The View from the Hermitage, Day 140

Twenty weeks! And I know a fellow quilter with whom I spent time in Texas in February who has been in her own Boston hermitage for 21 weeks. She's 81 and had a cousin die with covid-19 very early on in the pandemic. As for my own 88-year-old mother, her assisted living facility continues covid-free. The same cannot be said of the rehabilitation center where she spent six months before moving to assisted living. They now have five staff members and two residents who have tested positive. The story came out when a CNA quit after having been told to report for a double shift even though she had covid-19 symptoms and was going to be tested. She did test positive and is quite thankful, now, that she stuck to her gut feelings and did not go in to work. She said that were it not for the pandemic raging, she likely would have chalked her symptoms up to allergies, popped some Allegra, and gone to work anyway. She made a very good call.

There is another local senior-care facility, the Cedars, that may be setting records covid-19 records. They have had 96 residents and 44 staff members test positive. You read that correctly--140 total cases. There have been 17 deaths so far. I read things like that and offer thanks to the deities that my mom's facility has taken such good care to stay covid-free. That said, one single staff member could still come in having the virus but showing no symptoms and set off an outbreak. Here's hoping those deities stay with me on this.

I spent some pandemic-free time reading Mary Trump's book Too Much and Never Enough. It was a quick and easy read. I wouldn't buy it, but if you can borrow it or check it out of a library, you might take a look at it. Is there really any new information there? No. Did it make me more sympathetic to HWSNBN because his father was as large a piece of s*** as he is? No. The whole family is what people in polite circles might call "a piece of work." The whole book can pretty much be summed up as "like father, like son." How much might have been nature vs. nurture (or lack thereof), I would not want to guess.

Older son and I did our Sunday morning walk at the park with the family dog this morning. A church is now using one of the shelters for what appears to be a service and a social. Two weeks ago, no one there seemed to be wearing a mask. Now that the county has instituted new covid-19 mitigation measures, there were a lot more masks this morning. Not on every adult, but on enough of them to be noticeable. None of the kids were wearing masks, but the regs say kids under 10 aren't required to wear a mask.

I have been remiss in not mentioning that The Washington Post again has a daily sports section. This morning's contained an interesting article about a conference call between administrators, coaches, and some football players from the Southeastern Conference held to address concerns about the upcoming season. The players were told to consider it "a given" that players on each team would develop covid-19. When one player pointed out that while right now the teams can operate in a bubble, once all the other students return, that bubble is popped mightily. One of the higher-ups noted something I've thought all along: If those other students don't come back, there's no way football could be played.

And while the bubble theory appears to be working for the NBA, WNBA, and major league soccer, the abbreviated Major League Baseball season may be headed down the drain. The NFL has canceled all pre-season games. Will they end up doing the same for the regular-season games? Do people care? I enjoyed the organized sports I did (I helped break the gender barrier in high school cross country and tennis back in the early days of the 1970s), but I never did them with any thoughts of continuing to compete in anything but intramurals when I moved on to college. That may disqualify me from making judgmental statements about continuing organized sports during a pandemic, but I would say that the only collegiate sports that should have any microscopic chance of being held are those with limited or no interpersonal contact. Sports such as tennis or golf. Cross country could count if there are staggered starts to the races. And even with those, there should be serious discussion of are they needed. What is their purpose? If they are to be held without spectators, you can't even make the argument that they offer a diversion or entertainment. Pro sports can argue that television justifies their existence, but the same would not be true of college. At least not to me.

Time to get off my soapbox and go empty the dryer that just beeped at me that the clothes in it are dry.

 

Over the Moat (book review)

If there's any question about whether a book called Over the Moat can count for the "building" category of Annie's What's in a Name - 2 challenge, the subtitle is Love Among the Ruins of Imperial Vietnam. If "moat" doesn't count as a building, then "ruins" does. I actually read The Two Towers with the intention of using it for the building category but could never get motivated to write the review. It was different with this book.

I found this book by accident while searching for books to read before heading to Vietnam. This one especially intrigued me because it was set in Hue, the city in which we would be living for a month. I got about ten pages into it in the weeks before we left on the trip before, in the chaos that was my life, losing it. I searched high and low but could not find it. I finally figured I must have left it somewhere because I remembered that I had been reading it while waiting for a doctor's appointment. Oh well, I thought, **it happens. We went on the trip, came home, settled back in, and then, about two weeks ago, there the book was, on the bottom shelf of the coffee table in the living room, a place I must have looked in my search. As I said, **it happens.

But guess what? Reading this book before we went on the trip would not have been as magical as reading it after the trip was. Having visited and experienced Hue, I could relate to the book in a much more intimate way than I ever would have before going. Before I go into why, though, let me recap the book. In late 1992, the author, James Sullivan, was bicycling from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi with a friend in order to write about the trip for a cycling magazine. When all his clothes were drenched in a rainstorm in Hue, he happened into a clothing store in search of replacements. He found the clerk there, Thuy (pronounced Twee) attractive, and ended up getting her address so that he could visit her that evening. He and his friend never did find Thuy's house--there was a mixup with the house number--but Thuy and her sister found them after going out looking for them when they did not appear as promised. Jim did resume the cycling trip as scheduled but could not get Thuy out of his mind as he and his friend took the train from Hanoi back to Ho Chi Minh City and, then, home. Hopping off the train in Hue, he decided to see where things might go. He ended up "competing" with other suitors for Thuy's affection before he returned to the States. Thuy had told him that she would never make a life with him until he had lived in Hue for a year so that she could see his real character. He did return to Vietnam and, despite those other suitors, one of whom was a policeman who handled immigration issues, the story had a happy ending.

There were descriptions of Hue that jumped out at me because I had been there. One example: "Hue inspired that kind of poetry in people. Pedaling north on Highway 1, I'd found that the Vietnameses loved Hue unconditionally. It didn't matter whether you were from the north or the south, a truck driver told me ouside Saigon. "Everybody agree about Hue." It wasn't the guidebook stuff he was talking about, not the Imperial Citadel or the Forbidden Purple City or the pagodas as much as it was something else, less easily defined, qualities better communicated by gesture, by the aroma swirling off a bowl of bun bo Hue soup and a limning of moonlight over the Perfume River, by whispers and by secret. An old woman in Danang had told me that on quiet nights gold seeped out of the ground in Hue: Believe it. Back in Hue now, I was prepared to believe that anything was possible."

And: "If Hue was the most regal city in Vietnam, it could also lay claim--perhaps mroe than any other in the country--to the Vietnamese soul. Its landmark pagodas had turned out Vietnam's most renowned Buddhist monks: Thich Quang Duc, who set himself ablaze in a Saigon intersection in 1963, hailed from Thien Mu Pagoda; and Thich Nhat Hanh, the prolific exile who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King in the 1960s, was reared at Tu Hieu Pagoda."

And remember Mr. Cu, the owner of the Mandarin Cafe and the person who developed a walking tour of Hue that the sons and I took one very, very hot day? He was in here, too, mentioned as having just begun the photography we marveled at in his brochure and on the walls of his cafe. Had I read the book before we went, I doubt I would have remembered the brief mention of Mr. Cu; reading it afterwards, I almost shouted with glee when I saw Mr. Cu's name.

My one complaint about the book was that its proofreading or editing was not very carefully done. I corrected more typos than I usually do in a book. Still, I would highly recommend this to anyone who has visited Hue. If you haven't visited, go first, and read the book after. It will mean much more that way.

The Zookeeper's Wife (book review)

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman was my choice in the relative category of Annie’s What’s In a Name - 2 challenge. It may explain my doctorate in psychology in what seems like a past life, but I’ve always been attracted to stories everyday people who aided others in World War II Germany. Or perhaps it’s because I wonder whether, deep down, I would have the courage and resolve to act similarly in the same situation.

The zookeeper’s wife of the title was Antonina Zabinski, wife of Jan, the director of the Warsaw Zoo. The Zabinskis were Polish Christians but managed to save over three hundred people, most Jewish, during the course of the war. The zoo was closed as a result of the way (the Germans looted some of the animals when they took control of Warsaw), but the empty cages housed some of the refugees, who were code-named after animals. Other refugees hid in the zookeeper’s villa. Antonina tended to all, stretching her family’s meager rations to feed everyone, playing musical codes on the piano to send refugees into hiding places, and worrying over her young son’s increasing involvement in the family’s activities.

Just as compelling as the story of the family’s humanitarian efforts is, the story of the family’s pet animals is enchanting. A badger kiddie toilets and knocking on a door to be let into the house. Elephants filling a moat with dirt to create mud so that they could wade across. A carnivorous pet rabbit. The book had much to offer on several levels. At the same time, Ackerman explores how the Nazi interest in creating a perfect race of humans corresponded to their interest in creating pure strains of certain animals, the reason that many of the animals in the Warsaw Zoo were moved to German zoos.

I would highly recommend The Zookeeper’s Wife to anyone with an interest in the human side of World War II. Ackerman has a very nice writing style, and the book is, in between periods of gleeful marvel at the animal stories or of reflection on the human condition, quite easy to read.

The Last Templar (book review)

I read The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury for Annie’s What’s In a Name - 2 challenge, in the profession category, “templar” being accepted to refer to a member of the Knights Templar or, interestingly enough, “a barrister or other person occupying chambers in the Temple, London.”

This book was just done as a made-for-TV movie, the reviews of which weren’t that good. While the book is no literary classic, as thrillers go, it wasn’t half bad. After a short introduction set in 1291, the present-day action opens with four masked horsemen dressed as Knights Templar riding into the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and stealing artifacts from a Treasures of the Vatican exhibit. The book’s heroine, archaeologist Tess Chaykin, sees the leader of the horsemen almost reverently steals only one item, a geared device, over which he says some Latin words. She decides to investigate on her own, at the same time as the official FBI investigation is headed by Sean Reilly, a terrorist specialist and, relevant to the plot, a practicing Roman Catholic. Separately at times, together at others, they discover what the stolen device was and its importance, before finding themselves in a race against the Catholic church to find the secret to which the device points.

If I had a bone to pick with The Last Templar, it would be that the characters, especially Tess Chaykin, were not too well developed. In particular, Tess is said to be an archaeologist, working at the Manoukian Archaeological Institute, yet she is always addressed as “Miss Chaykin” rather than “Dr. Chaykin.” It’s a small point, to be sure, but it would have been nice to have a bit more background on Tess and on Sean, to make them a bit more real. That aside, The Last Templar does offer a good escape into fiction for those needing a break from the everyday.

Blood of Victory (book review)

I read Blood of Victory by Alan Furst for Annie’s What’s In a Name - 2 challenge, in the body part category. The “blood” in the title is not a body part, though, but oil, specifically the Romanian oil needed by the Nazis in World War II. The plot concerns British attempts to stop the flow of Romanian oil to Germany early in the war.

I.A. Serebin is a Russian journalist living in Paris. While in Istanbul, he is recruited by the British for their operation to stop the flow of oil to Germany. The story moves from Istanbul to Paris, Bucharest, the Black Sea, and Belgrade as Serebin tries to put together an operation to stop the oil barges from moving along the Danube River. Various characters, including Serebin’s lover, move in and out of the plot as it winds its way along.

Alan Furst has a reputation for novels written with incredible historical accuracy, and Blood of Victory appears to be no exception. The characters and action don’t appear at all contrived. At the same time, though, I found it difficult to warm up to the characters, to really feel as though I knew them, perhaps because not much background information is given. The reader sees the characters as they are in the action of the plot but doesn’t really get a feel for how they got there, or how they got to be the way. And the characters figure much more in the plot than does the action; Blood of Victory is not written in the typical spy-thriller vein. The story is told much more through the characters than though the action.

If you’re looking for a traditional spy or war thriller, with lots of action, you might want to give Blood of Victory a pass. If, however, you have a real interest in the history of World War II or the psychology behind the characters, then Blood of Victory might be just your cup of tea.

Grace After Midnight (book review)

This is my second book for Annie’s What’s In a Name - 2 challenge, in the time of day category. While purists might argue that the “dead” I put forward as a medical condition is a stretch, I don’t think anyone can quibble with “midnight” as a time of day.

Grace After Midnight is the memoir of Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, and will likely appeal only to those who, like me, became hooked on the HBO series The Wire. For those who may not otherwise know, The Wire is Homicide: Life on the Streets on steroids and/or without the NBC censors. Felicia “Snoop” Pearson first appeared in the third season of The Wire playing, who else, Felicia “Snoop” Pearson. On one level, ya gotta love a character named not only after the actor portraying her but very much patterned after her.

Snoop grew up on the streets of Baltimore, raised by foster parents who were more like grandparents to her. She only saw her real mother a couple of times, and never alone after the visit on which her mother had Felicia (she wasn’t called “Snoop” yet) take off her party dress then locked her in a closet so she could go sell the dress for drug money. Even before her teenage years, she learned the ins and outs of the corner drug trade. She also realized and accepted that she was gay. Several adults tried to keep her on the straight and narrow including, interestingly enough, two men themselves involved in the drug trade. She called these men Uncle and Father though there was no blood relation.

At the age of 14, Snoop was attacked by another girl in a street melee. When the other girl swung at her with a metal baseball bat, Snoop shot her, trading one form of lead for another. When no witnesses were willing to label Snoop’s act pure self defense, and one witness was ready to testify that Snoop acted first, Snoop asked her lawyer to plea bargain. She ended up sentenced to eight years in the Maryland Women’s Correctional Facility, though she was paroled after five years, when she was 20.

During her time in prison, Snoop experienced a number of ups and downs. Some of her stories of the other inmates are quite shocking. She also had the spiritual or religious experience from which the title is derived. One night, in the middle of a very low period after Uncle’s death and Father’s having been sentenced to life in prison, she looked up in the middle of the night and felt a presence. After that, she became determined to complete her GED and make it to the end of her sentence.

Snoop was 20 when she was released. She was determined to go straight, and followed the advice she had been given about getting a job: If they don’t ask about a prison record, don’t volunteer that you have one. After being fired from two jobs at which she was doing well because her employers found out about her prison record, she fell into dealing drugs. In a bar one night, she met Michael K. Williams who was playing Omar Little on The Wire. He invited her to the set, introduced her to the writers and producers, and she was offered a role essentially playing herself. She kept her drug corner running for some time after she was a regular on the series, but eventually closed it down.

In Grace After Midnight, Pearson writes about continuing to act and not getting back into the drug business. Searching google.com and the Internet Movie Database indicates that she hasn’t really done any acting since The Wire ended, but that she is active in a nonprofit working with Baltimore youth. She was also arrested last summer for possession of marijuana.

As I said at the outset, this book will probably only appeal to fans of The Wire. I’m not sure that Pearson’s story will resonate with someone not familiar with her role on the series. But if you miss The Wire and still think of it as one of the best things ever to air on TV, er, excuse me, it’s not TV, it’s HBO, then you might want to give this book a whirl.

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (book review)

The "rules" for Annie's What's in a name-2 challenge specify that one book have a "medical condition" in its title. I'd say that "dead" qualifies. The book's author, David Shields, is sandwiched between a 14-year-old daughter and a 97-year-old father. In The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, Shields considers human life in terms of our physical condition, with medical facts discussed and interspersed with stories of his daughter and, mainly, his father. The book is written in four sections: Infancy and Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood and Middle Age, and Old Age and Death. Several chapters appear in more than one section, including those on "Decline and Fall," "Boys vs. Girls," "Sex and Death," and "Hoop Dreams." (That's "hoop" as in basketball not needlework.)

I found the book very easy to read, though at times it was downright disheartening. As a 52-year-old trying to increase her explosive speed in a martial art, I really hated to read things such as "When you're 60, you're 20 percent less strong than you were in middle age; at 70, you're 40 percent less strong. You lose more strength in the muscles of your legs than in your hands and arms. You also tend to lost your fast-twitch abilities--a sprinter's contractions--much more rapidly than your slow-twitch abilities--a walker's contractions."

At other times, though, it was downright funny. I think my hands down favorite passage in this regard was a somewhat Freudian take on the movie Spider-Man, specifically, "Peter's change from dweeb to spider is explicitly analogous to his transformation from boy to man." And the current winner in the "Damn! I wish I'd thought of that phrase!" contest is the bold part of this paragraph (and I hope this isn't too risque for some readers, since it could be interpreted as for mature audiences only):

"The first time Spider-Man rescues M.J., she says to her boyfriend, Harry, that it was 'incredible.' 'What do you mean "incredible"?' he keeps asking her. The second time Spider-Man rescues M.J., she asks him, 'Do I get to say thank you this time?' and, pulling up his mask past his lips, passionately kisses him, sending both of them into rain-drenched ecstasy. The script makes painfully clear that Peter's newfound prowess is procreation or, more precisely, onanism: 'He wiggles his wrist, tries to get the goop to spray out, but it doesn't come.' All three times Spider-Man rescues M.J., they're wrapped in a pose that looks very much like missionary sex: Spider-Man on a mission. As Peter Parker, his peter is parked; as Spider-Man, he gets to have the mythic carnival ride of sex-flight without any of the messy emotional cleanup afterward."

Some of the medical information was so wonderful I can't wait to work it into conversation someday: "Your taste buds regenerate; cells within the taste buds die every ten days and are completely replaced. Even if a nerve that forms taste buds is destroyed, other buds will form around the new nerve that replaces it. However, it takes more molecules of a certain substance on your tongue for you to recognize the flavor later in adulthood. As you get older, you enjoy food less."

Woven into the story of how we age physically is the story of a family, principally one son's relationship with a father who just happens to be bipolar (though Shields uses the term "manic-depressive"). Although Shields tells many a tale in which his father doesn't necessarily appear in the best light, he does the same with himself. Shields says of his father in the prologue that "I seem to have an Oedipal urge to bury him in a shower of death data. Why do I want to cover my dad in an early shroud? He's strong and he's weak and I love him and I hate him and I want him to live forever and I want him to die tomorrow."

Is this a book you will find entertaining but also thought-provoking? Yes. Is this a book that you will be less for not reading? No. I would give few books that high praise. If you want to learn a bit more about how your body (and, to an extent your mind) changes and adapts, for better or for worse, as you age, this book is certainly one way to accomplish that.

Born on a Blue Day (Review)

I was going to use The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb for the color part of Annie’s What’s In a Name Challenge, but I found it a struggle to read best described by my image of the author as the slightly drunk academic monopolizing the cocktail party conversation with his obviously superior intellect and opinions. When I saw Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir of Asperger’s and an Extraordinary Mind by Daniel Tammet on the bargain table at Barnes and Noble, I knew I could put The Black Swan out of my misery at least for now. I had absolutely no problem making my way through this book.

Daniel Tammet has an autism spectrum condition as well as synaesthesia, the visual and emotional experience of numbers. The two combine into what Daniel calls savant syndrome, made well known by the 1988 Dustin Hoffman movie, Rain Man. Because of his synaesthetic experiences, Daniel can retain and calculate huge numbers in his head without conscious effort. He holds the British and European records for reciting Pi from memory, reciting 22, 514 digits correctly in five hours and nine minutes. He can do extremely complicated arithmetic calculations such as squaring six-digit numbers in his head. The synaesthesia also gives him an incredible facility with languages; he learned enough Icelandic in one week to conduct a live interview on Icelandic television. To put this accomplishment in context, Icelandic is considered one of the most complex and most difficult to learn languages. For example, there are at least 12 different words for each of the numbers from one to four, depending on the sentence’s context.

Daniel demonstrated some of the classic signs of an autism spectrum condition such as an obsessive need for order very early in life. At the same time, there was no significant delay in his language development, one of the criteria for a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. At the age of four, he suffered several seizures and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, though he has been seizure-free for over 20 years. Even as a child, Daniel was well aware of how different he was from other children, as described in the following passage:

I remember standing alone under the shade of the trees that dotted the perimeter of the school playground, watching the other children running and shouting and playing from the sidelines. I am ten and know that I am different to them in a way that I cannot express or comprehend. The children are noisy and move quickly, bumping and pushing into one another. I’m constantly afraid of being hit by one of the balls that are frequently thrown or kicked through the air, which is one of the reasons why I prefer to stand on the edges of the playground far away from my schoolmates. I do this every playtime without fail, so that it soon becomes a running joke and it is perceived as common knowledge that Daniel talks to the trees and that he is weird.

At the same time, though, Daniel ended up having several close friendships, typically with other kids who were also “different” in some way. At the age of eleven, he realized that he was attracted to other boys, although it was several years before he considered himself “gay.”

After graduation from high school, Daniel applied to work with Voluntary Services Overseas, an international development charity and spent a year teaching English in Lithuania. When he returned to England, he got a computer as part of an “end of service” grant to write about his experiences. I loved Daniel’s description of what a computer can mean to someone with an autism spectrum condition:

There is something exciting and reassuring for individuals on the autistic spectrum about communicating with other people over the Internet. For one thing, talking in chat rooms or by email does not require you to know how to initiate a conversation or when to smile or the numerous intricacies of body language, as in other social situations. There is no ey contact and it is possible to understand the other person’s every word because everything is writted down. The use of ‘emoticons’, such as (smiley face) and (frowny face), in chat room conversations also makes it easier to know how the other person is feeling, because he or she tells you in a simple, visual method.

In fact, Daniel met his partner, Neil, online, moving in with him six months after they met. After applying for and not getting numerous library jobs (Daniel describes how difficult the nuances of a job interview can be for someone with an autism spectrum condition), Daniel eventually set up Optimnem, an educational website with online courses for language learners. Neil handles the technical details, while Daniel develops the content.

Daniel memorized the digits of pi as a fundraiser for the National Society for Epiloepsy, a charity in the United Kingdom. The publicity surrounding the event led to Daniel’s appearance in the documentary Brainman, shown in the U.S. on the Science Channel. Part of Brainman showed Daniel working with researchers interested in his savant syndrome; he has continued this work in the time since Brainman was finished. Daniel hopes that such research will advance understanding of the many facets of autism spectrum condition and, more broadly, “encouraging a wider appreciation of different ways of learning.”

Quality Rating: 10 out of 10. Very easy to read but with lots of food for thought. I applaud Daniel for offering such an intimate look at his life.

Audience Rating: Not everyone would be interested in this book. Obviously, someone with personal experience with an autism spectrum condition would want to read it, as would someone with a background or interest in cognitive psychology or gifted education. And anyone who has ever even half seriously wondered how the brain works would find lots here to think about.

Time Bandit (Review)

This book’s full title is Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea, and One of the World’s Deadliest Jobs. If you’ve seen “The Deadliest Catch” on the Discovery Channel, you’ll appreciate this book a bit—no, a lot—more. I know I appreciated it more having just watched several hours of Discovery’s “Deadliest Catch Mother’s Day Marathon.” (I kid you not; it reminded me of 1990, when the BBC showed “The Bridge on the River Kwai” on Mothering Sunday and received a very large number of complaints.)

In other words, someone not familiar with “Deadliest Catch” will lack the background needed for much of this book. And even having that background, I found the structure of the book cumbersome. Some chapters are written from the perspective of brother Johnathan Hillstrand, from the point of view of his drifting in a disabled fishing boat. Others are written from the perspective of brother Andy Hillstrand as he awaits word of Johnathan’s fate. As one brother or the other moved away from the story of Johnathan’s being adrift to reflect on his own past or on the broader picture of the fishing life, I sometimes lost track of which brother was telling his story. More than once I had to backtrack to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself which brother was telling his story.

And Time Bandit offers much more a memoir of the brothers’ lives than an in-depth look at the fishing industry and its perils and thrills. Such works as Linda Greenlaw’s The Hungy Ocean and the Sebastian Junger’s classic, The Perfect Storm, better describe fishing as a profession rather than a recreation. I can honestly say that the parts of Time Bandit I found most entertaining were the stories of two brothers growing up and trying to out-do each other in more and more creative ways—stories only the mother of two sons could love and truly appreciate. I now know how much harder I could have had it ... or still might have it since at least one of my sons has read this book as well.

The Bean Trees (Review)

Several people have recommended Barbara Kingsolver to me, in particular, Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. I haven’t read that one yet, but I was not disappointed in The Bean Trees as an introduction to Kingsolver. It is much more a character novel than an action one, but that suits the psychology major side of me.

The Bean Trees is the story of Marietta Greer, who grows up in rural Kentucky with a fear of putting air in a tire and a dream of avoiding motherhood, or at least pregnancy. Leaving home in her early 20s, Marietta changes her name to Taylor before finding herself in Tucson, Arizona, working at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires and mother to Turtle, a three-year-old Native American girl put in her car outside a bar in the middle of Oklahoma. Taylor and Turtle live and form something of a family with Lou Ann, another expatriate from Kentucky, and her infant son Dwane Ray.

Despite the fact that Taylor is in her 20s, The Bean Trees seems, more than anything else, a coming-of-age story. She wrestles with many things, not the least of which is Turtle, whom Taylor discovers was abused before being left in the car. She wrestles with injustice in the world as she learns that Jesus Is Lord Used Tires offers sanctuary to Guatemalan refugees unable to win asylum in the U.S. She wrestles with her feelings for one of the refugees, Estevan, who fled Guatemala with his wife, Esperanza, after the government there killed Esperanza’s brother and two other members of their teachers’ union. At the same time, the government kidnapped Ismene, Estevan and Esperanza’s daughter, as a hostage to be exchanged for the names of other union members. Rather than turn in their friends, Estevan and Esperanza left the country, hoping that Ismene would be, as other such children had been, given to a government or military official unable to have children of their own.

Not all the loose ends are tied nicely together at the end of the book. Nor did all the little threads have happy endings. I did not find that offputting, because that’s life. There were several passages that really got to me or got me thinking. I’ll only share here Taylor’s discussion of parenthood with Mattie, her boss at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. I’ll let you discover the other thought-provoking ones on your own reading.

“Taylor, honey, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you’re asking the wrong question.”
“How do you mean?”
“You’re asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm’s way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can’t. But nobody else can either. Not a state home, that’s for sure. For heaven’s sake, the best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That’s why it’s the wrong thing to ask, if you’re really trying to make a decision.”
“So what’s the right thing to ask?”
“Do I want to try? Do I think it would be interesting, maybe even enjoyable in the long run, to share my life with this kid and give her my best effort and maybe, when all’s said and done, end up with a good friend.”

Quality Rating: 10 out of 10, if you like books that are more character- than action-driven. Otherwise, you’re likely to be disappointed.

Audience Rating: I think this would be a good book for teens or even a bit earlier who are wrestling with some of the “who am I” questions of those years, though they will obviously read it from a different starting point than this 51-year-old mother of two college or beyond kids did. In other words, while not “E” for “Everyone,” I think middle school and up could appreciate this book without being offended or otherwise put off.

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History (Review)

At last, one of the books I actually intended to read when I signed up for Annie’s challenge, my weather event book, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson. I must admit that, much as I sometimes hate that the cell phone in my pocket means I am never totally out of touch, this book did more to make me appreciate our current state of technology than just about any other book I’ve read recently. Here’s the quick and dirty summary: Imagine if no one had known that Hurricane Katrina was coming. It’s not pleasant, right?

The man of the subtitle was Isaac Cline who was in charge of the weather station in Galveston at the time of the hurricane. A proud man who thought he knew the laws by which weather operated, he claimed later to have personally saved the lives of thousands through his warnings. In fact, the main warning of the storm was transmitted to the national headquarters of the U.S. Weather Service by Isaac’s brother, Joseph, who was a subordinate in the Galveston weather station. Already somewhat estranged, the brothers rarely spoke or acknowledged each other's existence in the years following the storm.

The time was 1900, and weather science and a national weather service were both in their infancy. There were people who knew that a major hurricane was closing in on Galveston, Texas--forecasters in Cuba. Unfortunately, Cuban forecasts were seen as unreliable and inflammatory by the leaders of the U.S. Weather Service; in fact, the Weather Service had established that Cuban forecasters were not permitted to transmit their weather information over telegraph lines controlled by the U.S. military. Without satellite and other technology so commonplace today, forecasting storms was as much or more an art than a science. Despite what someone actually in a storm might think of it, only the Washington, D.C. office of the U.S. Weather Service was permitted to call a storm a hurricane.

The hurricane in question had no name; named storms didn’t come until much later. If it had been given a name, that name, like Andrew and others, would in all likelihood have been retired in acknowledgment of the power of the storm. Larson does a superb job of describing the storm from its formation over Africa to its growth over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and its progression across the U.S. mainland after it ravaged Galveston. A reader doesn’t need a science background to understand and appreciate the description of the mechanisms underlying the storm; Larson describes it in terms of sight and sound. What would the clouds have looked like? How would the winds have sounded? One looks at a storm with a new appreciation after reading this.

Quality Rating: 10 out of 10. Written in the narrative style of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, Isaac’s Storm was well worth the time to read. The interweaving of the man, the time, and the storm was seamless, and the resulting woven story made me not want to put the book down.

Audience Rating: Anyone with the appropriate reading level and interest in history or nature in general or meteorology in particular should enjoy this book.

Sleeping with Ward Cleaver (Review)

I was going to do Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear for my “name” selection, but I don’t know Jacqueline Winspear from Eve, and I do know Jenny Gardiner. Our sons were together on the high school academic team for three years, and I got my copy of Sleeping with Ward Cleaver at her very own book release party just last night. This is not Jenny’s first novel, but it is her first published one. (What is it with me and first novels?) Jenny got the contract through the American Title III contest sponsored by Dorchester Publishing and Romantic Times, and I was one of the friends who hustled online votes for her with my online quilting group.

Don’t let the Romantic Times reference trick you into thinking of this as a bodice-ripper. While Sleeping with Ward Cleaver is definitely of the “chick lit” genre, it is not what I would think of as a romance, though it is very much a love story. Claire and Jack Doolittle have been married long enough to have five kids from age 14 on down, and more than a lot of the magic has gone out of their marriage. Jack’s view of parenting is to set the standards for behavior high but to leave all enforcement duties to Claire. Jack’s view of housework is to leave everything to Claire; after all, how much time can her part-time job, one cat, one dog, one parrot, and five kids take? “Marital relations” have become perfunctory and are limited to Sunday night. Claire has come to view Jack as Ward Cleaver from “Leave It To Beaver” infamy.

As Claire is nearing the end of her rope, into her inbox pops an e-mail from the boyfriend who jilted her right before she met Jack. He claims to want only to know how her life has gone and whether she has forgiven him, but the progression of their e-mail conversation hints at underlying motives. Meanwhile, Jack has a new, young, female co-worker, Julia, who hangs on his every word and whose work relationship with Jack is making coworkers, as well as Claire, wonder what else might be going on. When Jack announces a business trip to Miami with Julia, Claire decides to leave the kids with Jack’s parents, follow Jack and Julia to Miami, and see for herself just what might be going on between them. What happens after that? Well, I'd spoil it for you if I told you.

Unfortunately, that description totally fails to convey that all this action (and what follows) is described in a boisterous, bawdy manner that is downright laugh-out-loud hilarious at times and somewhat tender misty-eyed poignant at others. It’s a very light read, though the deeper message comes through that marriages, like people, age and, also like people, some age better than others. Also, just as it takes two to tango, it takes two to make a marriage work, and rarely are the missteps due to just one of the partners.

Quality Rating: 10 out of 10. It’s not great literature, but it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s a good, fun, easy read, but one that makes you reflect a bit afterwards, especially if you’re at a stage of marriage similar to that portrayed here. The one where things are so different than they once were, and you find yourself wondering if this is all there is.

Audience Rating: M, more for age and life experience than anything else. Teenagers, even college-aged kids, will just not have the life experience to get this. And note that I did say “bawdy” above. You don’t want to be explaining some of the references here (especially the last line in the book, which is one of those downright, laugh-out-loud hilarious ones) to your kids.

The Collaborator of Bethlehem (Review)

I seem to be attracted to first novels, so when I saw the New York Times Book Review quote, “An astonishing first novel” on the cover of The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees, I picked it up for a look. A note in the front pages intrigued me, so I decided to substitute this book for Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as my “place” selection in the What’s In a Name challenge. The intriguing note? “All the crimes in this book are based on real events in Bethlehem. Though identities and some circumstances have been changed, the killers really killed this way, and those who died are dead just the same.”

As first novels go, The Collaborator of Bethlehem isn’t bad. It’s not in the league of Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian or Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, but it’s good, and I’m not sorry I bought it. The main character is Omar Yussef, a 50-something history teacher at a U.N. school in the West Bank. He used to drink heavily (despite being Muslim) and, as a result, feels his age daily. Because Omar Yussef tries to teach students to study issues and form their own opinions, he’s not the most popular figure with the local Palestinian activists; indeed, the headmaster of his school would like for him to resign keep things running smoothly. Omar Yussef refuses to give the headmaster satisfaction until one of his favorite former students, a Palestinian Christian now grown and with children of his own, is arrested for the murder of one of the leaders of the local Palestinian Martyrs Brigade. Omar Yussef knows his former student must be innocent, and takes a leave of absence from his job to investigate the murder on his own.

The plot is complex, the characters are very human, and the ending is not necessarily a happy one, but the story is compelling and kept my interest. The author is the former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time, and the depth of his knowledge and research showed. I learned a lot about the intricacies of the situation in Israel and the occupied areas.

Quality Rating: 8 out of 10. Well worth reading, though not what I would call a classic.

Audience Rating: Probably not for too young an audience. One of the deaths in the book is staged to look like a rape-murder, and there is a scene I can’t reveal without spoiling the book, that would probably frighten younger kids. High school kids could probably handle it, though I’m not sure they’d find the book as interesting as someone who has grown up through the various stages of Mideast conflict.

The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters (Review)

I bought The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters by Chip Kidd for three unrelated reasons. First, it had “monkeys” in the title, and the monkeys included in the cover illustration were cute, even if they did look a little on the sad side. Second, since I essentially grew up on college campuses as the kid of a single-parent college prof turned administrator, how could I resist “A Novel in Two Semesters”? Finally, I liked the design of the page side of the book (the side opposite the spine). Looking at it with the cover down, you can read “GOOD IS DEAD” on the edges of the pages. Looking at it with the cover up, you can read “DO YOU SEE?” on the same pages. Very cool, and it should not have surprised me that a course in graphic design played a big role in the story and the author is himself a graphic designer.

I finished this book several days ago and am still trying to decide if I liked it, not a usual reaction for me. If I like a book, I keep reading. If I don’t, I stop. I never stopped reading this one, but once I finished I felt, and still feel, very ambivalent. Parts of the story were outright hilarious, especially given my perspective of having spent many years in the company of pompous professors, lascivious lecturers, and other campus characters. The problem was, I think, that I never developed any attachment to the narrator and his leading lady, one Himillsy Dodd (accent on the “ill”). The story was set in the late 1950s, but the main characters seemed somewhat out of place and time. I so never warmed up to them that I now find myself feeling guilty for thinking, after the fact, that if the narrator had not rescued Hims (as he called her) from the drunken frat brother near the end of the term (and novel), would I have been upset? I feel guilty that there’s a part of me that thought she had it coming.

Quality Rating (on Annie’s 10-point scale): 5, because I still sort of feel as if maybe I should have liked it more even though I really didn’t.

Audience Rating: Definitely for mature audiences. Though there’s nothing in the description on the back of the book or in the front pages that would so indicate, there’s material here that I would not have wanted my kids to read before they were, say, college age, or at least late high school.