New Century Reading

Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin is one of my (many, regrettable) reading gaps, so when I saw that A Public Space was doing an online read-along of Giovanni's Room, I jumped at the opportunity.

I'm glad I did. This is an excellent book. But--it's a brutal, painful read, and possibly not everyone's cup of tea during a pandemic.

Giovanni's Room is the story of David, a bored American in Paris in post-WWII. He's met a woman, Hella, fallen in love, and proposed. Hella is a bit bored with Paris and decides to take off for Spain while deciding if she's going to accept David's proposal.

Then David meets Giovanni. 

It's easy to see why this book was controversial when it was published decades ago, with its frank depiction of gay and bisexual characters. But the hardest thing is the amount of loathing these people have, both for others, and for themselves. Given how society viewed them, it's not surprising, but it is heartbreaking, especially because (and this is not much of a spoiler--David tells us this at the beginning) Giovanni is doomed. This slim novel details the trajectory of that doom in horrible detail.

I'm making it sound like it's not worth reading. It's very much worth reading. But there's so much despair here that I feel it merits a content warning. But if you can shore yourself up, read it. Doing it on a read-along schedule was the best way, just a few pages a day, rather than trying to gulp down the whole book too fast. 

The Invention of Morel

The Invention of Morel is a novel from 1940 that has been compared to The Turn of the Screw, and rightfully so. In fact, to be honest, I think I like Morel better.

This book has, like Screw, a highly unreliable narrator, a man who is on a deserted island--or he thinks it's deserted. Is it? Are there others? Is he hallucinating? The island is apparently somewhere off the coast of New Guinea (the town of Rabaul is mentioned more than once, which is how I made that connection). The island is both wondrous and terrifying. It has infrastructure from previous inhabitants who are rumored to have died dreadful deaths from a disease on the island. Is our narrator dying too? Is there any truth to the tale of those deaths, other than the fact the infrastructure still remains? And who is the mysterious, beautiful woman the narrator sees every evening, coming out to watch the sunset?

He's falling in love with her and can't think how to approach her, how to express his love, how to win her over. He's increasingly desperate to reach out to her, especially when he sees her communicating with other men. Who are they, and what are they to her?

This novella (about 100 pages) starts slow and seems repetitious, but toward the end, I was reading as fast as I could. I had some ideas about how it would end, and I was wrong. All the better. The ending worked for me, and left me thinking about a whole lot of things: Love, isolation, hallucination, and just how unreliable an unreliable narrator can be. A great read in the run-up to Halloween.

Good Citizens Need Not Fear

Good Citizens Need Not Fear is a collection of loosely intertwined stories, five set during the Soviet period and four set after the fall of the Soviet Union. They're dark and funny, with situations that can seem over the top, and yet from what I've read about the actual Soviet Union, they're probably dead on. The book opens with a man trying to work his way through government bureaucracy to report problems with his apartment building's heat. But there's another problem: His building doesn't exist, according to the government, and therefore no one can do anything about it. 

The stories go on to document a woman who creates black market record albums in an unusual way; a child with a cleft palate who gets tossed into a nightmarish Soviet foster system; a government worker whose job it is to "encourage" people who have spoken out against the government to apologize; the first-ever Miss USSR pageant; and, in the post-Soviet world, a tour operator who takes rich people and mistreats them as the Soviet government did for pay.

Surreal, horrifying, yes--all these things. Author Maria Reva is a gripping storyteller, and I polished off this book in one day. That said, it kept bringing this book back into my mind, which I've read several times. I keep thinking it's the superior book, although it's been a couple of years since I read it. While the Reva was a good read, it didn't haunt me the way the Marra book did. If I hadn't read the Marra, perhaps I would rave more about this book? I don't know. The quandaries of being a passionate reader, I guess. Still, I recommend Good Citizens.  

The Heir Affair

This sequel to The Royal We--or next in a series, perhaps, as it's being officially referred to as The Royal We #2--isn't quite as fun or snarky as the first book. But you know what? For a quick, escapist read during a pandemic? I still recommend it. (But read the first book first, if you haven't already, as this one assumes you remember quite a lot from that one.)

The first book was a thinly fictionalized account of the courtship of Prince William and Duchess Kate. The Heir Affair picks up where that one left off, with the newlywed couple coming to terms with the scandals that broke at the time of their wedding, dealing with the over-zealous press, trying to rebuild a relationship with William/Nick's brother Harry/Freddie, while Kate/Bex struggles to find her own role in the monarchy. Queen Elizabeth/Eleanor is a bit of a tyrant and manipulator and has no worries about ordering the couple to get busy producing heirs. 

In the meantime, the couple have moved into the royal residence that was formerly the home of Princess Margaret/Georgina, and while renovating, Bex begins to learn a lot about the socialite-turned-recluse, including some highly explosive family secrets that will affect Bex, Nick, and Freddie.

This one was more plot-driven than the first one, and also has a lot less snark, which I missed. But Bex is still an engaging narrator, and the storyline about Georgina ends up being quite poignant. And some of the plot points are eerie, given how they mirror some things that have happened to the royals in recent years. So, bottom line, if you are craving some light escapism, you could do a lot worse. And yes, I'm all in for the third installment, if there is one.

Eyes of the Rigel

Finally, I was able to track down a copy of the final installment of Roy Jacobsen's Barroy trilogy. I gobbled up the first two parts, the story of Ingrid and her family living a hardscrabble life on an island in the northern part of Norway before and during WWII. In the final installment, the war is over, and Ingrid takes on a personal odyssey to find the father of her child. As she travels far from her small corner of the world, she finds people damaged by the war (and not just physically) and conflicting stories about the man she's searching for. 

This book seemed very different than the first two, and when I finished it, I wasn't sure I liked it. But I found myself thinking hard about it; it stuck with me in a way many books don't. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked, even loved, it. It initially felt episodic in nature as Ingrid roams from place to place. Yet I think this book is greater than the sum of its parts. Ingrid is learning hard truths about the nature, and outcomes, of war, especially in a pre-digital age. Jacobsen is unflinching in his view of the damage wars cause, even a war to fight Nazis. 

All together, the trilogy is so powerful, and one I will return to. I'd like to read all three books back-to-back at some point, as opposed to reading them between other books, as I did this time. I want to experience the full continuity. That might be a good winter project. 

Mexican Gothic

I am all in for Mexican Gothic. Wish I'd saved it for October. I was a little nervous cracking into it, because the author photo showed a highly photogenic young woman, and I've read one too many half-baked novels that seemingly were rushed into print with authors in that category. But author Moreno-Garcia delivered, big time.

The book is set in Mexico in the 1950s, and our feisty heroine, Noemi Taboada, is the belle of the society ball, flitting from one social event to another and flirting like crazy. Still, she'd like more from life; specifically, she'd like to go to university and study anthropology, a hard sell for a woman of her place and time. But her father has a rather onerous task for her, so onerous that he agrees to send her to university if she completes it. Noemi's cousin, Catalina, married a not-well-known man who carried her away to a small village, and she has since sent Noemi's father some disturbing letters. Noemi's task is to travel to this remote place and see for herself how Catalina is doing, make sure she's safe. Noemi's not wild about the idea, but she too is worried about her cousin, and off she goes.

The man Catalina married is an heir in a family that made its fortunes on silver mines. The mines are now closed, and the family's fortunes are failing, and there's more than a little suspicion that he married Catalina to get into her family's money. That's bad enough, but when Noemi arrives, she finds Catalina closely guarded by family members and servants in a house that's clearly falling into disrepair. Worse, the house has some traits that become increasingly unnerving. Noemi has a heart of steel, but the longer she stays, the more worried--and afraid--she becomes.

The book has it all--a dark, creepy house, forbidding family figures who clearly aren't telling the whole story, a damsel in distress (Catalina, not Noemi--Noemi is kickass and a great 21st-century protagonist), a sinister doctor, a village folk healer, and atmosphere on every page. I won't tell what the secrets are, or how it ends, but let's just say I found it enormously satisfying. This one definitely goes on my shelf for a future October re-read.

Writers & Lovers

Writers & Lovers is a book that shouldn't have worked for me. It takes on a number of tired tropes: The 30-something woman who isn't progressing in any way in life, and not only that, she happens to be a wannabe novelist. She's deeply in debt and rents a shack from a friend of her brother's, where she works on her novel while avoiding debt collectors. Her income is from working as a server at a high-end restaurant. Her friends are largely moving along with their lives and careers, starting families, and she's stuck.

However, Lily King's protagonist, Casey, is also still reeling from the sudden death of her beloved mother while she's estranged from her father. No wonder she's stuck. She's also developing debilitating panic attacks over everything that's not going well in her life, as well as a love affair gone wrong. She flounders through each day, trying to put a sentence or two on paper while surviving the demanding restaurant work.

Above all, she does manage to have a sense of humor, even in the midst of the panic and depression, and in spite of herself, she can't help see clearly about some potential romantic entanglements that come along. In a lesser writer's hands, this would have dissolved into trite love affairs, but King is smarter than that, and so is Casey. 

It was a book I was rather skeptical about going into it, but in the end, I was 100% sold. Was the ending a tad pat? Yes. Did I care? No. I loved Casey and seeing how she pulls herself out of the abyss. I'll read this one again, and I'll also look for King's other books.  

Lot

Bryan Washington's Lot opened an enormous window for me to learn about people different from me. This collection of stories explores immigrant life in various neighborhoods in Houston, whether it's a young Latin male realizing he's gay, a Jamaican woman whose extramarital affair has unexpected and horrific consequences, the struggle of an abandoned wife to keep her children and restaurant alive and flourishing, even the story of two men who find what they believe to be a chupacabra. There are prostitutes and thieves, unintended pregnancies, grinding poverty and systemic racism, and a variety of other tragedies.

But here's the thing. I may be making this sound depressing, and there are definitely stories that made my heart ache. These characters are all flawed--and who among us isn't?--but Washington explores their lives and histories so carefully that their stories are gripping and thought-provoking.

And the writing: 

"You bring yourself wherever you go. You are the one thing you can never run out on."

"It didn't take long to see that there's the world you live in, and then there are the constellations around it, and you'll never know you're missing them if you don't even know to look up."

A wonderful, worthwhile read.

 

The Vanishing Half

Oh, this book. It's so good. Sooooooooooo good. And that's quite an accomplishment, given that a plot summary makes it sound gimmicky and forced: Twin girls are born and live in a small town that is home only to light-skinned Black people, so light they could pass for white. But as they grow up, they realize that there's not much of a future for them in this town, and they make their escape to New Orleans. One of them ends up marrying a Black man; the other ends up passing as white and fully immersing herself in that alternate reality. How their lives unfold in this way is the bulk of the book.

In lesser hands, this would have been preachy and smarmy. But in Brit Bennett's hands, it's a thoughtful character study, one that doesn't pass judgment on either twin or present either of them as perfect and flawless. It's also, deeply, a story of family. What makes family? How are families constructed, especially families created under incorrect assumptions? What do we owe our families? And what do we owe ourselves?

Bonus: The writing itself is fantastic. 

"A town always looked different once you'd returned, like a house where all the furniture had shifted three inches. You wouldn't mistake it for a stranger's house, but you'd keep banging your shins on the table corners."

This one stuck with me for quite a while after I read it. I can't wait to see what Brit Bennett does next.

Abide With Me

Along with reading Virginia Woolf's novels in the order of publication, I decided to revisit another of my favorite authors and read her work in chronological order. Last month I reread and loved Amy and Isabelle. This month I reread and loved Abide With Me. 

Set in the fictional Maine town of West Annett in 1959, this is the story of Tyler Caskey, a young pastor in a small town at the beginning of his career. When the book opens, he's struggling to come to terms with the death of his young wife, leaving him as a widower with two young daughters. The youngest, barely a toddler, goes to live with Tyler's mother, while the school-age Katherine stays with Tyler. But her mother's death has caused Katherine to stop speaking. She's having problems at school and at the Sunday morning kinderkirk, where teachers find her difficult and even a little scary. Tyler is trying to manage the work of keeping his congregation together and on the straight and narrow, while desperately lonely himself. Eventually, things come to a head, and Tyler can't pretend that all is well anymore.

As with Amy and Isabelle, I can see the roots of Strout's Pulitzer-winning Olive Kitteredge in this book. The small Maine town, the examination of not just the primary characters but several secondary characters as well, all point to Kitteredge. Strout is a master at deciding which characters need attention and when, and she's not afraid to take a hard look at the lives of seemingly unlikeable people. I would say that a couple of minor plot points felt strained in this book, but at the same time, I was so invested in the characters that I didn't care. 

Amazing to think Strout only wrote two books before writing Olive Kitteredge. Looking forward to revisiting that one next.