"Rodham," by Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld’s new novel, “Rodham” (Random House, 2020), is very timely, as the upcoming U.S. presidential election reminds us of the 2016 election, and of the sad loss of that election by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Some of us older feminists have been waiting for decades for a woman (not just any woman, of course) to win the U.S. presidency for the first time; it is disgraceful that there has never been one. We were crushed when Clinton lost. And we know that she would have done so much better a job than the current incumbent, especially during this deadly pandemic. This novel – and it is fiction -- is an artful and compelling blend of true biographical facts, especially in the first half of the novel, and the author’s imaginary story of what could have happened. I don’t want to give too much away. But the plot of “Rodham” is not the main point; the novel is full of the kinds of details we would all want to know if we could know more about the character. The over 400 pages allow a leisurely (and very engaging) laying out of the different stages of the main character’s life, and of the context of the changing political and social landscape of the U.S. over those years. Sittenfeld, the author of several other novels, has written about politics and the presidency before, in her novel “American Wife,” which is based on the life of First Lady Laura Bush. I read that novel, despite my disinclination to be interested in the Bush family, and found it almost riveting. Actually, Sittenfeld had me at her first novel, “Prep,” about life in an exclusive boarding school. I have read most of her novels since then, and will keep doing so.

"Only the River," by Anne Raeff

I will start with a simple statement: Anne Raeff is an outstanding writer. As I wrote about her first book, she is in complete control of her material, and her fiction, although (or, of course, partly because) her topics are serious and grim, she makes us feel the life force that always comes through. That first book, the 2002 novel “Clara Mondschein’s Melancholia,” which I posted about here on 3/2/11, completely won me over. I was thrilled when her second book, a story collection titled “The Jungle Around Us,” appeared in 2016. I posted with great appreciation and enthusiasm about it on 12/8/16. Then Raeff’s third work of fiction, the novel “Winter Kept Us Warm,” was published in 2018. I was overwhelmed by how good it was. And here is the confession I am building up to: I kept wanting to write about that third book here, but I kept being paralyzed by the feeling that I couldn’t possibly do it justice. So I put off and put off writing about it, and finally gave up, not without a feeling of failure and even shame. Now I have just read Raeff’s latest book, the novel “Only the River” (Counterpoint, 2020), and once again, I am blown away by how wonderful, profound, meaningful, and expansive it is. Once again, I feel inadequate to express how good it is, and how great a writer Raeff is. But I am determined to at least try to do so. It is “about” the ways in which people are affected by wars and immigration, and about how people and families change as they move among cultures. It is about generational connections, family connections, the environment, and so much more. It is compelling and beautifully written, a real triumph. And it has intangible qualities such as integrity, deep honesty, and true caring about the characters and issues Raeff writes about. Although I feel the book deserves more than what I have written here, I am going to leave this post at that, so that I don’t delay any longer in giving tribute to both “Winter Kept Us Warm” and the current book, “Only The River.” Highly recommended!

Four Novels about Summers in Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Cape Cod

It is summer, but because of the pandemic, most of us are not going on beach vacations, or any other kind. I realize how fortunate I am that I and my family have our health, our jobs (which we can do from home) and our pleasant homes to shelter in. So I am not complaining, but I do miss summer vacations or some type of travel. I have turned to “summer”/beach novels for escape. It happens that three of the four such novels I have very recently read, in search of that summer feeling, have the word “summer” in their titles. All four are set in the storied New England area encompassing Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Cape Cod, with all the history and magic suggested by those names. All four are reasonably well-written examples of a certain genre, with romance, family issues, obstacles and triumphs over those obstacles, all in gorgeous settings. Two of them are relatively light-hearted; the other two are a little bit heavier, darker, but only a little bit. Two of them feature surfers among their characters. The four novels all go down easy, and distract from the fact that most readers themselves probably do not have access to these settings, especially not during the pandemic. I am not going to “review” these four novels individually, but will list them here: “28 Summers,” by the bestselling author Erin Hilderbrand; “Girls of Summer,” by the also bestselling author Nancy Thayer; “Summer Darlings,” by Brooke Lea Foster; and “The Second Home,” by Christina Clancy. Note that the first two are the more lighthearted ones that I mentioned, so if you really want escape, you might want to go for those two.

"The Vanishing Half," by Brit Bennett

“The Vanishing Half” (Riverhead, 2020), by Brit Bennett, has received much attention since its publication earlier this year, and rightfully so. This is partly because the always-important topic of race in America has even more dramatically come to the fore in recent weeks. It is also because of Bennett’s powerful take on race and gender in the United States, both in her prior novel “The Mothers” (see my post of 1/30/17) and in this novel. Her two main characters are twin sisters who grow up in a Black family in a small southern Black town that prides itself on its population’s being very light-skinned. The twins run away together at the age of 16, first landing in New Orleans. They are extremely close. But then one day one of them, Stella, disappears without a word, leaving Desiree behind. Stella is the “vanishing half” of the title. The twins do not have any contact for years, as their lives completely diverge, and Stella has to keep a big secret. She slips into passing as White, and marries a White man who does not know she is Black; she lives in terror of someone finding out her secret. Desiree, on the other hand, chooses a very dark-skinned man for her partner. Both sisters have children; Stella’s daughter is blond, while Desiree’s daughter is dark-skinned. The two daughters become part of the story, and even meet by chance in Los Angeles. There is some closure at the end of the novel, but I won’t give any endings away. The topic of “passing” reminds me of Nella Larsen’s novel titled “Passing,” as well as other books on the subject. Bennett's novel and the others raise many questions about the meaning and significance of race in America, and all of the weight and freight carried by race and color and the way they are perceived. However, the novel is not only “about race,” but also a beautifully written and constructed story of the carefully delineated characters of the twins, their mother, their partners, their daughters, and others.

"Rebel Chef," by Dominique Crenn

Since I love restaurants, especially restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was happy to see that chef Dominique Crenn had written a memoir, “Rebel Chef: In Search of What Matters” (Penguin, 2020). Crenn writes of her adoption into a French family in the French countryside, her wonderful family, and her early love of cooking. The “rebel” part of her title comes from her desire to go further out into the world, to fight the rather rigid and male-dominated world of high-level restaurant chefs, and to create her own way of cooking. Eventually, after cooking in several restaurants of various types, including one in Indonesia, she became the three-Michelin-star chef-owner of three restaurants (Atelier Crenn, Petit Crenn, and Bar Crenn) in San Francisco. It was a hard road, but she was determined, always buoyed by her parents’ unconditional love and belief in her. Other topics include her wondering about her birth mother, and her gradual realization that she was a lesbian. Over the years, I have dined at all three of Crenn’s restaurants, and have so appreciated her creativity, as well as the thoughtfulness displayed in her food, the atmosphere of her restaurants, and her sense of hospitality. Besides choosing the best ingredients, drawing on the different cultures she has experienced, she is also inspired by poetry, even presenting diners with a poem at the beginning of their dining experiences. And as she says in this memoir, she purposely kept her restaurants quite small, and when possible comes out into the dining room to welcome and speak with the diners. She did this when a friend and I dined at her first restaurant in San Francisco, Atelier Crenn, some years ago, and we did indeed feel welcomed.

"The Jane Austen Society" and "Jane Austen Made Me Do It"

Regular readers of this blog KNOW with great certainty that periodically I will write about Jane Austen’s novels, as well as books about the author, her novels, and the many tribute novels and related books by others. Here I write about two more books in this category that I have recently read. “The Jane Austen Society” (St. Martin’s, 2020), a novel by Natalie Jenner, imagines a fictional version of the group of Austen fans who got together in the 1940s to preserve the house in Chawton where Austen spent her last and most productive years. Some of the members of this society already live in Chawton, and others have connected with those locals to form the Society. The members are mixed in terms of background, nationality, gender, age, class, type of work, and more, but they are bound by their common desire to buy, save, and take care of the house as a permanent tribute to Austen. There are many backstories and subplots, all interesting in a low-key, sometimes melancholic way. The writing is lovely and the devotion of the author and her characters is evident. I truly enjoyed this charming and thoughtful novel, not only for the Austen focus, but also for the portrayal of the small village of Chawton and its inhabitants and visitors. Some readers may remember that I visited the house in Chawton some years ago, and was incredibly moved by being in the very house where Austen lived and wrote a large portion of her works. The second book is a collection of short stories titled “Jane Austen Made Me Do It: Original Stories Inspired by Literature’s Most Astute Observer of the Human Heart” (Ballantine, 2011), edited by Laurel Ann Nattress. The stories are all connected to Austen in various remarkably creative and intriguing ways. There are love stories, satires, ghost stories, and many other genres. I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy this collection, but, although the book is not as compelling as "The Jane Austen Society," I definitely did enjoy it.

"Queenie," by Candice Carty-Williams

The British novel “Queenie” (Simon & Schuster/Scout Press, paperback version 2019), which takes place in contemporary London, has been termed “Black Bridget Jones meets Americanah,” and that gives readers a very rough idea of the book. But the “Bridget Jones” books seemed much more lighthearted than this book; even the wonderful novel “Americanah,” although it focuses on racial analysis regarding the United States, has more of a wry, satirical tone in its observations than “Queenie” does. Queenie, the character, attempts to be a modern, free-spirited young woman, and there is certainly plenty of sex and drink and some drugs involved. But there is much pain as well. Some of the pain comes from a kind of depression that hangs over Queenie, getting worse as the novel progresses (although – spoiler alert – there is a cautiously optimistic ending to the novel). And some comes from being broken up with by a boyfriend. But some of that pain and depression comes from racial prejudice and discrimination, some of it internalized. So the book is a slightly uneasy mixture of “young and free woman in the city” (there is even a slight “Sex in the City” vibe as Queenie and her three best friends often meet and share their experiences about life, men, sex, work, and more) and of commentary on racial (and gender as well) matters. I like the portrayals of Queenie’s friends and how supportive and loving they are, as are some family members. Even her boss tolerates a lot of flakiness on Queenie’s part (some of it brought on by her troubles). The format of the book includes frequent series of tweets among the friends, which gives the book a contemporary vibe. At times the various aspects of the novel don’t quite fit together, but the result is still a compelling read.