"Heavy: An American Memoir," by Kiese Laymon

Kiese Laymon’s gripping, sad, revelatory book, “Heavy: An American Memoir” (Scribner, 2018) is the story of a black child and then man growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, and his going out into the world, needing to get away yet never forgetting his origins there. His life is fraught with discrimination, early sexual violence, fear, ambivalence, love, hate, and ambition, both in Jackson and in the northern cities where he had imagined that things would be better, less discriminatory, but found he had thought wrong in expecting that. The book is largely addressed to his mother, a professor and single parent, who Laymon addresses as “you.” Her main goal in life seems to be to keep him safe and to help him succeed. She is steeped in the civil rights movement and in teaching and writing and speaking about the condition of black people in the United States. She is both strong and yet vulnerable to unsuitable men and bad habits. Laymon loves her deeply but is also afraid of her at times, and afraid of disappointing her. Son and mother are very close, yet they each have major and often destructive secrets from the other, as each tries to protect the other. His grandmother is also a major figure in his life. The title of this memoir, “Heavy,” refers both to Laymon’s life long struggle with weight, and to the weight of his life circumstances and of the pain and discrimination he and other black men and women and children experience. It is not a spoiler (since it is in the cover flap material) to reveal that, fighting difficulties all the way, Laymon becomes a successful professor and writer. Still, we readers are not let off the hook with a sense of “well, the story ended well,” as it is clear that the problems have not all gone away, for him or for those he cares for, or for black Americans as a whole. This is an intense book, sometimes difficult to read (or in my case, difficult to listen to, as I did on CD as read by the author himself), but that is part of why it is important. I highly recommend this compelling memoir.

"This Is How It Always Is," by Laurie Frankel

I have a bit of a negative attitude toward books that are too much “about” a social or political topic. I am probably contradicting myself here, because I am sure I have written here in the past that literature can and should take on important social issues, and some of the greatest novels have done so. It is just that there is a fine line between engaging with such topics, on the one hand, and being didactic or even preachy about them, on the other hand. I can’t decide where Laurie Frankel’s novel (which I recently listened to on CD during my commute and a road trip), “This is How It Always Is” (Flatiron Books, 2017; Macmillan Audiobooks) falls on that spectrum. The book describes a family in which the youngest of five boys, Claude, says, at the age of five years old, that he wants to be a girl. His parents and his older brothers are all completely supportive, but stymied about the best way to respond. They allow him to dress as a girl and at certain points to “pass” as a girl, but they are hesitant about more intrusive and perhaps permanent medical steps. The whole family is on a journey regarding Claude, his present and his future, and they are all strongly affected by the situation. We see them over the course of several years, one major cross-country move, many events, a long trip abroad, and much more. Claude’s father is a writer, and his fairy tales, told to all the boys, are a way of helping everyone understand and frame the dilemmas and the emotions they are all dealing with. The book puts the reader right in the middle of a situation that most of us have not experienced directly, and pushes us to imagine all the feelings and necessary decisions and consequences that the family and child face. The novel is not preachy, and not didactic, except in the sense of being obviously educational; there are times when the prose is quite expository, such as when the parents read aloud to each other from their research on transgender children and lives. But the overall feeling of the novel is that we are privileged to see into the heart of a family and a child with a particular life experience, and to walk along the road that they walk along, at least for a little while. The characters and the plot are compelling, and the author involves us readers throughout.

"Dreyer's English," by Benjamin Dreyer

I have an ambivalent relationship with “usage” and “style” books about writing and, especially, grammar and vocabulary. I love language, literature, reading, writing, and even grammar, which is, after all, the structure of language. I also think a lot about language and style in the course of my teaching of writing. I am wary of usage guides that are too prescriptive (linguists don’t believe in prescriptivism) but also of guides that treat the whole topic as a sort of inside joke. “Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style” (Random House, 2019), by Random House executive and copy editor Benjamin Dreyer, sounded from reviews like it would be a good balance. I got it from the library (not wanting to commit enough to actually buy it until I had perused it more), and then it stayed on my “to-read” pile until it was almost overdue. Fiction and memoirs were always more immediately attractive at any given time I had for reading. A couple of days ago, spurred by a fast-approaching due date, I thought I would just skim the book and see how I liked it. To my surprise, I became utterly absorbed in the book, and read almost every page. My first reaction was that the book is genuinely useful; it answers the kinds of questions that many readers and writers (including this reader and writer) have. Topics discussed include overused words, misused words, spelling, grammar, and style. The book is also organized in an attractive and useful way. Best of all, the author’s tone is spot on: authoritative, friendly, witty, but a little bit self-deprecating when appropriate. He is teaching us, yet doing so as if we readers are equally intelligent and knowledgeable; we don’t feel condescended to. (Related confession: As I was typing the prior sentence, I suddenly couldn't remember how to spell "knowledgeable" correctly, and had to look it up; this happens to me occasionally despite my years of extensive reading and writing and teaching.) At times Dreyer is prescriptivist, but almost always acknowledges that the language is flexible and changing, and that that is okay. He manages the balancing act of taking his material very seriously and yet not appearing to take it TOO seriously. In fact, the book is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. There are so many ways that this balance, and especially the latter aspect (not taking it all too seriously), can go wrong, yet Dreyer (mostly) avoids missteps. I also enjoyed his occasional brief stories and examples from his work as an editor. In short, the book is a delight, and readers will definitely learn from it.

"The Risk of Us," by Rachel Howard

It is a familiar story. A couple desperately wants to have children “naturally,” but is unsuccessful. They decide to try fostering a child, with the idea of eventually adopting her or him. Thus a seven-year-old enters their lives, and thus their complicated, difficult time with little Maresa begins. The focus of this novel (which seems almost memoiristic), “The Risk of Us” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), by Rachel Howard, is their coming to terms with the child’s acting out, caused by the trauma she has already endured in her young life. The would-be parents struggle mightily, and we the readers feel torn between sympathy for the parents and heartache for the child. The hardest part for the reader is, perhaps, knowing that the child has very real reasons for her more-than-challenging behavior, yet feeling overwhelmed and even at times even repulsed by her behavior, and then feeling guilty about our negative feelings. We read about it all in excruciating detail. Does the couple stick it out? Does Maresa’s behavior improve? What does the future bring? You have to read the novel to learn the answers. It is sometimes a tough read, but the topic is important and the writing is compelling.

"A Wonderful Stroke of Luck," by Ann Beattie

I have always read Ann Beattie’s stories in The New Yorker and elsewhere, as well as her books of fiction. I have always admired them, and sometimes enjoyed them, despite their often somewhat distancing tone. (I know -- "minimalist.") Her most recent book of fiction, the novel “A Wonderful Stroke of Luck” (Viking, 2019) has a sort of sour vibe, and although I did read the whole novel, I had to push myself a little to finish it. It is the story of Ben, a student at a boarding school in New England, his fellow students, and his teacher who is billed as charismatic and influential, but who actually doesn’t seem particularly impressive or intriguing. Ben’s progress through life is rather aimless. When he reconnects with his vaunted teacher, we are set up to expect some kind of drama and revelation, but what happens is anti-climactic. Or, rather, the revelations don’t seem earned. Some of the characters are sympathetic, and the reader may care, a bit anyway, what happens to them. But overall this novel is disappointing, at least to this reader.