Book Review: The Cloisters

 By Katy Hays

• Pub Date: 2022

• Genre: Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I grew up blocks from The Cloisters in New York City  

 ******

 

   It's not often my old neighborhood in New York is highlighted in a novel. Even in maps, Manhattan gets chopped off somewhere uptown from Harlem, like it's not worth the effort to draw the streets of Inwood.

    But The Cloisters are two subway stops from where I grew up on 207th Street. Not that I went there a lot; I think the only time I've been was on a field trip during my elementary school days.

   Still, there's a lot to be said for seeing familiar places and streets in a novel. And it's a decent overall story. Not mind-blowing, but with an array of incongruous yet curiously well matched characters, it's well plotted and well told. 

    Our narrator -- who is either unreliable or unknowing -- is Ann Stilwell from Walla Walla, Wash. She's a smart if unsophisticated art history major, coming to New York for a summer internship at the world renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in Midtown. But there's a mix up and her job is now unavailable.

    Serendipitously though, she is rescued by Patrick, the dashing curator of the Cloisters, who says he can use her talents at the relatively obscure medieval museum uptown near 190th Street. There, she meets Rachel, a young, cultured, and worldly researcher, and Leo, the gardener with a discerning knowledge of the plants and herbs grown at the museum and a side gig as a punk rock musician.

    In the rarified air of the museum, we discover a lot is going on. Secretive stuff, which involves tarot cards and divination, late night unannounced meetings, and the questionable provenance of artifacts some employees are buying and selling on the side.

    The story centers on the relationships between the main characters, a complicated web of intrigue and personal histories. In between we have Ann's journey of discovering the city's diverse neighborhoods, and her telling the history of the Cloisters, the Renaissance period, and Medieval art. 

    Sometime, it's difficult to follow the rationales of the characters, and several times you find yourself thinking things will not end well. We wonder if they are devious, diabolical, brilliant, or some combination. 

    As a murder mystery (yes, there is one) and police procedural, the story is not very good. As a potential romance, it's mundane. Where it hits its peaks is as an art tutorial, tour guide, and language explainer. Here, the writer finds her niche, with compelling writing and deep insights. 

Book Review: We Are the Brennans

 By Tracey Lange

• Pub Date: 2021

• Genre: Irish Fiction

• Where I bought obtained this book: A Little Free Library in the Wrigleyville section of Chicago 

• Why I bought  obtained this book: My mother was a Brennan from the drumlins and lakes of County Monaghan 

 ******

 

    Based on the blurbs on the novel's cover and comments from friends who have read it, I was thinking I may not like this book. "It's a lot of family drama and bad choices," said one.

    So I was expecting something overtly dramatic, with a soap-opera vibe.

    But it was none of that. Instead, I got a story with solid writing, well-defined characters, familiar settings, and tales of family love, lore, and longing.

    In short, I liked it. I really liked it.

    Oh, it had some questionable plot twists. When the big secret was reveled, the story just kept going, heading for another big reveal. As one character said, he didn't want to see another potential "emotional mess ... just when they were past the worst of it."

    And neither of those secrets was a surprise; indeed, you wondered why the close-knit Brennans hadn't already figured them out.

    As the novel opens, we find Sunday, the only girl in an Irish-American clan with three brothers, needing help. Five years before, she moved from the family home in Westchester County, N.Y., for Los Angeles. She left behind a devoted fiancé -- considered to already be an honorary Brennan; an elderly, widowed father; and three brothers, including Denny, considered the alpha male. Why she left is the first big mystery.

    But now, she finds herself lost in LA,  with a crappy job, a lousy apartment, and a drunken driving charge.

    She heads back home, and as she gets re-acquainted with the family, we learn their ways. Their stories are told in chapters by a narrator who knows them intimately and can see inside their heads. It's a fine way to tell the tale from all sides

    All of the Brennans have made, and continue to make, bad choices. But they back up each other -- most of the time -- although they keep many secrets. When and how those secrets are revealed are the heart and soul of the story.    

    It's a good family tale, even if, sometimes, you just want to give them a well deserved dope slap.

Book Review: Thirteen Ways of Looking

  By Colum McCann

• Pub Date: 2015

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I love me a good collection of Irish short stories. 

 *****

 

  I am sad that I was generally disappointed in this collection of a novella and three short stories. I have liked several of the author's previous works.

    OK. The stories themselves were decent. The last one, Treaty, about a aging Catholic nun who comes face-to-face with her living nightmare, was thoughtful and compelling. But that one suffered from a flaw the others were far more guilty of, and unexpected from such an accomplished writer: A general lack of focus, using too many words, too much excess description, too much meaningless detail and too many strained metaphors  

    But let's start with the good. Treaty involves Sister Beverly, a nun living in a care home in Long Island, concerned about her health and wondering if her religious life has been a waste. She's forgetful, ill at ease, and unable to feel comfortable in her old age. Then on the television, she sees a man who looks very much like an older version of person who raped her a long time ago. 

    The story deals with perception, pain, horror, and regret. She relives her pain, but does not want to dwell on it as the defining point of her life. Would God want her to reveal the monster -- if that is what he is -- or forgive his actions? Her thoughts and behaviors are deeply compelling, and McCann's tale paints a masterful image.

    Contrast that to the main story, about Peter J. Mendelssohn,  an aging white guy, an immigrant, a Jew, a lawyer, and a former judge in Brooklyn. He's retired, and now living -- and dying -- in a fancy apartment on the Upper East Side. He's had a good life, despite an upbringing in anti-Semitic Europe. But now his days are all about his pains, his diminished capacity, his beloved but now dead wife, and his terse relationship with his egotistical son. 

    But unlike Sister Beverly, his story is not about reflection and regret. It's about him, his thoughts, and his dying. And, quite frankly, his life and story are not all that interesting for the amount of effort it takes to read about it.

    The other two stories, Sh'khol, and What Time is it Now, Where are You? also fall flat.

Book Review: Remember Us

 By Jacqueline Woodson

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Joy and Matt's Bookshop, Cincinnati 

• Why I bought this book: I've read and enjoyed other books by the same author

 ******** 

   I didn't realize this was a Young Adult book when I bought it; I picked it up because I liked some of Woodson's other novels.

    But as I starting reading, I realized this is a wonderful story, powerfully written and told. It features Sage, an African-American girl growing up in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in the 1970s. It was a daunting time in New York, when houses and apartments across the city were in flames, both literally and figuratively.

    Sage describes living through it, fighting it, surviving it, and eventually thriving. She tells of being a kid, playing basketball, having fun, and dealing with life's myriad problems. She has good friends, acquaintances, and non-friends, staying close and drifting apart, dropping and reforming relationships.

    For Woodson, it's part memoir, if mostly fiction. It's warm and tender, and ultimately kind.

    I laughed; I cried. It became a part of me.

Book Review: Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

 By James Hannaham

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I liked the optimistic title

******

    

    Carlotta Mercedes is a transwoman getting out of the joint in upstate New York after 20 years behind bars. 

    In her first couple of days of freedom, she has to return to her family's home in a changed Brooklyn, reintroduce herself to her son, Ibe -- who last knew her as his father, Dustin -- figure out the intricacies of the parole system, find a job, and stay on the straight and narrow path. All of this happens during the July 4th weekend, while her family is holding a combination holiday party and wake for a man she doesn't recall knowing.

    We hear her frustrations, her joys, her confusion, her anger, her bitterness, and her dreams as she explores Brooklyn and her old stomping grounds, the gentrified Fort Greene section.

    It's a new world for Carlotta, who last roamed the streets in the late 1990s, partying, dancing and listening to the latest music, while exploring and questioning her sexuality and gender identification. Then she got caught in her cousin's robbing of a liquor store, and wound up testifying against him but still getting a 20-year sentence because her cousin shot the clerk.

    So, in this award-winning novel, she talks about the hellhole that the state prison system is, a world of bartering, suffering, and danger. She is raped by both the inmates and the guards. She spends time in solitary, which for her is torture. She does find a lover, but wonders if he is worth it because he's unlikely to get out.

    All of this is told in flashbacks, in a long-winded, almost stream-of-consciousness style. We also hear her rambling about her current situation, wondering how she can get through the weekend, fix her problems, and still follow the parole rules. She is ill-equipped to do so.

    This is a story of transitions: Her gender transition. Her move from prison back to the streets, her youth now gone, but her mind still back in her early adulthood. The changes in her neighborhood, and her lamentations about all her friends who died too young over the years, including the rappers who helped make the neighborhood famous.

    Still, we can easily root for her, despite her flaws. She is in some ways not a good person, but she tries, and often her heart is in the right place. The book shows how the system isn't made for the likes of Carlotta, almost forcing her to break the rules that seem rigged against her.

    The book is her voice. Hannaham does a fine job of representing her, catching the cadence and rhythms of her language.

Book Review: The Thin Man

 

• By Dashiell Hammett

• Pub Date: 1933

• Where I bought this book: Conveyor Belt Books, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I found this new bookstore, and felt I had to buy something.

****

    Too many characters for such a short book (201 pages) make this old dime-store novel confusing and difficult to follow. Yes, I know Hammett is considered one of the best of the hard-core crime novelists of his time, but it seems this particular gumshoe tale long ago passed its prime.

    While its writing is plain, straight-forward, and linear for the most part, it is jumbled by introducing some characters almost as an aside, using different descriptions or identifications for some, and having others float in and out of the story at random.

    The by-now cliches of the genre can be annoying, but are understood as part of the era when it was written.

    This is a detective story that uses lots of dialogue, and it isn't always clear who is talking, or whom they are referring to. Following along is confusing, and I found myself repeatedly asking, "Who now?" 

    At one point near the end, two colleagues meet, and their tone and relationship seem to have changed so much that I turned back pages to see what I'd missed. I'm still not sure what happened.

    But Hammett's descriptions of 1930s New York, and its cops and gangsters and dames and detectives is arresting. The style is compelling, and it is easy to get immersed in the tale, even if you sometimes feel lost in the twists and turns.

Book Review: Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life

 

•  Author: Bill Madden
• Pub Date: 2020

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Tom Seaver was my boyhood idol 

********

    I cheered when Tom Seaver won the 1969 Cy Young Award the same year the Miracle Mets won their first World Series. I cringed when the Mets spitefully traded Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds in 1977. And I cried when Seaver died at his California home on Aug. 31, 2020.

    All that I knew. As a result, much of this biography -- Seaver's early days in Fresno, the Mets being able to sign him because the team's name was picked from a hat, and his glorious early career as "The Franchise," the player who led the Mets through their Amazin' days -- was a trip down memory lane. 

    I even knew about some of his later days in baseball -- his only no-hitter with the Cincinnati Reds, his 300th win with the Chicago White Sox, and his being on the field in a Boston Red Sox uniform when the Mets won their second World Series in 1986. After all, as a youngster I grew up reading every story I could find about his life, and I stayed enamored of him even after he was no longer a Met, even after I was no longer living in New York.

    Still, I was surprised by what I did not know: How Seaver was sometimes considered arrogant and distant by some teammates in his later years, how some of his best friends were his catchers, how he idolized Gil Hodges and later Tony La Russa, and how he considered quitting after the Mets let him go to Chicago in 1983 because of sheer incompetence.

    He had a falling out with the Mets over that fiasco, and the author notes that the Mets did little to alleviate the situation. The owners from the late '80 to 2020 often ignored the Mets' history and former players. When Shea Stadium was demolished in favor of Citi Field in 2009, Seaver and others lamented that it looked more like a shrine to the old Brooklyn Dodgers than the Mets. No memorials then existed for the franchise's star players.

    So, while it's a positive history, this is no hagiography. Still, it's a great read, with the workman-like sports writing and compelling insights of a newspaperman. Of course, because Madden's an older newspaper guy writing about an old player, some of the analysis isn't exactly modern.

    Statistics, for example. Whenever the author wants to show how Seaver was facing the best of the best players, he gives the hitters' stats from the old days -- BA-HRs-RBIs. No slashlines, no OBP, no WAR needed. He does the same with the pitching stats -- Seaver's prominence is always proved with wins, strikeouts, and ERA. Again, no WAR, no BABIP, no ERA+.

     And both Seaver and the author scoff at pitch counts. Seaver was appalled that starting pitchers today seldom go more than six innings. And while he acknowledges pitch counts are a legitimate measure, he says they were much higher in the good old days. Today, pitchers top out at 80 or 90 pitches per game. Seaver says he often threw 140 pitches a game. Teammate Nolan Ryan often threw 150 or more.

    Still, it's a fun book, and Seaver is overall a likeable guy who led a good life.

Book Review: The Parting Glass

 

• Author: Gina Marie Guadagnino

• Where I bought this book: Barnes & Noble Bookstore, West Chester, Ohio

• Why I bought this book: It shares a title with a great old Irish song

******

    Mary Ballard, born Maire O'Farren, left her home and her job in the west of Ireland for reasons unknown -- but eventually explained -- sometime in the early 19th Century.

    Her ensuing life in New York City as an Irish immigrant, a lady's maid, and denizen near the old Five Points neighborhood tells a tale of love and loss, heartbreak, and high living among poverty and destitution.

    Guadagnino's debut novel is a wonderful read.

    It's chock full of Irish history, New York City history, and the history of the Irish in New York. It touches on subjects including LGBT love, the empowerment of women, immigration, and the life of the rich and the poor in the 19th Century. 

    O'Farren -- or Ballard -- caters to her mistress, Charlotte Walden, a wealthy young woman of leisure whose sole goal in life is to find a wealthy husband. Walden, however, would rather love the man who runs the stables at her estate, near Washington Park in old New York City. That man, unknown to the  Charlotte, is Ballard's twin brother, Seanin. Of course, the Waldens are unaware of Charlotte's love for a common man.

    One more thing: Ballard holds in her heart her own unrequited and unspoken love for Miss Walden.

    But that's not all.

    On her nights off, Ballard hits the bars that line the streets of New York's lower east side. She finds a home at the Hibernian, run by Dermot, the man who sponsored and stood for her in New York. There, she meets another lover, a black woman who works as a prostitute and dreams of running her own brothel.

    Meanwhile, Dermot has his own connections with the Tammany Hall Irish who run that part of New York City, along with some ties to the Irish rebels back home. Here's is where Seanin returns to the story.

    Eventually, they all come together in a surprising and intriguing climax. Guadagnino does an impressive jobs with her research, her historical knowledge, and her writing.

Book Review: Same Sun Here

• Authors: Silas House and Neela Vaswani

• Where I bought this book: The 2021 Kentucky Book Fair, Lexington

• Why I bought this book: Silas House signed it.

    *********    

    

    Two strong writers have put together a pleasant read from the fictional correspondence between dissimilar yet emotionally connected youngsters.

    House's River Justice is a 12-year-old boy, the son of a coal miner in Eastern Kentucky. Meena Joshi is a 12-year-old immigrant from India, living in New York City's Chinatown. As part of a school assignment, Meena randomly selects River to be her pen-pal, and the pair begin to explore each other, their backgrounds, their lives, and their thoughts about their places in the world.

    It's a compelling read that shows the best of today's younger generation -- thoughtful, mindful, and caring. They discover they have many things in common, and while Meena's young childhood in India gives her some insight into River's rural Kentucky life, he is forever asking questions about New York's urban lifestyle and Meena's role in it.

    This is a book written like it is by young adults, for young adults.

    House writes River's letters. His language is remarkable. He uses the Eastern Kentucky dialect subtly, easily capturing the rhythms and tones of his home. He gives River his distinctive Appalachian inflections -- yes, you can hear him speaking.

    Vaswani is House's equal in presenting Meena's outgoing yet thoughtful pre-teen voice. Like any 12-year-old girl, she has to ability to change tone within seconds. One sentence she write as foot-stomping angry, and the next returns as the calm, compassionate friend.

    As they learn about each other, they find their worlds are being threatened. Meena sees her neighborhood changing and casting aside some who have lived in their rent-controled apartments their entire lives. The cause is the landlord's desire to increase their rent or force them out and sell the apartment for a high profit. To make the apartments unliveable for the current residents, they withhold servuves or refuse to perform routine maintenance. 

    Likewise, River sees his beloved mountains and woods being destroyed to bring out more coal. The coal barons are literally stripping away the mountaintops to get to the coal seams, in the process dumping toxic waste wherever they can -- usually in the rivers and streams.

    The difference is the landlords are deliberately being cruel, while the coal barons don't care.

    Both youths explain what is going one and how they and their communities are fighting it as best they can. So at its best it's a hopeful story, one befitting the authors who are telling it in the voices of the youths who are living it.

Book Review

 New York, My Village, by Uwem Akpan

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: It has a map

****

    My indelable memory of the Biafran War is the Catholic Charities "relief campaign" that used pictures of starving African children with bloated stomachs to raise money.

 

   That's it. I knew nothing about the reasons for the war, or even where in Africa Biafra was.

    So I was hoping this book would help me learn just a little bit about the war, and just as important, what happened and what is happening now. 

    It kinda did. But it also taught me the war has a long background, involves colonization and other crimes committed on the African peoples, and pretty much boils down to why any war is fought -- hatred, discrimination, jealously, and control.

    Briefly, and I hope I get this right: Biafra is a small province in the south of Nigeria. Northern Nigerian tribes, particularly the Hausa-Fulani, dominated. In 1967, representatives of the Igbo tribe in southern Nigeria, based in Biafra, claimed they controlled the south and proclaimed their independence.

    It did not go well. There's a reason you don't hear of Biafra anymore. It's no longer a country, and hasn't been since 1970.

    In this fictionalized account, Ekong Udousoro is a book editor, and he receives a fellowship to intern at a small publishing company in New York City. He is part of the Annang, who also lives in southern Nigeria, but have had little control to the dominant Igbo. Or as Ekong puts it, his group is a minority within a minoiry. 

    This book is an account of his months learning the book publishing industry, coupled with memories of the war -- which actually happened before he was born, but which has shaped his family, his village, and himself.

    But it's also about his family relationships -- which are confusing; his troubles and joys adapting to living in Hell's Kitchen -- ugh! far too much information on bedbugs and his problems with them; his relationships with his landlord, the man he is subletting his apartment from; the racism he confronts on the job and in book publishing; his difficulties getting along with his new neighbors, and much, much more.

    It's really too much. He covers too many issues, confusing us on many occassions, and spends far too much time on the damn bedbugs. (And even when you think he is done with that, they come back! I was ready to toss the book across the room at this point.)

    Still, at its heart, the book's theme is about how we complicate our lives by dividing ourselves in too many groups -- by color, ethnicity, religion, jobs, community, and so much more. In short, perhaps we are all minorities of a minority.    

Book Review: Rockaway Blue

 Rockaway Blue, by Larry Kirwan

    It's almost three years after the 9/11 attacks, and the Murphy family remains in turmoil.

    Police Lt. Brian Murphy lies in his grave. His widow Rose and young son Liam remain lost in their big house by the ocean, unable to live up to the memory of the man who is revered as a martyred hero. His younger brother Kevin, a firefighter, still lives and works in his Rockaway neighborhood, fending off adulthood and his brother's shadow.

 

   His parents, NYPD Detective Sgt. Jimmy Murphy, retired, and childhood sweetheart Maggie, find themselves floundering, their Irish Catholism hanging heavy on their souls; growing old, growing apart, and unclear of both their futures and their pasts.

    Into this steps Kirwan, himself an Irish emigrant who moved to New York in the 1970s, and lived the authentic immigrant experience. 

    Kirwan is a polymath. He's a singer and songwriter, the founder and force of the Irish American rock band Black 47. He's a playwright and novelist. He wrote Paradise Square, a musical about the convergence of Irish and African music in the mid-19th Century, which is opening in Chicago. He is the host of Celtic Crush, a widely popular radio program on SiriusXM.

    In Rockaway, Kirwan wants to write of the Irish community's falling apart, losing its ethnic sense, and no longer dominating the city's police and fire brigades. But the overwhelming novel tries to do too much. Its themes run the gamut -- questions of faith and family, of community and identity, of the changing definitions of manhood and womanhood, of love and marriage, of the shifting cultures, even of the rivalry between the Mets and the Yankees.

    Still, it centers around a single, burning question: Why was Brian -- who died a hero because he ran back inside after leading people to safety -- at the World Trade Center before the first plane hit? Detective Sgt. Murphy's unofficial investigation raises the hackles of his former tribe as he delves into the issues described above. and his efforts at easing his family's guilt and heartbreak sometimes makes them worse.

    It's an uneasy tension that careens through the book, showing that life, tragedy, and death isn't always as clear-cut as it seems.

Book Review: Church of Marvels

 The Church of Marvels, by Leslie Parry

   

    I loved the story, just not the way it was told.

    Set in Lower Manhattan and Coney Island at the tail end of the 19th century, Church of Marvels tells of a family of carnival workers, and then of an abandoned baby recovered by an underground prize fighter, along with an undertaker who regularly visits the city's opium dens. 

    I think.

    It's all very confusing. The novel drifts from one tale to another, abruptly changing characters, locales, and narrators. It's tough to keep up with the stories when you forget who is who. You spend too much effort trying to figure out how each person relates to the others in time and narrations. 

    And whatever you think is happening, or has happened, is probably wrong.

    Ostensibly, the tale circles around Belle and Odile Church, who with their mother, Friendship, perform at and run a carnival sideshow -- the Church of Marvels of the title -- on Coney Island. Alternatively, we are introduced to Sylvan Threadgill, who cleans out privies on the Lower East Side, and somehow finds a baby girl in a dark alley. There is Alphie, a makeup girl and sometimes prostitute -- who turns out to be one of the most intriguing characters in the book -- whom we first meet while she is babbling a confusing, perhaps fantastical, story while trapped in an insane asylum.

    Other characters come in and out, and it takes a while to figure out who everyone is and how they relate to each other. But just as you think you are piercing together the tale, it jumps off into another place with new people we haven't met before.

    Confusing, yes. But it is well written, and it is nicely wrapped up in the end by one of the characters who explains pretty much everything. I just wish more of the book was as expositive.

Book Review: Later

Later, by Stephen King

    You read Stephen King for the writing, of course. His is elegantly simple, using a working class language of good, useful words and descriptive phrases. It's not a style in which you pause and savor every word, but it gets the job done.

    And you read King's books for the stories, and the plots. Sure, sometimes he repeats anecdotes or plays with different perspectives of the tale, but it's always a story where he pulls you along and has you eager to get to the end. 

    King is typecast as a horror writer, but that has rarely been true. And now that he's often switching genres -- he's really gotten into detective and mystery tales recently -- it's even less true. He is, as one critic wrote, just a guy who puts ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances -- usually with a twist of the supernatural, or tearing a hole in reality to show another dimension.

    But mostly, you read King for the characters. One never tires of, or forgets, King's characters. Sometimes, they come back.

    I won't deny he uses tropes -- the magical Negro, the disabled child with mental superpowers. But he has has a cast of characters that often look like America -- and he is getting better at that. He shows strong people who are good, and evil people who are bad. Mostly, though, you can identify with his characters because you know them. They are based on regular people, with their thoughts and fears and biases

    And sometimes those ordinary people have a mystical or supernatural power. It's a King thing, OK?

    Which gets us to Later. It's about a boy who sees -- and can hear and talk to -- dead people. We first meet Jamie Conklin as a young child, but it is his older self telling the story. He introduces us to his mother, Tia Conklin -- a white woman of privilege and single mother who had fallen on hard times. We also meet her lover, Elizabeth "Liz" Dutton, a police officer with questionable ethics.

    This being King, we can probably tell what is going to happen -- someone will want to exploit Jamie's abilities. But that's something King can tell us, better than I could, and better than most writers.

    It's a short book for King, clocking in at less than 250 pages. 

    So pick it up and enjoy. You know you will.

Book Review: The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

    The six-word summation of this book is: "Rich man makes bad life decisions."

    I mostly enjoyed this book, although it is perhaps the whitest book I have ever read. Imagine, if you will, this synopsis: The father of a young teenage child deserts his family. Later, the boy and his mother are the victims of a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The mother dies; the child grabs a famous painting and escapes.

   

It's a lot of book

      Picture that happening to a black child. Now, as in this book, imagine the child is white. Yep. Two different stories, never meeting nor crossing paths. 

    This story is the white one.

    Simply put, it's about a child with an obsession about the stolen painting. Or more accurately, it's about a child cum man with an obsession about his obsession about his stolen painting.

    It did win a Pulitzer Prize, and it's not hard to see why: It's a grand, overarching book about family, love, desire, hope, and hopelessness. It's a sprawling book that moves from New York to Las Vegas, back to New York, and then to Europe. It's about the lifestyles of the wealthy, and the privileged way they walk through life.

    But it's also overwritten, meandering on for 771 pages. Just about every experience is overdone, every scene over-described. For someone who prefers tight writing, as I do, it's a slog to get through. At the end, Tartt grows increasingly philosophical, and you wonder if she is furiously adding on pages as you read. You fear the book might never end.

    That all said, however, it is a good story, with a handful of interesting characters; albeit none very likeable. It's no doubt a good book for the times we are in -- something that will remain with you through the long, shut-in days of quarantine.     

Book Review: The Singer's Gun

The Singer's Gun, by Emily St. John Mandel

First off, this is a good book. It's well written, and its story hits all the strong points -- family, love, crime, and travel.

Yet, it has a couple of failings. Some of the characters' actions make you wonder what they -- or their creator -- were thinking. Mandel's characters tend to be passive kettles for the actions of others. For instance, Anton Waker, the protagomist in this book, seems to go through life accepting that things just happen to him. He may not like them; he doesn't really want them to continue, but he seems unable or unwilling to do anything about them.

The book also contains gaping plots holes that make you look askance, twist your face into a quizzical grimace, and ask, "what the ???" Story arcs seem contrived to further a dilemma, but the easiest solution is ignored. Important decisions are pre-ordained, despite a character's disinclination to take that route. Even when the original problem is resolved, the character continues on the ill-chosen path, with severe consequences.

The novel tells the story of Waker, the Brooklyn-born son of an immigrant couple who traffic in stolen artifacts. The parents are minor characters in the tale, but their adoption of a niece left behind when her parents are deported give them a benevolent sheen over their criminality. 

The niece, Aria, starts out as a street-wise urchin, but turns into a woman who runs her own criminal enterprise, which involves Anton more or less against his will. Anton finds a temporary way out, but Aria wants to drag him back in, and he feels forced to go along. 

Thus we wind up in Ischia, a tiny tourist village on a small island off the coast of Naples. A good part of the story occurs here, and the setting is beautiful. We understand why Anton feels compelled to stay.

But we fail to understand his hemming and hawing, his refusal to make a decision, and his inclination to just wait until something happens. When it does, we are neither surprised nor sympathetic.

Book Review: Red at the Bone

Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson packs a lot of story into fewer than 200 pages.

The opening that describes a coming-out party for Melody, a 16-year-old black girl -- wearing the same dress that her grandmother Sabe, then 16, also wore, but that her mother Iris, then 16 and pregnant, could not -- sets the stage for a tale of family in the black community.

But it's much more than a family tale -- it's story about ancestors and descendants, about friendships, and about class and race. It's a story about love and marriage and sexual orientation. It's a story about connections and feelings of isolation, It's a story about hopes and fears, about bigotry and hate, about the past and the future.

We learn that the family survived the 1921 Massacre in Tulsa and began a new history in Brooklyn, but never forgot the past.

"Every day since she was a baby I've told Iris the story," Sabe tells us. "How they came with intention. How the only thing they wanted was to see us gone. Our money gone. Our shops and schools and libraries -- everything -- just good and gone. And even though it happened twenty years before I was even a thought, I carry it. I carry the goneness. Iris carries the goneness. And watching her walk down those stairs, I know my grandbaby carries the goneness too.

Woodson tells these stories through various voices weaving their way through time. Characters come alive as their stories mesh and reveal family history and secrets. Their relationships defy time and space. They come together and sometimes feel left behind.

She uses tight, yet emotional and compelling language. She ties the generations together, allowing each to share with the long ago, but to develop their uniqueness in the now.

Book Review: After the Miracle

After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the '69 Mets, by Art Shamsky

These were the good Mets. Unlike the bad boys of the 1986 Championship team, the '69 Mets were beloved across the country. 

They were young. They were happy. They played with joy and excitement and persistence. They were noble in defeat and celebrated in victory. At a time of political division -- over a war, over the direction of the country's youth -- a team from New York City was the epitome of togetherness.

That's because, says author and team member Art Shamsky, they were teammates who loved and respected each other. Each player accepted his role, and no matter how big or how small that part may have been, was appreciated for carrying it out with aplomb. Shamsky, for instance, may not have liked the fact that he platooned in right field with Ron Swoboda, but both reveled in each other's play.

Shamsky credits several people for this, including manager Gil Hodges, who believed in the team before it believed in itself, and then led them to the top with love and discipline; and pitcher Tom Seaver, who despite his superstar status, performed his role with humility and dignity.

Harrelson, Koosman, Sherman, Shamsky,
 Swoboda, and Seaver at a restaurant during the visit.
(Photo, from the book)

The book, while a celebration of the team and its youthful exuberance, carries notes of sadness 50 years later. Several team members have died, and two of its stalwarts --  Seaver and shortstop Bud Harrelson -- have signs of degenerative brain function -- Seaver from Lyme disease, and Harrelson from Alzheimer's.

Shamsky begins the book with his plan to bring a small group of former players out to celebrate with Seaver in his Napa Valley home in Calistoga, Calif., where Seaver owns a winery. He invites Harrelson, Seaver's former roommate; Jerry Koosman, the lefty counterpart to Seaver; and Swoboda, whose legendary catch saved Seaver's victory in Game 4. Shamsky's co-author, journalist Erik Sherman, went along.

Once the planning of the trip is set -- although Seaver's wife, Nancy, cautions that Seaver's health might force a last-minute cancellation -- Shamsky reverts to the 1969 season, going over games and memories from spring training to the last out of the season, and the ensuing on- and off-field celebrations. The remembrances are highlighted with interviews, stories, and quotes from former players and fans, adding color and grit to the memories.

After that pleasant reflection, Shamsky returns to the trip to Seaver's house. It's another happy occasion, with the conservative Koosman and the liberal Swoboda indulging in some banter about politics, and the group of five recalling their glory days. But it's a sad meeting as well, with the former teammates knowing their days are ending. The melancholy continues as Shamsky explores  how diseases have ravaged the minds of Harrelson and Seaver, causing the former ace to show a flaw in remembering the day's events while eating at a local restaurant.

Without a hint of frustration, the ever-courageous and self-assured Seaver shrugged and told (us) once more, "You know, I've got a little bit of the Lyme disease going on." He then graciously picked up the check, gave his regard to all of the people he knew at the cafe like he was the mayor of Calistoga, and walked us back out to the parking lot -- where the conversations continued on and on. We knew we would never all be together like this again. We were in our seventies, scattered around the country, and Tom could no longer travel.

It was the lengthiest of good-byes. Nobody wanted to leave.

You may shed a tear at the end. But overall, it's a book about days of happiness and youth, and the brotherhood of teammates.

Book Review: Akin

Akin, by Emma Donoghue

An old man, childless, set in his ways, and still mourning the loss of his wife to cancer, suddenly finds himself the guardian of an 11-year-old great-nephew he barely knew existed and had never met. 

Worse for Noah Selvaggio, he must take custody of the boy the same week he had planned a visit to his native France, for the Carnival in his hometown of Nice.

Days before he's set to fly from his home in New York, Noah gets a call from a social worker. Michael, his sister's only grandchild, needs an emergency parental figure, and Noah is his only living relative. The boy's father? A recent overdose fatality. His mother? Serving time in a prison upstate.

It's either Noah or a state home. Noah reluctantly agrees to take care of the child.

Thus begins Donoghue's latest novel, an exploration of family, heritage, and the responsibility one has -- or should feel -- for the actions of their ancestors.

You see, at the same time Noah is learning he will be taking Michael along on his trip, he discovers a small packet of cryptic photographs his mother took during World War II, when she stayed in France as he and his father shipped off to the United States for safety. Noah has no idea who the photos portray or why they were taken. Michael, snootily introducing Noah to Google images search, easily discovers the location of one picture. It's a hotel in Nice.

So off they go.

It's a tough relationship. Michael, at 11 years old, often finds his phone to be a better companion. He enjoys baiting Noah. Nor is Noah enamored with Michael, whom he sees as a whingy little brat. His immediate response to any request from Michael is to say no.

But still.

Noah is empathetic enough to know Michael's background and sympathize with his upbringing. He recognizes the child is poor and lonely, but he struggles to accommodate his wants and needs.

Still. 

For the most part, I liked their relationship. Noah wants to educate the child, and he takes every opportunity to explain history and science (sometimes in excruciating detail, but then, Noah is an old, retired chemistry professor). The boy generally is bored to tears, but sometimes responds to Noah's prodding and teaching.

So we see them slowly, reluctantly and uncertainly, grow closer and show concern for each other in fits and starts. Noah comes to enjoy Michael's wit, even if it is exasperatingly at his own expense. Michael tries to help Noah's search for meaning in his mother's photos, even as he struggles to maintain his own sense of self with his strange great-uncle.

Book Review: The Immortalists

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin

Great books tell a great story. This one tells four.

How would you live if you knew the day you would die? Would it affect your lifestyle or career choice? Would you be more brazen or more cautious? How would your relationships change?

These are some of the questions the children of Saul and Gertie Gold must grapple with after they visit a fortune teller, who gives them the specific date of their deaths. Chloe Benjamin tells us their stories.

And geez, most are well told. I will admit, the novel dragged a bit in the middle, but that part gave readers lots of information about the family dynamics.

Varya, the oldest; Daniel, the practical one; Karla, the dreamer; and Simon, the lover of life, are the children of Jewish immigrants, growing up on the Lower East Side during the 1960s. One day, they hear about and visit the woman on Hester Street, who is said to be able to give you the date of your death. The children, in varying degrees, want to know their futures.

The book then delves into their lives, their choices, and their destinies. It explores how they face, or don't face, the world, and how they draw away from, and occasionally return to, their family and its rituals.

Some of the stories are a bit predictable. And sometimes, an exposition fairy magically reappears at just the right literary time to fill in the details.

But the high points of the book, and their emotive telling, easily overshadow these trivial complaints.

Book Review: Last Night in Montreal

Last Night in Montreal, by Emily St. John Mandel

This is a sad book about a lost soul, and about people whose ability to cope consists of running away. 

Back when she was a child, Lilia Albert's father abducted her. Well, perhaps abduct is too strong a word. Actually, he showed up at her house in the middle of the night, she went with him willingly, and both disappeared.

They spent their days driving around the United States and Canada, briefly living in motels and campgrounds, before heading out again. They lived on the road, changing their names and identities, rarely staying anywhere for more than a few days at a time. Lilia's father taught her wile he cruised the backroads. Freedom, to both of them, meant driving away.

Why this happened is not yet explained.

Then we fast-forward to the present day, and Lilia is living the hipster life in Brooklyn with Eli, an academic who is losing his taste for academia. One day, Lilia tells Eli she is going to the grocery store. As is her wont, she never returns. Eli, after getting word she is in Montreal, goes after her.

Thus, the scene is set for back-and-forth flashbacks of Lilia on the road, Eli trying to find her, the emerging backstory of her disappearance and years growing up, and the arrival of a private investigator with a growing obsession about finding her. It's a daring way to write a novel, stopping one character's perspective to bring in a second, then a third, and a fourth. But soon, you see them coming together to form a cohesive, compelling narrative.

It's a thoughtful tale about lonely people who only think about leaving, driving off, or running away. It's what they do. It's what they must do. It's not a coincidence that the book references Icarus, who, when given wings to fly, responded by taking it too far -- both literally and figuratively. Icarus, of course, met his end of getting too close to the sun, and suffering the consequences.

Lilia, Eli, and other characters, all of whom have taken a good idea too far, also meet the various consequences of their actions.