Patti's Pages
Taking Looks at Books
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
THE MIGHTY RED by Louise Erdrich
Kismet Poe is graduating from high school and has two
boyfriends. One of them, Gary, is a
popular athlete with a tendency toward recklessness, but he presents Kismet
with an engagement ring, and she is too shocked to say no. Her other boyfriend, Hugo, is planning to
find a job in the oil fields so that he can earn enough money to win Kismet’s
affection, whether she is married to Gary or not. As for Kismet, she seems smart and
industrious but allows Gary to coax her into a marriage she doesn’t really want. Why she cannot extricate herself from this plan
is somewhat of a mystery. Her mother,
Crystal, is devastated that Kismet is abandoning her college plans to marry
Gary, while Gary’s mother is ecstatically planning a lavish wedding. After Kismet reluctantly and hilariously says
her wedding vows, she becomes something of a Cinderella figure, but Gary is no
prince. We, and Kismet, finally become
privy to the details of an event that puts Gary in an even worse light, if that
is even possible. Since this book takes
place in an agricultural community, Erdrich manages to weave in her concerns
about the ecological impact of sugar beet farming, but she also sprinkles in
more humor than I recall from her other novels.
In fact, this is my favorite book of hers since The
Master Butchers Singing Club.
Crystal and Kismet are the delightful anchors here, and the storyline
makes for an entertaining read. Even
Gary, with all his flaws, is more pathetic than despicable.
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
SAM by Allegra Goodman
The first half of this book made me anxious, but I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did. The title character is a petulant child, and she is the chief anxiety producer. Her single mother, Courtney, is a saint—working two jobs to make sure that her two children have better opportunities than she had. Sam’s ability to climb door frames inspires her ne’er-do-well father to take her to a climbing gym, and thus begins Sam’s love/hate relationship with climbing. The narrative recounts Sam’s life until she is about nineteen or so, making this a true coming-of-age novel. As difficult as she is as a child, she is worse as a teenager, making some very wrong-headed decisions. The second half of the book becomes much more palatable, as she falls in with a group of twenty-something-year-old rock climbers. She may not be their peer age-wise, but she is the best climber, and she seems to be making progress toward figuring out what she wants in life. Lapses in judgment still plague her, though, as does regret regarding her relationship with her father. The fact that her mother maintains her sanity through all of Sam’s screw-ups is what gave me hope that Sam would find her way to adulthood with her own sanity intact. Failures can be learning experiences, and Sam has plenty of those on which to build. Climbing is almost too obvious a metaphor here. When Sam falls, she dusts herself off and launches herself right back up the boulder.
Monday, June 30, 2025
THE CHALK ARTIST by Allegra Goodman
At its heart, this book is a love story, and it is almost as addictive as the immersive video games described in it. You can somewhat predict what happens when a very talented artistic young man named Collin---meets the daughter—Nina—of a mogul who owns a video game empire called Arkadia. This book predates Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by years, and I liked this one much better, although I have to say that the gaming sections were not my favorites. A side plot involves two sibling students at the high school where Nina teaches English lit. One of those student’s schoolwork is suffering, since he sometimes games all night, aided and abetted by a female Arkadia employee—Daphne. She has a dark allure that even Collin falls victim to, jeopardizing his relationship with Nina. I felt that Arkadia was the villain here, somewhat personified by Daphne, replacing real life with a soul-grabbing fantasy world and preying on teenagers. However, novels can be immersive as well, and one could argue that some of us are addicted to books, so who am I to judge gamers for their obsession or, for that matter, gaming companies for giving them what they want? Then again, I don’t know any compulsive readers whose personal lives suffer because of books, do I?
Sunday, June 29, 2025
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND by Allegra Goodman
I did not realize until after I had finished this book that it was intended for a young audience. No matter. Also, it’s even more relevant now than it was when it came out seventeen years ago. Climate change is an increasingly bigger problem, and kudos to Allegra Goodman for writing about it in language accessible to all. Honor is a 10-year-old girl in a dystopian society, and her parents are not conforming to the will of Earth Mother, a corporate entity that makes the rules. The school system is molding the students into Stepford children, who are punished for any infraction that defies or questions the government’s restrictions. Everyone knows that non-compliant parents will be “disappeared,” and their children will become orphans who have to board at the school. Honor is terrified that her parents will meet this fate if they don’t start behaving in the manner expected of them. This reversal of who is rebelling—the parent rather than the child—begs the question of whether or not safety is in obedience or in refusing to be subject to the constraints of a repressive society.
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enriquez
When I think of horror stories, I think of Stephen King, but this book is not on a par with his stuff at all. In fact, it is Dull with a capital D and totally lacks suspense. Maybe some of its punch was lost in translation, but I doubt it. The first part of the book is about Juan Peterson, whose parents sold him as a child to the Order—a privileged group of sorcerers. Juan is a medium who can summon the Darkness—a supernatural presence which supposedly has the power to grant immortality. The Darkness, however, gets hungry, and the members of the Order are happy to supply the Darkness with human sacrifices. Yep. Also, anyone who ventures too close to the Darkness is likely to lose a limb. Summoning the Darkness takes its toll on Juan’s fragile physical health, and the Order wants his son Gaspar to take over his duties. Juan does everything in his power to protect Gaspar from becoming the Order’s puppet, and sometimes his protection techniques are violently abusive, causing Gaspar to be quite conflicted about his relationship with his father. The dynamic between Gaspar and Juan was, for me, what gave the novel some heart, but otherwise it’s just a long and unpleasant slog through cemeteries, mass graves, and houses that are bigger on the inside than on the outside.
Sunday, June 22, 2025
BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres
This is my first exposure to erasure poetry, which I had
never even heard of until now. Chunks of
an existing text—in this case, a real study of homosexuals from the 1930s
called Sex Variants—are blacked out,
so that the visible text forms something new.
Photos abound in this book, including those of the erasure poetry, which
were definitely above my pay grade.
Suffice it to say that the non-traditional format of this book rendered
it too cerebral for me. Basically, an
unnamed gay narrator is trading stories with an elderly gay man named Juan, who
is dying. These two men met in a mental
institution, and now they are swapping stories, sometimes describing events as
if describing a movie—a clever way to set the scene more vividly. The book is a mixture of fact and fiction and
may be semi-autobiographical, but one of my chief beefs is that I found it
difficult to decipher who was talking—Juan or the narrator, whom Juan calls
“nene.” There are pages and pages of
dialog with no identification as to who is saying what, except that
occasionally the speaker addresses Juan or nene, so that we know that the other
character is speaking. There is some
fascinating history here, particularly with regard to homosexuality as a mental
health condition, but if this book was a test, I failed.
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
WELLNESS by Nathan Hill
I am giving this book four stars, but I may have more
negatives than positives to say about it.
On the positive side, the opening chapter and the ending are
marvelous. However, the middle sections
sink into the tedium of a marriage that has lost its luster with a
tantrum-prone child who refuses to eat anything but mac and cheese. The wife/mother, Elizabeth, is a behavioral
scientist of sorts who administers a psychological test to Jack on their first
date—unbeknownst to Jack. She also tries
a behavioral modification experiment on her son, but she realizes that the test
is flawed when her son explains why he failed.
I found this kind of stuff fascinating.
Also, in an effort to spice up their marriage, Elizabeth convinces Jack
to attend an event where spouse-swapping may occur. This possibility perked up my interest, but
the whole scene fizzles. Even more
annoying are multiple chapters describing various algorithms ostensibly used by
facebook. Ugh. A major tragedy that took place during Jack’s
childhood is not revealed until very late in the book, and I didn’t really
understand the reason for this delay.
Plus, I don’t know if Jack ever tells Elizabeth about it. Both Jack and Elizabeth are estranged from
their parents who are seriously flawed—envious of their own children. Jack reunites briefly with his father over
social media, trying unsuccessfully to deter his father from buying into
conspiracy theories. Given their lack of
good relationship role models, it’s a wonder Jack and Elizabeth’s marriage is
not a bigger mess than it is.
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