This Week in Books, 11th Ed.

 Grand Opening of a New Local Bookstore

    We have a new bookstore that opened here in Northern Kentucky. Okay, it's not exactly new, but it is the second location of our wonderful Roebling Books & Coffee.

    

    

    Let me repeat! We have a new bookstore location in Northern Kentucky. It's two miles from my house, and a block away from where I work. This might be dangerous.

    It opened Saturday, Nov. 27, which coincidentally is Small Business Saturday. It's at Sixth and
Overton in Newport's East Row neighborhood, a little more than a mile from its main store near the Roebling Suspension Bridge in Covington. So it's a local business -- and a bookstore. Everything is right about this.

    It being Opening Day, it was a little short on stock -- but heavy on coffee and tea, and atmosphere, and comfortable chairs, and wonderful art and antiques throughout. It's so much more than a bookstore.

    It's a local cafe. It's a community meeting center, fitting for its location in a residential neighborhood. It's a place to browse, to find new books, to explore new ideas. It is using a new way to present books -- with their covers facing out, giving them room to show off, to present their best selves, to speak to you, the reader.

    And a slow browse gives you the opportunity to listen, to hear the book call out to you, to whisper what it has to offer. Maybe it's a new experience, presenting a new culture, or showing new way of looking at life. Maybe it's a salve for a troubled soul. It might be a gift for a treasured friend.

    Or maybe it's promising a magical tale, a tour from the faeries into another dimension, a read to remember. What spoke to me was A Darker Shade of Magic, from V.E. Schwab, a wonderful writer who also penned The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

    

Book Review: Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever

Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever: Mostly True Stories, by Ed McClanahan

• Where I bought this book: Kentucky Book Festival, Lexington
• Why I bought this book: McClanahan is Kentucky's best unknown writer

*********

    I first fell in love with McClanahan's writing soon after I moved to the commonwealth some 40 years ago, and a colleague suggested -- nay, insisted -- that I read The Natural Man, McClanahan's first novel.. 

    I did. I was hooked.

    McClanahan has led an extraorinary 20th Century life. Born in Brooksville, the seat of rural Bracken County, he was a part of the pre-war generation -- too young for World War II, and smart enough and pacifist enough to avoid the Korean War. McClanahan is a contemporary of the legendary Kentucky poet and author, Wendell Berry, along with Pulitzer-prize winner Larry McMurtry and beat/hippie author Ken Kesey. He ran with the Merry Pranksters. He was an author, professor, and lecturer under the moniker, "Captain Kentucky." Along with Mason, Berry, James Baker Hall, and Gurney Norman, McClanahan was part of the group called the "Fab Five" of Kentucky literature.

    In Not Even ..., McClanahan pens a ragtag collection of tales stretching from his boyhood days to his current elderly strolls around Lexington. The result is funny, yet touching, a feeling that you are listening to an old man in the latter years of his life lightheartedly recalling his earlier days of glory. He explores his relationship as the hippie, ne'er-do-well son of an upright, businessman-father who brokers little nonsense and was unusually proud of the cut of his nose.

The nose, my father firmly believed, is composed of certain pliable matter that one can mold and shape over time like a lump of gristly modeing clay, if -- if --one develops the proper habits of life and sticks to them assiduously. Such as: When said olfactory apparatus itches, son, do not scratch same by rubbing it with the heel of your hand as if you want to smear the gaddamn thing all over your counternance. Rather, delicately grasp it between the thumb and forefinger, just below the bridge -- thus; yes; just so -- and gently pull forward and down, thereby addressing the offending itch while simultaneously helping the nose to become all that it can be, which is to say a nose not unlike the paternal beezer itself.

    Some of the stories may be true -- one he claims to have video proof he found on the Internet. Others, like the one above, he admits, might be a teensy bit exagerrated.  There are those he says are true to the best of his recollections. A few, perhaps, might just well be, perhaps, merely allegorical. 

    It's a memoir in the best sense of the term -- self effacing, forgoing sentimentality if he chooses, grumbling about memory loss if it provides a convenient escape hatch.

    It's short, and sweet, and funny as hell. Go read it.

Book Review: The Elephant of Belfast

The Elephant of Belfast, by S. Kirk Walsh

    Amid the bombs and destruction of life during World War II, a young Northern Irish woman tries to preserve what she can.

    Her family is troubled; her few friends are floundering, and her job as a part-time zoo worker is underwhelming. So Hettie Quin tries to save a young elephant from suffering as mankind wreaks havoc.

    It's a fine book, with a decent if depressing story, but just a tad bit overwritten. Some of Walsh's passages go on far too long, with an amount detail that simply does not add to the tale. 

    But Walsh captures pre-war Belfast -- already an old industrial city split between its Protestant and Catholic citizens -- as it crumbles before our eyes. Hettie tries to save the city's soul partly by saving her small part of it.

    

    Her life is a mess. Her beloved older sister recently died in childbirth. Her mother has fallen in a deep depression; her father has abandoned the clan, and her brother-in-law is finding solace in joining the IRA. At 20, Hettie is thinking of her own future -- trying to escape the Irish pressure to get married and start a family. She wants a job, but also find herself attracted to a co-worker and her brother-in-law. A female co-worker urges her to live out her dreams, but also to spruce herself up to find a man.

    Meanwhile, the German bombs are falling on the ciy's docks and industrial center, near the zoo and Hettie's home. The Protestant half of the city curses the Germans, while many in the Catholic neighborhood see an opening in the English-German war to re-unite the long conflict for Irish freedom and unity. Hettie, again, is caught in the middle -- while she is Protestant, her sister married a Catholic, and thus her in-laws and her infant niece are Catholic.

    But her key struggle is to save the young elephant that recently came to the zoo, and is in danger. Neighbors who live near the zee fear the bombing might allow the animals to escape and threaten their lives.

    Walsh captures Hettie as a confused but kind woman, dealing with her own issues while her neighborhood contends with the ancient Irish Troubes and her city with its very survival. 

Book Review: The Midnight Library

 The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig

    Imagine, if you will, a young, drab British woman named Nora Seed. She is depressed. She lives a sad, lonely life. Her music career fizzled out, and she cannot make it as a music tutor. She is stuck in a dead-end job she hates. She lives in a ratty apartment. She regrests dumping her latest boyfriend because she has no other prospects. 

    Oh yeah, and her cat just died.

     So she decides to end it all by taking a handful of sleeping pills and crawling into bed. But instead of dying, she wakes up in a library. An unusual library with row-upon-row-upon-row of books. The neverending tomes stream by at various speed. Sitting at a nearby table is a woman who looks suspiciously like her childhood school librarian, Mrs. Elm.

    Nora soons learns she did not die, but instead is visiting the Midnight Library, a place between time and space. The books contain the story of every one of her possible lives, changing like butterflies with every single decision she has made.

    So she picks a book, reads the first line, and enters an alternative life.

    Which is a cool idea, and opens up a whole timeline of changes, possibilities, and adventures. But its realization has  two severe flaws.

    One is that Nora jumps into a new life with all the memories of her old life, but having no idea what she was getting into. For instance, in her first jump, she finds what would have happened if she had married her beau and moved with him to buy a pub in rural Ireland. This happens in other jumps -- her being a rock star on stage without a clue as to what comes next, as a wife and mother who doesn't know who the child in her room is, and as a scientist with no knowledge of her speciality. So she has to fake it.

    The second problem is that Nora whinges. A lot. Some of her whinging is passed off as part of her depression, and some is part of her learning experience. But jeez, she is not a likable character.

    But the story does draw you in. You wonder in which life Nora will be satisfied. You enjoy the interludes at the library, where philosophical discussions with the Mrs. Elm lookalike bring exposition, background, and deep thoughts.

    It's an intriguing, well-written book, which gives insights to the bizarre yet conceivable ideas of time bending and alternative realities.

This Week in Books, 10th Ed.

   An excursion north

     I have written before about the Book Loft in Columbus, Ohio. It's a great place, filled with small rooms full of books that are hard to find elsewhere. That is why I spent Memorial Day adding to my TBR Stack.

    Some of the books bought were recommendations from my fellow book fans who joined me on this trip. A few were ones I have had my eye out for. And a few were spur-of-the-moment decisions.

 

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin

    She has long been a favorite. She is not only a great writer of science fiction, but is "a literary icon," as the author Stephen King described her.

    

    Anyway, I heard about this novel on a podcast called "Fast Forward," which is about topics that might arise in the future. (It's great. You should listen to it. Its host, Rose Eveleth, has the perfect podcast voice, and I am in love with it.) During a show about space flight and labor law, and what living and working on another planet might entail, the host mentioned this book. So I bought it. It was the least I could do.  

The House in the Cerulean Sea, by T.J. Klune

    Look at that book cover! That should be enought reason to pick it up.

    Not only that, but the title has the word "cerulean." We need to use that colorful word more often. Says Merriam-Webster: "Cerulean comes from the Latin word caeruleus, which means 'dark blue' and is most likely from 'caelum,' the Latin word for 'sky.' An artist rendering a sky of blue in oils or watercolors might choose a tube of cerulean blue pigment. Birdwatchers in the eastern United States might look skyward and see a cerulean warbler." 

    What's it about? Who knows? But it's described as "being wrapped in a big gay blanket."

The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig

    This was recommended by Corina Fay, a teacher and one of my companions on this trip. Listen, when a teacher tells you to read a book, you read it.

    The book's description says that "between life and death there is a library." And this library allows the book's protagonist to change the course of other lives by changing her decisions. Of course, knowing this might make the choices harder. 

    Still, she should make those decisions. 

Girl A, by Abigail Dean

    I have had this one on my to-buy list for quite a while. I found it. So I picked it up.

    Based on a true story, it tells the tale of a girl -- known as Girl A in media accounts -- who grew up in her family's "house of horrors" before managing to flee and save her five siblings. When their mother dies in prison years later, the children must come to grips with their traumatic Despite the raw subject matter, I am told it's a novel one can rip through in a couple of days. A blurb calls it "gripping and beautifully written." What more could one ask for?

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.S. Schwab

    Another friend and bibliophile, scientist Melissa Mann, and I were discussing the fluidity of time, and she recommended this novel. She even pointed out the shelf it was sitting on.

    I did not know this, but Schwab is one of the great science fiction writers of our time. In this novel, her protaganist and title character is immortal -- with the catch that every year on her birthday, she jumps into another skin and time. No one remembers her former self.

    Which of course, leads to the awful blurb: "A life no one will remember. A story you will never forget." But an author does not write her own blurbs. So I forgave her and bought the book.

The Kingdoms, by Natasha Pulley

    The book blurb describes it as a "genre-bending feat (that) masterfully combines history, speculative fiction, queer romance, and more." So I have to ask, how could you pass this one up?

    Oh, you want more? It also bends time.

    Actually picking up this novel was a mistake. I was going for another book, but grabbed this one instead. It spoke to me.

The Elephant of Belfast, by S. Kirk Walsh 

    It has an elephant. In Belfast. Industrial, gritty, urban Belfast.

    It also has Loyalist Protestants and Republican Catholics continuing their long feud over a small piece of Ireland. 

    Then World War II happened. And life went on.

Book Review: The Last Taxi Driver

 The Last Taxi Driver, by Lee Durkee

    I picked up this book because of the cover and the title: I saw it in the bookstore. I liked the cover -- it was bright yellow. I smiled at the title. I read the synopsis. I laughed. I bought it.

      It's one of the many reasons I browse in real bookstores as opposed to buying online. I never know what I'm looking for until I find it.

    Anyway. I was right about the book. It's enticing. It's funny. It's worth a read.

    Lou works as a cabbie in a small town in northern Mississippi filled with obnoxious frat boys, drug dealers, and desperately poor people. His employer is one of the last legitimate taxi companies around -- although its owner is a conniving fool who seems to dedicate her life to making her drivers miserable. But Uber is coming -- which will make the drivers even more miserable and anxious, with even less control over their down-and-out lives.

    So Lou muddles through his 12-hour shifts, shuffling drunks and meth-heads and old people on their last legs to low-paying jobs, hospital visits, and liquor runs in a city without public transportation. And Lou has his own problems: He's a failed college teacher (one semester) and novelist (one book, rarely to be found). He's looking for an excuse to get his no-longer girlfriend to move out, while narrating his lonely, melancholy life.

    He's really good at the narrating. And the loneliness. And the melancholy. And his undisguised despair at the town he lives in and how it forces people to live lives of -- as the philosopher once said -- quiet desperation.

    Consider this passage about the only Black Republican man in town -- who spends his days guarding the Confederate statute in the town square, while getting routinely beat up for his troubles.

Clem ended up meeting a Black woman at some Tea Party gathering who was also into the rebel flag -- there's somebody for everyone -- and they became a couple until one night, driving home from a rally, the two of them became convinced somebody was following their truck. Clem called the police -- 911 recorded the whole incident -- then he sped up, lost control of his pickup, ran off a bridge into the Tallahatchie River, and the two of them drowned together in that river without anybody ever writing them a song.

    Gems like that make one keep reading. So does his chapter of tips for the budding cab driver: Don't project your prejudices on the people you encounter while driving. Having a penis doesn't make one an awesome driver. Never fuck with anybody driving a Dodge Charger, Don't take selfies at red lights.

    There's more, but you'll have to buy the book to read them. Get thee immediately to your local bookstore and do so.

Book Review: Shade

 Shade, by Neil Jordan

    A ghost who sticks around to relive and review her life is the focus of this novel that reads like a movie script.

    Not that it is lines of dialogue. But the writing -- the descriptions, the settings and shifting of scenes, the lengthy thoughts and soliloquies -- shows Jordan's background as a playwright and screen-writer.

    As you get into the book, you can almost see the images on a screen.  It's a commendable style, but its takes a while to get used to. 

    Jordan shifts the narration from character to character, sometimes jumping around in time, other times telling simultaneous stories from different perspectives. The characters may be in different places at different times in their lives, with the alternate stories overlapping.

    As a movie or play, one might follow along without fail. But as a novel, it can be confusing because when a new story begins or returns, it's difficult to tell who is speaking and whose tale is being told. An unseen narrator simply begins.

    When we first meet Nina Hardy, she had just been killed by a childhood friend, who cut off her head with a pair of garden shears and dumped her body in a cistern. (None of this is a spoiler; it's all told in the opening pages.) She exists as a spirit, able to return to various points in her life and witness the days she lived, and able watch her friends and family in a new light.

    We see her loving father and unhappy mother. We meet her small group of friends -- the half-brother she first met as a young teenager, the strange but sensitive boy who wound up killing her, and that youth's small and relatively inconsequential sister.

    Nina's early years are set in rural County Louth, along the River Boyne, in an Ireland torn between Catholic and Protestant, with the desire for independence amidst loyalty to the king. It continues through World War I and beyond.

    Their stories jump around in time and space in the early going, and while the tales continue to meander at times, they eventually join to form a cohesive narrative. It's a about loss, and love, and family. It's about war and peace. It's about independence and loyalty. 

    It's about friendships, and saving lives, and avenging death.   

Book Review: Clay's Quilt

Clay's Quilt, by Silas House 

    If you want to know Kentucky, you have to live Kentucky.

    But for those born and live outside the commonwealth, know that it has spawned an extraordinary group of native writers. One of these is Silas House, born in Corbin, the heart of Laurel County, and reared in nearby Lily, a town of some 3,000 people. House was schooled at Eastern Kentucky University, and Lousiville's Spalding University. He currently teaches at Berea College.

    So he has a taste for the soul of the state, an ear for its finely turned music and  language, and an eye for the dignity and exuberance of its people.

    That talent is on firm display in Clay's Quilt, the first of three books that showcases the coal country and mountains of Southeastern Kentucky. The trilogy is not a series, although it is related in charcters and story lines.

    In House's debut novel, Clay Sizemore is a good-ol'-boy but a righteous one. He has a job in the coal mines, a hankering for country music, and a rowdy best friend. But he's a youth adrift and uncertain about his future. He yearns to know more about his mother, who died when he was a toddler. But his loyalty to his family, and his sense of place, gives him something to grasp and aspire to. But he struggles to find more.

    The writing in this tale is superb. You can hear the Eastern Kentucky accents in the voices and the setting. House is a master of storytelling, and the book reveals its secrets in every chapter.

    The setting explores the creeks and hollers of the mountains, and the breadth of Eastern Kentucky culture. It's all there: the diverse and beautiful music, the sometimes smothering nature of its religiosity, its joys of home and community, its random, often brutal violence.

    House tells it all without fear or favor. It's his culture, so he knows its strengths and lives with its scars.

    It's a portrait that only an honest and loving native son can paint.

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: Buck O'Neil's America

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, by Joe Posnanski

    Buck O'Neil is a story teller.

    Joe Posnanski is a listener.

    Together, they created a book that is many things -- a pleasant read, a learning experience, an emotional tour through the United States from the eyes of a Black man who experienced the best of the country and the worst of its racism.

    In the end, it's an uplifting story, one of hope and happiness migled with meloncholy. It shows the heights Black men reached while leaving the tantalizing potential of what could have been.

    One scene, which occurred in 2005, has O'Neil and Willie Mays taking a tour through the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. They are talking about Oscar Charleston, who from 1915 through the 1940s was a center fielder and manager in the Negro Leagues, and who many consider the greatest player ever.

"How good was Oscar Charleston, Buck?" Mays asked the old man standing next to him.

"He was you before you," Buck O'Neil said. 

Mays nodded as if he had heard that before, and he looked again through the chicken wire at the bronze statues of mostly forgotten men who had played baseball in the Negro Leagues. They had played at a time when Black men were banned from the Major Leagues. Segregation was an unwritten rule and mostly unspoken.

    Throughout the 1990s and until his death in 2006, O'Neil was the living, breathing embodiment of Negro Leagues baseball.

     He wasn't the greatest to ever have played the game, but he was pretty damn good. He was a first baseman and manager, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. He was known as a fast runner and a decent hitter, who twice led the Negro American League in batting. In his later years, he became the representative of a group of men who were finally getting their recognition as players equal to those in the Major Leagues. O'Neil played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues museum.

   But mostly, O'Neil was chosen because, as he told Posnanski at the time, "I'm alive."

    In 2005, O'Neil, at the age of 94, planned to tour the country as the Major Leagues began to promote the history of the Negro Leagues in an effort to right some wrongs. Posnanski, then a columnist at the Kansas City Star, asked to tag along. O'Neil's response was, "Don't be late."

    This book is the result. It's a road trip story, the tale of a youger white man and an older Black man traveling the country, talking baseball and life and jazz, another of O'Neil's passions. Mostly, O'Neil talked. Posnanski listened. and took notes.

    One of the stories told has O'Neil talking with Monte Irvin, perhaps the only man to be a star in both the Negro Leagues and later in the Major Leagues. They sound just like what they were at the time -- two old men talking, kinda lamenting how things had been.

"I'm not complaining," Irvin said. "I mean, I lived a good life. Better than most guys in the Negro Leagues. I got to play in the Major Leagues. I got to play in the World Series. I'm not complaining. It's just that people used to tell me how good I was, and I would tell them, 'You should have seen me when I could really play.'"

"I saw you, Monte," Buck said.

"And?"

"You could really play."

"That's all I was saying," Monte said, and he smiled too.

    The book is not a biography, but there is a lot in there that tells you about the man Buck was -- and also makes you want to search out more about him and his life. While on the tour, and right up to his death in 2006, O'Neil still felt he had a lot of work to do, and he wanted to do it.    

    So O'Neil told the stories of the Black men who played the game, and the lives they lived. He was proud of his playing days. He knew he and his teammates could have played alongside the white guys on any Major League team. He rejected the notion that the players were a ragged-ass bunch of clowns playing pickup ball. He knew they were professionals who worked hard and played hard, and who were as good as -- often better than -- any of their white contemporaries.

Book Review: Kissing the Witch

Kissing the Witch, by Emma Donoghue

    The best way to read this book is to forget your previous images of fairy tales, and with the author's help, let your imagination run wild.

    Donoghue's rewritten fairy tales are extraodinary. She ties them together with wee little blurbs at the end of each story and the beginning of the next. She twists them a bit to give them a sense of freshness.

    I suspect many people's knowledge of fairy tales comes not from reading the originals, but from watching Disney movies or other cartoon animations. Such treatment often infantalizes the stories to simple tropes. Donoghue returns then to their truer nature -- part of a mythology that tries to explain the world and why things happen or may go wrong.

    The writing here is superb. The characters are new but familiar, often redrawn to fit Donoghue's feminine perspective. The stories are written in keeping with the old style, She uses her love and understanding of language to invigorate each tale, and weaves them to create a loosely tied longer tale.  

    As someone who is not an expert on fairy tales, I am unsure if these are rewrites of older tales, brand new legends, or both. Some seemed familiar, while others did not.

    All but one were absolutely wonderful.

    I could not get through The Tale of the Cottage, which was written as by one with subpar language skills -- perhaps an animal? -- but in a collection of 13 stories, one miss is allowed.

    To make up for it, there was Tale of the Voice, about an introverted woman the community sees as a witch. She is not. Instead, she observes and advises. She doesn't cause the curses people suffer through as the price they pay for their desires, but rather she understands and informs them what would be the consequences of their actions. It's a subtle but too often ignored distinction.

Book Review: Flight or Fright

Flight or Fright, edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent

    In 1963, the Twilight Zone aired an episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," in which an airplane passenger, played by William Shatner, saw a gremlin tearing off part of the wing. Some 20 years later,  Twilight Zone: The Movie remade the episode, this time starring John Lithgow as the passenger.

    Flash forward to TV 16 years later, when Lithgow was starring in "Third Rock From the Sun," a show about an alien visiting earth. In one episode, his boss, The Big Giant Head, played by Shatner, came to visit, thus rendering one of the best inside jokes ever on the networks.

    The Big Giant Head was asked how his trip went. His response: "Horrifying at first. I looked out the window and I saw something on the side of the plane." To which Lithgow's character responded in horror, "The same thing happened to me!"

    You can read that original story, first published in 1961 by Richard Matheson, in this uneven anthology of airplane horror stories. It ranges from a brief 19th Century story by Ambrose Bierce, to a tale of envisioned "Air Jungles" above 30,000 feet written in 1913 by Sir Arther Conan Doyle (yes, the Sherlock Holmes writer) to a 2018 tale of being on an airplane when the world ends, by Joe Hill.

    I know many people dislike short stories, but I think they hold a place of honor. A good one is hard to write -- with a few words and fewer character, a writer must tell a tale with a grab-you-by-the-neck beginning, a now-sit-there-and-listen middle, and a see-I-told-you ending. This book has some of those, but a fair amount of WTF stories that leave you empty, and a couple of tales that never get off the ground.

    There are some out-and-out horror tales, some that are more wild imaginings, and a couple of hang-on-for-dear-life adventures. One of the best is a simple detective story, with an opening that pulls you in, a middle that keeps you wondering, and an ending that is satisfying and believable. It doesn't lead you around in circles, but tell the story and gets to the point like a good short story should.

    As an added bonus, you get to read a new tale by Stephen King, a good one that reaches into the supernatural heights, but makes you wonder just how much of what he writes is true.

Book Review: The End of Everything

The End of Everything, by Katie Mack

    If you learn just one thing about this book, it is this: Read the footnotes.

    Footnotes generally are boring, giving you a citation, notation, or annotation too dull or obscure for the text. Some readers skip them, viewing them as a way to shorten the page.

    But Mack's footnotes are as good as the main text. They are enlightening and witty. Miss one, and you'll miss a lot.

    Take, for instance, the way they liven up an early story she tells about the discovery that proved the existence of the cosmic microwave background. Briefly -- and I hope I get this right -- scientists were setting up an experiment with a microwave detector when they heard a strange humming noise. They could not figure out what it was, and took to blaming a nearby flock of pigeons. They tested that theory with another experiment.* 

    (*Footnote: Sadly, this line of questioning did not end well for the pigeons, who were innocent of all wrongdoing.)

    Eventually, this group of scientists unknowingly found proof of the cosmic microwave background, and won a Nobel Prize in 1978 for their work. Some 41 years later, she says, the goup that first theorized the existence of the background won a Nobel Prize for coming up with the idea.*

    (*Footnote: So maybe there is some justice in the end. Just not for the pigeons.)

     But of course, it's not just the footnotes that make this book such a good read -- it's her knowledge, presentation, and research skills. She is well versed in her subject of cosmology, and what she doesn't know, she counts on the work of those who came before her -- the legendary giants of the astrophysics world and their historic precepts.

    In this book, she sets out to explain how the universe will end. She gets into several theories of eschatology, and uses them to delve deeper into some of the more esoteric theories of physics and astronomy. It's a fun learning experience about the thought experiments and the larger concepts of where we live, how it came to be, and where it might end up.  

   

    And Mack explains it well. She is an excellent writer, and she has a knack for the perfect analogy or metaphor. Astrophysics has difficult concepts, but after reading this book I think I better understand things such as a singularity, the cosmic inflation, the expanding universe, and the fact that the observable universe is just a small part of the whole -- and why that is true.

    That all being said, I must say the book seems to slow down near the end. At some points, Mack turns philosophical, always a danger for a scientist. And she seems to turn from being the knowledgeable teacher to almost a journalist, talking to others and quoting their thoughts and ideas. It does add perspective, but it comes across as a little extra padding.

    But still, where else can you learn about the "quantum bubble of death," also known as vacuum decay,  which is one of the ways this whole universe could end? It's right there alongside the possibilities of the Big Rip and the Big Crunch.

    My preferred band name, however, will always be the Quantum Bubble of Death.

Book Review Shuggie Bain

 Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart

    Shuggie leads a sad and depressing life. 

    So does his alcoholic mother, his cheating, abusive father, his sister, and his lost-soul older brother. Indeed, this novel is full of sad and depressing people, words which also describe this ultimately disappointing book.

    None of the characters is a good person. Except for his siblings, who are minor players, you cannot root for any of them -- even Shuggie, a child who is bullied and struggling with the perception that he is not like other boys. But his character has little life of his own; although he appears to be the novel's protagonist, he seems more of a supporting character meant to showcase the fears and faults of others. 

    The child ignores reality and keeps believing his mother will eventually recover from her disease. His love for her is rarely reciprocated -- and when it is, never for very long.

    What also makes this book disappointing is that it is the 2020 winner of the Booker Prize. Usually, even being longlisted for the prize is a good sign that it's a book worthy of your reading list. This is the first time I have found that not to be the case.

    Set in Glasgow, Scotland during the 1980s, the  novel shows the changing economy of the times, as working class jobs dry up, and people fall into poverty and despair. Shuggie is a young boy growing up with the slow realization that he is gay in a paternalistic, macho culture. His mother is a self-absorbed drunk seldom available for him. His abusive father has mostly abandoned the family. Shuggie, bullied at school, alone at home, struggles to survive.

    On a positive note, the book is well written and pulls you in. But it never hits a satisfying point.

    It doesn't follow Shuggie's inner struggles and turmoil. Rather, it emphasizes the bigotry and hatred he is subjected to on a more-or-less daily basis.

    Such bitter neighbors and schoolmates are the novel's focus -- and the downtrodden working class community Shuggis is a part of is not treated with kindness or sympathy. Their poverty and despair may come from a changing economy that considers them castaways -- this is the era of Reagan and Thatcher, after all -- but the author fails to connect them to this larger social decline. 

    Instead, their poverty, malice, and despair are shows as their own fault. From pilfering coins from gas meters, to stealing whatever is nearby, to using others for their own gain, the characters are portrayed as without morals. 

Book Review: The Hate U Give

 The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas

    When I started reading this book, I began to lament how depressing it was.

    In the first 25 pages, the novel's focus is revealed -- a young, unarmed black man is gunned down by a white cop during a questionable traffic stop. Given today's real-life versions of that very narrative, I feared it would continue along that heartbreaking path.

 

    It did. 

    But its overall tale was offset with accounts of ordinary Black life. The narrator and protaganist here is a teen-age Black girl, whose concerns include her schooling, her high school friends, boys, her family, her parents and her social life. She frets about how she and those around her have changed since middle school. She reacts with dismay, but is secretly proud, when her parents openly show affection.

    She acknowledges living in two worlds and practicing code-switching -- living a proud Black life with her family and friends in the 'hood, but playing down her Blackness when she is with her white friends at school. The two lives really interact. Her parents are unaware she has a white boyfriend at school.

    Similar to the protagonist in On The Come Up, Thomas's second novel, Starr Carter is a bright, observant, talented black girl trying to make her way through life. But unlike Bri, who rails against the inequities through her rap music, Starr plays along to make her way through both of her worlds.

    Still, Starr suffers through the discrimination, the poverty, the bullying of police, and the humiliation of being treated as less of a person at school and on the streets. She deals with the trapped violence in her neighborhood, and grapples against speaking out and risking more trouble, or staying quiet and accepting the 

    She struggles to find the common ground, working to stand up and speak out when she must, yet protecting herself and her family when she can.

    Thomas portrays her vividly, letting us in on her secrets and her fears. Thomas is a wonderful writer, bringing us into a world we don't know, taking us around, introducing us to the people and places. She shows us and lets us see a fuller picture of her world, and I for one am grateful.

Book Review: Girl, Woman, Other

Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo

    This book is additional proof that the Booker Prize never leads you astray.

    It also shows the benefits of reading literature.

    The 2019 winner of the British-based prize, by Evaristo, an Anglo-Nigerian writer, was cited for "a gloriously new kind of history for this old country."

    Indeed. These seemingly random, but ultimately interconnected profiles of women -- mostly of color, but young and old, cis and trans, gay, straight, and bi -- are a wonderful collection of tales from groups who seldon are heard from and less often listened to. But these women deserve to be seen and heard, and noticed.

    And they are. And it is good.

    These vignettes tell the stories of women's lives. They demand that people like me -- a white, older male -- listen to their struggles and their success. The show me their cultures -- old, new, and joined. 

    Some show why they left their African or Caribbean homes for a difficult if more prosperous life in England, and how they fought to survive, adapt, yet hold on to their past.

    The descriptions connect mothers and daughters, or grandmothers and granddaughters, or descendants to their ancestors, and show us the lives of several generations. 

    One woman clings to her Nigerian heritage, but has no plans to return to her native home. Despite the racism and the poverty, her home and her life are now in England, and she cherishes being British. Another dreams of returning home, but cannot see a future for her there. Another not only lives her Nigerian culture, but desires to pass it, unchanging, to her daughter. But her daughter prefers her own Britishness, which she has fought hard to accept and be accepted in.

    The book's format allows for a full telling of an individual's prosopography. First, we hear from one woman, giving her background, her experiences, and her views on her life and work. A following chapter will tell the story of another person, until it slowly dawns on us that she is related -- by blood, marriage, or heritage -- to a previous person in the book. Then another individual's profle is told, and that person gives insight into previous -- and perhaps a future -- character.

    It's a compelling collection of tales, full of surprises, evocative yet pointed in its writing, colorful in its descriptions, and sensitive in its narrative.While it may not show the full panoply of women's views and stories, it tells a wide and impressive range.

Book Review: The River Capture

 The River Capture, by Mary Costello

    Costello's first novel, Academy Street, was a must read for me because it told about a young Irish immigrant woman to the United States, who moved to the Inwood neighborhood in New York City.

     This could have been about my mother, my aunts, many of  my cousins. We all lived in Inwood, blocks away from Academy Street. We grew up in Inwood Park and went to Good Shepherd Church. 

    I could relate.

    This book, not so much. 

    

    Instead of a poor, lonely Irish woman looking to get by as an immigrant, The River Capture tells the tale of a Irish man returning to small town Ireland. Luke O'Brien, a Dublin teacher and Joycean scholar, decides to chuck his city life to return home, take care of an aging aunt, fix up the family homestead in Waterford, and write a book about the man who both enamors and haunts him.

    But he accomplishes none of this. Instead, he mopes.

    The problem here is not the setting, the writing, nor the enchantment with Joyce. Instead, it turns into a tale of a whiny, entitled man who wishes his life was more exciting; his friends more engaging, and his problems -- with his neighbors, his family background, and his discovery of the past -- weren't so damn mundane yet so complicated.

    The writing is wonderful, if a bit strained. About midway through, Costello switches from a basic narrative style to a recitation of O'Brien's daily activities. It's a bit unclear why she does this, and it is quite confusing at first, but the reader soon becomes used to it. It reads like a diary entry by a silent narrator, but it becomes an effective means of telling the story.

Book Review: The Glass Hotel

The Glass Hotel,  by Emily St. John Mandel

    If you're into historical fiction from the early 21st Century, have I got a book for you.

    This is the tale of Bernie Madoff, writ large. But it's a slow, meanadering narrative, wandering around Canada, New York, and the high seas before reaching its climax -- then ambling off again. And yet, its main character -- a lost, lonely soul who becomes the second wife of Madoff's stand-in, Jonathan Alkaitis -- is resilient and strong enough to sustain the trek. 

    

    We first meet Vincent as a 13-year-old girl living in the remote northern half of Vancouver Island with her aunt and half-brother. Her mother is recently dead, and Vincent's father is away at various jobs. In the beginning, we are led to believe her half-brother Paul is going to the driver of the story.

    But he mostly fades away as Vincent, through a series of coincidences, finds herself working as a hotel bartender, and meets Alkaitis. She eventually moves in with him, and becomes a citizen of what she calls the country of money. She is unaware of -- and doesn't particularly care -- how Alkaitis uses his financial acumen to become fabulously wealthy. But others do, and the walls come crashing down.

    Vincent moves on. She is, shall we say, adaptable. She is a wonderful character.

    I really liked this book, despite its flaws. It's a tale of money and power, which Vincent accepts but doesn't let rule her. The story is familiar for anyone who paid attention to the business world in the late aughts. But it's well told, with perspective from the participants and the victims of the scheme.

    Sadly, all of the other characters are mere vessels. A few are given life, but not enough that we know or care too much about them. Alkaitis has some interesting traits, and seems like a nice guy who doesn't take advantage of Vincent, and we know he has led an interesting life. But we are not told enough to care very much about him. He's pretty much a non-descript, corrupt businessman.

    And Paul seems rather pointless. He pops in and out of the story -- I suppose to let us know he's still around -- but his only other life is being a drug addict and a bad musician.

Book Review: Actress

Actress, by Anne Enright

    Katherine O'Dell was one of Ireland's best-known and beloved actresses.

    But author Anne Enright relates a few problems with that in this finctional biography/memoir of O'Dell, narrated by her daughter Norah

     For one thing, O'Dell was born in England. Her acting career, while it encompassed some starring roles in the West End, Broadway, and Hollywood, was largely mythical. So she became Ireland's best-known actress by pretending to be Ireland's best-known actress.

    The eyes were naturally green. The hair was dyed the appropriate Irish color. Her agent dictated her style.

"From now on," he said, "you wear any color you like, so long as it's green." By this he meant anything from teal to emerald -- all forty shades of it. The hotel dresser arrived, pulled my mother's head gently back into the sink, and two hours later she was a flaming redhead.

    So she looked the part and played the role well. Being Irish is a character, and she was good at it. On the stage or in front of the camera, she was the familiar Irish ingenue. She pulled off the intrigue needed to keep up the illusion of her craft. She was as much the idea of an actor as she was the reality.

   O'Dell lived in Dublin in the rare ol' times, where little was as it seemed,  and where everyone kept their closest feelings close to the vest. That meant O'Dell was always performing. She was the star. 

    Norah, the narrator, reveals the stories of her mother the actress along with her own. Both their stories are similar and familiar. She reveals her mother's hopes, dreams, and fears. She mixes in tales of her own life, which paled in comparison to her mother's. But both shared bouts of drinking, days of torment, and instances of trauma and abuse.

    As the narrator, Norah speaks like a neighbor -- or perhaps, an older, wiser aunt -- telling the tale over a laminated kitchen table filled with cooling cups of tea, ignored biscuits, and over-flowing ashtrays. She would nod her head at whatever you had to say, then with a wink and a knowing smile, put you to rights. "Aye," she say, "but let me tell ya what's really going on.

    And then she'd be off. 

    There are some quibbles. Some of the minor characters are merely background noise, although they play brief but important roles in the story. But they are poorly drawn out, and thus hard to remember. And our narrator tends to jumps around in time, here and there, introducing new characters without warning, causing one to get confused.

    But overall, it's a well-told tale. 

Book Review: Hamnet

Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell

    If you're going to write about William Shakespeare and have him as a character in your novel, you had better be able to make your prose and dialogue sing.

    Maggie O'Farrell is more than up to the task. 

    Although Shakespeare is not the major character in this fictionalized biography, when he speaks, his words glisten. O'Farrell catches his cadence, his rhythms, his poetry You can almost hear the character speaking his words in iambic pentameter. You envision him upon the stage in the Globe Theater, delivering his lines to a silent, enrapted audience.

    Yet the major characters are those who surround William Shakespeare -- his wife, his parents, his in-laws, and his children, including his only son, Hamnet. It is, at its heart, a family story of Shakespeare growing up, coming of age, finding love, and trying to make his way in the world.

    It's a sad story, and at times the despair clings to the pages. The 16th Century was a time of the plague in Europe, and Shakespeare and his family were not immune.

    Still, the strongest, most compelling character in the tale is Shakespeare's wife, called Agnes in the book. O'Farrell portrays her as a feminist before her time, a healer, a strong woman who keeps her family together during illnesses and her husband's long absences. She is sometimes seen as a witch, whose unusual habits include carrying around a kestrel, keeping bees, and going off to the woods to birth her first child.

     Yet she brings magic to the hills around Stratford-upon-Avon. Whether it's the magic that promises and delivers riches and a long, happy life, or requires a steep price for wishes granted, is just one of the themes explored in this book.

    O'Farrell acknowledges her research was necessarily thin. Little is known about Shakespeare's life and times -- heck, even the number of plays he wrote is an open question -- and what is known is disputed. Yes, there was a Hamnet Shakespeare, who had a twin sister, as he does in the book. He died when he was 11. His death may or may not have had an impact on his father's plays, particularly Hamlet.

    So, O'Farrell took that information and made it her own, turning it into this wonderful piece of historical fiction.

     Her writing and her book is extraordinary. At times, especially in the early parts of the book, when she alternates between Shakespeare's youth and his early adult years, it came be a bit confusing.  But it soon comes together, into a heartfelt, heartbreaking novel of love, grief, and pain.