Modern Lovers by Emma Straub – Book

Literature right now is looking at families and, just lately a surprising number of these families live in New York City. Perhaps it is because diversity has long been tolerated by sophisticated New Yorkers. Perhaps it is the desire, held in abeyance by many of us, to live in New York City for at least a while. Maybe it is because, somehow, raising a family in New York City, seems both better than raising a family elsewhere because of the pace of the city and all the cultural options that families can sample, and more problematic because it denies children more bucolic pleasures. Unless you have money it is probably quite difficult to raise a family in this particular American city. However, when you are the author of a book your fictional family can be as rich as you like and thus the whole NYC fantasy can play out. Despite the stimulating and expensive surroundings it is still possible to make points about modern life that resonate universally, so an author can have their cake and eat it too.

Modern Lovers by Emma Straub is just such a novel. We meet three people who met each other in college. They were in a band together and were quite popular at local college parties and bars. They wore gothic attire and managed to sound better than they actually were. A fourth band member, Lydia, who became very famous, died in an OD at the age of 27. Two band members, Elizabeth and Andrew married. Elizabeth is a real estate agent, Andrew, who inherited money, is a man who drifts from interest to interest. They have a son Harry, who is studying for his SAT’s. Zoe, the other band member, apparently so beautiful and lively that people are always falling in love with her, is married to Jane, a chef with her own successful restaurant. They all once shared a house in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn. Zoe and Jane have a daughter, Ruby, also preparing for her SAT’s. The college band is being resurrected in memory as a result of a decision that must be made.

This is a slice of life novel, although not in a strict sense since we do hear the backstory. Each couple is at a point of crisis in their relationship. Each couple must decide whether to remain together or to separate. Harry and Rudy, ditching their SAT Prep course also have things to work out both together and separately. Does it make any difference that one couple is made up of a man and woman and the other couple is made up of two women? That’s what is refreshing about this novel. We see two marriages and two families, but the difficulties and challenges each couple faces could occur in any relationship. This is lighter than you would think based on the subject matter, perhaps even a bit superficial, and perhaps the ending is a bit abrupt with too little detail about the outcomes for each character, but this is still an enjoyable book with engaging characters.

Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan – Book

When I checked out what books were being published this summer I came across this novel, Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan. I wasn’t sure if it would be worth reading or not but the description said that the author had written in Singlish, a dialect of English used in Singapore and that this was a dialect that in no way would affect my ability to read and understand this story. I am a language and word lover so that was all I needed to get me to give the book a try. I was afraid it would be some fluffy chick lit, but like the chick lit I have read, it contains deeper thoughts and redeeming qualities.

On the surface the narrator, Jazeline (Jazzy) and her friends, Imo, Fann and Sher seem quite superficial. They have been girls, like many girls in America, who go to work all week and then head out clubbing on the weekends. They are modern girls so they drink a lot, dance a lot, and they sleep around a bit. The dialect they speak in uses many references we think of as sexual and this fact alone means that this book will not suit all readers. In truth, there is no subtlety to be found in the Singapore bar scene that the Sarong Party Girls move in, which caters to every taste that men, if allowed, will indulge in, so I caution you again not to read this novel if you don’t want to learn about their world.

The story line reminds me, however, of an old American movie with the title How to Marry a Millionaire except these girls are already sexually active and they want to marry white guys (ang mohs). Still, like the women in the movie, it is easy to like Jazeline, and to wish her well despite the rather materialistic project she is currently pursuing. Every once in a while Jazzy shows some real insight into certain realities about the treatment of women in modern Singapore (and elsewhere) by men, especially obvious if you go clubbing every weekend in a bar scene where wealthy men like to keep an entourage of young pretty women around them while they party.

The author, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, manages to stay in dialect, using the hip cadences of Singlish almost all of the time. The dialect thins out a bit when Jazzy/Cheryl shares with us her insights into things she is starting to be critical of in relation to the male-female dynamic as she begins to think about finding a partner for life, rather than just living to enjoy the weekends. She is getting too old for the clubs and she is feeling pressured to find her ang moh right now.

Here’s Jazzy/Cheryl in almost full Singlish mode:

“Aiyoh—mabuk already?” Charlie said, blinking at us one time while she pulled out her cigs from her handbag and threw them on the table. This woman was really damn action! Her eyes are quite big and pretty, so she knows that when she acts drama a bit with them, men confirm will steam when they see it. Some more she always outlines her eyes with thick thick black black pencil, so it makes them look bigger and darker, a bit like those chio Bollywood actresses. This type of move – yes is quite obvious drama, but that night, I thought to myself, Jazzy, better take notes. If you can pull this off well, it can be quite useful.”

Here’s Jazzy/Cheryl losing some Singlish as she makes a deeper point:

“The truth is, even if I felt like I could speak honestly, I didn’t know how to explain everything – or anything, really. How to tell him about a society where girls grow up watching their fathers have mistresses and second families on the side? Or one in which you find out one day that it is your mother who is the concubine and that you are the second family? A society that makes you say, when you are twelve or seventeen, ‘No matter what, when I grow up, I am never going to be the woman that tolerates that!’ But then you actually grow up and you look around, and the men who are all around you, the boys you grew up with, no matter how sweet or kind or promising they were, that somehow they have turned into men that all our fathers were and still are.”

I enjoyed this novel even more than I thought I would because it is even more like that old movie How to Marry a Millionaire than you might think. Movies of that classic film era generally contained a message, a practical moral message that passed on some wisdom from the elders in a form that was palatable to a younger generation. I did not really expect to find this in Sarong Party Girls, but it is there, along with a lot of shocking descriptions of what “fun” is like in Singapore, and it made the book worth more. It made it as Jazzy would say, quite shiok — and it is quite feminist also, without leaving men out.

The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith – Book

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Alexander McCall Smith has been writing The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series of books for more than a decade and I love them all. These stores remind me that there is still sweetness in this chaotic and sometimes wicked world of ours. Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi Radiphuti rarely have dangerous crimes to untangle. They are often called upon to clear up domestic difficulties, misunderstandings, or familial treacheries. Mma Ramotswe and her cohort (although somewhat eccentric) generally solve these delicate situations and sometimes set other things straight along the way.

In this current novel, The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine, Mma Makutsi forces Mma Ramotswe to take a vacation. When a case comes in and when it seems to have been placed in the lap of the perhaps-too-softhearted part-time pinch hitter Rra Polopetsi, Mma Ramotswe almost puts her friendship with Mma Makutsi in jeopardy. She proves that she is not good at vacationing. But her vacation gives her time to think some very good thoughts that remind her about her blessings:

“She gazed at her husband, Being loved and admired by a man like that – and she knew this man, this mechanic, this fixer of machines with their broken hearts, did indeed love and admire her – was like walking in sunshine; it gave the same feeling of warmth and pleasure to bask in the love of one who has promised it, publicly at a wedding ceremony, and who is constant in his promise that such love will be given for the rest of his days. What more could any woman ask? None of us, she thought, not one single one of us, could ask for anything more than that.”

Perhaps we don’t all agree with this sentiment and we might be inclined to want this and still want more, however, the emotion of this expression of marital love gives us hope that goodness will win out over evil and that we still inhabit a moral universe.

Even though this is the sixteenth novel in the series I don’t think I will ever tire of visiting my fictional friends in Gaborone, Botswana.

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler – Book

While it is fun to imagine writing a modern version of The Taming of the Shrew, there are some cultural differences between the 21^st century and the 18^th century that offer challenges to an author that may be insurmountable. Not the least is Shakespeare’s title. The actual word, shrew, must have been invented by men. Even Shakespeare’s female contemporaries when speaking among themselves most likely expressed anger at the term or, possibly a tolerant sort of humor (rolled eyeballs) provided the males in their lives were not actually abusive. In our times men in Western cultures who call women shrews had better be ready for some serious pushback.

We see the humor in the situation though – a woman with a sharp tongue is softened by love for a man who uses his wits to defuse her opposition and we believe he will offer her the respect and affection she needs to take off her armor. Since even someone who seems like a scold deserves love, a happy ending is satisfying and offers hope. Kate, however, is not quite enough of a scold in Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler to have the same impact as Shakespeare’s Kate.

Anne Tyler may have had the idea to do this modern novel based on Shakespeare’s play in the back of her mind for many years. It is not a bad read, but not, I think, as strong as most of Tyler’s other novels. It lacks detail and it is not as witty as the acid give and take of the original. The novel seems more like a writer’s outline than a fully fleshed out offering. In this case Vinegar Girl, although interesting conceptually is a bit lacking in the execution. Of course Shakespeare is formidable writer to take on. If you don’t make your expectations impossibly high, you will enjoy the story. Anne Tyler still has skills that have been polished by a long career as a bestselling author.

The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton – Book

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In The Excellent Lombards Jane Hamilton is doing a Jane Smiley-style farm family story for us. Jane Smiley hasn’t always write about the same farm but she usually writes about a similar era, the era when family farms are no longer profitable, or the children don’t want to continue being farmers, or the suburbs crowd out the farms as developers convince farmer after farmer to sell off parcels of land for housing developments or malls or a Walmart Superstore, a Seven-Eleven. There are always a few farmers who are not ready to sell, who cannot imagine any other way of life or who have a child (in this case, a daughter, Francie) who is in love with the family land and the family business. Jane Hamilton gives us such a tale in her new novel.

There are two brothers, the Lombard brothers, who live on the family land with its 3 houses, 3 barns, four hundred acres of forest, sheep pastures and the prize, the apple orchard. This orchard and the surrounding land has been in the family for four generations. In this generation Sherwood and Dolly Lombard occupy the main house with their two children, Adam and Amanda. Mary Hill, an adopted cousin lives upstairs in the big old farmhouse. Sherwood is not a true farmer, he invents things. Adam and Amanda are being groomed for college. They do not like the outdoors and are unlikely to want to run an orchard.

On the other side of the road Francie lives with her Mom and Dad, Jim and Nellie Lombard and Francie’s brother William. Francie is the narrator. We hear her voice through several years as she changes from child to teenager but the book is not childish. In this generation Francie is the Lombard who loves the farm, cannot imagine any other life and is thrown for a loop whenever she glimpses what the probable fate of the orchard and the estate and the lifestyle will be. Does it still matter in modern times that Francie is a girl? You will have to see for yourself what you think about this.

What I always loved about Jane Smiley was the way she immersed us in a farm family, and we experienced the tortuous inheritance decisions, the romance of a life lived close to nature on owned land, the anxieties of the economics of farm families, so dependent on uncontrollable variables like weather and world events and markets. Jane Hamilton brings to life these same elements that have eventually led to fewer and fewer family farms in America. We have all watched farms disappear from the near hinterlands around our cities. We all see the poor Canada geese trying to conduct their natural lives on tiny manicured wetlands near car dealerships. We have watched them cross eight lane highways with their ducklings – well at least I have. Every day I ride on a road that ran through farmland and now runs through senior housing.

Francis never says this but we can see that she worries. As much as she loves the farm she sees that she would have to learn the things that May Hill knows and she does not want to become May Hill. May Hill is a genius when it comes to fixing farm equipment but she is also a rather scary recluse. Francie says this about May Hill, “She did not like anyone – she did not want to see you on the path.”

Jane Hamilton and The Excellent Lombards made me long to inherit an orchard, at least before the realities began to outweigh the romanticism, but she, like Jane Smiley, made me wish that family farms had never become too culturally irrelevant to survive, or too labor-intensive for modern sensibilities and too lacking in economic stability to be attractive. I fall for this sort of farm tale every time. It is always the same, like a familiar litany, but different enough to captivate me, like an old photograph that gives me such enjoyable nostalgia that I don’t mind seeing it again and again. It would be sad if this way of life did not leave a trace, but as long as people read the books about farming written by these two women, it will live on.

We’re All Damaged by Matthew Norman – Novel

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We’re All Damaged by Matthew Norman is a novel of this moment, this cultural age, as yet unnamed, in the America we are all currently immersed in. It is interesting to have our main character and narrator be a guy, Andrew, Andy, with a sort of funny way about him (not in a ha-ha way, but in an ironic, self-deprecating, nerdy but shell-shocked way). As we meet him Andy is reliving the end of his marriage to Karen. He wishes that the setting had been somewhere more appropriate than an Applebee’s. He wishes for a different soundtrack although he sees the “jagged little piece of pop music irony” in “Wake me up before you go-go” which was playing at the exact moment that Karen breaks the news, not even affected, apparently, by the older couple enjoying drinks and touching hands at a nearby table.

It has actually been a year since these events and Andy is now a bartender in NYC, but he is still feeling as bad psychically as his body feels when he gets hit by one of those speedy New York bicyclers. He has to go home with all his bruises and breaks because his family calls to tell him his Grandpa does not have long to live. He has to go home to Omaha, Nebraska, where Karen is now living in their old house with the ripped EMT guy she left Andy for. Andrew is definitely not over this. Will going home help?

When Andy stops in a local bookstore he runs into a tattooed 30-something pretty girl named Daisy. Daisy is a sort of cool girl, a seeming psychic savant and a rebel which is probably the part of her personality that connects with Andy at this point in his life. But who is Daisy and why is she so interested in his Grandpa?

You may ask if this is sort of the guy equivalent of chick lit as many have suggested, and it could be, but it is still a nice little novel about the way guys can sometimes experience a breakup as a sort of killer ego-destroying treason and how it can, perhaps, with time, lead to a higher level of maturity. I am sorry that the author chose the picture he did on his author page – it makes a handsome man with humor look cruel. Other than that, good job.

Behind Closed Doors by B A Paris – Book Review

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Behind Closed Doors by BA Paris was a difficult book to read. It was not complexity that made it difficult; it was content and awareness. From almost the first page we are aware that all is not right with Jack and Grace Angel, although they are often described as perfect. He’s perfectly handsome, has great taste, good manners, and he is such a successful lawyer that he has never lost a case.

Grace is obviously pretty, although we don’t hear an awful lot about this. She is a good cook and hostess. Her home with Jack is well decorated and she is devoted to her much younger sister, Millie, who has Downs Syndrome and who currently resides at a great school in North London.

How do we know that there is something not quite right in all this stylish perfection? There are small details that give us the beginnings of our goose bumps. At the dinner party which opens the book Jack and Grace entertain two couples – Esther and Rufus who Jack just met, and Diane and Adam who they have known for a while. The question is raised of how Grace manages to stay so very thin despite a seemingly ravenous appetite. When Esther presents Grace with a box of very expensive chocolates Grace seems to be worried that if she doesn’t open them before her guests leave she won’t get any. Grace is very fearful that there might be noticeable flaws in her meal. Jack makes sure that no one is ever alone with Grace. Grace doesn’t seem keen on showing the pictures from their honeymoon in Thailand – and more, much more. In fact Millie dislikes Jack until Grace gets Millie to transfer her dislike to Jorj Koony (George Cooney).

Since I sense right from the beginning that all is not as it appears it fills me with a sort of unspecified dread. It also makes me question whether the author should tip her hand so early. Sometimes I like obvious symbols but even the last name Angel doesn’t really work here. Somehow John Irving always carried this off. The stuffed dog Sorrow that kept popping up in Hotel New Hampshire is one of the best examples ever of an obvious symbol that works. But Paris is not John Irving. There is just not enough subtlety here. But even so I could not stop reading (even though I wanted to) and I hoped all the while that somehow all would be well.

We know situations like this really happen. In my small city there is a famous, fairly recent case of Mr. Jankowski, living in an upper middle class suburb, who built a secret underground room behind his basement. He was a serial kidnapper who kept a woman locked in a prison-like cell where he had complete control over her. When he was done with one victim he kidnapped another. He got away with this several times. There were also the three woman held prisoner for a decade or more who escaped from their captor perhaps because he sort of let them. There are other stories like this, fortunately somewhat rare, but even one such imprisonment is too many.

Most of Behind Closed Doors is spent showing how Jack managed to turn an independent woman into the fearful woman that Grace became, incapable of finding a way out, and how he was able to have such a seemingly normal social life. Could anyone actually have so much control over someone that they did not have to keep their prisoner physically locked up? A good part of the book is also spent telling us what happens to Millie, as Millie is the emotional blackmail Jack uses, and Millie is the one Jack really wants.

This novel is chilling and sadly all too believable, but I think the writer’s skills were not quite up to the task of dealing with the subject matter. It’s as if the entire book is written to tick off a check list the author has created of the ways Jack was able to fool Grace and everyone else. However, there is a part of us that likes to know how such a captivity could take place in such a crowded world and the topic is an important one. The book is not long and reads fast, but you will have to decide for yourself whether you want to tackle this one.

At The Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier – Book Review

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My journey with Tracy Chevalier, author of At The Edge of the Orchard, began years ago in book that featured a tapestry of a unicorn (The Lady and the Unicorn). Her current book is worlds away from her first book but if you like trees and following history across the American frontier then here is another sort of tapestry, more realistic and much grimmer, but still somewhat gripping. My favorite Chevalier novel is still Girl with a Pearl Earring and this novel did not displace it.

I acknowledge that all the cruel things people do to each other is upsetting enough when the people are real flesh and blood figures. It seems redundant sometimes to create fiction that captures our inhumanity (or perhaps our too, too human nature) when we can read about it in the news. But still, to create a world with fictional characters and even fictional events that rings true is a true talent and many agree that fiction can immerse us in experiences that are foreign to our own and which help build our capacity for empathy. And while literature that tells us of unpleasant human experiences can seem unrewarding, it can help rid us of the gullibility that partners with being too innocent of life’s trials. Bad things, after all, do happen.

When the Goodenough family decides to leave New England and move west a bad marriage turns into a nightmare. The family puts down their new roots (literally and figuratively) in an inhospitable plot of land in the Black Swamp in Ohio in 1838. James and Sadie Goodenough are a terrible match. He is hard-working and stable, even perhaps a bit dull if you are Sadie who enjoys being admired, likes to party, and is very social. James is obsessed with growing an apple that was brought to America by his family from England, the Golden Pippin. He has carried plants with him from New England to the Black Swamp. But the swamp presents a constant struggle with many indigenous trees to be cleared through massive human labor, too much moisture for growing apples that are good for eating, and a fever that kills.

The Goodenoughs can only keep their land if they have fifty fruit trees growing successfully in five years. They grow the Golden Pippins for eating and they grow other apple trees (spitters) for cider and apple jack. Sadie knows that they don’t have to grow the pippins and she hates how much her husband is obsessed by them. Their children, Caleb, Nathan, Sal, Martha, Robert, and Charles are expected to work as hard as they are able to help make ends meet. The swamp and the grueling labor has already killed two children, Jimmy and Patty. John Coleman (Johnny Appleseed) is almost their only visitor and he brings new apple trees for sale every time he paddles his canoe to the homestead. He also brought Sadie the apple jack, an alcoholic cider to which she, perhaps to tune out this life she is so unsuited for, becomes addicted. James and Sadie have reached a point where they are barely civil and James is so frustrated that he often hits Sadie, who sometimes hits back.

When Sadie and James finally reach the breaking point young Robert is so appalled and feels so guilty that he leaves home at nine and we follow him for the rest of the book as he keeps moving west across America, doing odd jobs and making a living any way he can until he reaches California. Here it seems that Robert finds that he too, like his father is a tree man. He wants to see the redwoods and the sequoias. His interest and the fact that he can’t move any further west leads to his last and most important job. He works for an Englishman, William Lobb who sends seeds and seedlings back to an employer in England to sell to rich estate owners who want to try to grow the giant trees. When his sister Martha catches up with him we finally learn what happened in the aftermath of his parent’s meltdown. This book review of At the Edge of the Orchard finds that this is an odd sort of novel; I think I liked the one with the unicorn better, but I did read the whole thing and it is, of course, well-written. It did make me want to eat a Golden Pippin apple and perhaps hug a sequoia.

The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney – Book Review

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Families “do be crazy” (a term I have inappropriately appropriated) (although The Big Bang writers did it first). There are all kinds of books about families, but what they all seem to have in common is idiosyncratic family members and a certain amount of dysfunction (or a lot of it).

The Plumb family is at the center of the book The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney. They are a modern family, Leonard, Sr. and Francie, and their four children – Leo, Beatrice, Jack, and Melody. The family grew up in New York City with a father running a business that involved feminine hygiene products and a mother who was not exactly a hand’s-on mom, although she seemed to understand her children’s differences well enough.

Leonard, Senior set up a nest egg trust fund for his children to be divided equally when the youngest, Melody, turned forty. Why did he make his children wait so long to inherit? Senior will explain if you read the book. The nest was meant to be small, but the administrator was an astute investor and the fund grew larger than expected.

Just before Melody’s 40^th birthday something happens that changes everything. Of course I can’t tell, but think about the situation. Four adult Plumbs have been planning to inherit and living their lives accordingly. How would it affect your life if you knew you would come into money at a certain age? Would you spend ahead, or would you wait. Would it make you less or more ambitious about your own life goals? Each of the Plumb siblings is affected differently by the unexpected series of events. How will they adjust if their inheritance is less than expected?

This could be a very dark story but the author’s treatment keeps it light. There is angst but not deep anguish. It is a book to enjoy as summer reading – to shake your head at – but it is no great literary masterpiece. Still, this book review finds that it is well-written, a quick read, and entertaining enough to be a best seller.

The Swans of Fifth Avenue: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin – Book

I always had a secret, and to some family members, not so
secret, interest in all things artsy-New York City. In eighth grade we took a
class trip to NYC. I remember well the mix of butterflies and awe I felt the
first time I saw Fifth Avenue and Central Park, stayed in a real hotel, and went
to a show (even if it was only the Rockettes) (even if some of my classmates
were dropping water balloons out of the hotel windows)

I came from a very poor family and our greatest beauty came
from the care our parents lavished on us. Books and movies gave me my first
glimpses of both material luxury and true deprivation. So I confess, although I
understood that the life of sophistication, style, and wealth can be
superficial and exclusionary, and perhaps even psychically empty; it also gave
access to wonderful art that expands awareness and beauty that drugs the
senses.

I devoured Mademoiselle, Glamour, and Vogue magazines. I
poured over the furniture and clothing and the fancy careers in the Doris Day
movies, even more important to me than the romance, or at least part and parcel
of it. Could love really be love without mid-century modern décor, designer
gowns, and furs? This was pretty heady stuff for a girl who slept three-to-a
bed until she was ten or eleven and it was a fantasy world that was never
realized, perhaps because my creation of it was so two-dimensional.

Anyway, Melanie Benjamin, author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue: A Novel seems to have caught the same
bug I did, although perhaps a bit later. Her wealthy role models are from the
70’s, while mine were from the 50’s. She was fascinated by Truman Capote and
the New York scene he briefly “swam” in until he sabotaged himself. (Perhaps
even in the social sphere “what goes up must come down”.) Benjamin has written
a fiction book, but she has done her research. She was as fascinated by these “stars”
as I was when I learned about Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table and
Sylvia Plath, author of The Bell Jar who committed suicide, so
incomprehensibly. (Was it clinical depression or a broken heart, or both, or
neither?)

So there is some room in my brain for this gossipy
speculation about beautiful, famous (and sometimes infamous) people. Truman
Capote as the author’s words describe him, was very young and charismatic,
smart and witty – on the edge of fame when he attracted the attention of those
five young society swans with their lovely long necks. He was not attracted to
women sexually which made it easier for him to befriend these beauties in this
close-knit group of New York’s most photographed and admired women, who were
really only famous for their style and for who they were married to. The author
shows how Truman courted them, worshipped them, was worshipped by them, and
then betrayed them.

Melanie Benjamin did a great job with a novel that could have
read like a piece of fluff. The details of the lives of the five swans (Slim
Hawks, Pamela Churchill, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, and Babe Paley) are
mostly public and have been covered by others in books this author has studied.
The dialogue rings true but was created by the author who tries to explain how
this unusual relationship might have worked well for all involved until it didn’t.
Not my usual fare, but it does tie into my sentimental roots and it is well
done. I enjoyed The Swans of Fifth
Avenue.

By Nancy Brisson