"Station Eleven," by Emily St. John Mandel

Readers of this blog will know that I have always been completely uninterested in science fiction. OK, I have read a few of Ursula Le Guin’s stories, which are wonderful, and a little more fiction from the genre, including some of the famous utopian and dystopian novels, but overall very little. In fact, I will admit, while acknowledging its place in literature, and that some of it is written at a very literary level, I have been somewhat dismissive of it. (I know, I know…this was highly presumptuous of me.) Recently, during a conversation with my friend J., it came up that I had liked Emily St. John Mandel’s novel “Last Night in Montreal,” (see my post of 11/1/15) but had not read her perhaps more famous novel “Station Eleven” (Knopf, 2014) because it was labeled as science fiction. J. told me that in fact, despite its science fiction aspects, the book was much more than that, and was a compelling book about character, relationships, and choices. Because I trust her judgment, I thought, “Well, I should at least give it a try,” and obtained a copy of the book, thinking I would at least start it and see whether I wanted to continue reading it. Well, J. was right! I was immediately swept up in the novel, and never considered stopping reading it. It is set in the present and the near future, and starts at a Shakespeare performance in Toronto, during which we are introduced to some of the main characters. Soon after, a terrible virus becomes pandemic. The rest of the book tells of the lives of the survivors in a world without infrastructure, electricity, media, etc. The group of people most focused on in the novel forms a traveling combination symphony and theater group, and performs wherever they go. There are some flashbacks to pre-pandemic days, giving us more background about some of the characters. The reason I liked this novel, despite my anti-science fiction preferences, is that the focus is (as J. had told me) still on human behavior, characteristics, and relationships, in a stripped-down version of our modern world. By the way, I am very aware that this is the second recent post in which I have needed to eat some humble pie and acknowledge that I was wrong about my preconceptions about a book. It reminds me of the importance of pushing myself to stretch beyond my immediate responses to hearing about a new book that others are telling me is excellent. Sometimes that first response is right (for me, at least), but I need to give such books more consideration, and maybe at least leaf through them, or read their first couple of chapters, before deciding whether to continue reading them.

"My Name is Lucy Barton," by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout, best known as author of the highly praised bestseller “Olive Kittredge,” and author of several other works of fiction, has a new novel out: “My Name is Lucy Barton” (Random House, 2016). It is a short book (under 200 pages), and takes place mostly in a room in a hospital, over a period of only a few days, so there is a feeling of focus, containment, and even a bit of claustrophobia. It does allude to earlier events in the characters’ lives as well, but those events seem misty and far away. Lucy Barton has a strange and not-completely-identified illness or infection, following a simple surgery, that keeps her in the hospital for several weeks. Her husband hates hospitals and mostly stays away; he is also busy working and taking care of their two young daughters. Out of the blue, it seems (although it later turns out that Lucy’s husband has made a phone call), Lucy’s long-semi-estranged mother shows up at the hospital and settles into a guest chair, even sleeping there, refusing nurses’ offers of a cot. Lucy has missed her mother, even though she is associated in her mind with a very poor, very difficult childhood, and is touchingly happy to have her mother with her. They mostly talk or just stay quietly together. The talk is about unremarkable topics, such as her mother’s passing on news about people in the small town where she lives and where Lucy grew up. Once in a while they touch on the difficult matters of their lives during Lucy’s childhood, but tend to move away from such fraught topics before they go too deeply into them. However, Lucy derives deep comfort from the half-said things, the brief motherly touches, and her newly gained sense of having a history and being loved, something she was always insecure about. On the surface, this story is quite simple, and the author apparently does not feel the need to, or want to, explain everything about the backgrounds of the characters; she tells of them in glancing ways, and leaves it to readers to understand or speculate, or simply to accept that we can never know all there is to know. Obviously a strong theme is that of mother-daughter relationships, as is the theme of the lasting psychological effects of childhood, especially of difficult childhoods. But there is nothing didactic about this book. Readers feel they are fortunate to be able to eavesdrop on Lucy’s and her mother’s conversations, and even to sit quietly with them during the times when they barely speak.

"My Life on the Road," by Gloria Steinem

When I heard about feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s new book, “My Life on the Road” (Random House, 2015), I was mildly interested. After all, I have been a feminist since college at least, a subscriber to Ms. Magazine from the beginning, and an admirer of Steinem and other feminist leaders for all these years. But I didn’t immediately rush to get the book, as I thought perhaps there wouldn’t be much that was new to me. I know that sounds, and is, presumptuous, but as one who has followed feminist news and publications all these years, and even done some feminist work (mostly teaching but also some advocacy) and writing myself, on a very small scale, I thought I knew more than, as it turns out, I do. This book is packed with history (personal, national, and global) and politics, gained in a long life thoroughly lived. Steinem is perhaps the epitome of an activist and organizer, as well as, of course, a writer. She is on the road far more than she is at home, even now at the age of 81. She travels to and speaks at an incredible range of political meetings, campuses, organizations, fundraising opportunities, and much more. Despite the long flights and rides, the nights in various hotels, dorms, spare bedrooms, and sometimes on meeting room floors, and the various privations of being far from home (which she alludes to but never at length and never in a complaining tone), she takes genuine pleasure in the experiences she has, the people she meets, and the opportunities to learn as well as speak and organize. The tone of the book is conversational, although the book is clearly organized and well written. Steinem’s voice is positive, informational, enjoyable, and inspiring. Although she does describe many accomplishments of the women’s movement and many achievements helped along by her own work, she never sounds egotistical, she never boasts, and she always gives generous credit to other activists, writers, politicians, and others. And of course she points out what still needs to be done. I am humbled to read more details than I ever knew about her incredible work for the cause of women’s rights, as well as against racism and for other good causes. She believes that sexism and racism are inextricably intertwined, and never allows the fights against the two to compete. I am also, parenthetically, highly impressed by her seemingly limitless energy! And, to get back to my clueless statement about thinking there wouldn’t be much new to me: I was so wrong. I learned from almost every page. I learned so much about the women’s movement, about organizations and activism, about people in various parts of the United States and elsewhere, about Florynce Kennedy and other feminist leaders, and about Steinems’ own parents and childhood years (very humble). Steinem always praises her colleagues and others she encounters. She believes in the importance of each person’s story, and she seems to genuinely listen carefully to, enjoy and learn from the stories of taxi drivers, flight attendants, college students, and others she meets “on the road.” Among other areas about which she has learned are the history, lives, rites, and activism of Native Americans, especially Native American women such as her dear friend, the activist and leader Wilma Mankiller. Steinem obviously has a strong desire to fight for social justice, especially but not only for women, and she does so in a positive, collaborative way that seems to be very effective. I am in awe of her, and of her devoting such a huge portion of her life to this invaluable work. And I am grateful to her for her part in the changes that have come about in the lives of women and others who have lacked equality and justice. I highly, highly recommend this book.

Flashback to Memories of Being the "Book Auntie"

This is a frankly (blatantly?) warm-and-fuzzy family-children-and-books story, one with a (perhaps unseemly) touch of self-congratulation. But I can’t resist. The background: Several of my (six) nieces and my (one) nephew, now all adults or near-adults, have been kind enough to say that I helped to influence them to love reading, which as you can imagine, warms my heart incredibly. When they were small, I enjoyed giving them books, reading to them, taking them to bookstores and libraries, whenever possible. Some of them lived across the country, but I saw them at least once a year in the leisurely setting of my parents’ lakeside summer cottage, where we converged, and where the “Michigan cousins” and my daughter happily played together, basking in the surroundings and in the attention of their wonderful grandparents. One frequent outing was to the charming little local library on its own miniature island, approached by a footbridge. Another was to a nearby bookstore, where I told each child she or he could pick out one book each time as a gift from me. There were piles of books, children’s and adults', at the cottage, and lots of reading to the kids, as well as their reading on their own. Of course they read and were read to at home too, encouraged by their parents, but I enjoyed my special role as the “book auntie.” OK, so bringing the story up to the present: A couple of days ago, one of my nieces, A., who now has three young children of her own, sent me a short video of the oldest one (7 years old) reading to the youngest (2 years old). He was reading her the wonderful, wonderful book “Jamberry,” which I loved reading to my daughter and to my nieces and nephew when they were little, and which I gave A.’s oldest son when he was about one year old. It was so cute, and so heartwarming, to hear this young reader reading the beloved exuberant and poetic book’s words to his little sister, and at the same time to go on a nostalgic flashback to my reading that book to my daughter and her cousins at home and at the cottage. So, I thank my niece A. for providing me with this lovely scene and lovely memory! And I can’t end this entry without putting in an enthusiastic word for this delightful, irresistible book for very young readers (one that is also fun for their parents and other grown-up readers), “Jamberry,” written and illustrated by Bruce Degen. Here are a couple of excerpts:“One berry, Two berry, Pick me a blackberry….Raspberry, Jazzberry, Razzmattazzberry, Berryband, Merryband, Jamming in Berryland…” The words practically sing themselves off the page! The illustrations are equally creative, energetic, and joyful.

"The Past," by Tessa Hadley

I had every reason to be quite sure that I would like English author Tessa Hadley’s new novel, “The Past” (Harper, 2016), and I did like it, very much. First, I have read several of Hadley’s novels and both admired and enjoyed them (see my posts of 7/12/11, 7/13/11, and 3/12/14). I had put her on my mental list of authors whose new books I watch out for. Further, the novel is about family members who meet for three weeks for one last stay at a longtime family home in the countryside in England, a house that had been their grandparents’, and that they will probably be selling soon. This gathering of relatives or friends from near and far in a somewhat isolated place and then observing them interact is a device that many writers have used, and one that I am very fond of. It is a riff on Jane Austen’s claim that (paraphrasing and slightly exaggerating here!) by writing about people gathered in a small village, she could illuminate all of life. Another (rather more somber) notable example that springs to mind is the wonderful Irish writer Anne Enright’s 2007 novel, “The Gathering,” about a scattered family that comes together for a funeral after the suicide of a brother. “The Past” also involves adult siblings, four in this case, along with their various spouses and offspring, gathering, talking, interacting, arguing, cooking and eating, and dipping into their past. They have different memories of, and different feelings toward, their parents and grandparents, and their lives as children. They love each other, and in some cases know each other well but in other cases seem not to understand each other at all. They communicate uneasily. There are secrets from the past and present that are sometimes exposed at inopportune times and in inopportune ways. The book is structured in three parts: the first section is about the present, the second about the past of the siblings’ childhoods and of their parents and grandparents, and the third returns to the present. One motif that joins the past and present is a primitive cottage in the woods on the grounds of the family home, a building that is the home at various times to mystery, menace, excitement, discovery, romance and desire. But best of all, for me and I am guessing for most readers, are the portraits of the characters and their interactions. Hadley is a gifted observer of human character and behavior, of how people both change and stay the same as they grow older, and of how family members interact. For all of these reasons, along with that of Hadley’s perceptive and sometimes quite beautiful writing, both about people and about their surroundings in the countryside, this is my kind of novel, one which was a great pleasure to read. Let me leave you with two excerpts, one about family and one about long marriages. About family: “All the siblings felt sometimes…the sheer irritation and perplexity of family coexistence: how it fretted away at the love and attachment which were nonetheless intense and enduring when they were apart. They knew one another so well, all too well, yet they were continually surprised by the forgotten difficult twists and turns of one another’s personalities, so familiar as soon as they appeared” (p. 79). About long marriages: “In bed, while finding her place in her book, Sophy felt the familiarity of her husband’s lean flank against hers, through the cloth of their nightclothes: they lay close together because the bed hadn’t warmed up yet….The lovemaking part of their marriage wasn’t over, but most often these days their contact was merely friendly. After sleeping together for so many years, they hardly had to go through the rigmarole of a rapprochement or a truce before they touched, even if they’d been at odds while they were talking. Their bodies, more prosaic than their souls, were intimate at a level deeper than their argument” (p. 217).

"A Manual for Cleaning Women: Stories," by Lucia Berlin

Lucia Berlin’s “A Manual for Cleaning Women” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015) is a wow!-wow!-wow!-real-deal book. A collection of short stories that are openly based on the author’s life, it embodies the grit, pain, grief, glories, love, joy, ambivalence, rejection, and acceptance of a life extremely thoroughly lived. Although these are stories, they are mostly connected by a similar main character, sometimes but not always named (fittingly) Dolores, along with her sister Sally, her parents and grandparents, her sons, her husbands, and her lovers. There is poverty, abuse, cancer, alcoholism, and death, but there is also great love, intense experience, various places in the world (notably Chile, as well as cities all over the United States) experienced in all their glory, families that explode and implode and reconnect, a love of books and writing, and a main character who both smothers feelings with alcohol and is utterly open to all the world has to offer. Contradictory, yes. Very human, yes. And all observed in these stories with the clearest of eyes. For those of us (OK, me, at least) who like to impose order on artistically arranged disorder, it might have been preferable to have the stories ordered chronologically (correlating with the author's own experiences, not with dates of publication), or grouped according to some principle, but that is like asking life to be more orderly than it is. Besides, the editor of this book, published posthumously, must have had reasons for the way the stories are ordered. I say this not in the least as an indictment of the book, but to poke a little fun at myself for my “control freak” desire to impose a more discernible order. The editor, Stephen Emerson, gathered stories from several previous collections by wonderful but small presses (most notably, Black Sparrow) in order to put together this outstanding collection and to give the stories more exposure. For Emerson, a colleague and friend of Berlin's, along with the other editors and various others who were involved, this book was clearly a labor of love. Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) herself, like her characters, led a complicated and difficult life, including struggling with alcoholism for many years, but eventually became sober and became a beloved professor of writing at the University of Colorado Boulder. All the while, she was sporadically writing. Sadly, she became ill and a few years later died in California, where some of her sons lived. It is quite likely that her work would have been more or less lost to obscurity if it were not for the gathering of her stories into this book, so great kudos are due to the editor, the publisher, and everyone else involved. I only wish she had lived to see the success that the book is having; it has been greeted with much praise and excellent reviews. Adding context to the book is a terrific foreword by the highly esteemed short-short-story writer Lydia Davis and an informative and insightful introduction by the editor, Stephen Emerson. Davis says that in these stories “…we never know quite what is going to come next. Nothing is predictable. And yet everything is also natural, true to life, true to our expectations of psychology and emotion” (p. xiv). Emerson adds that “The prose claws its way off the page. It has vitality….What her work has, is joy….It is writing continuous with the irrepressibility—humanity, place, food, smells, color, language. The world seen in all its perpetual motion, its penchant to surprise and even delight” (p. xix-xx). And, Emerson adds, “a riotous humor animates” her work (p. xxi). All of this is true even when the stories are at their most heartbreaking (see, for example, the story “Mijito”). I hope I – with the help of the words of Davis and Emerson – have convinced you that this is an extraordinary writer and an extraordinary and deeply rewarding collection of fiction. Highly recommended!

Author Interviews on Fresh Air

On 3/2/10, I wrote about how much I love the NPR radio show, Fresh Air, with the gifted host and interviewer Terry Gross. I think it is time to write about the show’s interviews again. I enjoy the variety of interviews with politicians, journalists, scientists, musicians, artists, and others, but most of all I love the interviews with authors. Gross always chooses interesting and varied authors and books to discuss, and somehow knows exactly the right kinds of questions to ask, the kinds of questions we all have, or would have if we thought deeply about the topic. With these questions, and her follow-up questions, she unerringly elicits the most interesting answers, giving us glimpses into an author’s work as well as her/his life, experiences, and opinions. There is also a blessedly unrushed quality to these interviews. In recent months, for examples of these interviews, Gross (or occasionally her colleague Dave Davies) has interviewed authors Toni Morrison, Tessa Hadley, Gloria Steinem, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rick Moody, Patti Smith, David Mitchell, and Elizabeth Strout, among others. I love encountering the interviews with authors whose work I know, but also enjoy those with authors who are new to me. A chance to hear these authors in person in an accessible way (because although there are live readings in bookstores, etc., which I also love, those happen much less frequently and involve much more commitment of time and scheduling) is invaluable. Fresh Air in general, and its author interviews in particular, offer truly intelligent radio, and are a joy to experience.