At one point I promised myself, no more Holocaust memoirs! I can’t change history, and I know enough. I am retired. Why make myself feel worse? But then this wonderful biography became available, thanks to Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media; thank you to both of them for the free DRC. Not only was it worth delving back into this difficult period in history, but it kept me awake till 2 AM because I could not put it down unfinished. What a terrific story!
Many of those of us that have studied the Holocaust, whether for reasons of family and culture, historical interest, or something else, have maxed out on the horror, the numbers, the gut-wrenching details. This book isn’t more of that. Instead, it is the remarkable true story of Jewish Germans that found a way to conceal themselves, not only in Nazi-occupied Europe, but in Berlin itself. Within the belly of the beast, there were still some good people left. There were people that would house the Arndt family members; there were those who had no space or were too afraid to do that, but who would provide food; and there were those who took no active role, but were willing to see, and to say nothing. And perhaps more than anything, there were seven really smart people who were determined not to die, and who beat the odds by surviving till the Russians came in to rescue them.
Young people are often the quickest to respond appropriately when big changes occur quickly, and so it was with the Arndts. Dr. Arndt had grown up in Germany as a member of a respected family, and he was reluctant to give up on the German government as a source of justice and order. He had fought in World War I, and didn’t think his country would allow him or his loved ones to be hurt. Erich, his son, thought differently. Ultimately, it was the teenagers, Erich and Ruth, who persuaded their parents that they had to disappear. In fact, they tossed down an ultimatum: disappear, or we will disappear without you! To keep the family together, the doctor and his wife, Lina, complied with their children’s wishes, and it is a very good thing they did so.
Once Goebbels, the monstrous architect of Nazi Germany’s “final solution” to its Jewish scapegoats, declared Berlin to be completely free of Jews, a lot of Germans believed him. For most of them, it was not really an important issue; they were more concerned with paying their bills and finding food than with spying on the neighbors. The truth was that more than 5,000 Jews had slipped by the cops, soldiers, and members of the SS; of those, 1,600 managed to hide somewhere until the whole thing was over. However, this was the only family to emerge intact—not that no one in their family died, but that seven of them managed to ease themselves in and out of safe houses, factories, even basements and sheds, with the help of the doctor’s former patients and others who were willing to do the right thing.
It’s enough to give us faith in humanity, because there was a good deal of both real and perceived risk in doing so.
Wouldn’t you like to read some good news for a change? Lovenheim’s survival tale is fantastic. I was spellbound both by the bold, clever things done by the family members—especially the young folks—and by the inspirational actions and words of those that could not look away, who just had to help in spite of what could happen to them if they were caught.
Highly recommended, and recently released, this one is a real day-brightener. Get it right away. You’ll feel so much better if you do!
Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King *****
I’ve loved Stephen King’s books since 1976, and his work gets better all the time. Mr. Mercedes marks his debut within the mystery and detective fiction genre. Retired detective Bill Hodges lives alone; his wife left him a long time ago, and his daughter is grown and flown, living an adult life that rarely includes him. He’s watching too many game shows and eating too much crap. Now and then he fondles his old weapon and contemplates putting it into his mouth and pulling the trigger.
His life changes dramatically when the social misfit and mass killer he had been tracking when he retired, sends him a love letter. Actually it’s a taunt. It is sent to him at his house, and so it feels even more personal. Because his life needs purpose and the Mercedes killer has provided it, he decides against contacting his old partner and letting the local cops take charge, at least not yet. At one point he reconsiders, but his former colleague is in the midst of an enormous celebration after having solved another difficult, long term case, and when it becomes clear that even if law enforcement were notified, it would not be available in a timely, sober fashion, Bill sets off on his own again, a lone cowboy in the contemporary Midwestern USA, aided only by his friendly yard helper and computer geek, along with a relative of one of the deceased persons from the Mercedes killing spree.
When I lay it out this way, it looks so implausible. You’ve got to be kidding, right? A retired cop and a couple of young civilians will somehow solve a mass murder, and their only edge is to be had from a taunting letter, followed up by a few more taunts online? No way.
But what excellent writers have taught me over the years is that a strong writer can make me believe anything, and a poor one can’t convince me of much. And indeed, if King has made me believe there are haunted cars, haunted dogs, and crazed clowns that live in the sewers, why then should he not convince me that this trio can solve a big-deal crime?
Of course he can!
I was fortunate enough to get this award-winning, coveted jewel of a book at the Seattle Public Library, my friends in literature, but if I had had to ask for it as a Mother’s Day gift, I was prepared to do so. And so should you, if you like a good mystery here and there. Especially here.
Because when Stephen King spins his web, all of us fly in to hear what he has to say. How can we do otherwise?
River of Earth, by James Still *****
River of Earth, originally published in 1940, is a classic tale of Appalachian coal miners, dirt-poor, ever-proud people living deep in the mountains, crags and hollers, trying to scratch out a living, sometimes from pretty much nothing. How does one grow a crop if one has eaten the seeds to avoid starvation the winter before? And how does one survive as a miner when the days of available work shrink from five, to four, to two, to “Mine’s Closed”?
Initially, I was drawn to this book for two reasons. One is an interest in the early United Mine Workers, a stark, brutal organizing effort that is actually nowhere in this story. I got the book for Christmas upon my own request, and one might expect I’d be disappointed that no union shows up at all here.
And yet I wasn’t. Note that five star rating. My other reason for wanting to read it, is that one of my favorite authors mentions it in the text of one of his novels, and I wrote it down. And as I read this bittersweet tale of rural Caucasian poverty, I found something unexpected. I’ve been finding it more than one might think lately. I found ghosts and echoes of my own ancestors.
My grandfather was a miner; he died of black lung. But when a relative embarked on a genealogical expedition, I found that three of my four grandparents had roots in that same hardscrabble region, the part of Eastern Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia where a body had to more or less guess, back in the 1700’s, which side of the state line he was on.
By 1940, when this book was published, my folks had cleared out of there, but I still heard little speech mannerisms, which cultural geographers call “cultural artifacts”, that had embedded themselves and dropped into the speech of my elders back in the day.
Alpha, usually referred to in the first-person narrative as “Mother”, has married down. She fell in love with Brack many years ago, and although there was at least one wealthy man that set his cap for her, she chose Brack instead. And she doesn’t complain about the family’s state of poverty, not even when there is so little food that she pretends to eat while the children have their supper so that they won’t realize she is making a single mouthful last an entire meal. No, Brack is the one she wanted, and he is what she’s got. She’d do it again, she says.
But oh, how she wants to settle on a little spot of land! At one point they have rented a farm that is humble, yet provides enough food that they can winter over without fear of starvation. It’s on a hilltop with a view, and it has access to woods nearby where in spring, wild salad greens can be picked. It’s all she wants. That, and for Baby Green to survive. He’s been feeling poorly, crying from hunger. Finally, one ugly winter when the food has nearly run out, she apologetically takes a little more food at table. She is ashamed to do it, but she knows the baby needs milk, and it’s the only way she’ll be able to feed him.
She loves that baby so.
Just a plot of land where she can grow things and settle into the house without constantly being required to pick up and move to the next coal town, a mining town which might or might not be hiring, and where the air will clog the children’s lungs and coat the inside of the house with fine black grit, no matter how many used tobacco plugs are stuffed into its cracks. She is sure that if her little family takes care of the earth, it will take care of them. It worked for her mother, and it will work for her family too…if only she can persuade Brack.
And she can’t. Brack is a miner. He believes he was destined to mine coal. And wouldn’t it be nice if his many hanger-on relations, those that come to visit and never leave, felt inclined to do the same? Or to help turn the ground, when they have some to turn? Or to do something other than eat more than anybody else and complain that the food isn’t good enough?
The reader has to admit that this is a wicked-hard dilemma. If one’s relatives are likely to starve if turned out of the house midwinter with nowhere to go, can one send them? But if one’s children are going hungry because the relatives are eating a lot of the food that was supposed to be theirs, can one continue to feed them? It’s a point of contention between Mother and Father. Father says he won’t turn his kin out; Mother says the children are too thin and hungry, and couldn’t his kin do a lick of work for once?
At one point Grandma needs help, but Mother can’t go to her, because the baby is ill. The food supply problem and the Grandma problem are partially solved by sending our narrator and protagonist, still elementary school aged, off to live with her and help her run her farm. Grandma is the embodiment of a work ethic. Rheumatic and 78 years old, she crawls down the rows of crops in order to harvest a few puny potatoes. She reflects on her married life, before her husband died, and her pride in having none of them shot to death, so common in these nail-tough hills:
“Eight me and Boone brought into this world, and every one a wanted child. Four died young, and natural. Three boys and one girl we raised. My boys were a mite stubheaded, as growing ones air. But nary a son I had pleasured himself with shooting off guns, a-rim-recking at Hardin Town and in the camps, a-playing at cards and mixing in knife scrapes, traipsing thar and yon, weaving drunk. Nor they never drew blood for doing’s sake, as I’ve got knowing of. Feisty though, and ready to fight fair fist if the other feller wanted it that a way. I allus said, times come when a feller’s got to fight. Come that time let him strike hard where it’ll do most good, a-measuring stick with stone, best battler win. The devil can’t be fit lessen you use fire.”
It occurred to me as I read it, although I could hear Grandma speak in that dialect in my head clear as day, that the dialect would wreck havoc upon the eyes and mind of someone with a mother tongue other than English. I handed it to my husband and pointed to a paragraph. He’s been in the USA for decades and speaks several languages, but he reluctantly told me that although he could understand it if I read it aloud with inflections where they belonged, it was really too much on the printed page.
With that sole caveat, I recommend this slim but magnificent story. The setting is nearly a character unto itself (although I had to get online to figure out what a paw-paw fruit was). The dialogue and its point and counterpoint, Mother advocating for the Earth, and Father advocating for dynamite and despoilment, is bound to resonate in this fragile ecological time.
But you could just read it because it is amazing literary fiction.
Officer Elvis, by Gary Gusick *****
Today! It’s for sale today! A little bird at Random House sent me a message, and I promised I would reblog this. If you haven’t bought it yet and would like to laugh your butt off, now is the time. I will also note that it is super-cheap if purchased digitally.
That was absolutely ridiculous…and just in the nick o’ time! Many thanks to Random House Alibi and Net Galley for the DRC. This second installment of the Darla Cavannah mystery series reads just fine as a stand-alone novel.
I like to read several books at a time, and it was getting a little dark out there. The Blitzkrieg had broken out in the master bathroom, with Hitler’s troops having overrun Belgium and Poland and on into France. On my e-reader, Bull Connor had sent huge attack dogs and fire hoses against the teenagers of Birmingham, and Dr. King already understood he would not make it out of the struggle alive. And by bizarre coincidence, Elvis was already perched on my nightstand. We were in the Vegas years, and Priscilla said that on the nights he wasn’t performing, the man just ate and took pills out of boredom. And downstairs, even…
View original post 236 more words
The Sunlit Night, by Rebecca Dinerstein *****
When was the last time I read something this poignant? No, it’s more than poignant. This novel is a real powerhouse, and my heartfelt thanks go to Net Galley and Bloomsbury, USA for letting me read it as a DRC. It affected me to the extent that I needed to let it steep in my mind for a few days after I read it, before I could review it. That’s always a good sign.
You see, Yasha has grown up without his mother, at least for most of his life. He, his father, and his mother all received much sought-after plane tickets to the USA from Russia. Not all were scheduled to depart at the same time, and not all of them did. And so Yasha and his father have lived above the bakery, and now and again they phone to see when Mama might be coming. It isn’t like she is dead or in jail. She just hasn’t come. She puts them off; she makes excuses. So Yasha helps his father run the bakery, rising early every day and jetting home from school promptly when the bell dismisses him. Season follows season,and year follows year;the loss grows deeper and stronger, as does his bond with his father, a flour-speckled, graying eccentric with the world’s kindest heart. His father is his life, and the place where his mother once was is a constant void. “No mother. No mother. No mother.” Unless you are made of brick or cement, you have to feel his pain.
I think the narrative that alternates here, that of Frances, who is destined to meet Yasha, is supposed to be equal in force, but to me she is an also-ran. The book is really about Yasha, and I am fine with that. Frances also hails from a family that is coming unstuck; her parents have given her and her sister notice that they need to get out of the tiny Manhattan apartment in which they grew up, because they are going to separate.
At the same time, Frances’s boyfriend, the man she loves so much that she has turned down a prestigious art fellowship in order to follow him to the ends of the earth, dumps her. Doesn’t even stay with her till she boards; he just leaves her there all by herself, hurt and stunned. He’s gone.
Yasha and Frances will meet at the top of the world, or the nearest possible place. It’s in Norway, not far from where the Sami hunt reindeer. In the summer, the sun never goes down.
Generally I am not a reader of romances. I am perhaps too cynical; I hear the violins starting up and slam the book shut. No schmaltz for me, thank you kindly. But once in awhile an amazing story comes along. Think of The Thornbirds; think of The Prince of Tides. The Sunlit Night is such a story, an exceptional story for which rules were meant to be broken.
It comes out in June, and you just have to read it. Don’t let yourself be left out.
College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students, by Jeffrey J. Selingo ****
College Unbound is a thoughtful, informative, and nearly exhaustive look at the ways in which higher education may best serve today’s young learners. Thank you, Net Galley and Amazon Publishing for this extremely useful volume, which I received free in exchange for my review. It will be available for sale April 28.
It became available at an important time. My youngest child is a high school senior contemplating college; I am retired, and still paying off my own student loans. Selingo’s discussion of the worth of post-graduate education, whether it is better to attend a two year school or pony up for a pricy school that has a lot of perks and more financial aid available, and the ways in which higher education itself needs to change gained my full attention.
It seems that my own debt-ridden situation is not unusual. Now that not all student loans are subsidized by the government, many graduates exit the comforting, ivy-covered walls of higher learning saddled with 50k or more in student loans and no guarantee of future employment. Most at risk are those that excel in liberal arts, since today’s economy is more geared toward mathematics, technology, and hard sciences.
Selingo suggests, among other things, that higher education needs to unbundle, so that students can combine credits and experience from a variety of schools and other sources, such as on-the-job training, in order to receive their degree. He also points out that many students can get the best result for their dollar (or yours) with a one or two year certification program at a local community college or technical school, rather than paying out the big bucks for a 4 year or advanced degree.
As I read, I flagged nearly 100 passages that I thought were worth revisiting. There’s a lot of information here, and a lot of thoughtful ideas. Selingo has the experience to back his suggestions, and in addition to citing his sources in a conversational way for greater accessibility to text, Selingo has also spent many years in college administration and journalism, including the much-lauded US News and World Report guide to colleges.
One thing I watched for all the way through, as he discussed a wide variety of options, including online learning and experimental hybrid classes, was what he thought of alternative schools. At one point he used the term, but it turned out that he was referring, once again, to online and “unbundled” options. Given that the author discussed the need to avoid “dumbing down” curriculum for the sake of students-as-consumers (here, here!), and the need for critical thinking skills that would create better problem solvers once graduates hit the job market, I immediately thought of actual alternative schools such as Evergreen State College, Bennington, Eugene Lang, and Antioch, where students are not just taught rote content, but how to think more critically. My daughter attends a strong alternative high school, and all four of my other children went there too, turning down Seattle’s much-lauded AP program for highly capable students. I gained my teaching credential and advanced degree at one of these alternative colleges, and although the student loan debt is no joke, I was able to go directly from school to a job in a field where the average graduate in Washington State had to spend three or four years working in temporary or substitute positions while waiting for their break.
And so…what? And this is why the fifth star in my review is denied. Just like US News and World Report (now moribund save for its college guide), Selingo completely leaves alternative schools out of the picture. If he doesn’t like them, he should say that and explain why. If they are recommended, he should include that information.
My conclusion is that this is nevertheless a really good resource for parents of teens who are trying to decide what choices to offer their children after high school is over. The decision, says Selingo, is often not a rational one, and this resonates. How many parents go for the higher price tag because they feel nothing is too good for their son, their daughter? And yet, says Selingo, more expensive is not always better, and a rarefied atmosphere does not always produce the result anticipated by those who pay or borrow heavily. I’ve only scratched the surface of what he has to say. So although I do recommend also considering alternative education, when you find yourself facing that vast selection of college-shopping materials available, include this forward-looking volume in your collection.
Although most teenagers won’t likely read it, adults considering returning to school and facing the financial decisions for themselves, rather than their parents, should also give Selingo’s discussion your time and attention.
In order to get the best education at the best price for ourselves or our children, we must first learn about the schools and educational paths we are considering.
Pleasantville, by Attica Locke *****
This is a really strong work of fiction, and I reviewed it a hundred years before it was due to be released. It will be on sale April 21, and so I am reblogging it today. Don’t miss it!
Jay Porter has a full plate, and so his legal career has been set on cruise control. Money is the least of his worries; he is successful, and has won a very large case, though it hasn’t paid yet. No, his issues have to do with family, and with grieving. And with grieving. And with grieving. His wife Bernie died young and fast due to an illness that she knew she had, but had chosen not to share. She pushed him to follow through on his enormous case against the oil company that had sickened, even killed people in their own close-knit, middle class African-American suburb outside Houston, Texas. It was important to everyone that the families affected experienced justice. But now he wishes he had spent more time by his wife’s bedside and less in the courtroom. His self-hatred for the time spent away from his wife and two…
View original post 910 more words
Lost in the City, by Edward P. Jones *****
Edward P. Jones needs my review like Shakespeare needs my review. He is one of those literary luminaries whose work is timeless. Nobody can teach anyone to write like this. Either you have it, or you don’t. We are fortunate that he does.
This wasn’t a digital galley; it was a Christmas gift. That’s how much I like his writing. So I guess my purpose in reviewing someone this renowned is perhaps to draw attention to him for those that haven’t read his work yet.
I read this over the course of almost a month, short as it is, and I did it that way because it’s so painful. In this respect he is similar to Russell Banks: peerless, brilliant work that is also so sad that you just about have to sit down and cry when you finish. And because of this, I was glad to have a short story collection, because I could read a whole short story, put in the bookmark, then pick something else up for a little while to cheer myself up. Then when I was over it, I could pick it up and read another one a different day.
All the stories are set in Washington, DC, and all have to do with alienation and a sense of loss. I think the story I admire most is “His Mother’s House”, but all of them are strong.
The first book I read by this author was The Known World, which won the Pulitzer. Now I need to get a copy of All Aunt Hager’s Children.
We Install and Other Stories, by Harry Turtledove ****
Science fiction is a big house with a lot of rooms. Turtledove has managed to leave his calling card in almost all of them, and includes a couple of thought-provoking essays as well. Once again, I send hearty and heart-felt thanks to Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media for permitting me to glimpse this collection in advance, and free of charge. It goes on sale in August of this year.
I used to read more science fiction than I do now; one reason is that a big branch of it has veered into tech-speak that requires more knowledge than I possess in that field. But another reason also occurred to me as I read these stories, sometimes voraciously and at other times more tentatively, and that is that sci fi requires a flexible mind, and as we get older, our brains don’t bend as readily. Now that I know it, I will require myself to read it more frequently, because they say to use it or lose it, and I’m not ready to surrender yet. I did find that there were too many characters and relationships introduced in too little time for me to keep up with “Down in the Bottomlands”. This one won the Hugo Award, so I am fairly sure the flaw is mine rather than his. Maybe those of you that are younger and more oriented toward this genre will find it more to your taste.
However, I loved “Hoxbomb”, a thought-provoking twist on the notion of computers having intelligence of their own. And I actually laughed out loud during parts of the first selection, “Father of the Groom”, and also “Birdwitching”. The temerity of “Under St. Peters” left me nearly breathless with admiration; the guy will end up on the Banned Books list for sure if this collection sells well.
Maybe most intriguing of all is the subgenre of alternate history. Turtledove’s essay made me want to roll up my sleeves and write again. How much fun could it be?
All told, this is a meaty collection that the sci fi lover should read when it’s possible to do so. I promise you’ll have a great time, and stretch your mental muscles in the process.
Memphis Ribs, by Gerald Duff ****
It’s tourist season in Memphis; the Mississippi Delta land is filling up with convention-goers and barbecue lovers. They’re fixing to parachute in a couple of whole hog carcasses, but not until after the Cotton Queen goes by on her float. And this being Delta country, the float really is a float; it is a barge made over, and she is much more concerned about keeping every hair exactly where it belongs than she is about finding out who killed Daddy the other night. Okay, actually she pretty much knows, and it was badly done. But damned if it’s going to spoil her special day. As for me, I just want to say thank you to Net Galley and Brash Books for the DRC. It’s been a dark but enjoyable viewing.
So let’s have a chat, just the two of us, about the best way to break into an ATM machine. Never tried it myself. I would never have thought to do it the Memphis way, so maybe it’s just as well I turned out to be more the sort to read and write things and less the criminal type. Because frankly, I never would have considered just ripping the thing off its moorings with a forklift and driving it away to where I could tear it apart in privacy. Franklin Saxon is more suited to this kind of activity. We’ll let him do it, or at least direct the hired help to do it. Well, for as long as he can, anyway; things don’t go well for him up the road a fair piece.
As for our local cops, JW Ragsdale just wants to get out of Memphis for a bit. It’s so humid, so crowded. The bugs alone will make you crazy. If he can launch an investigation that will take him out of town, preferably with a fishing pole and a six-pack in tow, he’ll be happy to fill out the paperwork saying he’s been on the job, been conducting critical interviews.
How sad for him, then, that he is so good at his work. One interview leads to another, and before you know it, the man is right in the thick of all sorts of drug smuggling, fraud, thievery and yes, oh yes…murder. It ain’t so much a holiday after all, and looky here, even the barbecue done turned rancid. It really isn’t his day.
The Bones family figures prominently; they’re employees of Franklin Saxon, recently bereaved son of Aires Saxon. The hard part is not sampling the merchandise.
“ ‘Shee-it,’ said Stone Job. ‘Shee-it. Merchandise. Why you call it that?’
“ ‘Fool, that’s what it is. That’s what we be buying and selling. Why you think we
done made a withdrawal from the ATM the other night?’”
“’To pay the white man the money for the rock. That’s why.’”
“’Right, you getting it. That be the Bones business…Free enterprise, motherfucker.’”
At first, with my political antennae always on alert regardless of genre, I was concerned about the negative depiction of African-Americans in the story. Were we going to veer toward stereotypes here? And what is up with the use of the word “honky”, which I hadn’t heard since the 1970’s?
But not to worry. This little tale treats everyone with equal irreverence. In fact, the very best, sickest humor, to my way of thinking, was the scene at the pork processing plant, when JW indulges in a little fantasy of his own regarding the speed-that-line-up foreman.
Trust me.
If you are squeamish, if you can’t deal with sick humor or gruesome interludes, give it a pass, already. It isn’t half as gross as most of what’s on television, but never mind; the point of dark humor is to enjoy it, and we want you to have a good time here.
If, however, you can read Janet Evanovich and The Onion and come away holding your sides, then this little goodie just might be up your alley. Originally published in 1999, it will be released in digital format May 5.
I recommend you read it separately from meal time, though.
Seattle Book Mama 