"Fin and Lady," by Cathleen Schine

Cathleen Schine, whose “The Three Weissmanns of Westport” I posted about on 4/11/10, has a new novel out: “Fin and Lady” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), and it is just as lively and engrossing as the earlier novel. (She has also written several other novels.) Both are full of life, full of interactions, meditations, surprises. In “Fin and Lady,” an eleven-year-old boy is orphaned and goes to live with his glamorous, fun but restless and moody, older half-sister in Greenwich Village in New York in 1964 (but it somehow seems like a slightly earlier era, perhaps because the expectations for women were still so restricted...). It is a huge change for young Fin, who has not only lost his parents but also his roots on a dairy farm in rural Connecticut. Lady is warm and welcoming to Fin, admirably seeming not to hesitate for one moment to take on the sudden responsibility of being guardian of a young boy she has only met a couple of times, but they make an odd pairing, and they know so little about each other’s very different lives. Lady isn’t sure how to be a guardian/big sister/substitute mother, and Fin has to learn how to adapt to the new situation. He is in fact remarkably adaptable (the one thing I find not entirely believable is the swiftness with which he does adapt, although perhaps it is because he has no choice, and because Lady is genuinely loving if an atypical “parent”), and comes to love Lady profoundly. He also finds that she is unsure about what is important in her life, and her constant need to do new things, go to new places, be with new people is a sign of this. She wants to marry, she says, but she seems at the same time to resist this kind of commitment, and she keeps several suitors dangling. These suitors develop the habit of all visiting Lady and Fin, sometimes at the same time, each hoping she will make up her mind in his favor. I don’t want to reveal more of the story than this, but there are many plot developments, and they definitely kept me glued to the book. There is a bittersweet ending, but one that readers can accept and even celebrate some aspects of. These two unusual characters, Fin and Lady, and their touching if unusual relationship, are the central draw of this engaging novel.

Jane Austen on England's ten-pound note!

I opened my newspaper a couple of days ago to see my beloved Jane Austen's face on a sketch of a future British ten-pound note -- hurray! The new bank note will appear in 2016 or 2017. Apparently there had been many complaints about the lack of women on English money; fortunately, "The Bank of England chose the chronicler of 18th century English country life as the new face of the note, bowing to critics who complained that the venerable institution was ignoring women on their currency" (San Francisco Chronicle, 7/25/13, p. A6). It seems to me that the issue of equal treatment of women, although a very important one that readers of this blog know I am passionately positive about, is not the main one here; the main point is that next to Shakespeare, Austen is the greatest English writer ever, and should be honored as such. In any case, I am thrilled to learn this news.

"Where She Went," by Kate Walbert

More Kate Walbert! As I wrote on 7/24/13, I so admire Walbert’s fiction. Because I enjoyed the three books I have already written about, I looked for and read her earlier book, “Where She Went: Stories” (Sarabande, 1998). This collection of stories is really, like Walbert’s “Our Kind,” a “novel in stories,” although not labeled as such. The first half of the book tells the stories of a mother, Marion, and the second half tells the stories of Marion’s daughter, Rebecca. But in fact both halves include both women’s stories. The stories start in the 1950s, and move back and forth through the years up to 1992. Marion escaped her own background in “the middle of the country, near a Great Lake few could remember the name of” (great line! Even though I lived in Michigan for many years, I still can't remember the names of all the Great Lakes....), moved to New York, and married a man she had only known for a short time. After all, at that period in our history, most women’s main goal was to find a husband. Marion’s husband Robert is a good man, but they are very different. His job took them to many cities over the years – Rochester, Norfolk, Baltimore, Tokyo, and many more. Every time, Marion tried to establish herself, decorate the new house, and build a new life. Her daughter Rebecca, who came of age in the 1970s, was determined to lead a more independent life, as were so many young women at that time. Intriguingly, she too lived in many different places, but in her case it was because of her restlessness and her longing to find out what kind of life she really wanted. Marion and her mother have a loving but somewhat wary relationship. Marion encourages Rebecca to do the traveling and have the freedom that she, Marion, wishes she had had. So Rebecca is sometimes torn between feeling she is doing what she is doing for herself, and wondering how much of her behavior is based on trying to fulfill her mother’s dreams. Like “Our Kind,” this book – without being preachy – clearly focuses on the dilemmas faced by (American) women in the second half of the twentieth century (and of course some of these dilemmas continue now). My only small reservation about this book is that occasionally it tends to get sidetracked with rather dreamlike, poorly integrated descriptions of the various locations and scenes. Because -- captured by the author's more recent books and wanting more -- I am reading “backward” in Walbert’s career (this is the earliest-published of the books I have read), naturally the writing here is slightly less accomplished than in the later books. Even so, the writing is generally beautiful and insightful, and this book, like the others by Walbert that I have written about, is well worth reading.

"Our Kind," by Kate Walbert

I am increasingly convinced that Kate Walbert is an exceptional writer of fiction. I wrote admiringly about two of her novels: “A Short History of Women” on 6/13/12 and “The Gardens of Kyoto” just a few days ago on 7/13/13. “Our Kind: A Novel in Stories” (Scribner, 2004) is also astoundingly well written. The interrelated stories are about a group of women living in a small town that could be anywhere in the U.S.A., over a period of time roughly the second half of the twentieth century. The specific times are vague, but these are women born about 1930, by my calculations. The book seems to embody some of the assertions of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” (1963), the early feminist book about how the majority of women were staying at home as they were “supposed to” and quietly going a little crazy, wondering why raising children and running a home just wasn’t fulfilling enough. The women in “Our Kind” don’t explicitly talk about such feelings, except in a late chapter when Viv remembers how as a scholarship girl at a Seven Sisters college, she was encouraged by an admired professor to go on for graduate school, but gave it all up to get married. The women in general have been happy at times, but their husbands often leave or die, and their children move on, and then they wonder what to do next. Their greatest comfort seems to be each other’s company. This book is both somewhat hazy about exact dates and plots, and very concrete and thus evocative of the lives of these women. Happiness and sadness are interwoven, as the women get older, lose family, lose their health, drink too much, in some cases see their children struggle and even die, yet the women keep on, always keep on. To me this is a very sad novel about the waste of so much talent and energy, but also a positive novel about the power of female friendship and support of each other. Walbert is so insightful about women’s lives, yet without being didactic. A lovely, wistful book that thoroughly captivated me. Do put Kate Walbert's fiction on your "must-read" list.

"Shakespeare's Kitchen," by Lore Segal

The name of the author Lore Segal is familiar to me, yet I cannot remember what I have read by her. Perhaps, a long time ago, her early novel, “Her First American”? She also writes children’s books, so perhaps I read some to my daughter when she was young? In any case, I have now just read her “Shakespeare’s Kitchen” (The New Press, 2007), a collection of short stories that reads very much like a novel, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book has nothing to do with “the” Shakespeare; one of the three main characters is named Leslie Shakespeare. The others are his wife Eliza and his mistress Ilka. They, along with most of the other characters, work for or are connected to a think tank in Connecticut, the Concordance Institute. The novel is about the small and big events in the lives of this group of colleagues and friends. Even more, as the author points out in an “Author’s Note,” she was “thinking about our need not only for family and sexual love and friendship but for a ‘set’ to belong to: the circle made of friends, acquaintances, and the people one knows.” I think this is a wonderful, fascinating theme; as Segal says, most of us have, or want to have, such a network of people to be part of. In this book, she shows us the daily interactions, gatherings, connections of this particular group of friends; many of these interactions take place in the “Shakespeare’s kitchen” of the title. Most of the action takes place over a period of perhaps 20 years, with a bit of looking back at the end of the book. There is love, sex, work, conflict, kindness, conversation, illness, deception, reconciliation, gossip, intrusions from the outside world, and much more. There is, too, a bit of humor, even gentle satire, about the think tank and its members. This is a very human and completely engrossing book; I highly recommend it.

"Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules," edited by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is a funny, original, insightful writer. The CD I recently listened to, “Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules” (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2005) (Sedaris’ titles are usually quirky) shows his philanthropic side; the five stories in this collection were not written by Sedaris but rather selected, edited, and introduced by him. The stories on this audiobook are taken from a larger collection in a book of the same name that Sedaris also edited. He reads one story himself, and the others are read by writers and actors, including one by the wonderful actor Mary-Louise Parker. Sedaris published this audiobook “to support 826NYC, a nonprofit tutoring center in Brooklyn, New York, designed to help students ages six to eighteen develop their writing skills through free writing workshops…and one-on-one help with homework.” This organization, I happen to know, is an offshoot of writer Dave Eggers’ “826 Valencia,” here in San Francisco; the original San Francisco site for this wonderful and worthy project has inspired several others. The stories – one each by Patricia Highsmith, Tobias Wolff, Charles Baxter, Amy Hempel, and Akhil Sharma (what a marvelous selection of writers!) – are excellent, with a slight tilt to the eccentric and gloomy, and the readings do them justice. The only thing that seems a bit strange to me is that the label on the copy I borrowed from my local library says “Fiction, Children”; while this audiobook benefits children, the stories themselves are definitely adult-oriented (not as in "adults only," meaning sex and violence, but as in -- see above -- at times rather dark and gloomy). For readers who listen to audiobooks in their cars, as I do, or elsewhere, this is a short, well-chosen collection. That it benefits a good cause is a bonus.

"Mother Daughter Me," by Katie Hafner

Reading-wise, fiction has always been my first love by far. Novels, short stories are my reading life’s blood. But once in a while I enjoy a good memoir, and the one I just finished is a powerful one. Katie Hafner’s “Mother Daughter Me” (Random House, 2013) tells the story of her decision to invite her mother, Helen, to move from San Diego to San Francisco and live with her and her teenaged daughter Zoe. Helen has lived for over 30 years with Norm, but Norm’s daughter has just put him in a nursing home. Katie hopes that this three-generation household will bring her and her daughter closer to her mother, but unfortunately it doesn’t work out that way. In fact, the living together turns out quite badly. This should not have been a surprise for Katie, as her mother was a very neglectful, difficult parent, due largely to her alcoholism but also to her own unloving parents. When Helen and Katie’s father divorced, Katie and her sister Sarah went back and forth between them, and when Katie was ten years old, her father won custody of the girls, based on the mother’s binge drinking, promiscuity, and inability to maintain an adequate household for her daughters. Over the years, the mother and daughters have had a rocky but continuing relationship, and Katie feels that she and her mother -- who no longer drinks much -- are now quite close. Now over the course of less than a year, they realize the living-together experiment is a failure, despite therapy and other efforts to make it work. Finally, though, they reach a kind of rapprochement, with Helen living separately but nearby. This last piece of information may seem like a spoiler, and perhaps it is, but really the fascination of the memoir is the back story and the process, rather than the details of the conclusion. Hafner, a journalist and author of six nonfiction books, is a good writer, and expertly moves back and forth between the present and the past. We also learn about her own marriages, one mostly good and one bad, and her current far better relationship. A perhaps trivial but extra attraction of the story for me is that it takes place in San Francisco, and in an area of San Francisco that I know well (because my daughter went to school there for thirteen years); I can picture the streets, houses, hills, sights, and restaurants of the area; I also recognize some of the local personalities she mentions. Finally, an important feature of this memoir is that Hafner strikes just the right note: she is candid about what she has been through, but she is also thoughtful and tries to understand the reasons for her mother’s neglect, to understand ways in which others were responsible as well, and to be open about her own bad choices too. And of course the topic of mothers and daughters is always of interest to me and to almost any woman; many of the recognitions relate to fathers and sons as well -- in other words, to anyone who is part of the tangle of family life.

"The Innocents," by Francesca Segal

I am both attracted to and skeptical of novels based on other novels, especially those by great authors. Sometimes these new versions are wonderfully reimagined tributes to the original; sometimes they are just a botch, making one feel they are either cynically or cluelessly riding on the coattails of far better novels and writers. Fortunately, “The Innocents” (Voice/Hyperion, 2012), by Francesca Segal, is a worthy contemporary version of Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence.” Of course it is not at the same level as Wharton's work, but it is an excellent novel in its own right. Although set in the present, it retains a whiff of the late 19th century of Wharton’s work, because the characters all live in a tightly connected group of family and friends, in this case all Jewish, in an affluent suburb of London called Temple Fortune. This community is as close as the high society of Wharton’s New York. The reversal of the two cities in the two novels is interesting, and the Ellen/Ellie character also reverses directions in her going away and returning. Speaking of the characters: the names of several characters in “The Innocents” have echoes of Wharton’s characters; for example, Newland Archer becomes Adam Newman, and Ellen Olenska becomes Ellie Schneider. Several other characters are clearly modeled after specific characters in the original novel; part of the pleasure of reading this new novel is making those connections with the original. The main story replicates Wharton's story quite closely, at least in its bones; there are of course minor adjustments for a different time period, and other small changes. This novel, to its credit, is enjoyable both for its reconstruction of the original and for its own self. One would not need to have read “The Age of Innocence” to admire and enjoy this new novel, although having done so certainly adds to the pleasure of the experience. As a quick summary and/or reminder of the plot: Newland/Adam is part of a close traditional and prosperous society, and is engaged to the very suitable May/Rachel. But then May/Rachel’s cousin Ellen/Ellie returns from a long time abroad, beautiful and trailing scandal behind her. As a (future) family member and a lawyer, Newland/Adam wants to help, but before he knows it, is deeply in love with Ellen/Ellie. They admit their mutual attraction, but Ellen/Ellie, out of loyalty to her cousin May/Rachel, refuses to allow Newland/Adam to leave May/Rachel. There is much tension, several side-but-related plot lines, and finally a bittersweet resolution. In the course of reading each novel, one also is given fascinating and detailed insights into these two close-knit, affluent societies, societies which have much in common despite being divided by a century or so, and by the Atlantic Ocean. Despite my initial skepticism, I was very much won over by this beautifully written novel, full of realistic characters, evocative of a specific community and way of living, and providing the tension of a classic love triangle in which there is a fourth side: a family/community/commitment that is as real and compelling as any character.

"Tapestry of Fortunes," by Elizabeth Berg

I have posted about the writer Elizabeth Berg before. On 2/8/10, I gave her as one of several examples of “middlebrow” writers, not of the very top literary quality, but the writer of solid, well-crafted, satisfying novels. On 12/21/11, I said that I had read and enjoyed many of her novels over the years, wrote about one of her novels, “Range of Motion,” and praised its insights into women characters and their lives, and praised the occasionally lovely writing in that novel. I have just finished “Tapestry of Fortunes” (Random House, 2013), and it is, as I have come to rely on, an enjoyable, satisfying, and entertaining book. It could be labeled, as some of her other work could be labeled, “feel good” writing; there is much about positive thinking, much advice about how best to live. The main character, Cece, is in fact a motivational speaker, but in the way of such books, isn’t always sure how best to live her own life. Cece has recently lost her best friend to cancer, and is considering retiring from writing and lecturing, as well as moving out of her house. She suddenly receives a letter from an old boyfriend, one she has not seen since she was a young woman, saying he is thinking of her. These factors come together in a move to a house shared with other women, a pause in her career, renewed communication with the old boyfriend, and a road trip. I won’t tell you how it all turns out, but you can perhaps imagine. This novel is a bit too self-help oriented, and a bit too predictable, for my tastes, yet I must say it was enjoyable in a not too demanding, “good read” way. I love Berg’s focus on relationships, especially those between women friends. I also appreciate her demonstrating that romance is still possible in late middle age and beyond (Cece’s widowed mother begins a romantic relationship during the course of the story as well). Not exactly a “beach read” (see my post of 7/1/13), but close. One postscript: I see from the book cover's back flap that Berg lives part of the year here in San Francisco, which (irrationally, I know!) increases my favorable view of, and feeling of connection to, her fiction.

"The Gardens of Kyoto," by Kate Walbert

When I wrote (6/13/12) about Kate Walbert’s 2009 novel “A Short History of Women,” I noted that despite the title, I was not initially drawn to the book, but once I read it, I liked it very much. I have just had essentially the same experience with her 2001 novel, “The Gardens of Kyoto” (Scribner). But once I started reading it, I liked it even more than the other novel. It is,in fact, a wonderful, very original novel. The main character, Ellen, looks back on her life forty years earlier, during and after the WWII years; because the narrative moves back and forth in time, it is (as clearly intended by the author) at first a bit difficult to keep track of the varying characters, plot lines, and perspectives. So there is a sense of mystery, even foreboding at times. The novel begins with the line “I had a cousin, Randall, killed on Iwo Jima.” Ellen and Randall had a very special relationship from childhood, being two very bright and nonconforming children and adolescents. That he died at age 17 is the tragedy of the book. But there are other tragedies, other deaths, and other terrible results of the war, not only for those who fought, but for those who loved them. The main characters are Ellen’s and Randall’s family, but there are other important characters, such as another soldier Ellen fell in love with after Randall’s death, one who is charming but damaged. There are also secrets about Randall’s family and parentage, which involve bringing in another character, Ruby, and her plot line. Various other topical issues arise, including domestic violence and slavery (Randall’s house had been a place for slaves on the underground railway to the north to stay). But these never feel didactic; they are organic parts of the story. The reason for the title, “The Gardens of Kyoto,” is too complicated to explain here, but suffice it to say that it is related to the war and to what is truly important in life, but has only a peripheral place in the novel's sites and plot lines. Ellen and Randall especially are compelling characters, and readers are drawn into their stories. Reading this novel provides an intense sense of being immersed in the drama of life. Most of all, it is beautifully written. I highly recommend this novel.

"The Suitors," by Cecile David-Weill

“The Suitors” (Other Press, 2012, originally published in French in 2009), by Cecile David-Weill, is so much fun! It is as light as a French meringue; it could practically float away. The reader needs to do nothing but sit back and enjoy it. This novel, translated from the French, is well written and delicious. It tells of two sisters who are dismayed that their parents plan to sell their beautiful summer house in the south of France. The sisters decide to invite various men to the house who may be candidates for a rich husband for one or the other of them, a husband who could then buy the house and preserve it in the family. But this flimsy, even half-hearted plot is merely an excuse for an extended paean to the house and to the very proper and very upper-class life and entertainment that the two daughters value and sentimentalize. The descriptions of the house, L’Agapanthe, and its surroundings and rituals are organized into chapters describing three consecutive weekends. For each weekend, there is a list of the characters (family, visitors, staff), the rooms where guests stay, the elaborate menus for each meal, the schedule for the weekend, and other relevant information. These beautifully ornate lists (just one feature of the aesthetically pleasing format and production of this book) are useful, but also serve to make concrete the extensive planning and traditions that accompany these weekends, invitations to which are most prized. As I said, this novel is mostly frou-frou; one doesn’t get the sense that the stakes are very high for anyone, and that makes the novel untaxing and enjoyable to read. The one serious note, one that I could relate to (on an entirely different scale!), was the attachment of the family to a summer home and all it symbolizes for them. There is something so family-oriented, so memory-making, about vacation places where it seems that all is right with the world. In my family’s case, the place was a humble summer cottage (probably a twentieth the size of L’Agapanthe!) on a beautiful lake in northern Michigan, one where the family gathered every summer in various combinations, and one where I went for a couple of weeks almost every summer even long after I moved to California, as did most of the family. My parents themselves had moved to California, but they kept the cottage for many years afterward. I loved that my daughter spent idyllic time there with her grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, as well as the neighbors’ grandkids, every summer. Both kids and adults swam, went out on the boat, took excursions, ate the wonderful summer fruits and vegetables (and fudge!) of Northern Michigan, played, read, talked, lay in the sun, took day trips, and generally had a lovely time. I thank my parents for having this cottage and for welcoming us there every summer.

Barbara Pym's Centenary

This post is dedicated to my friend B., who loves Barbara Pym's novels as much as I do.... I have mentioned writer Barbara Pym two or three times in this blog, but not in any detail. I am prompted to do so now by a 6/23/13 essay by Laura Shapiro in the New York Times Book Review, titled “Pride and Perseverance,” on the occasion of the centenary of Pym’s birth. This wonderful British novelist first wrote “six modestly successful novels” but in 1963, her publisher declined to publish more. Perhaps she seemed anachronistic in the 1960s; as Shapiro puts it so well: “Pym specialized in a minor-key world far from fiction’s cutting edge. Her characters tend to be unmarried women in sensible shoes, fond of musing over Anglican hymns and scraps of English poetry. They help out at the church jumble sale, offer cups of Ovaltine at moments of late-night crisis….” Pym herself, as well as her loyal readers, was shocked by this turn of events, and she was a discouraged writer for many years. It was only 1977 Times Literary Supplement statements by famed British writers Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil that Pym was the most underrated author that brought her back to the spotlight. Then her recent books were published, her older books were reprinted, and she was interviewed and celebrated. Unfortunately she died three years later of cancer. It is terrible that she had those 12 years of obscurity, and that she died so soon after her work was published again, but it is a great thing that she lived to see her work rediscovered and celebrated. I am personally a huge fan of her novels, having read all of them, some several times. They have great titles: “Excellent Women,” “A Glass of Blessings,” “No Fond Return of Love,” “The Sweet Dove Died,” and “An Unsuitable Attachment,” to name a few; there are about a dozen in all. The low-key aspect of her topics does not indicate low-key writing. Her work is witty, in an unassuming, musing way. She draws her characters sharply, with details and conversations that reveal much in a few words. Her understanding of human motivations and self-delusions approaches that of the great Jane Austen. Her novels, like Austen’s, are often labeled “domestic” dramas, and although in a sense that is accurate, it doesn’t begin to show how whole worlds can be found in domestic scenes. Sometimes reading Pym makes me laugh out loud at her humorous perceptivity. Pym’s women characters are sometimes sad, but good at cheering themselves up, finding ways to encourage themselves, often through helping others (but not in a goody-goody way). One of the later works, "Quartet in Autumn," is definitely darker than the others, as it takes a close look at ageing. I find myself somewhat at a loss to convey the unique and compelling qualities of this writer’s fiction. I strongly urge readers to just find and read one of her novels; I suggest “Excellent Women” to start, but really any of the novels will do.

"Little Sinners," by Karen Brown

I feel happy when I think I have “discovered” a “new” writer whose work I find I like very much. I had never heard of the writer Karen Brown before, but when I saw her small collection of short stories, “Little Sinners” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) on the “new book shelf” of my university library, something told me to pick it up and check it out. Perhaps it was the contrast between its modest, university-press appearance, its author's common name, and, on the other hand, the provocative title. This book won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, and I can see why. (Of course a book that has won a prize and been published cannot be said to need “discovering” by me, but the work is just new enough, and as far as I can tell, not reviewed in the major newspapers and magazines, that I will preserve the feeling of having “discovered” Brown, at least for myself!) The stories are a fascinating blend of the very concrete and the slightly mysterious. The situations seem both real and just beyond one’s understanding. They are psychologically intriguing, character-focused, yet with compelling plots. Most of the stories take place in East Coast suburbs and small towns, some of them with working class roots, some not. There are many secrets and much pain. Yet the overall feeling of the book is not all sad and depressing; there are notes of hope. Even the characters in bad situations don’t necessarily seem desperate, and in fact sometimes seem curious to see what will happen next. Some of the stories have an elegiac tone. The overriding feeling, though, is of matters strange and haunting. Throughout, I had the sense that I was in very good hands, and that Karen Brown is a writer to watch out for. I hope to read more by her.

"The True Secret of Writing," by Natalie Goldberg

Almost any writer, or would-be writer, of the past twenty-five years has read or at least knows of Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones.” That book is a guide for writers, but more than that, it is a guide for life. Goldberg has written many books since then; her new book, “The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language” (Atria, 2013), is a kind of update of her first book. The organizing structure of her book is recounting how she runs her “True Secret of Writing” intensive workshops, which are also retreats in the tradition of Zen Buddhism as interpreted by Goldberg, a longtime Zen student who is also influenced by her Jewish heritage. These retreats are held in Taos, New Mexico, and are Goldberg’s own amalgam of meditation, walking, hiking, doing simple chores, keeping silence for big lengths of time, reading, speaking, and of course writing. Two boiled-down summaries of Goldberg’s directions are “Sit. Walk. Write” and “Shut up and write” (stop putting it off, and do it – advice that I, for one, sorely need to follow!). There are many examples of how the days go, and stories of individual attendees, some of whom have become longtime friends of Goldberg’s. Along the way we get excerpts from some of the author’s favorite books and poetry (an eclectic selection, also listed in a useful appendix), as well as from her students’ writing. Although Goldberg’s students mainly write fiction or memoir, and I mainly write academic articles and books, I found much inspiration and even useful specific suggestions in this book. But more useful than anything specific was an immersion in the life of writers, and Goldberg’s bedrock belief in the power of writing. I am not tempted to do one of her workshops or retreats (all that sitting with my legs crossed and meditating…I admire those who do it, but it is probably not for me…), but I am glad I read the book, and feel I both learned from it and was inspired and energized by it.

"Island Girls," by Nancy Thayer

It’s the summer! Time for summer reading, otherwise known as “beach reads.” By now I have a pretty good sense of how beachy I want my beach reads to be. They have to be light, undemanding, and full of stories of family, friends, leisure time, and romantic relationships. Groups gathered in summer vacation places, especially those on oceans or lakes -- in other words, literally beach reads -- are bonuses. But I want even my “summer reading” to be well written. Not necessarily "high" literature, but reasonably well written. I just read a novel that almost perfectly fulfills all these requirements. I have read several novels by Nancy Thayer over the years, ever since I read her second novel, “Three Women at the Water’s Edge,” soon after it was published in 1981. Thayer’s work is reliably enjoyable. The one I have just read is “Island Girls” (Ballantine, 2013), and it was great fun to read. A charming and successful man dies, and in his will states that his three daughters from three different marriages must live together in his Nantucket house for a whole summer before they can sell the house and share the profits. Because of various resentments about the several marriages and child custody arrangements, the sisters are not at all close, so there is some grumbling about this stipulation in the will. But they all move into the house, and gradually become closer. There is much about careers, families, and of course romances. All of this, of course, is in the beautiful, irresistible setting of Nantucket. What can I say but that the novel is great fun and very satisfying, a nearly perfect example of “summer reading” and a delicious “beach read.”