"His Favorites," by Kate Walbert

This book made me sick. Almost literally. I picked up “His Favorites” (Scribner, 2018) because it is by the wonderful Kate Walbert, author of, among other novels, the beautifully written and compelling “A Short History of Women” (see my post of 6/13/12) and the equally terrific “The Gardens of Kyoto” (see my post of 7/13/13). “His Favorites” too is well written, but the subject matter just made acid rise in my throat. In order to explain, I need to write what is a spoiler, so if anyone is about to read the book, perhaps you don’t want to read further. There is a sad accident at the beginning of the book, and the reader thinks that is the main focus. But after the accident, the teenaged girl who caused it goes away to an elite boarding school, and then the real story becomes evident, and the meaning of the title becomes evident as well. It is the classic story of a charming male in his thirties who first grooms and then seduces a teenaged girl (not the first young student he has seduced and abused). In this case, he is a teacher – the kind of teacher who is good-looking, intriguing, attentive, poetic, and with whom many of the girls are a little in love, which he encourages. As the main story became clear to me, I almost stopped reading. This kind of story is so much in the news these days (but has existed forever) and is, as I said in my first sentence, sickening. I applaud the author for writing a convincing version of this all-too-common story, and I know we need to know more about the epidemic of sexual abuse, read about it, talk about it, do something about it. In this MeToo moment, there is a little bit of hope for change. But there are also so many related matters in the news and about our national political leaders (see the recent Kavanaugh-for-Supreme-Court-justice hearings in the United States, for a major example) that one feels discouraged all over again. Because I trusted the author, I continued reading. I respect the author and the book, but I hated reading it.

"We All Love the Beautiful Girls," by Joanne Proulx

I mentioned (11/11/18) partly choosing to read the novel “A Hundred Small Lessons” because it was set in Brisbane, Australia, a city that I visited a few years ago. Similarly, I picked up Joanne Proulx’s novel “We All Love the Beautiful Girls” (Grand Central, 2017) partly because the story takes place in Ottawa, Canada, which I visited a few months ago for (despite my Canadian heritage) the first time. I soon became caught up in this story of pain, anger, revenge, disconnection, as well as love, connection, reconnection, and a modicum of redemption. At the beginning of the story (very early, so the following are not spoilers), the Slate family suffers two terrible losses. One is financial: Michael discovers that his business partner and close friend Peter, whom he has always trusted absolutely, has stolen his share of the business, and therefore his and Mia’s life savings. Then, even worse, their teenaged son Finn passes out in the snow after too much (uncharacteristic) indulgence in alcohol and drugs at his friend Eli’s house; he lives, but suffers physical health consequences. The Slate family is closely entwined with two families – Peter’s and Eli’s – and feels doubly betrayed by these families, with an exception for one member of Peter’s family: his daughter Frankie. Each of the family members – Michael, Mia, and Finn – responds to these twin catastrophes in different ways, some of them far from healthy. There is anger, there is vandalism, there is acting out – all understandable, but verging on dangerous, and none of it promotes healing. What does help, ultimately, is the surviving connections among some family members, notably between Finn and Frankie (Peter’s daughter) and between Mia and Helen (Peter’s wife). Despite all the painful events and feelings, the story keeps the reader engaged and, despite everything, a little bit hopeful. The hope is not a sentimental, kumbaya type, but rather a tentative, hard-earned version. Still, that is something.

Libraries!

There seems to have been a spate of books and articles about libraries lately. As readers of this blog know, I am a great admirer and lover of libraries (as you very probably are as well), so I am always happy to see tributes to libraries, information about libraries, pictures of libraries, and basically anything related to libraries. A book which is getting a lot of attention right now is Susan Orlean’s “The Library Book.” I haven’t read it yet, but I have read several reviews, and it is on my list to read. Also, the New York Times Book Review recently (10/21/18) had a two-page spread titled “In Praise of Libraries: More Than a Room Full of Books,” in which the editors asked several authors to write about a childhood library or other favorite library. The authors include Barbara Kingsolver, Curtis Sittenfeld, Amy Tan, and several others. Every one of them speaks with love and reverence of favorite libraries. The titles to their individual short pieces include “My Temple,” “If There’s a Heaven, It’s a Library,” and “Free Meant Freedom.” In several instances, one feels the authors believe that libraries saved their lives, and helped them become writers. I of course found this collection of short encomia to libraries very reasonable, and a great joy to read. A few days ago a friend posted on Facebook a photo of the gorgeous and historic British Museum Reading Room, and later I saw, also on Facebook, a photo of the great reading room of the University of Washington Library. Within a couple of days, there were all these – and more -- instances of references to, writing about, and photos of libraries, and it reminded me, once again, what precious and important and essential places libraries are, and how meaningful various libraries have -- individually and collectively -- been to me personally. Special thanks to my university library and to my beautiful local library!

"A Hundred Small Lessons," by Ashley Hay

To be honest, when reading a review of Ashley Hay's novel “A Hundred Small Lessons” (Atria, 2017), the thing that initially caught my attention was that it takes place in Brisbane, Australia. I went to Brisbane for a conference in 2014, and found it quite enchanting, with its beautiful river running through it, and its ferries and boats traversing and traveling the river. I still remember a lovely ride with my friend C. down the river on a ferry on a sparkling summer day. I don’t think I have read another novel set in Brisbane. But I was also intrigued by the novel’s story of two women who lived in the same house at different times. Lucy Kiss and her husband and baby move into a house that was recently vacated by Elsie, who is widowed, has become old and forgetful, and has moved into a nearby nursing home. Although they never meet, each is aware of the other, even seeing glimpses of the other, and each feels connected to the other. Certain secrets in the house connect the two. In fact, the house itself becomes a character, with its mysterious sounds, an attic with boxes of photographs, and more. I don’t mean these are supernatural or anything that cannot be explained, but the house has a feeling, an atmosphere, infused with the lives of its occupants past and present. The larger theme of the novel is that we all have, or can imagine having, other versions of our life that we could have lived. For women, often these possible versions have to do with choosing between, or trying to balance, work and adventure, on the one hand, and child-raising and domesticity, on the other. Elsie, for example, was content to be a stay-at-home wife and mother, whereas her daughter Elaine felt trapped when she followed in her mother’s path. Lucy feels torn as well. Lucy also imagines that there are other Lucys, other versions of herself, out there in the world or even nearby. There are impressions of spirits, of ghosts. There are intersections among lives, including when a former boyfriend of Lucy’s shows up and her husband becomes uneasy about the visit, because it reminds him that Lucy could have chosen another life. I like the layers of this novel, the connections, the reminders of what could have been, and of what might still be.

"The Victorian and the Romantic," by Nell Stevens

“The Victorian and the Romantic” (Doubleday, 2018), by Nell Stevens, is my kind of book! Its subtitle is “A Memoir, a Love Story, and a Friendship across Time,” and it is all of that. The author is a writer writing about a famous writer (Elizabeth Gaskell) who writes a famous biography of another, even more famous, writer: Charlotte Bronte. Gaskell and Bronte are two of my favorite writers, so of course I was drawn to this book. But I was both interested and hesitant, as I have been disappointed by some (but definitely not all) other books of this genre – books about the connections between a current writer and a writer from the past. This one comes through grandly, with much information about Gaskell, focused on her brief time in Rome, where she met her great soulmate, the American writer Charles Eliot Norton, who was seventeen years younger than she was. Gaskell was respectably if not particularly happily married, with four daughters, and there was never an explicitly sexual or romantic relationship between her and Norton, but she did consider him her great love. About half of the book is about Gaskell, and the other half about Stevens; we are given alternating chapters about the two. Part of Stevens’ story is about her PhD research on Gaskell; the other part is about her tumultuous, on again/off again relationship with her own soulmate, Max, a fellow writer. She seems to be very candid about the relationship and about her strong feelings of love and also of grief when the two are apart, geographically or otherwise. However, in her acknowledgments section, she includes this line: “To the man who is like and not like Max in this story…”, leaving this reader wondering how much was true and how much not. I have read enough memoirs to know that there is an element of subjectivity and selectivity in most memoirs, and that often certain disguises occur to save the feelings of those being described, so this acknowledgment is not shocking, but I still found it somewhat disconcerting. Finally, though, the point of the book is not the exact literal truth of any event, either in Gaskell’s life (which is somewhat fictionalized by Stevens) or Stevens’ own life, but in the emotional truths, and in the connections between the two writers (three, if you count Bronte).