Patti's Pages
Taking Looks at Books
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
AMERICAN DIRT by Jeanine Cummins
I have mixed feelings about this novel and not just about
its authenticity. I certainly have no
legitimate knowledge of the Mexican-American experience. This book opens with a massacre which Lydia
and her 8-year-old son Luca manage to escape by hiding in the shower. The remainder of the novel recounts their
harrowing journey, partly by freight train, from their home in Acapulco to el
norte—the U.S. At face value, this is an
adventure story, grounded by Lydia’s fierce vow to herself to protect her son,
at all costs. Along the way, she trusts
people that she should not and is wary of people whose only motive is to help
her; she definitely walks a tightrope between paranoia and a firm belief in the
innate goodness of people that gradually erodes as she occasionally comes face
to face with a stunning betrayal. The
biggest betrayal is from the beginning when an erudite man named Javier becomes
her friend and then murders her family.
Javier is as unrealistic an example of a druglord as Lydia is of a
migrant. She is not fleeing poverty;
rather she is fleeing Javier’s watchful eye and his possible desire to finish
off Luca and Lydia, despite the fact that he is in love with her. She is plagued by guilt, and that sentiment
to me is perhaps the most inauthentic aspect of the novel. She does not kill her family; the cartel
does. She also did not write the
newspaper piece that caused Javier to lash out in revenge; her husband did, and
he paid the ultimate price. She had no
way of knowing the domino effect that the article would ultimately have. I
could perhaps relate to her emotions better if survivor’s guilt were in play
here, but that’s really not the case. And
I get that the author wanted to shed some light on the migrant’s plight, but
Lydia is not at all typical. She is
well-educated, and her son speaks perfect English. He also has a photographic memory when it
comes to geography. Really? Does such a thing exist?
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
AN ELEGANT WOMAN by Martha McPhee
I would expect a certain amount of confusion when reading a
book about four generations of women, and there is that. The narrator is fourth-generation Isadora,
but her grandmother and great-grandmother dominate the novel, and rightfully
so. The first generation woman is
Glenna, who leaves her husband in bed with his mistress in Ohio and takes their
two daughters westward by train. Glenna
plans to make a living as an itinerant teacher, despite her lack of credentials
and the disadvantage of having two small children in tow. The elder daughter is Thelma, known as Tommy,
who becomes a mother to her sister Katherine during Glenna’s lengthy
absences. Tommy has to sacrifice her own
educational aspirations in order to run the household so that Katherine can
graduate. As adults, their lives diverge
in a surprising way, with Tommy going east and Katherine going west. Katherine decides to be known as Pat, since
her middle name is Patricia, which she deems more suitable for her plan to
become an actress. Tommy changes her name also and basically takes on a whole
new identity, in an effort to become the person she wants to be. Tommy then tries to ensure that her daughter Winter’s
childhood is the complete opposite of her own.
In any case, Tommy’s life is the main focus of the novel and the glue
which holds it all together, and for me, Tommy is the title character, although
I guess one could argue that all four generations of women are elegant in their
own way. Male characters receive fairly
cursory treatment here, except for Slim, Pat’s son, who can’t help but wonder
how his life would have unfolded had his mother followed the path that Tommy
forged. This book is reminiscent of
Wallace Stegner’s masterpiece, Angle of
Repose, but does not quite rise to that standard.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
ASK AGAIN, YES by Mary Beth Keane
Brian and Anne Stanhope live next door to Francis and Lena
Gleeson. Soon it becomes apparent that
Anne is unstable. Her son Peter and the
Gleeson’s youngest daughter Kate are playmates who begin to consider becoming
more than just friends as they grow older.
However, a tragic event throws both families into turmoil, with the
result that Kate and Peter do not meet again until college. I became engrossed in this story though not
immersed, if that makes sense. The
characters are all flawed to varying degrees and undergoing circumstances that
at times resulted from a lack of communication, among other things. Late in the novel Kate knows she has to
confront Peter and initiate a frank and painful conversation with him but finds
herself constantly backpedaling. For me,
this section is the most moving, and Kate’s uncertainty is very vivid. Anne is a singularly unlikeable character,
but I had to keep reminding myself that she is mentally ill and that I should
not hold that against her. I would say
that maintaining an open mind about Anne was a challenge, and Kate’s missteps
and coping mechanisms were quite exasperating.
The struggles of these two women are the heart of the book. The main male character is Peter, and I found
him to be completely enigmatic. His
career decision comes out of nowhere, and his transformation over the course of
the book left me scratching my head.
There are hints that he has psychological issues himself, though not on
a par with his mom, and I was disappointed that the author never really
elaborated on what these issues were or how they manifested themselves. All of these characters need therapy for
PTSD, and that suggestion comes up at the end of the novel.
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
THE SON by Philipp Meyer
I would classify this book as a western but more in the vein
of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood
Meridian than Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. For me, it
lacks heart. Each chapter is devoted to
one of three characters, all in the McCullough family but generations
apart. Eli is the patriarch who lives
100 years, including three years with the Comanches. After a raiding party murders his mother and
siblings, he becomes their captive. A young
member of their band wisely advises him to be less passive, enabling Eli to
progress from slave to apprentice, learning to launch arrows from
horseback. His son Peter’s chapters are
diary entries in which Peter describes his family’s vengeful assault on a
Mexican neighbor’s home—an event which haunts Peter with guilt for the rest of
his life. Peter is the conscience of the
family, but the rest of the McCulloughs view him as a pariah. The third protagonist is Jeannie, Peter’s
granddaughter, who transforms the family’s struggling cattle business into an
oil empire. What stands out about this
novel is the stark realism. The author
does not pull any punches when describing “how the West was won.” That victory cost thousands of lives on all
sides and decimated countless native American populations. If the thought of reading about scalping
makes you squeamish, skip this book.
However, my favorite passage in the novel is about a different aspect of
human behavior that is still true today:
“The poor man prefers to associate, in mind if not in body, with the
rich and successful. He rarely allows
himself to consider that his poverty and his neighbor’s riches are inextricably
linked….” It’s baffling to me that
people in poverty cozy up to rich people without grasping that those riches are
often gained at poor people’s expense.
Friday, December 18, 2020
DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY by P. D. James
I am not sure that Pride
and Prejudice needs a sequel, but P.D. James has undertaken to write one,
and I am all in. Darcy and Elizabeth are
all settled at Pemberley with two sons, and Bingley and Jane live nearby. All seems smooth and cozy, but there is still
the matter of Lydia, married to troublemaker Wickham. Lydia decides to crash the annual ball at
Pemberley, although Wickham is unwelcome.
They sneak upon the estate by way of the woodland, but Wickham and his
friend Captain Denny exit the coach after an argument. When Lydia and the driver hear gunshots, they
hurry on to Pemberley, where a hysterical Lydia fears that her husband has been
shot. In fact, Denny is dead, and
Wickham cries that he has killed him, although he may not have meant his confession
to be taken literally. The ensuing
investigation is not exactly thorough, and the trial is somewhat speedy. I kept wondering why no one questioned Lydia,
and by the end I was even more puzzled as to why she apparently did not know
the substance of the two men’s quarrel.
Let’s face it: Jane Austen would
never have written a murder mystery.
However, the style of this book is so Austen-like, you will almost feel
that a posthumous thriller has somehow surfaced. Darcy takes center stage throughout most of
this book, rather than Elizabeth, particularly as he wrestles with mixed
feelings about Wickham’s plight. He
strives to strike just the right unbiased balance in his testimony but then
laments that he may have sealed Wickham’s fate.
Honestly, if P. D. James were to write another Pemberley installment, I
would be on board in a heartbeat.
Thursday, December 17, 2020
NORTHANGER ABBEY by Jane Austen
Seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland joins a childless
couple for a month in the town of Bath.
There she soon attracts two suitors—the delightful and handsome Henry
Tilney and the loathsome and boring John Thorpe. She tolerates Thorpe when she is desperate
for a dance partner or eager for a visit to a castle she wants to tour, but her
heart belongs to Tinley. Thorpe turns
out to be even more dastardly than we thought and puts Catherine, more than
once, in a difficult spot. Catherine has
no experience of treachery the likes of which Thorpe is capable and thus is slow
to comprehend that someone could be so intentionally deceitful. I liked this book so much more than Mansfield Park, which took me on a long
and arduous journey that at times challenged my attention span. This novel, on the other hand, I read in two
days and enjoyed every minute. Granted,
there may not be a lot of substance here, but no matter. There are several particularly humorous
sections, including one in which the author takes lighthearted potshots at
readers and writers of fiction as being frivolous, even as we discover that
Catherine and Tinley both love gothic novels.
This shared interest later leads Tinley to describe his family home to
Catherine as a mysterious place with dark, scary passageways. Catherine hangs on every word of his
depiction, knowing it to be in jest, but then when she actually goes to
Northanger Abbey, her imagination goes wild.
I can’t help wondering if Charlotte Brontë, stole part of the storyline for Jane Eyre from Jane Austen.
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
LONGBOURN by Jo Baker
Longbourn is the name of the Bennet estate in Pride and Prejudice. Jo Baker’s novel has the same setting but
focuses on the servants, particularly Sarah, a teenage housemaid. The novel opens with Sarah doing laundry, and
it’s an unpleasant task, making Sarah’s hands raw. From my perspective, this was not an
auspicious beginning, but the storyline does improve, although the pace is
pokey at times. Besides Sarah, the cast
of characters includes Mrs. Hill, who manages to gain Mr. Bennet’s ear from
time to time, and Polly, a child who is sort of Sarah’s apprentice. A mysterious new footman named James Smith
arrives on the scene, and his backstory, although pertinent to the plot,
occupies a few too many pages that particularly drag. However, he provides the necessary spark to a
novel that is mostly about women, including the five Bennet daughters. This novel feels very Jane Austen-like,
although I suppose it never would have occurred to Jane to write about the
personal lives of the servants, even though their problems have much more heft
than those of the Bennet family. Not
that the Bennets are unkind to the servants; they are, like Jane, just
oblivious. The novel also emphasizes
what few options and freedoms the servants really had. The particularly slimy Wickham preys on Polly,
who basks in his attention, even as Sarah is constantly vigilant to make sure
that Wickham doesn’t “interfere with” Polly.
Basically, though, this novel is a love story that in some ways
parallels that of Lizzie and Darcy. Not everything
is fully resolved at the end, leaving me to wonder if the author expected the
reader to draw a particular conclusion.
She chooses to flesh out Polly’s future in some detail but left everyone
else’s somewhat unsettled.
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