Ishmael Beah's Little Family

Yesterday I spent an hour enraptured by the online interview with novelist Ishmael Beah that was hosted by Politics and Prose Bookstore in DC. Anyone can access their author events or get on their mailing list and oh, they have so much going on! https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/pp-live-ishmael-beah-little-family-in-conversation-reza-aslan The back and forth between Beah and Reza Aslan made me appreciate this book all over again as if I was reading it for the first time.

I had the distinct pleasure of reviewing this and Beah's previous novel, The Radiance of Tomorrow, for Library Journal and I loved them both. You may remember Ishmael Beah's name as the young man who tore our hearts open with his 2007 memoir Long Way Gone, his cathartic take on being conscripted as a twelve-year-old child soldier during the civil war in his home country Sierra Leone. Fifteen years later he is a living success story, a husband and father living here in the United States, and a writer who gets better with each literary outing.

Little Family tells the story of five lost and abandoned children who live in a derelict airplane in an unnamed African country where they form a de facto

family unit led by the bookish but street-smart Elimane, the oldest at twenty, and mothered by Khoudiemata, barely a teen herself but wise beyond her years. The five are grifters, they survive by their wits, conning, stealing, and getting away with it because they are invisible to society. To Beah and to readers though, these children are distinct and complicated and a joy to spend time with even as we worry that at any moment their delicate house of cards will come tumbling down.

Elimane takes a gamble on a business relationship with a dubious man, William Handkerchief, who could be a government informant or the head of a criminal syndicate. Khoudi, because of her innate beauty, gets the attention of a posse of wealthy jet-setting young people from whom she won't be able to keep her secret life hidden. As they let down their guard, the all too human Elimane and Khoudi may be endangering the little family unit they've worked so hard to protect. 

This was my verdict on this gorgeous book: 

 “Beah portrays his characters with exquisite tenderness, imbuing them with a grace that belies their wretched situation… In a work less harrowing but no less effective than Radiance of Tomorrow, Beah continues to speak eloquently to the impact of colonialism on generations of African children for whom freedom is merely an illusion.” – Library Journal

If I ever get up the courage to go out again, maybe to the post office? I would love to share my copy with someone. Let me know if you're interested. 

Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman

The opening scene of this fabulous new novel from Ellen Feldman is vivid and gut-wrenching. It takes place in Drancy, a French internment camp outside Paris, in the waning days of the German occupation. It's 1944 and the American liberators are coming, but some of the French people, whose humiliation at the hands of the

Boches has devolved into a sickness of hatred, are determined to punish someone. Their anger falls on the  women, so-called "collabo horizantale" because they had sexual relations with the enemy. They are being tortured, their heads shaved, swastikas carved into their foreheads, stripped and brutalized for all to see. It is a surreal picture of mob rule that reminded me of lynching parties in the south. Charlotte and her four-year-old daughter Vivi turn away in fear and disgust. The significance of it all we won't understand until much later in the book. 

"Paris Never Leaves You," I'm sorry to say, won't be out until late summer but do put it on your "to read" list now as it's another powerful entry in the World War II/Holocaust genre that's booming as the world quickly loses the  generation that lived it. Charlotte gives birth to Vivi alone in a Paris deprived of all that it's best known for. Food is scarce, neighbor turns on neighbor, Jews are in hiding or passing as Christian, Nazi soldiers parade the streets, and people hunker down not wanting to be noticed. Charlotte's husband Laurent, a soldier at the front, is dead before his daughter is even born, but not realizing this, Charlotte chooses to remain in Paris, running her bookstore, feeding the baby scraps in the back room, standing in line for dry bread and rotten fruit, in case Laurent finds his way home.

As Jeanine Cummins did so beautifully in "American Dirt," Feldman also does here. She frames the question, "what would we do if...what would we do to protect our only child...to find sustenance in a world gone mad?" This is a love story, yes, between a man and a woman, but more so between a mother and child. The secrets Charlotte keeps, the lengths she will go to give Vivi a chance at life, are life threatening in themselves. When does the end justify the means and how do we tamp down that horribly human urge to judge others without even a modicum of understanding of the circumstances?

Through a New York-based humanitarian organization that worked to bring Jewish refugees to America, Charlotte and Vivi are now ensconced in a brownstone on the upper west side of Manhattan, living in an apartment in their benefactor's home. Charlotte has her dream job editing novels at Gibbon and Field, the publishing house headed up by her landlord, Horace Field. Vivi is a scholarship student at a prestigious public school. Though it's been ten years since their arrival in the states, Charlotte has suddenly begun receiving letters from France that revive difficult memories and debilitating guilt, emotions she has struggled to subsume. And Vivi, now fourteen, is brimming with questions and curiosity about her father and her Jewish faith.

Toggling back and forth between occupied Paris in the forties and the literary scene of a thriving New York City in the fifties, author Ellen Feldman https://www.ellenfeldman.com/about-ellen-feldman.html has written an engrossing novel about physical and emotional survival, acceptance of the decisions we are forced to make in the gray areas of life, and the courage to push forward, to life, l'chaim!

More Reading for Solace

I've been marveling at all the people online who have gotten into cooking and baking all day long. I wish I felt compelled or had the ambition for this since I certainly love to eat and drink. But alas, I guess I'd rather read about food than prepare it. Food memoirs are another genre that I turn to for satisfaction in difficult times. They are especially fulfilling if they combine travel and recipes.

 I can't offer enough praise for My Life in France by the inimitable Julia Child. Going along on her odyssey from a small conservative town in California to life with her beloved husband Paul, a photographer and diplomat of sorts, as they travel the world, settling in Paris where Child bucked the misoginistic system of the Cordon Bleu, is pure delight. Her joie de vivre emmanates from every

page, along with her love of cooking, entertaining, and the establishment of life-long friendships along the way. For added fun you can go to PBS and watch episodes of her infamous, groundbreaking cooking show which leans heavily on recipes from her award-winning book Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Another food writer I can't get enough of is Ruth Reichl. She is so funny and down to earth even though she's held such prestigious jobs as food critic for the New York Times and Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet Magazine. She lured me in with her first memoir Tender at the Bone, and won me all over again with Comfort Me With Apples. Just the titles of her books takes your blood pressure down a peg or two. I wrote about her and so many others here: https://bit.ly/2KjCQ5t

If you're longing to travel again, to spend a leisurely afternoon in a European cafe or a street market in some out of the way Asian city, then head to Netflix and binge watch Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown and No Reservations. Renowned for his love of street food and astute political commentary, his shows are like nothing you've ever seen before. But to meet Anthony as a kid and to discover what propelled him to the heights of celebrity chefdom, begin your

inquiries with his first memoir Kitchen Confidential. This book shocked many when it first came out with its gritty look at what happens behing the scenes at the world's finest restaurants. But he also takes time to reminisce about his family's trips through Europe, how his parents inculcated an appreciation of food and adventure into their two boys, and how he came to associate pure love with his mother's grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell's soup. Comfort foods for all of us!

For all the parents who are valiantly working from home while trying to homeschool and set boundaries for mommy/daddy time I suggest the delightful Four Seasons in Rome by the novelist who inspired us with his phenomenal debut and Pulitzer Prize-winner, All The Light You Cannot See. (Another book worth a second look) Doerr and his wife, brand new parents of twins, gamely take up a grant offer for him to write for a year in Rome. But apartments in Europe bear little ressemblance to even the smallest accommodations here in the states and, with two little ones, Doerr would have given his soul for a place to self-isolate! His writing is funny, engaging, and has a "you are there" quality that is balm for the soul. https://bit.ly/2VqB3ls

And for those women "of a certain age" who feel downright claustrophobic in isolation, rueing every event that we cannot attend, every friend we cannot spend the little time we have left with, I highly recommend the vibrant, "I am woman, hear my roar" sentiments in the memoir of editor and publisher Diana Athill. Alive, Alive, Oh! is a resounding paeon to the wonders of every stage of this glorious life we're given, with no pious regrets, recriminations, or moaning over the road not taken. Read my review here: https://bit.ly/3anJmm4

That's it for today everyone. Again, let me know what you're reading and loving right now, what speaks to your heart, what helps you sleep at night. We are not alone and knowing that makes all the difference.

 

Reading for Solace in an Age of Angst

All over the online book world writers and reviewers are baring their souls as they try to make sense of our stress-filled days, our anxiety if we choose to admit it, and our fears for ourselves and our world. Concentration, for many, has flown out the window and our tastes change daily. Some of us are separated from our loved ones indefinitely. Heart palpitations and butterflies in the stomach are with us day and night. Who or what can we turn to for solace?

My friend Don and I searched for a book that we could read together as we each shelter in place a thousand miles apart. I had heard of an online group that was reading twelve pages a day of War and Peace. I ordered my copy but as we chatted more about it we decided that something more beautiful might be in order, something more poetic. Many years ago he had gifted me the five volume Chinese classic The Story of the Stone, a daunting history of the Jia family's rise and fall in fortune, spanning decades and featuring a young man's journey from favored child, to bohemian, to indigent, to Taoist monkhood. 

The lush descriptions of the clothing, the gorgeous, spare architecture, the

simplicity of the natural surroundings, and the exquisite poetry that graces every page, have a deeply soothing effect on the psyche. In fact I am unable to stop at twelve pages and find myself way ahead of Don in the story. But no matter, he's read it twice before!

Mulling over the pleasures I'm deriving from this book I thought back to other titles I've read and shared with Don. One that comes to mind for its lyricism and beauty is The Garden of Evening Mists by the Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng. I raved about it here about half way down the page: https://bit.ly/3ailfFn

Solitude is a strange animal. Many of us thrive on it, find it renewing and refreshing. I was one of those people. But there's a different tenor to forced solitude, one that requires strength and fortitude to endure. Might this be a time I wondered to return to characters both real and imagined who faced enforced

confinement with courage and imagination. Perhaps it's time to re-read Ann Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. Searing in its honesty, I read Ann's diary every ten or fifteen years or whenever I feel that I need to be humbled. 

Another book I could read over and over again is Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow, the genre-defying story of Count Rostov, a member of the leisure class, now an enemy of the state, who is confined to live the remainder of his life in the famed Metropol Hotel. Here's what I had to say after the first reading: https://bit.ly/3cy6dN8 There can be no better example of a man who created a full and fulfilling life out of his isolation.

Another writer I turn to when the world doesn't make sense is Barbara Kingsolver. Her background in biology is often on display in her novels, try the glorious story of the monarch butterflies in Flight Behavior, but never has it been more integral to the tale than in the wondrous Prodigal Summer. Set in Appalachia, an area she knows very well, this story of a park ranger savoring her solitude in a one room cabin in the mountains spans three seasons just bursting with life. Read my review here: https://bit.ly/2Khobrl

Last week Don sent me a link to Maureen Corrigan's NPR essay on books to read for solace.https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/831684823/need-a-mental-escape-these-books-offer-solace-in-troubled-times I love Corrigan. She even attended one of our first library reading festivals. She's so no-nonsense in her views. I'm anxiously waiting for my copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to arrive from Maryland where it was on my "to read" list for this summer. I don't want to wait for travel restrictions to be lifted. I need it now!

In fact, it was Corrigan's essay and a little push from Don that made me decide to sit down and think about the books I might recommend during these scary days. At first I was in a rather dark place and didn't think that I had anything worth saying. But this morning I sat down to look over the lists of books I've read and enjoyed over the past fifteen to twenty years and the options were astounding. Now I have too much to say! Tomorrow I'll look at some uplifting memoirs and a few more novels that I promise will take you out of yourself. And please, please, please, do share with me and whoever else is listening the titles that you can't live without. 

My Take on American Dirt

Lydia Delgado knows, even as she calls them to report the carnage, that she cannot trust the police. Sixteen family members lie dead in the back yard where Lydia's husband Sebastian was manning the grill at a quinceanera celebration. She and their eight-year-old son Luca were in the bathroom when the bloodbath began. And there but for goodness...

Acapulco is a dangerous place, especially for journalists like Sebastian, shining a light on the insidious power of the drug cartels. As solidly middle class Mexicans, Lydia and Sebastian believe they have successfully shielded themselves and

Luca from the worst that men can do. But when Lydia's flirtation and ultimately deepening friendship with Javier, a patron at her upscale bookstore, results in Sebastian's writing an in-depth piece on the jefe of Los Jardineros, known as La Lechuza, a Pandora's box of suffering opens.

Convinced that Javier will not rest until they, too, are dead, Lydia sets out on the tortuous path traveled by hundreds of thousands before them, joining a caravan of immigrants from all classes and countries seeking safe haven in el norte. You'd have to be living under a rock not to be familiar with the controversy surrounding this novel. Labeled "trauma porn" by critics, Cummins' book has been disparaged as inauthentic though she is married to a green card holder who was for years an undocumented immigrant. She and her family have been vilified and threatened. For wanting to shed a light on a humanitarian crisis, for trying to put relatable faces on the streams of nameless, faceless, immigrants who arrive at our southern border each day, Cummins has had to go into hiding.

I found this novel to be a deeply moving meditation on motherhood and trust. Lydia's survival instinct and the ferocious love she has for her precocious, delightful Luca, compel the story forward. She shocks herself at her ability to lie, steal, even murder if she has to. With no time to grieve the deaths of her husband or her mother, every ounce of energy must be applied to survival. She can trust no one and that loss of innocence might be the most tragic loss of all. Along their way, they will meet the worst and the best that humanity has to offer.

"American Dirt" answers the question that so many people ask either out of ignorance or mean spiritedness. 

"Why would they risk it all, their very lives, to come here?"

Each character in this ultimately hopeful novel represents a reason.

Go to her website to learn how you can help. https://www.jeaninecummins.com/how-to-helppre/

Men Behaving Badly

Two outstanding non-fiction titles made it onto my ipod over the past couple of months. Perhaps I needed something else to be outraged about as the covid-19 virus barreled down upon us. Anything to keep my overactive imagination in check with each tickle in the throat.

Ruth Marcus, opinion writer for the Washington Post, has always been a favorite of mine. I knew that she had covered the Supreme Court. I did not know that she was a Yale and Harvard educated lawyer. Who better to write the definitive book about the travesty that was the election of Brett Kavanaugh to the

Supreme Court? I remember listening raptly to the public hearings at the time and having to pull over to the side of the road to cry in despair. I knew he would be elected no matter the facts that were uncovered against him. But in "Supreme Ambition" Marcus makes it clear that the facts the public never heard were even, if possible, more damaging.

From the moment that retiring justice Anthony Kennedy visited with Trump in the White House, making a deal with the devil, the table was set for Kavanaugh, Kennedy's protegee, to take the seat. But what should have been a shoo-in, turned into a contentious debacle when Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford came forward with allegations of a sexual assault by Kavanaugh in high school. What upset me so much was the incredible amount of background information that was unearthed that not only backed Ford's accusation but proved a long history of Kavanaugh's pathetic frat-boy behavior and severe alcohol abuse. None of the other witnesses against him were allowed to be heard in the FBI's rush to push Kavanaugh's nomination through.

Marcus takes readers behind the scenes of the incredible machinations and maneuvers that result in placing a name in front of the president and the judicial committee and shows us how the groundwork for skewing the court to the right had been laid as much as thirty years ago. Democrats do not get off easy either and, in fact, Marcus inadvertantly makes the case for term limits when implicating the complete failure of Senator Diane Feinstein, head of the judiciary committee, to persue the accusation in a timely matter. Kavanaugh's despicable behavior throughout his hearing, uncontrolled anger and blatant partisanship, made Justice Clarence Thomas look like a choirboy. 

And then there's the poster boy of sexual predatory behavior, Harvey Weinstein. Wunderkind, Ronan Farrow, who earned his bachelor's degree at the age of fifteen and went on to also earn a juris doctorate from Yale, has written a spell-binding book about his two and half year attempt to bring Weinstein's story to light, initially for NBC news but finally winning a Pulitzer Prize for The New

Yorker. "Catch and Kill" reads like a spy thriller and Farrow is a fabulous narrator, revealing a surprisingly self-deprecatory sense of humor and a knack for accents.

But there is nothing funny about the incredible journalistic sleuthing that went into paving the way for justice for Weinstein's accusers and peeling back the layers of criminal conduct that pervaded the NBC studio heads who were in Weinstein's pocket. Weinstein even employed a shadow agency of Israeli intelligence to follow and intimidate Farrow and the victims he was trying to persuade to come forward. The power of white, male money is terrifying in its reach.

Most disturbing of all is the way women turn on women and how attorney Lisa Bloom, a supposed defender of women's rights, posed as a helpmate to Farrow and the victims, but was actually gaining information to aid Weinstein in his fight against the charges. If you were reading this as fiction you wouldn't believe it but it is mind-blowingly and oh so sadly true. If by chance you felt a moment's bit of empathy when you watched a frail-appearing Weinstein leave court after his conviction leaning on his walker, just read this book. You'll get over yourself, quickly!