Apologies to all for my AWOL status. While on the road from Maryland to Florida I learned of the sudden death of a dear, longtime friend in Massachusetts. Home only long enough to exchange one suitcase for another, I flew north for several days of reunions and reminiscences. It was a bittersweet time for reflection on family and friendships.
So what better way to face the long flight back than to delve into a new book, due out this week, about - you guessed it - family and friendships. "Seven Days of Us" by Francesca Hornak kept me happily occupied for the three hours plus that we hurtled through the air with Jet Blue.
As I was reading I kept thinking, this is made for the stage. In fact, it presents almost like a screenplay, with short, punchy chapters that each focus on a different member of the Birch family as they face the week between Christmas and New Year's, often tense in the best of circumstances, under a medical quarantine at their rambling estate in the English countryside.
Daughter Olivia is a physician whose penchant for helping out in the remotest parts of the world rarely brings her home for the holidays. That's just the way she likes it. But this year, she's been in Liberia facing a crisis that sounds much like the Ebola outbreak and, until she's declared disease free, no one can leave the house.
Her folks, Andrew and Emma, dance around each other like strangers. Each appears lost in his own world, Andrew's, a career decision hanging over his head, and Emma's, a potential life-threatening diagnosis. During their long marriage they've grown apart and lost the joy of communicating.
And then there's Phoebe, the younger daughter, always considered a flighty, flibbertigibbet, whose only interests are clothes, makeup, jewelry and beating her friends to the altar. Maybe that's why she's accepted a marriage proposal from George, a pompous slacker from a wealthy family with whom she's been keeping company for years.
I've often thought how problematic families can be. After all, just because they are related by blood doesn't always mean that they have much in common in terms of interests, passions, or temperaments. Put yourself, if you can, into the Birch family's situation and think about the potential for volatility when an outside party suddenly enters the frame.
Because that's just what happens when Jesse, a young American filmmaker in search of his birth father, (and maybe a documentary), tracks down Andrew and decides to just knock on the door. Merry Christmas! A delightful character, Jesse is the catalyst the breaks the repressed Birches wide open. Hornak's prose is snappy, funny, poignant, and sarcastic in equal measure. Why was I not surprised when I read that her novel has already been optioned for British TV?
This is a warm, wonderful read that explores the quirkiest trait that most families share. We may not always like each other but, oh, how we do love each other.
If you are reading this blog then it's a safe bet that you might resemble Nina Redmond, Jenny Colgan's delightful heroine, who blatantly admits she prefers books to people. Haven't we all felt that way sometimes? Especially lately?
Nina is a librarian whose forte is matching patrons with the perfect book. She loves her work, but as those of us in the business have already learned, the times they are a changin'. In Birmingham, England, funds are dwindling and libraries are forced to reinvent themselves. You know the terms... maker spaces, community centers, digital labs. Books? Well, they no longer fit into the equation.
Staff members are let go but told that they may reapply for their jobs IF they are willing to wear the new hats required of them. Nina tries, but she just can't stop herself from rhapsodizing about books during her interview. Wrong move.
Yes, this novel is a romantic comedy, perhaps a little too heartfelt for some tastes, but every now and then don't we all just need a book that makes us feel that all's right with the world? I know that I do. (Thank you Alexander McCall Smith!) I thoroughly enjoyed watching Nina stretch a bit, move out of her comfort zone, and stand on her own two feet, all the while turning a life-long dream into reality.
"The Bookshop on the Corner," is actually a refurbished van, one that Nina travels all the way to the wilds of Scotland to purchase. We watch as she slowly falls in love with the people and the quiet of the countryside, such a far cry from the chaos of downtown Birmingham. With the aid of her plucky roommate, Nina ships cartons of books by train, managing to fall for one of the conductors in the process, to the Highlands, where she meets a wonderful cast of characters while operating her traveling bookstore.
Colgan has a great sense of humor, offering some laugh-out-loud moments that librarians and booklovers will especially relate to. She'll also make you want to book a trip to Scotland asap, a country she obviously loves and where she apparently makes her own home. If you're looking for a break from the ugly reality of the news of the day, Jenny Colgan should be your go-to woman. Reading her will give a boost to your feel-good pheromones!
If you know anyone who is going through the grieving process, and more importantly, is open to some kind advice, buy them this book. It is a sweet meditation on grief and lives well lived. Sometimes fiction can be the better antidote than a well-meaning self help book, and I believe it's often easier to recognize ourselves and our foibles through a fictional character as opposed to say, a Joan Didion or a Diane Rehm.
When Phaedra Patrick's (http://www.phaedra-patrick.com/) novel opens, sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper is hiding in his own house, breathing shallow, praying that the old neighborhood busybody will just GO AWAY. Bernadette is known in the village of Thornapple as the patron saint of lost causes. Arthur does not intend to be one of them.
Since his wife Miriam's death, a full year ago now, Arthur has become a recluse. They had forty beautiful years together, a peaceful life of love and contentment ended by pneumonia. Now Arthur wants nothing more than to be left alone to live with his memories, his only companion, his fern, Frederica. Son Dan has his own life in distant Australia and his daughter Lucy? She didn't even come to her mother's funeral and Arthur doesn't have the heart or curiosity to ask why.
After Bernadette abandons all hope of raising Arthur, she shoves a few "self-help" brochures through the mail slot and trundles away. Arthur decides that he can put if off no longer. Today is the day he will bag up and dispose of Miriam's things. Reminiscing and tearing up, he sorts through clothes, shoes, handbags, and papers, remarking again on what a simple woman Miriam was, so easy to live with, asking so little of him.
Pulling out a pair of mukluks still good enough for the church sale, Arthur feels
something bunched up in the toe. He is startled to discover a red, heart-shaped box holding a gaudy, gold charm bracelet, so unlike anything Miriam would wear that he laughs out loud. And then, as people with too much time on their hands are wont to do, he begins to wonder. Why had he never seen it before? Whose could it be? Why was it hidden away? And the exotic charms? An elephant? A tiger? What could they mean?
This discovery galvanizes Arthur in a way that nothing has done in the past year. He becomes obsessed with knowing all he can about Miriam's life before they met and the charms act like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs. The story takes on a fantastical air as Arthur, in hot pursuit of Miriam's youth, comes back to life himself. He makes phone calls, follows up leads, begins to travel, to talk to people he never would have engaged with before. The origin of the elephant charm nets him an invite to India, and the tiger, well, let me say that Arthur's quest becomes a piece of slapstick comedy writing. And don't ask how he ends up posing in the nude for an art class!
Ms. Patrick's book is no literary masterpiece and it doesn't pretend to be. But it does represent the kind of homespun wisdom that you would find in an Alexander McCall Smith book or in "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry." It's such a pleasure to watch Arthur rediscover the joy of living, reconnect with humanity, and accept that we must not waste a single moment of the life we've been blessed with by mourning the past. In fact the author tells us, we actually have an obligation to the people we have loved, those who have died before us, too young, too soon, to fully embrace each day that we are given. I've always believed this. "The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper," reaffirmed it for me in the guise of fiction, the only form I understand.
