaper interviews and a book contract. The society cheers, advising her to “Steer into the swerve.” A quiet member of the group urges Kathleen to enjoy the new popularity, but to “Keep telling the truth.” She finds an agent, and a major publisher insists on a ghostwriter, preferring that the author stay busy with promotion and social-media. </p><p>Of course, social media as a tool can build and destroy reputations. Users take advantage of any connection or problem to advance agendas. Interactions are staged, publicized, with daily activities becoming less genuine. Frustrated, the husband plants a story that Kathleen never cared for the family dog, and activists attack her for living in an illegal Airbnb. Danica, organizer of the Society of Shame, stages a bizarre attack at a book announcement party for Kathleen and then expects that the two pretend to have no relationship at all. Kathleen’s daughter accuses her mom of promoting the movement “all for herself.” </p><p>Weary, Kat frets about everyone expecting her to be "so <i>perfect </i>all the time," and critics abound on the internet. “Maybe it distracted them from their own faults and hypocrisies to constantly point out hers. Why confront your own mistakes when you can attack other people’s instead?” Kathleen's husband long prioritized his role as politician in their family life, and she repeats those errors, expressing disappointment that the child fails to understand “how complex it was to be a public figure and a spokesperson for a cause.” </p><p>The plotting and charades become overwhelming and Kathleen abruptly stops obsessing over what others think. “People I don’t know or even particularly like. The thing we’re all doing here. Controlling narratives and changing conversations and getting back on top instead of trying to actually – I don’t know, grow.” </p><p>Calm people, those who refuse to express anger and insist on playing fair, rarely attract as much public attention as do the outrage-makers. A low profile on social media can be priceless. </p><p>The book captures the extreme language and emotions of our time, reflecting how social media can instigate divisions with no resolution intended. “Everywhere we look, we see values clashing and tempers rising, in ways that seem frenzied, aimless, and cruel,” suggests a review posted by the Stanford University's <a href="https://casbs.stanford.edu/how-do-things-emotions-morality-anger-and-shame-across-cultures">Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences </a>of <i>How to Do Things With Emotions: The Morality of Anger and Shame Across Cultures</i> by <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691220970/how-to-do-things-with-emotions">Owen Flanagan</a>. “At the same time, we witness political leaders and others who lack any sense of shame, even as they display carelessness with the truth and the common good.” People can control and adjust emotions, and “Flanagan makes a passionate case for tuning down anger and tuning up shame," while demonstrating "how cultures around the world can show us how to perform these emotions better.”</p><p>Forms of shame leading to revenge, anger or harm to others are destructive, the review concludes. Other forms “can protect positive values, including courage, kindness, and honesty.” As suggested by <i>Fear of Beauty</i> and <i>Allure of Deceit, </i>thoughtful and socializing shame starting at a young age, “can promote moral progress where undisciplined anger cannot.”</p><p>Anger can strengthen an opponent's resolve.</p>Allure of Deceithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511022282504267700noreply@blogger.com0