"What Are You Going Through," by Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez is a truly original writer, in a somewhat quirky way that takes getting used to. On 2/7/19, I posted about her novel “The Friend,” which is about a woman who unintentionally and somewhat against her will acquired a dog companion (left to her by a friend who died), and with time, found the dog to be a treasured friend. This perhaps sounds annoyingly sentimental, but it definitely isn’t. It isn’t a book that I would have expected to like, and I had to warm up to it, but then I was completely captivated, perhaps won over as the main character was by the dog. In Nunez’s new novel, “What Are You Going Through” (no question mark) (Riverhead, 2020), there is a similar strange, uncomfortable vibe in the sense that it involves the main character being drawn into something that she never asked for or wanted to do: she reluctantly agrees to accompany her friend who has a fatal disease in her final days, knowing that her friend plans to commit suicide (self-euthanize). But in this novel as in “The Friend,” the main character is drawn in, wanting to be a good friend, and also somewhat fascinated by the decision her friend has made. The novel is about death, yes, but really it is more about life, about friendship, about enduring what seems unendurable, and about savoring the time together as the story moves toward the inevitable end. As with “The Friend,” the description makes the novel sound sentimental (the friendship part, not the dying part), but it is in fact quite unsentimental and unsparing in its observations about how people feel and behave in such circumstances. The main characters in both books are a little prickly, although caring, and do not make it easy for readers to immediately appreciate them or desire their company, but they end by being compelling, as are both the books themselves. In other words, in both novels, the characters and the stories sneak up on the reader. Both novels are beautifully written. This is a small book, physically (just over 200 small pages), but it shows us so much about friendship, connection, and what human beings do for each other over and over again.

RIP Diane di Prima

I heard San Francisco poet Diane di Prima read within a month of my arriving in San Francisco for a new teaching position, many many years ago. I was excited to be in this fabled city, with its beauty and vibrant culture. As an English major, I had studied the Beat poets, but of course those were mainly men. The reading was in Golden Gate Park, and sure enough, the poets were almost all men. I was thrilled and starstruck to see them and hear them read their work. But Di Prima was a revelation, and she is the one whom I remember from that evening of poetry. That evening came back to me when I heard of Di Prima’s death on October 25th, at the age of 86. She was originally from New York City, and started writing poetry at a young age. One of her high school classmates, with whom she shared her early poetry, was another gifted and legendary poet, Audre Lorde. De Prima was a teacher, an editor, an organizer, an activist, and at one point, San Francisco’s poet laureate. She was also the mother of five children. She was unafraid to write about female sexuality, graphically at that, and about motherhood. She never stopped writing, even during her final eight years during which she suffered from Parkinson’s disease and other health problems. She lived life fully, literarily and otherwise, and she was a pioneer in poetry. I know she inspired many, including this blogger/reader/feminist. (Thanks go to reporter Sam Whiting at the San Francisco Chronicle, in his 10/29/20 obituary, for some of the details included in this post.)

"The Names of All the Flowers," by Melissa Valentine

As with Yaa Gyasi’s novel, “Transcendent Kingdom,” about which I posted last time (10/28/20), Melissa Valentine’s memoir “The Names of All the Flowers” (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2020) has a central tragedy: a young woman’s tragic loss of her beloved brother. In both cases, fictional and real, the loss has to do with all the difficulties faced by young black men in the United States. Valentine in particular makes it very clear that her brother’s life represents so many young black men’s lives. Her father is white and her mother is black; they raise six children, always somewhat struggling for money, but hanging on to a barely middle-class life, and making sure their children get good educations. The place the author and her brother grow up is Oakland, California, which added to the interest of the memoir to me, as Oakland is in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I too live, but in a different county. The memoirist is the “good girl” who gets good grades, takes care of family members, and always mediates among family members when there is tension, but for the sake of her beloved brother Junior, she is willing to break some rules too. The memoir is about family, race, gender, education, and much more. It is well-written, feels very “real,” and is poignant and moving.

"Transcendent Kingdom," by Yaa Gyasi

I know I should like, am even supposed to like, the novel “Transcendent Kingdom” (Knopf, 2020), by Yaa Gyasi, author of the best-selling “Homecoming.” I could see that it was well-written and engaged with important themes. It got excellent reviews (although in one or two cases, with slight reservations) from excellent reviewers and publications. But I struggled to finish the book. (I did finish it, but it took a while.) Usually I am interested in themes of race, immigration, family, mother-daughter relationships, education, and the ravages of heavy-duty drugs, all of which this novel addresses. The characters are well-drawn, especially the main character, Gifty, who is also the narrator. Gifty’s family has immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana. Her father returned to Ghana, her mother has psychological problems, and her talented but troubled brother is lost to a terrible fate. Gifty feels, then, that she has to be the successful one. She is studying for a PhD at Stanford, has published and done well in her field, and is devoted to her work with lab mice, hoping to discover what causes addiction and depression. And this, although obviously important work, is where the novel kept losing my attention; there was too much extended exposition about neuroscience for my taste. This is probably a shortcoming on my part, but there it is. I did like the powerful and poignant parts about the family dynamics. Gyasi is obviously a talented writer, and has hit a nerve with her two novels. I will continue to follow her literary progress with interest.

Five Books That Don't Get Their Own Posts

Today I am writing about five books I have read in the past few weeks that I don’t want to write whole posts about, but just to note. When I read a book and don’t post about it, it is usually either because I didn’t feel strongly about it, or because I felt there wasn’t a lot to say about it. Here is my list. About the first two: I have loved reading mysteries ever since I started reading on my own, beginning with the Nancy Drew books. But I sometimes get tired of mysteries and don’t read any for months or years. I haven’t read many for at least a couple of years now, but in these pandemic stay-at-home days, I have picked up a couple and enjoyed them. I read one of Louise Penny’s recent Chief Superintendent Armand Gamache books, some of which I have read before, and I have always savored the Montreal (city of my birth) setting among other attributes. This one was “Kingdom of the Blind” (St. Martin’s, 2018), and I did indeed enjoy it, if mildly. The other mystery was G. G. Vandagriff’s “An Oxford Mystery” (Orson Whitney Press, 2019), and I am sure people who know my Anglophile taste will see why I was drawn to it. It was quite entertaining for its Oxford setting and its female main characters, although not outstandingly well written. Third, I read the bestselling author Emily Giffin’s “The Ties That Bind” (Ballantine, 2020), an absorbing book if too much in the category often called “chick lit.” (I don’t like that label, but I often find it relaxing to read books that people classify that way.) Then, fourth, there was the much more critically esteemed book, “Weather” (Knopf, 2020), by the also critically esteemed Jenny Offill, which is about a woman and climate change and human relationships (sorry, that is a reductive description!) and is mostly written in short fragmentary sections, very intense, which I admired but didn’t particularly enjoy. Fifth and finally, Heidi Pitlor’s intriguing book about a woman ghostwriter, “Impersonation” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2020), did engage my attention and I relished the literary aspects as well as the parts about the main character’s complicated personal life, but when I closed the book, I felt I wasn’t left with much I wanted to say about it. I apologize if this post sounds dismissive; I don’t mean it that way, and I have a deep respect for how hard it is to write fiction, but I am perhaps trying to convey the mishmash of books I am reading these days, some of which are very satisfying and some not so much, quite possibly my fault rather than that of the authors.

"Monogamy," by Sue Miller

Sue Miller’s novels are reliably “good reads,” and I don’t mean that in a condescending way at all. I have read all of her novels and her book of short stories, starting with the bestseller (later a movie) “The Good Mother” (1986). She is one of the writers that the minute I see she has a new book out, I make a note to get it as soon as possible. She writes her best about women’s lives, loves, and families. Her new novel, “Monogamy” (Harper, 2020), is in this vein as well. As the title suggests, the novel focuses on a couple, Annie and Graham, and is mainly told from the point of view of Annie. It is a good marriage, one that others admire and are drawn to. Graham is a big, amiable, sociable man who owns a bookstore. Annie is an art photographer, although her work has gone a bit by the wayside as she tends to the needs of her husband and (now adult) children. They are both friendly with Graham’s first wife, Freida, the mother of Graham’s son Lucas. Graham and Annie have a daughter, Sarah. But then Graham dies (the front flap tells us this, so I am not giving anything away), and Annie finds that not all is as she had thought it was. She then struggles with reconciling the strong and wonderful relationship the couple had in many ways with the part that was secret. So the novel is “about” many things: marriage and the way every marriage has some unknown parts; parenting, and accepting the difficulties that one’s children may have despite everything parents do to protect and help them; what women often give up for their marriages and children; the varieties of families and friendships (Frieda’s still being such a close part of Graham and Annie’s family); the style of living of a certain strata of professional and artistic people in Boston and Cambridge (and perhaps in general of “the Coasts”), and so much more. So much to think about, so much to relate to, so much to admire about the recognition of, and acceptance of, the “grey areas” of most marriages, relationships, and lives. Suffice it to say that I finished the novel in two days.

Two Novels on Aging: "Hieroglyphics," by Jill McCorkle, and "The Weekend," by Charlotte Ford

I have just read two novels featuring “older” characters, both books at least partly about the topic of aging. “Hieroglyphics” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2020), by the wonderful writer Jill McCorkle (whose books I have read for decades), is a deep dive into the lives of a recently retired couple, Lil and Frank, who have moved from Boston to North Carolina, where Frank spent his childhood. Frank is obsessed with the house where he grew up, and Lil is equally obsessed with going through old letters and diaries with the idea of leaving a family history for the couple’s adult children. Both of them are remembering both good and bad events in their lives. At the same time, both of them find that they are having more trouble remembering things in general. The novel is also about secrets, families, parenting, and the role of place in our lives. “Hieroglyphics” is both profoundly human and humane, on the one hand, and quite discomforting, on the other. There is some joy, but there is also much melancholy, and overall the book felt bleak to me. The other novel I read "about" aging is “The Weekend” (Riverhead, 2020), set in Australia and written by the Australian author Charlotte Ford. Three lifelong friends in their early seventies gather at the beachside home of their late fourth friend, in order to clean out her belongings, at the request of her lover. Their weekend together illuminates both the friends’ deep connections and the ways in which they have diverged. They get on each others’ nerves, and old secrets are revealed. The author does not avoid facing some of the inevitable problems of aging, and this book too has its bleak aspects. Yet at the end we know that the women’s friendship is deep and lasting, despite everything. I am always glad to see novels with older characters, as this is a stage in life that is too often neglected in fiction. I am also always glad to read fiction with the theme of friendship, especially female friendship.