Identity Crisis

When I was in Portland for the Public Library Association conference I was fortunate to receive a bag full of audio materials at the Sue Grafton dinner. The meals themselves can often be nondescript but getting back to the room and opening the bags is always a treat. Among the giveaways was an audio book by a fledgling author who had received several prestigious grants as well as a Bellweather Prize from none other than Barbara Kingsolver. If that doesn't make you sit up and take notice, Heidi Durrow's writing will.

You all know the myth that we are now supposedly living in a "post-racial" world. Oh, would that it were so! We may have a bi-racial president but we also have a Tea Party and a new law in Arizona that can only be followed if the authorities practice an ugly brand of racial profiling.
During the presidential campaign of 2008 the divisions in our country were exacerbated by black activists who accused Barack Obama of not being "black enough," while others refused to accept that  his mother, not to mention the grandparents who raised him, were white. If you read his books you will understand that this dichotomy has plagued him for most of his relatively  young life.

Durrow gives readers a chance to try to understand this bi-racial dilemma through the eyes of young teenage girl in this complex and thought-provoking debut novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. According to the blurbs this novel is an attempt to grapple with feelings that Durrow herself likely faced as she is, like the main character Rachel, the child of an African American soldier and a Danish woman who he met and married while overseas. The couple doesn't see color and naively believes that their children will be raised not to see it either.

Educated and well traveled, young Rachel comes to live in Chicago with her younger brother and sister. The marriage of her parents, though, will not survive the strain of alcohol abuse. Her mom takes up with a man she meets in rehab, a man who is not sufficiently healed to love or even accept the three black children that are part of the package.

Through multiple narrators and flashbacks the reader discovers that Rachel is the sole survivor of a horrific tragedy which results in her moving to Portland, Oregon to live with her father's mother. A light skinned black girl with startling blue eyes, living in an all black neighborhood with a black grandmother she's never met, Rachel begins the long process of examining what it means to be bi-racial in America.

Conflicted, questioning, unaccepted by either side (Rachel talks "white" but looks black), she longs for facts about her father while trying to come to grips with her mother's actions and yearns for love, often pinning her hopes on the wrong person. As the observer/reader I wanted to yell out no, don't trust that one, listen to this one, which I guess is indicative of how Ms. Durrow drew me into her narrative. And if that isn't the sign of a good writer, well, what is? Book groups could have a field day with this one!

On Death and Dying

Several years ago my friend Andrea and I planned an outstanding series of programs for our public library titled "On Death and Dying." We had both recently experienced devastating losses of loved ones and the subject of helping folks educate themselves about the various ways we perceive the deaths of others and, of course, our own, was topmost in our minds.

For 6 weeks we hosted members of Hospice, local clergy, palliative care nurses, nursing professors from FGCU and even an Elder Law attorney. Though the number in attendance was less than stellar, the folks who did come were overwhelmed and grateful for the chance to learn and mingle with like-minded folks. Your public library doing what it does best.

I wish that this exquisite little novel with the big ideas had been available then so that we could have piggy-backed onto the program with a discussion of The Spare Room by Australian writer Helen Garner. This is a difficult, brutally honest look at a long friendship being tested to the breaking point by Nicola's refusal to admit that she is dying of cancer and Helen's rash invitation to take Nicola into her home while she undergoes alternative treatments.

Nicola has an outsized personality and, as a single woman with no kids or family to speak of, life has always been, as my sister would say, all about her. Helen, on the other hand, lives next door to her daughter and delightfully precocious granddaughter, is active in the community, and planning a huge trip in the not too distant future. She comes to realize that a three week stint caring for Nicola will mean that she must completely put her own life on hold.

Now, don't get me wrong, we DO these things, don't we? Usually for family though, and even then with great trepidation. How long will the ties of friendship hold without untethering when strained by sleepless nights, endless laundry, and daily trips to the clinician who subjects Nicola to vitamin C treatments and coffee enemas that leave her shaking with pain and fever.

What it boils down to is that the two friends have very different views on what constitutes a "good death." Neither one of them sees the other as the other sees herself. Then again, how can they really? How can anyone get into the mind of another? Nicola is fighting because she doesn't feel she has a legacy to leave, while Helen sees Nicola's entire life and friendship as a positive force, a legacy in its own right.

Until we, the reader and the person, are in the dying one's shoes, we can never understand what that state of mind must be like. Everyone, it seems, has something to say about how one "handles" their leave taking from this earth. Our family and friends may not approve of our choices, rifts may be bridged or chasms dug, all depending upon where we are in our own growth and development as human beings. Garner's book will conjure up all the conflicting emotions you have ever had over the years as you've sat by a family member's bedside. Some may have raged against the dying of the light, others accept with grace. Be prepared for a deep emotional response to Ms. Garner's gem of a novel.

Old Friends

In my ongoing attempt to lighten up a little bit in my reading, I decided to go back to Martha Grimes whose books I used to love until I realized that they were pretty formulaic and I had to move on. For some reason I decided to download her latest in the long running and very popular Richard Jury series, the one in which every title is named for a British pub. What's not to like about that? Listening to The Black Cat was like getting together with old friends that you haven't seen in ages and realizing that you still really enjoy each other's company.

Supt. Jury, while not as complex a character as P.D. James's brooding Adam Dalgliesh, is still an interesting man who proves worthy of his promotions. His sparring yet comfortable relationships with Sgt. Wiggins, his sidekick, and Carol Ann, his quirky upstairs neighbor, who watches over him like a mother hen, render him very human even as he mourns the end of a relationship with Lu Aguilar, paralyzed and in a coma from a horrific accident in a previous novel.

At the Black Cat Pub a stunningly decked out body clad in Jimmy Choos (THAT got my attention) turns up dead with only the local cat as a witness. As the investigation proceeds we find out that the glamorous female victim worked part time for an exclusive escort agency but during the week she was just a low-paid, plain looking - you guessed it - librarian! Can't these authors make us more interesting in our own right? I don't know any dull librarians.

At any rate, the deaths mount up, escorts all dressed in Louis Vuiton and Manolo Blahniks. Naturally suspicion falls on the men who hired these women. Jury, on the other hand, is nursing an old grudge against a man who previously got away with murder and for a while drops the ball on the current investigation as he fixates on the wrong culprit. Add to the mix an excessively cheerful wife of the local constabulary who, though confined to a wheelchair, harbors an unhealthy fascination with designer shoes.

Sure, I guessed the name of the culprit before the superintendent did but that's ok. Reading Martha Grimes is like having a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tomato soup; comfort food.

Addictive Personality Disorder

I'm gonna have to face it, I'm addicted to books. I haven't read of this disorder in the DSM-IV but I know there have been many books written about those strange characters who hoard books or steal them from libraries (say it isn't so!). Me? I collect Advanced Reader's Copies. Behind my desk at work, in piles at home on the kitchen counter, in my office and the bedroom, these paperback, pre-publication books (some autographed, some not) mulitply by the number of conferences I attend, the number of publishers' contests I enter and the number of books Barbara Hoffert sends me. I love them!

I'm thinking about this today because two of my colleagues are winging their way to New York City for Book Expo America and I'm pea green with envy. BEA is, without a doubt, the greatest high a book collector and author stalker can ever feel. No matter how overwhelmed we are with our responsibilities here at work, this is the time of year (and I'll bet Maryellen feels the same way) that I wish we were still co-chairing the Southwest Florida Reading Festival. I have no doubt that, when I retire, (famous last words) I'll attend BEA on my own dime and just revel in all those stacks of new books crying out "pick me, pick me!"

Some lovely treats that I carted home from Portland and intend to get to over the long, hot summer are Matterhorn (Nancy Pearl's review was over the top), http://nancypearlbooks.wordpress.com/
The Lonely Polygamist, The Red Thread, and The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst. Of course, that doesn't include what goodies Jessica brings back from BEA for me. Hint to Jess if you're reading!

Conspiracy Theories, Part 2

Whew, I just finished The Room and the Chair, and it was breathtaking. Lorraine Adams has an impressive resume and her background in journalism is evident in her writing which is crisp, clear and to the point. No Jamesian paragraph-long lines here. While I love complex, winding sentences in the right place, this book is perfect for the other kind and the abrupt style probably adds to the feeling one has that you're on a runaway train and won't be able to stop it.

The novel opens with a harrowing description of a jet losing power for no known reason, taking us into the  pilot's head as she examines all the ramifications of ejecting over the Potomac, not far from the Watergate building. Mary Goodwin ends up in a tree like a broken doll, yet before anyone could have known the plane was even down, an ambulance and crew rescues her and takes her to Walter Reed for surgery. Unknown to any of the players, there's been a witness to the crash and to Mary's unlikely saviors.

I read in the paper last week that new car manufacturers are expressing concern over the fact that black boxes like the ones in the Toyota Priuses, which have supposedly been acting up, can be easily hacked into by computer geeks bent on causing havoc. Hold that thought while reading this book.

Meanwhile, in the offices of a large DC newspaper, not unlike the Washington Post where Adams worked for many years, news of the crash comes in, but for some suspicious reason none of the usual "unidentified sources" know anything about it. How do you hide an F-16 one might ask? And Vera, the newbie on the night desk, decides to go after it.
Not yet jaded like many of her cohorts, she still has a passion, I believe Adams calls it, fervor, for the thrill of investigative journalism. Her research has her surreptitiously  meeting with underage prostitutes who have the goods on many an "upstanding" DC bigwig, frightening some of her higher ups at the paper but earning the respect of the supervisor who matters and the satisfaction of uncovering the truth whether or not it ever gets printed.

This book will make you question everything you read in any paper no matter its reputation. I remember a professor in library school who asked us to look askance at every article we ever read. Look for the subtext, he said. Who's behind the research and do they have an ax to grind? No one cared for this guy but he's the only one I really remember well. Maybe he was a conspiracy theorist.