Guisewite began publishing the comic strip “Cathy” in 1976,
the year that I graduated high school. It was a time of high expectations for
women, and the unrealistic suggestion that we would be able to “bring home the
bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you’re a man,” as Madison
Avenue decreed, was daunting. Through
her sharply perceptive humor, Guisewite let her peers know that it wasn’t just
us; we were judging ourselves with an unfair yardstick. She kept it real, and
in doing so, kept us sane.
My thanks go to Net Galley and G.P. Putnam for the review
copy.
So how does cartooning translate to prose? Whereas the cute, punchy single-page entries
and single sentence proclamations—and the lists—are her most familiar territory,
my favorite parts of this memoir are the least cartoonish ones. Yes, I love the
way she takes down the women’s fashion industry and the unhealthy way it
affects our body images. She was good at
it forty years ago, and she’s good at it now. But the passages that drew me in
and let me get lost in her story are the more vulnerable, deeply perceptive
parts of the narrative, her fears for her aging parents; the struggle and
triumph of raising a daughter, one with special needs, alone; and the failure
of her marriage. I am in awe of the fact that she and her ex made each other
laugh until the tears came as they planned their divorce. Who does that? And of
course, she made me laugh too.
Guisewite stays inside her usual parameters, never veering
outside of the middle class Caucasian realm with which she has experience.
Younger women won’t get much joy out of this memoir; women that came of age
between 1965 and 1985 are right in her sweet spot, and it is to them that I
recommend this book. It’s available now.
Randy Susan Meyers wrote The
Murderer’s Daughters and The Widow of
Wall Street. Her new novel, Waisted is
a fiercely feminist story that skewers the weight loss industry and a society
that “treats fat people like out-of-control horrors” and the war against women
with its “intersectionality of misogyny, fat shaming, [and] faux health
concerns.” Thanks go to Atria and Net
Galley for the review copy. You should read this book.
Alice married Clancy when she was “break-up skinny,” not
knowing that he isn’t attracted to any woman that isn’t thin. Daphne is
tormented by her 108 pound mother, whose toxic monitoring and obsession with
Daphne’s eating have nearly driven her daughter over the edge. Alice and Daphne meet at Privation, a live-in weight loss program in rural
Vermont. They and five other women sign on because they are promised rapid
weight loss free of charge, with the caveat that they must agree to be filmed
24 hours a day for a documentary. The program is not only extreme; it is cruel
and dangerous.
“Welcome to hell, ladies, where we recognize
that life is unfair, and you pay the price for every action you take…You’ve
eaten your way through pain, through loss, through happiness, and just for the
plain pleasure of crunching calories between your teeth. Not one of you knows
how to live with privation. So you landed here. The last stop.”
The women don’t know that there are no doctors here, or that
they are part of a nasty experiment to see what women will tolerate in order to
become thinner, even when it is obvious that such a program cannot be
sustained. Each time one or another of them considers decamping, there’s a
weigh-in that shows them to be even lighter than they were earlier in the week,
and with dreams of a new, sleek, lovable body ever nearer realization, they
persevere.
The readers that will relate to this story best are also the
ones that will have a hard time getting through the first half of it. Meyers
drives home so many uncomfortable truths that overweight women like me have
trained ourselves not to think about most of the time because they are painful.
Do it anyway. It’s high time someone wrote this book.
Apart from its very real underpinnings, the story is
far-fetched and features an unlikely outcome, but that doesn’t matter. A more
nuanced or realistic version would fail to deliver the message in as brilliant
a fashion.
This is urgent, angry, and at times darkly funny prose. It
will be available Tuesday, May 21, 2019. Highly recommended.
Cussy Mary Carter delivers books to the rural poor folk of
Troublesome Creek, Kentucky during the Great Depression. I read this quixotic
tale free and early, thanks to Sourcebooks and Net Galley; it’s available for
purchase now.
Cussy is the daughter of a miner; her mother is dead, and
her father is dying slowly of Black Lung, known to them locally as “the miner’s
sickness.” She has no siblings. The government pays her to follow every possible
winding path to reach out-of-the-way homes, loaning books, magazines, and the
scrapbooks assembled of odds and ends by the librarians themselves. It provides
a bright spot in an otherwise grim little town.
I like Cussy Mary, but I have to admit that I am more
attached to Junia, her mule—and if you read this book, you’ll see why.
Everything Cussy does is fraught with peril, and though I seldom do this, I
cheat and look ahead because although I can tolerate any fate for the human
characters here, I need to know whether anything will happen to Junia. Junia
serves as Cussy’s transportation, watchdog (watch mule?) and best friend.
Ordinarily I am no more attached to hoofed animals than any other city dweller,
but this plucky critter has me at hello.
One of the best single moments in historical fiction occurs
when Cussy Mary is confronted by a rattlesnake on a path. A shot rings out, and
a neighbor woman steps out of the trees holding a gun and yells, “Back. That’s
my supper.”
The story’s greatest strengths all have to do with setting and historical detail. Cussy Mary and her father are among a relatively rare racial group that no longer exists, people possessed of blueberry-blue skin. They were often shunned by those they lived among, some of whom regarded them as “colored” (as did local law), and others of whom feared they carried a curse. I had never known about the “blues” before reading this novel, and this is historical fiction at its best, that which educates us and makes us like it.
I would have liked to see more subtlety and ambiguity in the
development of Cussy Mary and the lesser characters. Everyone here is either a
good person or a bad one. Richardson’s good people never have bad moments or
vice versa. I understand when Cussy Mary turns down offers of food even though
she is hungry; part of it is the pride that is an inherent part of the culture,
and she also fears that those making the offer may be giving up their only food
of the day. I understand this the first time she tells us, and the second, and
the third…but by the time I see it again (and again, and..) I am rolling my eyes
and wishing fervently that once, just once she will say thank you and scarf
down the biscuit, or the apple, or the whatever. On the rare occasion she
accepts food, she takes it to someone else, and then she goes home and eats
thistles. It makes it difficult to believe her character, because nobody is
that saintly every minute of every day.
Nonetheless, I recommend this book to you, because there’s
nothing else like it. If there were a body of fictional literature widely
available regarding this time, place, and its people, I might say differently,
but as far I can see, this is it, and the setting is strong enough to just
about stand on its own. Those that enjoy the genre will want this book.
Edwards is the author of This
I Know, and here, once again, she creates a powerful story based on a youthful
yearning for identity. My thanks go to the author and her publicist for the
printed galley, and to Kensington and Net Galley for the digital copy. It will be available May 28, 2019.
Our setting is a small commune in California in the early
1970s. Our protagonist, Clover Blue, sleeps in a tree house with some of the
other commune members. There’s no running water or electricity, but we don’t
miss what we don’t have, and California has a mild climate. Though decisions
are made collectively, with younger and older residents each having a vote,
Goji is the spiritual leader of the group. In place of formal education, young
commune members study with him. Blue can read as well as other children his
age, and he knows more about nature than most would because it’s part of his
everyday experience. He doesn’t remember living anywhere else; his life is
happy, and his bonds with his communal family are strong ones.
But everyone wants to know their origins, and Blue is no
different. As puberty approaches, he begins to ask questions. He gains the
sense that older members know things they won’t tell him, and it heightens his
desire to find out. Goji promises him that he will be told when he turns
twelve, but his twelfth birthday comes and goes, and still Goji evades his queries.
And so the story darkens just a bit as Blue undertakes
research on his own. He has a hunch as to who his biological parents might be,
and despite the communal culture that regards every older person as the mother
or father of every younger person, he wants the particulars and is determined
to get them. The things he learns are unsettling and produce further questions.
A large part of the problem the communal elders face is that
the State of California does not recognize the commune, and the living
conditions and educational process used there are not legally viable. Because of
these things, Goji discourages interaction with the outside world, and
sometimes essential services—such as medical care—are given short shrift
because of the risks they pose. Instead, naturopathic remedies are used, often
to good result.
Edwards builds resonant characters, and I believe Blue, the
sometimes-mysterious Goji, and Harmony, the member of the commune that is
closest to Blue. There is enough ambiguity within each of them to prevent them
from becoming caricatures; everyone holds various qualities within them, none
being wholly benign or malevolent. The way that we judge these characters isn’t
built upon their ability to do everything well, but in how they deal with their
mistakes when they make them. In addition, some writers of historical fiction—which
technically this isn’t, but it has that vibe—fall into the trap of establishing
time and place through the cheap shortcut of pop cultural references and well
known historical events. Edwards doesn’t do that, but she does use the speech
of the time period so effectively that at times, I feel transported back to my
own adolescence. There are aspects of the period I’d forgotten entirely that
surprise and delight me; if there are errors, I don’t see them.
Ultimately, the story takes a turn that harks back
(somewhat) to George Orwell’s classic, Animal
Farm, in that while everyone at the commune is said to be equal, some are “more
equal than others.” Cracks in the foundation of their once-idyllic lives form,
and we see who has strength of character, and who is lacking.
If I could change anything, I would make the ending less
rushed, and I’d also urge the author to be less afraid of letting the ugly
parts play themselves out as they most likely would in real life. In this novel
and her last, it seems like the tragic aspects that occur near or at the climax
are a hot stove, and we have to move away from them quickly. I’d like to see
Edwards let the stove burn a little more.
I do recommend this
book to you. In fact, it may be a five star read, but it’s almost impossible to
evaluate it without comparing it to what the author wrote earlier, and this
made the five star standard difficult to achieve here. Those that love
historical fiction should get it and read it.
Chris Pavone is the real deal. The Paris Diversion sees the return of CIA employee Kate Moore, the protagonist from his first novel, The Expats. This taut, intense thriller is his best to date, and that’s saying a good deal. Lucky me, I read it free thanks to Net Galley and Crown, but you can get it tomorrow, May 7, 2019.
Kate wears many hats, moving deftly from professional spy to
primary caretaker of two children, one of whom is medically fragile. Her
husband Dexter calls himself an investor, but he’s basically just a weasel. His
weak character comes into play in a big way in this story as he is tied to a
shady financial deal that in turn is tied–though he doesn’t know it– to a
terrifying terrorist event that takes place in the heart of France:
“She gasps. She is
surprised at her reaction, like an amateur. She has never before seen anything
like this. No one here has. What she sees:
a man is standing all alone in the middle of the vast open space,
looking tiny. He’s wearing a bulky vest, and a briefcase sits at his feet, the
sort of luggage that in action-adventure films follows around the president of
the United States, a shiny case lugged around by a tall square-jawed man
wearing a military uniform, a handsome extra with no speaking lines. The
nuclear codes…Yes, Dexter was right: that’s a suitcase bomb.”
Events unfold seen from the viewpoints of several different
characters. In addition to Kate, we have the bomb-wearer; his American driver; the
sniper assigned to take the bomb-wearer out; billionaire Hunter
Do-You-Know-Who-I-Am Forsyth; and a mysterious woman using the name Susanna. Points
of view change frequently, and the brief chapters become even briefer as the
story unfolds, creating even more suspense. Pavone (that’s three syllables—Puh-vo-KNEE)
has keen insight into the lies weak people tell themselves to justify their
poor choices, and at times he is wickedly funny. Favorites here are the
internal monologue of our ass hat billionaire; the moment Kate takes down the
security guard; and the exchange between Kate and Hunter’s assistant, Schuyler.
Because I spend several hours of every day reading, I can
almost always put a book down, even an excellent one. For the best books, I
reserve good-sized blocks of time when I won’t be interrupted, and these are
the ones I read with joy, rather than out of duty to the publisher. But it’s
been awhile since I stayed up late because I had to know how a book ended. The
prose here is so tightly woven that every word is important; in most books of
the genre, there’s a winding down period at the end of the book after the climax
has been reached and the problem resolved. In contrast, Pavone moves at warp
speed until almost the last word of the last chapter.
I have rarely seen a male writer that can craft a believable
female character, and Pavone does that. I appreciate his respect for women. In
addition, it appears that Kate may have met her own Moriarti, and so I suspect
both she and her nemesis will be back. I hope so.
To say more is to waste words, an unfair tribute to a bad
ass writer who wastes none. Get this book and read it. You won’t be sorry.
Best-selling author J.A. Jance is something of a legend here
in Seattle, and I came to her work as a huge fan of the J.P. Beaumont series. It
took me awhile to bond to the Ali Reynolds series—which is set in Not-Seattle–
but I am all in it now. Big thanks go to
Net Galley and Gallery Books for the review copy.
Our story commences inside a prison where a killer is
spending what’s left of his life and plotting vengeance. On his arm are
tattooed 5 initials which comprise his “A list” for the five people he wants
dead. He understands he’ll have to hire out the “wet work,” but that’s okay.
The voice Jance gives this character sends chills up and down my neck, and I
don’t get that way easily. We learn that Ali, our protagonist, is on that list.
Once the reader’s attention is secure, we go through a
complex but clear and necessary recap, which gets us through the essential
information that’s developed during the first 13 books of the series, which is
set in Arizona. So here, I have to tell you that I don’t recommend starting the
series with this book. I have read all or most of the series, but with a year
or so passing between each of these, I very much needed this recap to refresh
my memory. Young readers with sterling memories might be able to keep up with
it, but the audience that will love this story best are middle class Caucasian
women over 40. The reader doesn’t necessarily have to go all the way back to
the first book to begin reading, but I would urge you to go back to an earlier
book somewhere else in the series and work your way forward. The books fly by
quickly, and it’s definitely worth it. While some authors lose the urgency in
their prose when they get older, Jance just gets leaner and sharper, and this
story is among the very best I’ve seen her write, which says a lot.
The premise is centered around The Progeny Project, a
nonprofit organization that helps children born through artificial insemination
find their biological relatives for the purpose of learning about their own
medical background. It begins when one such young man, in desperate need of a
new kidney, makes a public plea for information on Ali’s television news
program. Results come in quickly and reveal that Dr. Eddie Gilchrist’s
fertility clinic did not use the donors he advertised, instead inseminating his
many female patients with his own sperm. Events unfold, and the doctor is
convicted of murder, and is sent away for life in prison. From there, he seeks
revenge.
The plot is among the most original I have seen in many
years, and its execution requires tight organization, which Jance carries off
brilliantly. She could have written this mystery successfully without lending a
lot of attention to the characters, but she doesn’t do that. It’s the
combination of an intricate but clear plot and resonant characters that makes
this story exceptional.
In an earlier book we were introduced to Frigg, an AI entity
created by an IT guy that works for an internet security company owned by B.
Simpson, Ali’s husband. Frigg disregards what she considers to be unreasonable
laws against hacking, and attempts to take Frigg down completely have been
foiled by the AI herself. This scenario creates all sorts of vastly amusing
problems when Ali herself needs personal security; Frigg learns she is on the A
List, and her vigilance is both essential and illegal, at times.
The second and most fascinating character is Hannah
Gilchrist, the elderly, very wealthy mother of Dr. Eddie. When she learns that
her only son has decided to have everyone responsible for his ruin killed, she
decides she’s going to help him. She has terminal cancer and no other children,
and a sort of modern, rich Ma Barker personality emerges. Hannah is a dynamic
character and I absolutely love the way Jance develops her, laying waste to a
multitude of sexist stereotypes.
If I could change one thing, I would have Jance lose the
word “gangbanger,” a stereotype in itself, and include some positive Latino
characters in the Reynolds series.
Make no mistake, this mystery is brainy and complicated. You
don’t want to read it after you have taken your sleeping pill. But the
masterful way Jance braids the plot, the return of Frigg, and the development
of Hannah all make it well worth the reader’s effort. But again—don’t let this
be the first of the series for you. Climb aboard an earlier entry and work your
way into it. In fact, newbie readers will likely have an advantage over long
time readers, because you can read these mysteries in succession without having
to wait a year to come back to the series.
With that caveat, this mystery is highly recommended.
Author Anna Quindlen is queen of all things warm and wise,
and so it’s not surprising that her ode to grandmothering hits just the right note. I was lucky and read it free and early,
thanks to Random House and Net Galley, but it would have been worth the
purchase price had it come down to it. This friendly little book is available
to the public now.
Quindlen’s memoir can double as a primer for her peers that
are new grandparents also, but that’s not where its greatest strength is found.
The most resonant aspect is that common chord, the eloquence with which she
gives voice to our common experience. It makes me feel as if she and I are
sitting together with our baby pictures—the grandbabies and our children that
created them—and as she speaks, I am saying, “I know, right?” I chuckle as she
recounts trends in the advice given by experts to new parents: when our first babies were born, we were told
to put them to bed on their stomachs so they wouldn’t spit up and choke to
death on it; then later children slept on their sides, which seems like a safe
bet either way, but babies don’t stay on their sides very long; and now babies
are supposed to be safer on their backs. And she voices so well the pride we
feel when an adult that we have parented turns into a wonderful parent in his
own right. And I nod in agreement as she says of her toddler grandson, “No one
else has sounded that happy to see me in many, many years.”
Quindlen speaks well to the ambivalent moments as well, to
the need to hold our tongues when we want to offer advice that hasn’t been
requested; at the same time, there’s the relief that comes of not being in
charge of all the big decisions. And I
echo the outrage that she feels when some ignorant asshole suggests that our
biracial grandchild is not part of our blood and bones. (A jerk in Baby Gap
wants to know where she got him; she replies that she found him at Whole
Foods.)
Unequivocally joyful is the legacy grandchildren present. “I am building a memory out of spare parts…someday that memory will be all that’s left of me.”
And then, there are the books:
“’In the great green room…’
“’Mouse,’ Arthur says.
“’There is a mouse,’ I say…falling down the well of memory
as I speak, other children, other chairs.”
Go ahead. Read it with dry eyes. I dare you.
Quindlen is writing for her peers. If you aren’t a
grandparent and don’t expect to become one anytime soon (or perhaps at all,)
then this memoir will probably not be a magical experience for you. But the
title and book jacket make it clear exactly where she is going, and I am
delighted to go with her.
Highly recommended to grandparents, and to those on the
cusp.
I was invited to read and review this title by Simon and
Schuster and Net Galley. It’s the story of Shane, an orphaned teen whose uncle
kicks him goodbye [with my apologies to Shrek] directly following high school
graduation. Shane sets off for the small town in Minnesota whence came his only
letter from his mother, who abandoned the family a long time ago. Since he
finds himself suddenly homeless, he figures he doesn’t have much to lose. Maybe
she’s still there.
His new home, however, is little more than a wide space in the road, and its residents haven’t received the memo about gender crossed individuals. His long hair and androgynous appearance are the trigger for some nasty behaviors on the part of the locals, and when you’re homeless, this is exponentially scarier because you don’t have a safe place into which you can rush and close the door.
On the one hand, the theme here is a timely one, combining the present-day increased problem of homelessness with other issues of the day. We see teen kids instantly unhomed by the government once they reach majority age; bullying and hate crimes against those with nontraditional sexual identification and orientation; and then, as the novel proceeds, substance abuse as a means of escape and a signal of dark, dark despair.
The despair. The despair the
despairthedespairthedespair. The challenge
in reading this is that we begin in a bleak place, we stay in a bleak place for
the most part, and then we end in a bleak place. The whole thing is punctuated
not only with alienation, of which there is understandably plenty, but also
that flat line ennui that accompanies depression, and who in her right mind
would read this thing cover to cover?
Hopefully it’s someone with rock solid mental health whose moods are not
terribly variable. As for me, I read the first half, and then I perused the
remainder in a skipping-and-scooting way I reserve for very few galleys. It was
that or commence building myself a noose, and self preservation won the day.
If the key issues in this novel are a particular passion of
yours, you may feel vindicated when you read it. I recommend reading it free or cheaply if you
will read it all, and keep a second, more uplifting novel ready to do duty as a
mood elevator when you sense your own frame of mind descending hell’s elevator.
Helen Ellis makes me laugh out loud. If you can use some of
that, you may want to read this book. Thanks go to Doubleday and Net Galley for
the review copy.
Southern Lady Code is a title that carries a code of its own. Some people use the word “lady” to describe
European royalty; some to describe a courteous woman, which is what I
anticipated here; and some use it to describe a well-mannered woman with a very
comfortable income, which appears to be the author’s operating definition. In
terms of the “code,” I thought I’d be reading straight satire, but discovered
that she has provided a combination of self-help tips and searing, sometimes
raucous humor. It works surprisingly well.
I have never made a cheese log before or wanted one, but
Ellis’s recipe sounds so persuasively delicious that I may try it. That said,
my favorite essays were short on advice and long on humor. I nearly hurt myself
laughing over the construction man she found masturbating in her bedroom—did I
mention that she gets a little edgy here?
And “The Ghost Experience” is massively entertaining. There’s a lot of good material here. Though at times her outlook is a little more
conservative than my own, I like the things she says in support of gay and
trans friends.
Ultimately, I suspect that I am not the target audience for
Ellis, who in her middle-aged years is dispensing life skills wrapped in
bountiful amounts of humorous anecdotes. She is writing to her peers and to
those women younger than herself. I am
ten or twenty years older than this woman, but I still came away impressed. So,
ladies and women, if you can look past the assumption of a greater-than-average
income, you’ll have a good time here, and if you can’t, try to get this
collection at the library and read selectively, because more of these essays will
resonate than not, for all of us.
I rate this book four giggles, and it will be available to
the public tomorrow, April 16, 2019.
The buzz around this mystery started early, and it started
loud. If it hadn’t I am not sure I’d have asked to read it. When I saw the
premise—the use of a hyperbaric oxygen tank to murder an autistic child—I thought
wow, this author is reaching. But a quick web crawl taught me that though
controversial, hyperbaric oxygen therapy is actually used to treat autism. The
treatment is controversial but the basis of the story is a sound one, so I have
learned something already, and now that I’ve read it, I am glad I didn’t let it
pass me by. Big thanks go to Net Galley and Sarah Crichton Books for the review
copy. Miracle Creek will be available
to the public April 16, 2019.
The HBOT therapy device is owned by Pak and Young Yoo. A lot of hard work and financial struggle
went into procuring this device; there were years when they had to live apart,
with Young and their daughter Mary in Baltimore, Young working round the clock
for room, board, and her daughter’s private school tuition while Pak worked two
jobs in Korea, squirreling away resources. Now the unthinkable has occurred—the
chamber has gone up in flames with patients inside it. Two people are dead and
others are horribly injured, and there’s an intensive investigation that leads
to an arrest. Elizabeth, a single mother, is charged with starting the fire in
order to murder her little boy and free herself from the difficult caregiver
role. On the surface, the facts are damning indeed, but what the cops don’t
know, at least in the beginning, is that every single person that was there
that day is lying about it.
Elizabeth, Kitt, and Teresa are mothers of autistic
children, digging deep and running up their credit cards hoping for miraculous
transformations. The seventh patient is Matt, whose wife has pressured him into
trying this treatment to raise his sperm count. The other characters in this
story are the Yoo family that own and operate the chamber, and the legal teams
assembled for the trial.
Most legal thrillers and courtroom mysteries hinge heavily
upon what happens in the courtroom. In contrast, although what plays out in
court is not unimportant, the real meat of this story has to do with the
actions, thoughts, and memories of the townspeople that are involved, primarily
when court is not in session. Although our point of view is the third person
omniscient, specific critical details are revealed to us in stages, and what we
learn at the end differs greatly from the conclusions most of us will have
drawn at the outset, when we had less information.
Why do people lie, and in particular, why would anyone lie
to the authorities investigating a deadly disaster like this one? Make a list
of the possibilities, and as you read, you’ll see them all, a veritable potpourri
of bald-faced lies and critical omissions of facts. At the end of it, we find
just one (lying) person that has integrity and pure motives, and everyone else
has crossed a line, not only legally but ethically. And although there’s just
one character here that I’d describe as dynamic, the others are developed to an
extent as their layers of rationalization, anger, fear, resentment, and greed
are revealed to us.
This is an explosive debut, and Angie Kim is a force to be
reckoned with. You want to read this book, and happily, you won’t have to wait
long. Highly recommended.
Seattle Book Mama 