Such a Fun Age

Debut novelist Kiley Reid said during a recent interview that she's interested in "class dynamics in tiny microcultures." Those five words immediately drew me to her book "Such a Fun Age," a fast-paced, thought-provoking novel that I read while screaming at the pages. 

"Oh no, she isn't going to do that?" "Is she?" All the while dreading the answer.

The she I'm referring to is Alix Chamberlain, the prototype of a wealthy, white, liberal woman who congratulates herself on her "wokeness" even as she struggles with an inferiority complex stemming from an incident during her

senior year of high school that she cannot put behind her. That incident spools out gradually over the course of the story, a trick that Reid effectively utilizes to make the anticipation all the more dreadful.

The novel begins late at night in a high end market in Philadelphia where Emira Tucker is babysitting for the Chamberlains' three-year-old daughter, Briar. The Chamberlains' home has been vandalized because husband Paul, a newscaster, had earlier in the day been caught on an open mic making a dubiously racist comment. Not wanting to subject Briar to the drama of the police investigation, the Chamberlains have called Emira away from a night out with friends to watch over Briar for a couple of hours.

The problem is that Briar is snow white and, you guessed it, Emira is black. A "do-gooding" patron of the store, suspicous of the relationship between Briar and Emira, calls security and, though she is grace under pressure, Emira exudes enough angst that another bystander, Kelly Copeland, sensing an injustice about to go down, films the altercation on his cell phone. Sound familiar?

From this single, timely incident in the first chapter of the book, Reid takes readers down a rabbit hole, examining issues of race, class, integration, and authenticity. Emira, a college graduate who hasn't been able to find her passion, works low-paying odd jobs in a desperate attempt to keep up with her more sophisticated friends. She's embarassed by the fact that she babysits even though she truly loves the work and cares deeply for Briar. Everyone seems to expect more from her, except her.

Soon, both Alix and Kelly are vying to Emira's attention and friendship. But is it Emira they want or just another black friend to add to their collection. I know that sounds harsh but as you read you will see what I mean. This is a great first novel. Especially strong is Reid's sense of the zeitgeist. Conversations among Emira and her pals, Emira and Kelly, and Alix and her friends are perfectly characterized. So this is how it feels to be a millenial I thought. 

In the end, this is a book that makes us look at our own selves with a sharp eye. Sometimes it may not be pretty. What kinds of judgements do we make - just automatically - out of the box - when we see something that doesn't fit into our preconceived notions based upon our world view. The lesson is to widen your world view! With that in mind I'll be off to Costa Rica tomorrow to read and relax and bask in the joy of old friends and a country that sees no need to fund a standing army. Pura vida!

Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me

Once again I must accuse myself of pre-judging a novel, deciding that I wouldn't read it, only to discover that it was on Professor Elaine Newton's (Emeritus, York University, Toronto) list of books that she's discussing this year in Naples, Florida. Ms. Newton is one of the closest readers I've ever had the pleasure of listening to so I knew that I'd better get my nose into "Machines Like Me." So glad I did! Especially in light of the fact that I chose Jeanette Winterson's "Frankissstein" as a Library Journal top ten for 2019.

Two decades into the twenty-first century the incredible development of machine technology and artificial intelligence has even been front and center in the latest presidential campaign. Think Andrew Yang. It is also the subject of more novels that once would have read like sci-fi but now read like representations of current times. And though McEwan's story takes place in an alternative iteration of 1980's London, it feels all too plausible.

Because the novel springs from the imagination of multi award-winning McEwan (Booker Prize, Whitbread, National Book Critics Circle) you can trust that it is

constructed of layer upon layer of nuance and moral conundrums that make it ripe for discussion. The basic premise is that Charlie, a thirty-something young man with a degree in anthropology and a passion for all things technological, has spent his life's inheritance on an Adam, one of the first batch of androids created by the still living and working Alan Turing - the scientist made famous in Cumberbach's The Enigma Code.

Charlie plugs Adam in and, while reading over the directions and waiting for him to charge, decides that a clever way to entice a closer relationship with Miranda, the doctoral candidate who lives upstairs, would be to invite her to help him program Adam's traits. Even as I read this I suspected trouble but, oh, I had no idea! Ethical dilemmas quickly arise as Adam's computerized brain works 24/7 to scan the digital universe for all the knowledge that's out there, processing and memorizing large swaths of science, literature, and laws, much like Watson. How, now, can Charlie and Miranda use Adam to cook, wash dishes, and perform menial tasks so far beneath his intellectual heft?

As Adam becomes more and more "human" he exhibits so-called human attributes that confound Charlie; jealousy, love, sorrow, depression. These feelings also confound Adam. Ms. Newton proclaimed Miranda a delightful character while I found her to be manipulative and untrustworthy. Was I channeling Adam? You see, with his wide swath of factual knowledge he has discovered that Miranda has a secret. She has committed a crime and has gotten away with it. Whether or not it was executed with the best of intentions is a moral gray area that Adam is incapable of judging. And now Ian McEwan leads his readers down a twisted rabbit hole of unanswered questions, questions that will fascinate and perplex.

This novel, that I didn't think I wanted to read, was profoundly disturbing, challenging, funny, complicated, and thought-provoking. A friend remarked that for days after finishing it she could think of nothing else. I concur. Ever since Mary Shelley created her Frankenstein readers, writers, philosphers, and scientists have questioned what exactly it means to be human. Our future will no doubt be "peopled" with more and more machines that can replicate our every move. But can they live with us? Can they tolerate our innate ability to weather disasters, devastating illnesses, love and loss, the messy facts of life that dog us every day of our lives and that we face with stalwart resilience at every turn? Think about it. Then run out to your local library and grab a copy of "Machines Like Me." I think you'll thank me.

The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes

What flavor book do I feel like immersing myself in this week? I often ask myself this and, because I had just finished Julia Alvarez's "In the Time of the Butterflies" for a class on politics and literature that I'm taking at the local university, I decided to pick up something light. "The Giver of Stars" has been

on the New York Times bestseller list for months and I understand why. You don't read Ms. Moyes for her soaring language or for a devastating foray into humanitarian crises. You read her simply for a rip-roaring story.

As a former bookmobile librarian I was naturally drawn to the history of the Packhorse Librarians, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pack_Horse_Library_Project funded in the late 30's and early '40's as part of the Works Progress Administration during the Roosevelt administration. The idea was to improve the lives of folks living in rural areas, particularly eastern Kentucky which was

deeply affected by the recession, by delivering reading materials to those families who might rarely get into town or have access to magazines, novels, kids' books, or even much human interaction at all.

Moyes is known for writing strong female characters and she doesn't fail us here. Margery O'Hare, a gun-toting, mule riding, independant woman who lives happily alone in her family cabin heads up a small band of women each searching for meaning in their lives. The strength of the novel is in the ways that these perceived misfits in the community develop camaraderie and ultimately deeply felt friendships that ignore race, class, and the limitations of disability.

Naturally, it will not be a smooth ride. Rural Kentucky in the thirties was not a hospitable place for the nurturing of liberated females earning their own money, working long, lonely hours on borrowed horses, delivering that thing most often feared in closed communities - knowledge! Baileyville is a company town, coal mining is its jewel and its scourge, and the Van Cleve family holds all the power.

 The young scion, Bennett Van Cleve, has returned from a European tour with  British bride Alice in tow, a young woman whose perception of America is New York City. Can the marriage survive the culture shock? And can the Van Cleve's accept the humiliation of Alice's passionate embrace of library work over the soul deadening domestic duties expected of her?

As you should expect from Moyes ("Me Before You") this novel threads multiple romances through historical realism, adding to the mix the health, safety, and environmental aspects of unregulated coal mining, blatant sexism, and classism. In other words, there's something here for everyone. I'm sorry to say that it wasn't until I sat down to write that I discovered that there's a rather disturbing controversy surrounding this book and its similarities to another recently released story about the very same packhorse librarians in Kentucky, "The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek." https://bit.ly/311Odqa 

I thoroughly enjoyed the JoJo Moyes book, reading all afternoon yesterday to finish it. Now, I wonder if it's tainted. Have any of you read either novel or both? How do you weigh in on the possibility of plagiarism? I'd love to hear from you.

Musings on a Book Discussion of The Inheritance

The operative word here is "book!" What happens when what should be healthy talk about the merits of writing style or point of view devolves into over-sharing of personal anecdotes and diversion from the task at hand? Yesterday I attended my library's discussion of a memoir, the third in author Dani Shapiro's oeuvre, a fascinating psychological look at Ms. Shapiro's deepest thoughts and insecurities. Unfortunately, I sensed that too many considered opinions went unshared.

"The Inheritance" is rife with potential talking points apropos of twenty-first century concerns about privacy rights and the digital age.   

 This memoir is gorgeously written and remarkably personal so I expect that how readers receive the book may have much to do with whether or not they come to like Dani Shapiro herself or lose patience with her. 

What happened is that, well into her fifties, established in a successful career as novelist, memoirist, lecturer, mother, and partner, Ms. Shapiro, on a lark, sends her DNA into one of those mail away companies expecting to have all her notions about her learned background, steeped in Orthodox Judaism, confirmed. Instead she discovers that her beloved father was not, in fact, her biological dad. Shapiro is devastated by this news - wrecked really - and becomes obsessed with revisiting her life story (her folks are both dead) based upon this new information. Suddenly each strange, disparate incident, or overheard conversation takes on new significance. 

With the help of her journalist husband and some librarian level internet searching skills she is able to track down the unsuspecting man who, back when he was a student at Penn in the fifties, donated sperm to the Farris Institute in Philadelphia, a place that offered help to infertile couples but was later found to be using dubious methods of insemination and operating without medical licensing. 

What follows is Dani's uncomfortable pursuit of her biological father pushing for a meeting that he is initially unwilling to accommodate. Having been promised anonymity long before the advent of DNA testing, he is appalled at the thought of hearing from potentially hundreds of children who may be running around the country with his genetic code and who now, thanks to modern science, might come calling. And here's where the conversation got tricky. Whose rights take precedence? How much should adult children be told of their origin story? Do genetics diminish the importance, the devotion and love of the parent who raises us? The old nature vs. nurture conundrum comes front and center. Who are any of us really? And does it matter?

I suspect that each of us in the discussion room had definitive thoughts we may have wished to share but without the discipline to keep us on track and with no open ended questions to prompt deeper conversation, unfortunately our moderator let us down. The book will not let you down. It is an amazing examination of familial love and the ramifications of family secrets and lies coupled with a portrait of a woman in search of identity and ultimately realizing that she is who she always was. And that's enough.

An Eclectic Start to the New Year

The first week of 2020 has completely gotten away from me! A decision three years in the pondering, to remodel my kitchen, has been made, a contractor hired, cabinets and countertops perused. Anyone who knows me understands how terrible I am with disarray and disorder. This will be big!

Meanwhile I also decided that it was time for me to audit another course at our local Florida Gulf Coast University. I thrive on settling into a class with young people and listening to their thoughts and ideas. It always seems to give me a needed boost of optimism. "Women Writing Dangerously" includes works by some of my favorites, Julia Alvarez, Louise Erdrich, and Margaret Atwood. I'll also get to delve a little deeper into Edwidge Danticat and meet Demetria Martinez for the first time. Will keep you posted on our semester's reading.

I've been simultaneously reading two books this week, Laila Lalami's novel, "The Other Americans," and a restorative non-fiction book about the river Seine by a Francophile writer I admire, Elaine Sciolino. Sciolino may look and sound Italian but she's been living in Paris for nearly twenty years, first as bureau chief for the New York Times, and always as a joyful flaneuse and raconteur. Her books about all things Paris are so much fun and she is a delight to spend time with. "The Seine, The River That Made Paris" is deeply

researched and loaded with atmospheric black and white photos of historic spots along the famed river from its source in the south to its mouth where it empties into the English Channel at Le Havre. She never fails to make me yearn for a return to the City of Light.

Lalami's book, on the other hand, is not made for the slow stroll. It is a quick, volatile read and would be a worthy nominee for book groups. https://lailalalami.com/ Moroccan-American via Great Britain, Lalami's award-winning work is always informed by the immigrant experience. "The Other Americans" that and so much more. 

Nine disparate characters speak to the reader over the course of the story, a pretty courageous step for the author and one that could have backfired but ultimately did not. At first I worried that the individual voices of Nora, her sister Salma, mom, Maryam, friend and lover Jeremy, lacked distinction, but as I became immersed in their lives my complaint dissipated.

On a dark street in a small town in the Mojave desert a business owner walking to his car after closing up his diner for the evening is run down by a careless driver, left in a ditch to die. There was a witness, but Efrain is an undocumented immigrant too fearful of deportation to come forward. The victim, Driss, has two daughters whose lives have taken very different turns, Salma a respected doctor, Nora, a struggling musician and composer. Their mother Maryam never seems to miss an opportunity to remind Nora of what she could have been and racial and class tensions simmer under the surface. 

Familial dynamics, secrets and lies, are always in the background as the action involves Nora's insistence that a crime has been committed and that her father

was murdered. She begins a relationship with Jeremy, a friend from high school, an emotionally fragile war veteran, now a cop, who introduces her to Detective Coleman who's still acclimating after moving from DC and worrying about her teenage son who is angry and morose. As the investigation deepens, each character reflects and reveals himself in various ways.

There are lessons galore in this fast-paced novel. As Lalami said in an interview I listened to, not one of us can possibly understand what another is going through on any given day. Human beings are so adept at erecting facades. It takes courage and the ability to be rejected to try to pierce another's armor, whether it's that of a family member, a lover, or even a neighbor. A provocative novel indeed.