RIP Diana Athill

Flipping through radio stations about a month ago, breezing through a little bit of BBC News, I suddenly heard the name Diana Athill, and gasped as I realized that this great English author and editor had died (on 1/23/19). Although she was 101 years old, I was shocked; somehow, as I enjoyed and savored her wonderful books, especially her memoirs, over the years, I had come to believe at some level that she would never die. Athill was a respected, even legendary, editor for the publisher Andre Deutsch in London for 50 years, working with such writers as Jean Rhys, Philip Roth, John Updike, Simone de Beauvoir, V.S. Naipaul, Margaret Atwood, and many more. In later years she wrote a series of memoirs, including “Stet,” “Somewhere Towards the End,” and “Alive, Alive Oh!” (See my blogposts of 3/5/10, 6/9/12, and 2/11/16 about Athill and her work.) Her writing provides a fascinating and revealing window into her literary life, as well as her complicated and in some ways unconventional personal life; this writing is wonderful, candid, vivid and generous. Athill was a strong, independent woman, and wrote fearlessly. She was, among other things, a great model of how to age; she was honest about the ups and downs of that process as she was about everything else. I admired her greatly, and her writing gave me great pleasure. I am sad that there will be no more books from her.

"A River of Stars," by Vanessa Hua

I read journalist/short story writer/novelist Vanessa Hua’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle (my longtime and well-loved “local” newspaper) every week and enjoy it. She writes about San Francisco, family, childhood, culture, ethnicity, gender issues, and much more. She is also the author of a collection of short stories, “Deceit and Other Possibilities,” about which I posted on 2/21/17. Those stories were gripping and somewhat shocking at times; they were different than much of the literature about immigrants, and especially Chinese American immigrants, that I had read before. Now I have read Hua’s next book, her first novel, “A River of Stars” (Ballantine, 2018), which also focuses on Chinese American immigrants, and which paints a detailed and fascinating picture of the lives of the main characters in China, Los Angeles, and – mainly – San Francisco’s Chinatown and surroundings. The main character, Scarlett, has been sent from China to Los Angeles by her boss and lover, Boss Yeung, where she stays at a house for pregnant Chinese women who want their children to become American citizens by reason of birth there. Other characters include Mama Fang, proprietor of that house; Daisy, a teenaged pregnant woman also at the house; Uncle Lo, Boss Yeung’s best friend but also nemesis; Viann, Boss Cheung’s daughter; and a large cast of characters in San Francisco, where Scarlett and Daisy end up in hiding, as a result of complicated events. These characters are vividly drawn, and we care about what happens to them. There are many themes here: the difficulties of immigration to the U.S.; the still inferior role of Chinese women in many ways, especially for those not wealthy; the class system in China; poverty; Chinese men’s desire for sons; the ways that struggling immigrants, new and longtime, both help each other and sometimes distrust each other; the ways that motherhood can transform women’s lives with great love, but also complicate their lives beyond measure; the ways that cultures mix in the U.S. Hua does not beat readers over the head with these themes, but they are very evident at every turn.

"The Friend," by Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez’s novel “The Friend” (Riverhead, 2018) will be a (complicated) joy for most readers to savor, but will be of extra interest to those who love dogs. The main character’s longtime dear friend and mentor dies and leaves his huge and unruly Great Dane to her. She lives in a small apartment in New York where tenants are not allowed to have pets, and although initially she thinks it will be impossible to keep the dog, she reluctantly gives it a try (not being able to find anyone else to take him). One by one she overcomes the many obstacles to having a dog, especially such a large one, in her situation. The main character is a writer and a writing teacher, and somewhat depressed. Gradually she becomes very fond of the dog, and he of her, apparently, and she feels very protective toward him. He also eases her depression. She is reminded of the poet Rilke’s definition of love: “two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other.” Soon she is building her life and schedule around him. Nunez writes with engaging detail about her main character’s relationship with the dog. One such detail that caught my attention was that the main character realizes that the dog was used to being read to, and so she starts to read to him, a happy experience for both of them. In the process of telling the story, the author takes some literary side trips, bringing in tales of the dog’s deceased owner and the literary conversation he and the book’s main character used to have. About now, readers of this post may be envisioning a sort of inspiring, heartwarming, perhaps overly sentimental paean to dogs and to human-dog friendships, with a literary twist. Certainly those aspects are there, but this book is much more complex than that. This short novel is a bit quirky, and doesn’t immediately reach out to invite the reader in, but it soon offers a thoughtful, original story that will, I think, engage many readers.

"Evenings in Paradise: Stories," by Lucia Berlin

Lucia Berlin’s posthumous collection of short stories, “A Manual for Cleaning Women” (2015) was a huge success both critically and popularly. I wrote about it here (2/20/16) with great admiration and enthusiasm. Now I have read an even more recent posthumous collection by the same author, “Evenings in Paradise” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), and am equally bowled over by the quality of the stories: the writing, the insights, the slices of real life, the fearlessness. These stories, like those in the earlier book, are largely drawn from the author’s own tumultuous and often very difficult life: her brilliance and talent were hampered at various times in her life by poverty, alcoholism, and failed marriages and relationships. She managed to overcome these obstacles and became a great writer and professor; in addition, she raised four children, mostly on her own. As I wrote about her earlier collection, her stories are bursting with life, vivid, gritty, and sublime. They take place in multiple settings and at various times in the usual main character’s (i.e., Berlin’s) life. I of course especially liked reading the stories set in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco, “my” territory, but also liked and savored them all, whether set in Albuquerque, New York, or Europe, among other sites. Readers will admire the main character’s -- and the author’s -- courage, but also her joie de vivre. Highly recommended.