Very Little Sunshine in "Here Comes the Sun"

 

When debut author Nicole Dennis-Benn spoke to librarians last month in Chicago about her devastatingly sad first novel "Here Comes the Sun," she broke down in tears and had difficulty continuing. Now I understand why. Imagine if you can, having to leave your homeland and move to a new country, not just for financial stability but for emotional stability as well, just so that you can live your life authentically. 

 

Born and raised in Jamaica, Ms. Dennis-Benn (http://www.nicoledennisbenn.com/) came to the United States where she earned a Cornell degree and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence. She is now proud to call Brooklyn her home. But if she saw, lived through, or knew people who had even half of the tragedies that she writes of, then that is too many. Fair warning, this novel is Shakespearian in its examination of human folly.

 

In this case, it's the sins of the mothers that are visited upon their daughters. In fact, male characters are unimportant to the crux of this novel which is more an examination of motherhood, unexpected and unwanted. It's a novel about women searching for love, a true connection, not a fleeting romp. It's about a mother, caring for her own mother, and for a daughter, through long, tedious days of catering to tourists, selling cheap trinkets to Americans who get off a luxury liner for a few hours and think they are buying a piece of Jamaica.

 

This is a novel about a woman who resents her daughter's beauty and innocence and is willing to despoil her own child for six hundred U.S. dollars. It's about that daughter, Margot, who uses what she's learned to take advantage of other innocents as a means of saving her younger sister, Thandi, for what she hopes and believes will be a better life. And it's about Thandi, a lovely, bright young woman who has the burden of those three unhappy generations weighing heavily on her shoulders. Her confusion and quandaries will break your heart.

 

In a parochial school where her class and color insure friendlessness, Thandi excels in science and math knowing that her family expects her to become a doctor. But Thandi harbors dreams of art school and only feels good about herself when she's with a street boy named Charles. When he discovers that she's been stealing money from her sister to have painful skin treatments that will make her lighter (more acceptable to her white schoolmates), he pleads with her in a deeply poignant scene to recognize that she's beautiful just the way she is. Dennis-Benn says of the moment, "No one has ever called her beautiful. It is like a sheer, billowing curtain that rests like a fainting damsel on the back of an armchair...serene, graceful, elegant."

 

There are no debut flaws in this tragic novel. Dennis-Benn's writing is pure and elegant. She writes delicately and realistically about the island's homophobia and the courage displayed by Verdene, a woman who returned to Jamaica after her mother's death even though she had been spurned by the townspeople years earlier for an indiscreet lesbian relationship. And the author tackles head on the rape of the island by big corporations that come in and offer the native people paltry sums, if any, for their valuable property. Where Jamaicans once fed and housed themselves on fishing, they now bow and scrape to wealthy tourists, offering glorious, white, welcoming smiles, that never reach their eyes.

 

I firmly believe that if we are to ever understand other cultures and people that we must walk a mile in their shoes. Of course, that's not always possible. But great literature serves as a means to that noble end. If we keep reading, we keep learning. Won't you join me? I have a copy of the book for the first person who asks.

 

 



The Bridge Ladies by Betsy Lerner - A Fabulous Mother's Day Gift

 

 

For several years I followed Betsy Lerner's blog about writing. Then, somehow, I thought she had gone away and I was devastated. She enthralled me. Her humor was wry, her profanity infectious, her self-deprecation remained mercifully far from self-flagellation. And, I always sensed that we had  something in common. I'm happy to say that she's back and we do! https://betsylerner.com/

 

Let me say, unequivocally, that I loved "The Bridge Ladies," Ms. Lerner's memoir that examines her often fraught relationship with her mother and the efforts that she's taken, not to make amends, but to see through a different lens. Like so many of us who grew up in the '60's and '70's, getting out from under the yoke of parents and rules was paramount. There was none of this helicopter parenting that's choking today's kids, delaying their maturation by decades. We couldn't wait to be on our own and coming back home after college felt like the ultimate failure.

 

Betsy Lerner is refreshingly honest about her own rebellion which began at puberty and is maybe, just now, beginning to settle down. She and her mom, Roz, were at loggerheads constantly. If one said the sky was blue, the other saw it black. Criticism was the name of the game. It was not a time when parents were touchy-feely, and to say "I love you?" Well, it just wasn't done. Did we spend so much time chafing against everything our folks stood for in an effort to test their love?

 

Lerner sets out to better understand her mother through the bridge ladies, the four women who have met with her mom every Monday for over fifty years to nosh and play cards. By listening and observing, culling as much from what's not said as from what is, Lerner discovers that these women, now in their eighties, for whom she had had not a shred of admiration or respect, are actually deeply deserving of both. Her awakening to their attributes comes gradually, as she meets individually with each, asking probing questions about their youth, their marriages, their hopes and dreams. And they in turn, teach her how to play bridge.

 

I can't say enough about this beautiful book. Lerner, a writer, literary agent and former editor, has a wonderful way with words. There are so many little gems of self-awareness that I wanted to go back, re-read, and immediately pull quotes. She takes us through her bouts with depression, therapy, marriage, and motherhood, recognizing the parallels between her and her mother's life. She softens, as we all do with age, and it's gratifying to watch. How I wish my own mother had lived long enough to become my friend.

 

Whether you and your mom were best buds or - be honest now - were at each other's throats, this memoir would make a lovely gift for mother's day or for any important woman in your life. Thank you to the publisher, Harper, for allowing me to be an early reader. Look for it next month or place a hold at your public library now.

Lucy Barton is no Olive Kitteridge

 

Let me say right up front that I just love Elizabeth Strout. I've had the privilege of meeting her in person right over at the Sanibel Public Library. Her talk is thoughtful, funny, and honest. I suppose it just isn't fair to expect every novel she writes to live up to the Pulitzer Prize winning "Olive Kitteridge," but hope springs eternal. "Burgess Boys" came close.

So what's my problem with "My Name is Lucy Barton?" Reviews have been unanimously positive and we all know that size doesn't matter. After all, look what Kent Haruf did in under 200 pages with "Our Souls at Night." Still, Lucy seemed slight to me. The back story, which should have explained why Lucy is estranged from her family, is so subtle and nuanced that you just might miss it. And certainly the reader is entitled to more information as to how Lucy, an aspiring writer by the way, ended up married to a man so thoughtless and uncaring that he doesn't even come to see her in the hospital when an infection threatens her life.

Instead, he calls Lucy's mother, a woman with whom she hasn't spoken in many, many years. Lucy wakes up from a drug induced sleep to find her mother sitting in a chair in the hospital room. Lucy is both shocked and thrilled. Does this mean that her mother truly does love her after all this time and distance? How can mother and daughter hope to make up for those lost years? Desultory conversation about people from Lucy's past keeps them from alluding to anything of significance in the present.

We learn of Lucy's childhood, years of deprivation both physical and emotional, through flashbacks, and we witness her desperate need for love and approval through the close, but likely one-sided, relationship she develops with her doctor. Lucy is a woman in need of having her memories, her truths, validated by someone, but the only woman who could give her that gift is withholding and dismissive. It's a terribly poignant, difficult book to read and I couldn't help but wonder how much of Strout's own life is being examined here, especially after listening to Strout's interview with Terry Gross a few months ago on Fresh Air. http://n.pr/1Pu4Egb

Sara Nelson, one of my favorite reviewers, now with Amazon, said this about Lucy Barton: "Rarely has a book been louder in its silences." I love that. It seems so right. And just because I felt a little let down after finishing it, doesn't mean that you will. Let me know what your impressions were. I'd love to hear from you - pros and cons.

This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!

Some of you may be old enough to remember what might be called the first reality TV show, "This is Your Life." It was a sometimes awkward, always maudlin, tear-inducing show that chose some unsuspecting person from the audience and highlighted the ups and downs of their life so far. Often there were walk-ons from one's past, someone with whom the "star" had interacted without even realizing the effect the star had had on said person's life.

Well, for some reason, after reading a couple of reviews of Jonathan Evison's (http://www.jonathanevison.net) new novel, "This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!" I was expecting a comedy. I should have thought of the TV show earlier! While there are some laugh-worthy moments in Evison's book, they are wry laughs, not guffaws. For this is a book, as he says in his acknowledgements, dedicated to all the unfulfilled women out there who dreamed of greater things but settled for less, either because of the times in which they lived or because they were thwarted by the pressures of marriage and children.



Younger women may have trouble even relating to this story about seventy-eight-year-old Harriet but it's worth the read as a cautionary tale. We give up our dreams at our peril. Harriet has just buried her husband Bernard after an emotionally draining year and a half as his full-time caretaker. Bernard's fall to Alzheimer's disease was quick and relentless.

Harriet answers the phone one day shortly after Bernard's death to be informed that Bernard has won a cruise to Alaska. Alaska? Harriet had no idea that Bernard wanted to go to Alaska, nor was she aware that he had entered a sweepstakes. But, as Harriet always has, she defers to Bernard's judgment, deciding that if he thought they should have gone then she'll go, inviting her best friend Mildred to accompany her.

Evison toggles back and forth, in short, punchy chapters, over the seventy-eight years of Harriet's life, slowly revealing a complex picture of a woman whose self-esteem was persistently battered by a cold, uncaring mother, while her father enticed her with work in his law firm, a place that teased her into believing she could have a career in law, though it was more likely her role was simply to be sexy window dressing.

Finally free to make her own decisions, Harriet embarks on the Alaskan cruise even after Mildred reneges at the last minute, handing Harriet an explanation letter that gets shoved into her luggage along with Bernard's ashes. I found myself so hoping that this would be Harriet's chance at liberation.

Ultimately though, this novel is less uplifting and more than a little discouraging. Harriet's relationships with her son Skip and daughter Caroline have been tense and unfulfilling. Bernard, we discover, has been an absentee father even when he's been home in his chair, head buried in a newspaper. Now that he's dead he wants to redeem himself, to ask forgiveness, popping up by Harriet's side at most inopportune moments. Yes, you must suspend disbelief to read this book.

Jonathan Evison has been called wistful and wise and bighearted. He wants women like our moms, our teachers, and all the other unsung heroes who subsumed their dreams and desires so that we could fulfill ours, to know that he sees them. I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not he succeeded.

Frances Godwin, Another Tough Woman

I've returned from beautiful Costa Rica and a wonderful visit with a friend who's one strong woman. She and I share of love for the author Robert Hellenga (www.roberthellenga.com) who initially grabbed us with "The Sixteen Pleasures," so I had dragged along his latest book for her to read while I was there. As you can imagine, as much as we all love books, we didn't get much reading accomplished. On the flight home, however, I jumped in and finished "The Confessions of Frances Godwin" in two days.

 

 

 

Frances spoke to me for a number of reasons, she's a Latin teacher as was my mom, she's a young widow like my sister-in-law, she's prone to examining her life in minute detail like my dear friend Andrea, and she's in love with Italy as I am. Perhaps she is Hellenga's alter-ego or maybe she's channeling his mom. Either way I loved her for her humanity, her truth, and her passion for all that life throws at her.

 

Frances begins her story in 2006 having survived hernia repair surgery and been advised by her friend/arch-enemy Lois that she should think about getting her affairs in order. Yes, she's about my age. Her confessions take her back to 1963 in the Trastavere neighborhood of Rome where, now graduated from college, she is taking a conversational Latin course with the renowned Father Adrian. Back in the states she's left a lover, her Shakespeare professor Paul Godwin, whose marriage is now on the skids because of their torrid affair.

 

Forty-some years later Paul and Frances are still together in Galesburg, Illinois. Their only child, Stella, has failed to live up to their high expectations, having eschewed study at the Iowa Writers' School, to take up with a thug named Jimmy who treks vegetables cross country in an eighteen wheeler.

 

Paul has lung cancer. In less than a year Frances must face the world as a solo traveler. What she decides to do and how she does it fills this small novel with big ideas. We learn about astronomy, antique automobiles, opera, piano tuning, great wines, and even the Catholic church.

 

Some critics might say that Hellenga throws in everything but the kitchen sink to show off the breadth of his knowledge. I say that he takes a love story, a murder mystery, and a fantasy, combined with a dose of magical realism, wraps it up in the food and music of Italy, and serves up the kind of satisfying novel that will stay with you days after you've closed the cover.