Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead-Book

From a Google Image Search – The Conversation

Cool Machine is the last book in the trilogy by Colson Whitehead giving us glimpses of Harlem in the 70’s and 80’s, fifty or so years after the Harlem Renaissance. Ray Carney, his main character, has his feet in two worlds. Ray owns a furniture store, and he knows the names of every furniture line that he carries. He is also a “fence” who accepts stolen merchandise from crooks he knows and sells it to safe but crooked buyers.

In Cool Machine we follow “Pepper,” now old and sick with gut problems being treated by an ersatz doctor who “prescribes” his meds by pill colors. Pepper may not be at his best, but he is a loyal friend of Ray Carney and his wife Elizabeth and he is still formidable. Elizabeth, who runs a travel agency, is being harassed by a customer about an art object he wants to buy, a stolen art object. Pepper agrees to act as a bodyguard for the buyer. But plans go wobbly and they keep changing. Pepper is guided through the many players in this bizarre art auction by a young black woman known as LJ. She represents a different buyer of this Ngil mask once worn by a Fang artist from Gabon. African art is having a moment, and the bids are up to $80,000 dollars.

Pepper feels even older when he encounters a counterculture of musicians and graffiti taggers where deals get completed (or not) in noir clubs. When the money and the mask go missing and the Melancholy Hitman gets involved, Pepper, swilling Pepto and losing consciousness, manages to capitalize on the instincts of a lifetime to survive the new bohemian bizarro world.

The second half of the book belongs to Ray and Elizabeth. In his straight world Ray has been named the furniture store owner of the month. Elizabeth is running into more competition in travel business. They are imagining retirement. Their efforts have paid off, and their two children are launched and doing well. They don’t have to have their feet in two worlds. Ray’s father had his feet in only one world. He was a criminal. Can a tendency towards criminal behavior be passed down? Ray accepts both sides of his nature but often finds himself in tense situations. He keeps things from Elizabeth.

Colson Whitehead is a very talented writer. He brings the Harlem of that era to life and ties the dreams of his characters in with the dreams of all who come to New York City and who meet their fate there. Ray and Elizabeth are at a restaurant on the 106th floor celebrating their business successes.

” From the 106th floor, the teeming boroughs and all those who lived and bled in them were turned into a vast, scrabbling miniature–insignificant, pitiable even–and ennobled at the same time, because you could make out the true breadth of their striving, extending as far as you could see. They were completely hopeless out there, and unstoppable. Broke-ass, chasing jackpots, cooking schemes, pushing through. The nameless heroes of an asphalt romance. Like everyone else in the restaurant, Carney suspected that they had thrown up these two monster buildings for his benefit, just so he could sit there today and see these things.

Sunset shook out a brilliant layer of orange-pink across the grimy grid below, powdering over the day’s crimes. When the dark crept in, the skyline turned itself on one switch at a time, the million lights in the million buildings, in the row houses and prewars and corporate megastructures, heckling the deathless stars above. Think you’re hot stuff? Get a load of this. As if to give the very universe the finger.”

Read it for the prose, the insights, the characters, and the audaciousness.

Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson – Book

From a Google Image Search – Amazon

Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson-Book

Kate Atkinson often writes about the events around World War II as they affected the British and the world. She’s a great writer so even when she tackles something as seemingly yawn-worthy as the 1951 Festival of Britain, as she does in Our Noble Selves, Kate Atkinson manages to pull it off. Throwing in a murder mystery doesn’t hurt. Harry Flynn never fought in the war, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and spent his war years as a prisoner of war in Asia. Now Harry has been hired to work on the Festival of Britain, an enormous endeavor planned by the Queen to help Britain face forward after a horrific decade.

Flynn, changed by his POW experiences is no longer comfortable with the pursuits of his bachelor days. He wants stability and peace, but he marries a woman who will never offer him either. She has a daughter, Veronica and Veronica has a dog named Mrs. Betty. After they split up Flynn is lost with no goals for a future that makes any sense. Somehow the odd collection of employees in the festival office restores some balance and puts solid ground under his feet. Evans is a Welshman and Badger (a nickname) is from a wealthy family. Boy is fourteen and “mothers” them all (real name, Terrance). Eventually they are joined by Maud Ogilvie, a calm, rational, and somewhat mysterious older woman who knows how to get things done.

Flynn’s first assignment is to set up a poetry contest with prize money of 1000 pounds. He also is assigned to procure items both obscure and common to fill out the displays in the various venues. Home and Gardens needed lots of attention. Flynn enjoyed the hunt and had an excellent memory for the items on the lists. Today someone might need a stuffed rabbit, tomorrow a certain table or lamp. However, when someone has the bright idea to have a contest to choose a festival cake the consequences are rather unexpected.

It’s all very British, with the idiosyncratic characters echoing people we met in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby, Desmond and Molly Jones, Mr. Kite, Rita and many more. In Atkinson’s book besides Flynn’s office mates, we have the bosses they answer to, Mr. Denholm, Mr. Dangerfield, and coworkers from other festival offices. Denholm and Dangerfield had been Nazi sympathizers before the war. Flynn wondered what they had done in those war years, and his instincts suggest they are still somewhat dodgy.

Our Harry Flynn is popular with the ladies with some kind of mysterious attraction that the men around him don’t understand but are jealous of. Women are always asking Flynn if he would like to meet them for a drink. After his misadventures with Ivy Spears and their short-lived marriage, Flynn is less than enthusiastic, which makes other men even more mystified by the effect Flynn has on woman. He takes the attractive femme fatale Delphine Dubois (she’s French) for a drink. When he wakes up the next day, he remembers nothing. Now Delphine has disappeared. Did she go back to France or meet an untimely end? Harry Flynn is gradually becoming a murder suspect and he’s not sure that he isn’t guilty. Then Ivy leaves Veronica and Mrs. Betty with him while she goes off with her new man.

It’s quite a festival and at the end the toast is to ”Our Noble Selves.” Not all involved turned out to be worthy of the toast.

The French Illusion by John Grisham-Book

From a Google Image Search – Penguin Random House

John Grisham has written many best-selling books exposing bad practices within our justice system. When his characters comprehend the ways in which the law can be twisted to allow lawyers to profit from borderline irregular or even criminal legal practices, brave protagonists come up with creative plans to end the bad behaviors and restore proper justice. The French Illusion is just such a book. Stuart Nash is just such a protagonist.

A man from Algeria, falsely accused of being a terrorist, subjected to torture at Guantanamo, and then released, decides to get revenge. Since his method includes kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture he feels his actions are justified by the way he was treated. He plans to also be paid back with huge cash settlements through collecting millions in ransom. He’s playing a long game, and the US seems unable or unwilling to track him as he operates out of France, kidnapping honeymooners in Paris. The US eventually gets involved because the young men who are kidnapped are either US government or military people.

In a twist, Graham introduces his main character, Stuart, in a separate (very short) book. We are charged $.99 for this eBook, which, although unusual, hardly seems excessive. Stuart Nash, however, does not appear in The French Illusion for some time.

The story has all the classic John Grisham suspense tempered with a soupçon of a sense that justice has gone off the tracks. Relatives of the kidnapped men are told to tell no one about the kidnapping or the ransom. Over a period of three years the same pattern plays out three times. Eventually what has been kept secret is revealed to the FBI and then the CIA. The crime is interesting; how justice is restored is even more interesting. The plan involves Stuart Nash and he is not alone.

This is a very fast read. Although the plot is fresh, the book seems short and the smaller book that introduces the main character (The Law Student) seems unusual. In the back of your mind you might wonder if Grisham has spent too extravagantly and is now holding us for a bit of ransom. (And you might think twice about planning a honeymoon in Paris.)

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett-Book

From a Google Image Search

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett may remind you of the movie Risky Business, but her female characters are not teenagers fixing damages to a tchotchke. Their issues are about survival and restoring their agency. Set in the Great Depression, Stockett gives us two parallel story lines that eventually blend into one.

The Great Depression was unkind to everyone, but it was especially unkind to women if they lost a job, or a good stable family life, or their reputation. Kathryn Stockett, who. gave us The Help, likes to write stories where victims win victories, both small and large. She performs this magic again in her story about a group of women at the mercy of a self-righteous woman, powerful men without charitable impulses, and terrible economic times. These women come up with an outrageous and possibly dangerous plan to get the financial security they need to achieve their goals and get out from under the thumbs of their oppressors. Once again, forming an ersatz family operates as a sort of power base.

Meg is a very bright little girl, who is being abused in an orphanage by a woman who believes that women who have children out of wedlock are feeble-minded, that they only produce feeble-minded children, and that, at the very least, they ought to be rendered unable to reproduce. Why did Meg’s mother, who obviously loved her, allow her to end up in the clutches of this hate-filled woman. It’s personal, as you will see.

Two sisters, Frances and Birdie, whose lives become intertwined even though Frances believes she has escaped the low social status of her birth family are unhappily reunited. Their mother and Grandmother are about to lose their home to foreclosure. Birdie comes to borrow money from her lucky sister, only to find that Frances’ situation is not as lucky as Birdie and Frances have been led to believe. Birdie emerges as a person with depth, empathy, and strength.

Isn’t it fun when people do the impossible? At the very least it is satisfying. Read the book.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion by Beth Brower – Books 1-8

From a Google Image Search – Amazon – Books 1-7

Beth Brower has written a delightful set of short books called The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion which can be enjoyed like a box of chocolates, some bitter and some very sweet indeed. Emma lives in the Victorian Age, and her social standing is high enough to be affected by her behavior, as was the behavior of any woman of means. Emma is hardly a woman of means these days, but she is a homeowner in the quirky, but upscale St. Crispian section of London. Emma lost her mother and her father at the age of 18. She could not become the legal owner of Lapis Lazuli House until turning 21. For three years she was the caretaker for a very cranky relative, Matilde, whose son, Archibald Flat, was installed in her beloved home. Archibald, it turns out, has a passion for morning coats, and a rather nasty disposition, perhaps inherited. He has eaten through most of Emma’s fortune, leaving her to live frugally upon reaching her twenty-first birthday.

However, Emma is gifted with a disposition that is philosophical, upbeat, undaunted, and magnetic. Emma wants to pursue an academic lifestyle. She wants to read every important book and learn all she can. Sadly, her father left his library to Archibald, who has locked the doors to the library and forbidden her to enter. She has only two books right now, the complete edition of Shakespeare with her father’s notes and drawings and the Bible, although she isn’t particularly religious.

Since Emma arrived at her house slightly before coming-of-age, she is denied access to her own room and sent to the garret. Over time she finds ways to turn the garret rooms into a comfortable and private space. Archibald has had a portion of the house partitioned off as a rental.

Here is a set of short books, pardon me, a set of addictive short books, featuring our plucky heroine who attracts near disaster and great companions, leaving her skating close to social ruin but exceedingly grateful and well protected. She must contend with her Aunt Eugenia Spencer, who is managing the Seasons of the lovely Arabella, leading to an advantageous engagement to a wealthy husband. Arabella to Emma’s dismay is perfectly willing to marry for status and doesn’t seem to believe in love. Because Emma’s services are required by her aunt to make sure only the best suitors dance or speak with her daughter by blocking unsuitable applicants, Emma is treated to seasonal wardrobes from one of the best dressmakers in London, which is lucky break given her rather impoverished state.

When a talented war photographer, Niall Pierce, rents Lapis Lazuli Minor, and later rents space to make a studio, not only are Emma’s fortunes uplifted, but so is her heart. Emma also has a cook and ally named Agnes, and her servant Parian is coming along nicely. A chance connection sees Emma befriended by the rather strait-laced Duke of Islington, a friendship that gives Emma a certain social cachet. Add in Young Hawkes the ever-disappearing vicar and Emma suddenly feels that she is part of a group of companions who seem to have what she calls “alchemy.” It’s easy to relate to the comfort she finds with these friends because many of us have experienced this happy phenomenon, an ersatz family.

These journals may remind you of the books of the Brontë sisters or of Jane Austen, but Emma is far less supervised than the women in those stories. Books 1-8 are now available, but I hope that Beth Brower will not stop where Book 8 ends. Read at the risk of destroying your schedule, or for using up those days when you are at your leisure. While there is plenty of happiness to be found in Emma’s journals, there is also sadness, poignancy, and heartbreak making outcomes uncertain. Keep writing Brower. These journals are winners.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

From a Google Image Search – LA Times

The topic of “tradwives” is trending which makes Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke very timely indeed. Conservatives are upset that Americans are having too few children. They’re upset that men are feeling challenged by women seeking fame and fortune. Right-wingers believe that men are being left feeling emasculated, and angry. The rest of us are upset that so many men are unwilling to entertain the idea of evolving to a mental state in which they can enjoy sharing power with women. The answer is, supposedly, to return to an earlier time when men were dominant and women submissive, when men “brought home the bacon” and women were “barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen”.

Natalie Heller, born in rural Idaho, a Christian girl with unbending ideas about life, morality, and the immoral behavior of modern women, accepts a scholarship to Harvard as if enlightenment will win out over culture shock. Her judgmental signals alienate roommates and dorm mates who then punish her with isolation. When Natalie attracts the son of a wealthy politician, she decides that she’ll show them all, so she leaves school to get married. However, Caleb Mills turns out to be spoiled and aimless. For a while they live with his parents. Eventually Natalie takes the wheel and talks Caleb’s father, Doug, into buying them a farm and bankrolling them. Doug agrees but his support has financial limits. Five million dollars sounds like a fortune, but Caleb has no concept of what things cost. He has an image of what a farm should be like, so he buys big equipment he doesn’t need, milk cows he can’t care for properly, and farm workers to do all the farm work. He decides that he will only grow vegetables which Natalie knows will not produce the income needed to keep up with the costs of having this farm.

Natalie, facing the end of Doug’s financial support and Caleb’s rather dreamy approach to life, decides to become a “tradwife” in an online podcast. Natalie’s mom advised her “to remember to be kind.” Although this sounds like the typical advice to women, “smile, honey”, in Natalie’s case it is simply good advice. Natalie is not kind. We see her thoughts because the author lets us in on them. She judges her followers, she judges her husband, and she has no intention of being an actual “tradwife,” although she does produce plenty of offspring (Clementine, Stetson, Samuel, Jessa, Junebug, Mary, Maeve, Noah and Abel). She has two kitchens, one without modern appliances, and around a corner in an adjacent room she has all the appliances found in modern kitchens and laundry rooms. She mistakenly hires a producer for her Instagram posts who learns all her secrets and sees the two nannies Natalie has hired to keep her children from being a burden and from being neglected by a mom who has no interest in being a mom. Natalie is, to say the least, as inauthentic as most of us would suspect a modern “tradwife” to be.

The author transports Natalie and Caleb back to 1855, to a time when life required women to occupy traditional roles. Even in this setting, Natalie avoids reality by imagining a kidnapping situation and with the help of a way moms dealt with the realities of being a tradwife in the 50s, “mother’s little helper.” (pills, drugs, alcohol)

It takes a while to put together the 1855 chapters and the present-day chapter, to see how they connect, to decide if time travel is involved. It leads to a truly surprising ending. Burke has written a book that will make you think deep thoughts about the changing roles of men and women, about parenting, about authenticity, love and kindness, and about social media’s ability to prevaricate, to present the unrealistic as real. Interesting subject, interesting book.

The Women by Kristin Hannah – Book

From a Google Image Search – Pan Macmillan

“There were no women in Vietnam.” When Frankie McGrath comes home from two years of nursing soldiers wounded in Vietnam, she is not thanked for her services. Her father doesn’t add her photo to his wall of heroes. Of course, coming home from Vietnam was nothing like coming home from WWII. America’s role in the war was hotly contested at home. Because Americans felt it was not our war, some of their anti-war emotions were displaced onto our soldiers who had few choices and usually could not avoid being sent off to the war.

Kristin Hannah’s account of the war and the roles of women in it is not a dainty matter. She did not withhold the gore or the emotional turmoil army nurses experienced in Vietnam. Her book may be fictional, but that allows her to include us in the devastation as we identify with the characters in her book.

Frankie’s much beloved brother joined the Navy but was killed in action almost as soon as he arrived in-country. Helicopters played a huge role in the Vietnam War, both taking soldiers in and out of combat and in and out of medical camps, some of them MASH units, located near the front lines of the battle. Frankie’s decision to join the army to become a nurse was motivated by a desire to please her father, but also it was for Findley, her brother.

The soldiers Frankie treats gave proof of the fragility of human bodies when confronted with weapons of war. Their wounds are terrible. Experience eventually replaced her nerves with skill. She earns a place as an excellent surgical nurse, and she finds friends who will have her back for life.

However, Frankie is young and soldiers flirt, especially helicopter pilots. Frankie falls in love and despairs when she learns her sweetheart is dead. And, what Frankie faces when she gets home does not meet any of her expectations. Finally, after PTSD, addiction, and other heartaches we leave Frankie in Washington, DC at a ceremony dedicating the wall honoring the veterans who died in Vietnam, and a ceremony honoring the nurses and doctors and the soldiers and sailors who didn’t die in Vietnam.

I have left out many important events from this story because I recommend that you read the book and I don’t want to spoil it. In a meaningful coincidence I finished reading The Women by Kristin Hannah about the women who served in Vietnam on our designated Memorial Day.

Platform Decay by Martha Wells – Book

From a Google Image Search – Space

Our hero in Platform Decay by Martha Wells, as with all the Murderbot Diary books, used to be a murderbot. He found a way to override his governor switch because he found killing distasteful and lacking as a nuanced approach to solving problems arising between corporations or corporations and humans in space. With each entry into the diary, murderbot becomes more organic and less of a bot. Eventually he was adopted by Dr. Mensa and the Preservation colony. He is on a mission to bring two endangered citizens with close personal ties to Dr. Mensa home.

Our murderbot is now a SecUnit, a security unit, with skills that make him the perfect one to mount a rescue mission to a decaying platform surrounding a dead planet. When he arrives at the designated platform, he learns that there are a few more people who need to be rescued, but he doesn’t totally trust the woman who is seeking his help.

Once again, his old enemy, the powerful BE corporation is involved and the story becomes an action-packed race through well-kept parts of the platform that rings the planet and old, abandoned parts of the platform. Will SecUnit get everyone out safely this time? It’s a tense situation. It helps that SecUnit can turn off surveillance cameras or wipe them after the fact. It helps that he has pockets full of drones to use as scouts.

When SecUnit is stressed, he watches old movie episodes. He especially loves Sanctuary Moon, but he has expanded his internal library. I use the Murderbot Diaries in the same way that SecUnit uses Sanctuary Moon. The books are a brief adrenalin rush that refreshes because they are fictional. Long live our increasingly human Murderbot.

The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett-Book

From a Google Image Search – Penguin Random House

The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett started in an old folks’ home with a killer cat named Pancakes, and I almost quit reading. But, although this was a story of heartbreak and grief, it was also a story about how taking risks might mitigate grief or at least give a person the tools to handle life’s next blows.

The story ended up being a kind of a romp. PJ and Ivy lost their oldest daughter, Kate, on prom night. PJ deals with the loss by drinking, a lot. Ivy divorces him and moves in with a mutual friend, Fred. Ivy, in other words, moves on. Fred and Ivy, seeing how PJ is flailing and failing, take care of him as a family member. When Fred and Ivy announce that they are going to Alaska and that they will be unreachable by phone or text for a while, it appears that PJ might not make it. Then he sees an online post about a death in Tucson, Arizona of the husband of a woman he knew in school. She lives in the Tender Hearts community. He falls in love. It’s fate. He decides to travel to Tender Hearts. Should he take his old beaten-up ride?

However, fate has another path in mind for PJ. Luna and Ollie are headed for foster care because of parental stupidity (murder and suicide). Pancakes had a hand in this, maybe. Their father was PJ’s estranged brother. These children are not happy to accept PJ, Luna especially, but their only other option is foster care. Luna believes that her real father is a movie star who used to go to her mother’s high school.

What was a rather iffy situation becomes tolerable for everyone when PJ decides that they will all go on a road trip to find Luna’s movie star and ask him to complete a paternity test. Meanwhile they can also stop by Tucson to meet PJ’s intended at the Tender Hearts Senior Community. PJ’s grown daughter, Sophie, recently fired from her job, reluctantly decides to go with them. Hartnett’s novel tells the story of their journey. They take Pancakes along and leave a small trail of deaths behind them. We learn that Pancakes doesn’t kill indiscriminately.

Once we lose someone we love, the grief never leaves us, but Hartnett’s story gives hope that there is life after loss, even if fate has to beat us over the head and send us off on a wacky road trip to figure it out. There’s a lot more to this journey, but, of course, I won’t tell you.

Cal Hooper Trilogy by Tana French – Books

From a Google Image Search – Amazon

I’m still enjoying the booty of rewards from Audible. I listened to the Tana French Cal Hooper books, The Searcher, The Hunter, and The Keeper almost without coming up for air. The books are read by Roger Clark who easily switches from an Irish accent to an American accent. Cal Hooper, an ex-cop from Chicago retires to the small village of Ardna Kelty expecting to be surrounded by the beauty of the land and getting in some fishing. He doesn’t have much time to get tired of too much peace and quiet though.

In The Searcher, Cal finds himself being stalked by a wild creature, which eventually reveals itself to be a very paranoid 11-year-old boy with a furtive manner, hand-me-down clothes and a shaved head. What could turn a modern child into the mess that is Trey Reddy? As it turns out, a small Irish village where families have long histories is not as peaceful a place as you might expect. Trey wants to know about her brother Brendan. (Cal discovers that Trey is a girl) She needs to know what became of her brother. She knows that there is someone or perhaps several someone-s who know what happened to Brendan, but the locals can keep secrets, especially the deepest, darkest secrets. It’s not all gothic drama. Cal is settling in, getting to know his neighbors, planting vegetables, and tempting Trey to do some carpentry. He tries to avoid the widow they are trying to fix him up with, but when he meets Laina, he immediately sees her excellent qualities. Does Trey eventually get her answers? You know I can’t tell.

When I learned there were three Cal Hooper books (a trilogy) I downloaded the other two and the “lost weekend” happened, pleasantly lost though. In The Hunter, Trey’s father comes back from London, and he is a man with a plan. John Reddy has always been a dreamer (with no moral boundaries). His wife, Trey’s mom, Sheila seems more anxious than pleased. Johnny tells guys he knows down the pub that a man he met in London is related to the Feeny’s in Ardna Kelty. The man’s great-grandmother told him that there was gold buried along a path through the mountains in Ardna Kelty made by an old stream that ran into the river. This begins a village gold rush. Johnny got all his friends to invest in a fake gold trail that would inspire the investor to look for the real buried gold. Trey is happy to have her dad back, but she doesn’t put her trust in him. Laina, Cal, and Trey have settled into a peaceful life. However, Cal is finding that peace in Ardna Kelty has little permanence. Is there gold in them thar hills? Read and find out.

Some quiet years must have ensued because in the next book, The Keeper, Trey is sixteen, and although she will always be socially different, she has made friends and it’s looking like she may be headed for a more intimate relationship. When Rachel, a young woman from the village who is about to marry the son of a successful, but rather overbearing local developer, comes to talk to Laina about her cat (and her life), Laina doesn’t want to involve herself in Rachel’s decision-making, so she sends her off without any satisfying bits of wisdom. Soon after, Rachel is found dead by what looks like suicide-by-drowning. Plenty of small-town speculation goes into deciding who’s to blame. Laina, as supposedly the last to see Rachel is devastated and it doesn’t help that most of the villagers blame her for Rachel’s death also. (Side question: Can an old woman who sits all day in a gloomy parlor really have such influential behind-the-scenes power?) Cal can’t get through to Laina, and he is grieving the loss of their relationship. Mart, Cal’s neighbor and friend with an irascible personality that may make you laugh out loud, also ends up dead. Is there any way to stop a man determined to get his way at all costs without ruining the lives of innocents in the town? Better call Cal.

So, you might want to explore the dark undercurrents in that small village in Ireland whose beauty and peaceful appearance is tempting you to throw over your old life and begin a new one. Your in-depth research could start with Tana French’s, Cal Hooper trilogy. But be prepared to lose track of time and be unavailable for socializing due to a pleasurable excursion into the dastardly deeds done in gorgeous, isolated places, and to meet a new set of memorable characters..