THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Kazuo Ishiguro

Mr. Stevens has been an English butler for all of his adult life.  It is now the 1950s, and he is on his way to visit a former housekeeper, Miss Kenton, who has written to him.  During this road trip in his employer’s car, he reflects on his buttoned-up life and has one particularly uncomfortable encounter.  Stevens is a poignant character in so many ways from the reader’s perspective, but he doesn’t view himself that way.  His first person narration exudes haughtiness and is so indicative of the dignified, unemotional voice of a stereotypical English butler.  However, his version of dignity requires a certain status in life, which he considers himself to have achieved.  He is subservient but proud and has immense respect, along with misplaced loyalty, for his former employer, Lord Darlington, whose reputation was ruined by his consorting with Nazi leaders.  Stevens has stood on the periphery of weighty discussions and considers himself fortunate to have been present, though not an active participant.  However, his relationship with Miss Kenton, at times volatile due to Stevens’s insensitivity, is the heart of the novel.  Ishiguro has created here a character whose life we can inhabit for a moment while at the same time realizing how misguided Stevens really is in establishing his priorities.  Human connection is not one of them.

MEMORIAL by Bryan Washington

Mike’s Japanese mother comes from Japan to visit Mike in Houston just as he is leaving for Japan to be with his long-absent dying father.  Talk about ships passing the night.  Mike’s mother will now be spending months with a stranger—her son’s Black lover and roommate, Benson.  Their comfort with one another’s company develops over time and food, and, for me, their relationship was the most compelling aspect of this book.  For Mike’s part, he goes to work in his father’s small bar in Osaka.  As his father’s health deteriorates, we begin to wonder what Mike plans to do after his father’s death.  Keep the bar?  Return to Houston?  Plus, it becomes apparent that Mike and Ben’s relationship is at a crossroads.  Both men experiment with other lovers, but both seem reluctant to make a clean break from one another.  A jaw-dropping revelation from Ben made me rethink previous events, but somehow this bombshell fizzles without ever becoming a big deal.  At one point, Mike tells Ben a head-scratching story about an encounter that causes Ben to laugh inappropriately, but the author doesn’t let the reader in on the joke.  For me, this arrogance on the part of the author is unnecessary and unforgivable.  I have no complaint about the writing, except for a few lapses in grammar (eg., “lay” should be “lie”), but neither Mike nor Ben is particularly endearing, or at least not nearly as endearing as Mike’s mother.  Both men’s fathers were despicable during their sons’ childhood but show signs of being candidates for redemption in their old age.  However, the ending is maddeningly frustrating, with no closure whatsoever, unless a hint is buried too deeply for me to unearth.

MONOGAMY by Sue Miller

From the title we can guess this is a book about marriage, and it is.  The union of the diminutive Annie, a photographer, and Graham, a larger-than-life bookstore owner, seems almost too good to be true, but, of course, if everything were copacetic, we wouldn’t have a book.  Our bubble is burst when Graham shares an unflattering secret about himself with a good friend.  The backstory is that Graham was previously married to Frieda, but Frieda never really embraced their agreed-upon open marriage as enthusiastically as Graham did.  Frieda still loves him and never remarries, raising her son Lucas as sort of a close cousin to Annie and Graham’s daughter, Sarah.  In fact, Annie and Frieda become close friends, drawn together by their attachment to Graham.  Their respective children go even further down this path, with Sarah choosing Frieda as her confidante and Lucas similarly confiding in Annie.  Graham is the pivotal character in this semi-blended family and indulges in whatever other appetites strike his fancy.  Annie even wonders whether he has not gobbled her up entirely, but she yields to his wants and needs without complaint.  However, she does not come across as a weak character at all.  In fact, Frieda seems to play that role, never having really broken free of Graham, but in many ways she is the stronger character, having ended her marriage despite her immense love for Graham.  Sue Miller makes this rather ordinary storyline into an extraordinary novel with a hint of suspense and complicated characters.  Graham may be the elephant in the room, but the two women carry this novel, navigating their way around their love for the same man without ever becoming competitors.  At one point, Frieda does silently rejoice in Annie’s discovery of Graham’s transgressions but doesn’t view it as a victory so much as a balancing of the scale.

FAMILY PICTURES by Sue Miller

Nina is sometimes the first-person narrator of this immersive family drama and sometimes not, and she is not really the central character, if there even is one.  The fourth of six children, she follows Randall, whose diagnosis of autism completely upends the family dynamic.  Nina and her two younger sisters see their role as being normal, as compensation for Randall’s special needs.  Lainey and David are the parents, whose wobbly marriage is front and center in this story, which also devotes quite a few pages to Mack, the oldest of their children.  Nina and Mack become problem children as adolescents, and this development particularly rankles David, who is a psychiatrist; he obviously cannot “fix” Randall.  The other three children get relatively short shrift, as they mostly fulfill their obligation to be normal.  My favorite character is David, who spouts sarcastic witticisms, particularly when speaking of his youngest three daughters.  Sue Miller’s writing is always soothingly smooth and seamless, even when she is describing Randall’s most violent outburst.  The downside of her style is that suspense is not always a priority, and that is the case particularly with this book and its meandering timeline.  Sometimes we know the outcome before we know how this family arrived at the outcome.  The upside is that Miller puts the “pleasure” in “reading for pleasure.”

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

This novel begins with the main character, Leila, having been murdered and thrown in a dumpster in Istanbul.  Before her brain completely dies, she thinks back on her short life—as a sexually abused teenager, as a prostitute, as a friend, and as a wife.  The second half of the book focuses on her five special friends who proceed to honor Leila in death.  Several themes are at work here, but the one that struck me the most was that of the contradictions within any religion’s set of beliefs.  Hypocrisy among religious zealots apparently is common there as well.  For example, Leila’s father has two wives, but Islam prohibits polygamy.  In Turkey, corruption and reactionary laws reinforce the limitations placed on the lives of Leila and her misfit friends, including a transgender woman and a dwarf.  A character who surfaces near the end of the book is a gay young man being forced into an arranged marriage.  His outcome is one of the few bright spots in this novel, and, although it is beautifully written, this novel does not offer hope for Turkey’s progress.  Leila’s friends mount sort of a minor rebellion against the treatment of Leila’s corpse, but it will have no impact on the country’s modus operandi, in which the deaths of prostitutes are not really cause for concern by law enforcement or by the general public.  When it becomes clear that a serial killer is on the loose, targeting prostitutes, the authorities advise “normal” women not to panic.  If a society is judged by its treatment of women, this novel indicates that Turkey has much room for improvement.

GREAT CIRCLE by Maggie Shipstead

Two girls, Marian and Hadley, are both raised by uncles, a century apart.  Hadley is an actress whose career has been all but derailed by scandal.  The role of Marian Graves in a movie about her north-south failed circumnavigation of the globe is an opportunity for Hadley to salvage some respect in the industry.   Late in the book, Hadley becomes very involved in Marian’s history, and I can see how this intertwining of their lives helps bring to light Marian’s past.  However, Hadley is basically an expendable character, as far as I can tell, and certainly this novel could use some tightening up.  Marian Graves is the star of this story.  As a child she encounters a pair of barnstormers and immediately becomes fixated on the idea of becoming a pilot.  Speaking of fixations, Barclay Macqueen, a wealthy local bootlegger, becomes inexplicably fixated on 14-year-old Marian and funds her obsession by offering to pay for her flying lessons.  Of course, strings are attached to this financial gift, and Marian has basically sold her body, if not her soul, to the devil.  Her twin brother, Jamie, and childhood pal/lover, Caleb, are tangential characters that are infinitely more loveable than Marian.  Jamie’s fixation is on a girl named Sarah whose father’s slaughterhouse fortune is anathema to Jamie, who is a vegetarian.  This book is inhabited by several loners who are not lonely, including Caleb, my favorite character by far, who thankfully does not harbor an obsession.  The writing is beautiful, but this book is too long and too dry; it just did not hold me hostage with suspense, particularly when the author waxed poetic about airplanes.  Perhaps this novel is just too epic for my tastes.  The ending was my favorite part, although I could see it coming a mile away.