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.