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: The Wren, The Wren

 By Anne Enright

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Irish Fiction

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

• Why I bought this book: Cool title, from an  old children's song from Ireland. 

 ****

    I'm not sure what to make of this book.

    Enright's writing is descriptive with a touch of wit. Her characters are strong women, rising above (mostly) whatever life has thrown at them. Her dialogue is fast-paced. Her scenes are Irish. Her stories are raw and insightful.

    Some that was apparent in this tale of three generations of an Irish family, struggling to live with the legacy of a grandfatherly poet with a(n undeserved) reputation for tradition and brilliance.

    It fact, until the ending, the novel is a bit of a mess. There's a mishmash of metaphors and a riot of remembrances; quagmires of conversations, gatherings of glib asides, and troves of touchy tweets and texts.

    The grandfather is the symbol of privileged, mediocre men. Phil is an acclaimed poet -- but given the representation of his best work printed in the book -- not a very good one. Terry is the long suffering wife who is little heard from. Carmel is the daughter-- ignored, irritable, but accepting. Nell is the granddaughter, a writer and her grandfather in spirit, but without the privilege or his self-confidence.

    Their stories interact, with each one getting to tell parts of the tale, interspersed with snippets from Phil's work and stories from an unidentified narrator. Of the distinct voices, I liked Nell the best. She comes alive in the latter part of the book.

    She's young, introverted but unperturbed. She tells random stories of her relationship with her mother -- a bit different from her mother's tales -- and her love life and travels. She's confident, indiscriminate in using social media, and wants to be an influencer.

    In her afterword, Enright says Nell was also her favorite. Nell is, Enright says, the heir to her grandfather's carelessness. "She exists in a modern space, one which is full of new possibilities for young women. These include the possibility of going wrong, or even gloriously wrong, as poets are want to do. It seems I invented Nell in order to love her."

    I'm glad she did.

Book Review: The Granny

 By Brendan O'Carroll

• Pub Date: 1996

• Where I bought this book: Last Exit Books, Kent, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I read the first two parts of the trilogy, and liked the stories.

 ******

     Not as laugh-out-loud funny as The Young Wan, nor as disappointing as The Mammy, the conclusion* of the four  stories of Agnes Browne's life is sadder yet more real. It shows her children growing up, their successes and failures, as they experience life in Ireland and beyond in the latter half of the 20th Century. 

    Agnes, the matriarch of the clan, is in many ways a typical Irish mother -- demanding, often self-deprecating, always with more love for her children than herself. She's always willing to go to bat for her brood, but just as willing to shake her wooden spoon at them and threaten to beat them within in inch of their lives.

    But whether those six boys and one girl are kind, loving, and gentle, a common criminal, or a successful businessman, she accepts them for who they are. Even Rory the gay son is accepted, even though his lover and companion is only acknowledged as his close friend.

    But it's a touching, heart-warming family story as the children grow up, make mistakes, cause harm, and break away to find themselves. Sometimes, it a little contrived, and the tales fall into clichés and melodrama. Still, it works, and you should ignore that cynical part of yourself that wants to eye-role, and accept the family for who they are and the tale for what it is.

-------------------------------------------------------

    *Conclusion is not the right word, as the books are written out of order. The Mammy was published in 1994; The Chisellers (which focuses on the children), in 1995; The Granny in 1996, and The Young Wan (about Agnes as a young woman) in 2003.

Book Review: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

 By Becky Chambers

• Pub Date: 2014

• Where I bought this book: Downbound Books, Cincinnati 

• Why I bought this book: My daughter highly recommends this writer

*******

   About halfway through reading this book, I had emergency gall bladder surgery. I tell you this because while drifting in and out of consciousness during recovery, I starting having some wild and colorful hallucinations, feeling that I was traveling through other dimensions of time and space. 

    It made me sort of leery about returning to the book, but also more appreciative of the images and descriptions in Chambers' writing.

    It's actually a fun book, an exploration of the foibles and frustrations of humans -- and to a larger extent, all sentient beings. It puts them together on a spaceship, The Wayfarer, tasked with punching wormholes to facilitate interspace travel. 

    It forces everyone -- humans, lizard-like beings, and assorted blobs and lobster-like and artificial intelligent beings -- together so that we rethink culture and thoughts and mores and idiosyncrasies.

    But like in all good worlds, love and appreciation of tea is a constant.

    The chapters and adventures are like episodic television, as the crew sets out on a mission to build new pathways through sometime hostile space frontiers, meeting and greeting other worlds and species. It's got science, excitement, danger, and hope for the future.

Book Review: Good Eggs

•  Author: Rebecca Hardiman

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

• Why I bought this book: I was looking for a quick and fun read; this was her debut novel, and it looked right

******

    Like her character Millie Gogarty, Hardiman tells a good yarn.

 

    But unlike the elderly Millie, who tends to embellish and stretch out her story telling, Hardiman is concise and keen. She writes a pithy and funny tale about the kerfuffle that three generations of a Irish family find themselves in during the rainy season of their discontent.

    Yet, despite their meanderings, mistakes, and muddled lives, we know, deep down, they are good eggs. Why, it says so right on the cover.

    The middle guy in this saga is Kevin, a son and a father who is trying to hold their lives together, but like many a hapless dad, finds that no one really listens to him. Still, he tries.

     He loves his wife (mostly); he adores his four kids (even when they act out), and he does his best for his mother as she enters the purple phase of her life.

    His mother is Millie, elderly and kinda, sorta losing it, but determined to continue as she always has. She wants to keep her seaside house in Dúg Laoghaire, outside of Dublin, but when she gets arrested for mindlessly shoplifting at her local store, gives in to Kevin's insistences she bring in a caretaker.

    Then there's Aideen, Kevin's 16-year-old daughter. She is, well, she's a moody teenager who hates her family, hates her school, and hates her life -- and she isn't shy about letting everyone know. She does not take kindly to her parents' plan to send her to a nearby boarding school.

    There are a few other characters -- Aideen's perfect but bitchy twin, Nuala (who Aideen calls Nemesis); Kevin's mate's mother, Maeve, who gives Kevin the what for: Miss Bleekland, the school's disciplinarian (and old maid); Sylvia, the American helpmate, and assorted friends, neighbors and relatives -- mostly well drawn, but just around for decoration. Except for one of them. Well, maybe two.

    So that's the setting, and the story takes off from there. It's a short book of 323 pages -- and 64 chapters! -- so it moves quickly. It may take a while to introduce everyone before the real action starts, but then things hurry along. 

    It's funny, gentle, and moving.

Book Review: The Chronicles of Kazam series

 

• The Last Dragonslayer (2010), The Song of the Quarkbeast (2011), The Eye of Zoltar (2014), and The Great Troll War (2021)
• Author: Jasper Fforde
• Where I bought these books: Various book sellers over the years; bookshop.org for the finale 
• Why I bought these books: Fforde is an inventive and witty writer. "Quark," said the Quarkbeast

    

********

    I recently noticed that the subtitle of The Great Troll War is A Last Dragonslayer Novel. So maybe the use of the indefinite article means it's not the end, like we are all led to believe? Maybe, just maybe, there is room in the future for more tales about Jennifer Strange, the Kazam Mystical Arts, and the Ununited Kingdoms? 

    We can only hope. 

    It was a joy for me to read this Young Adult series -- and I am a person to whom the term decidedly does not apply. The series has all the attributes of the Jasper Fforde oeuvre -- the imaginative yet cerebral tales of fantasy highlighted by clever and bantering dialogue.    

    Okay, he sometimes gets carried away, but it's all in great fun. He gives us a sardonic view of authority, farcical side tales, and whimsical if grounded characters.

    Take this series, for instance, set in the Ununited Kingdoms, a place similar to Great Britain in an alternative dimension. It is a land where trolls -- 25-feet tall, the tattooed characters eat humans and consider them vermin -- are confined to the northern tier, and the Kingdoms routinely go to war with them, and routinely lose. 

    In Fforde world, this accomplishes several things: It allows the various kings, moptopps, dukes, potentates, and other inept rulers to have an enemy to blame for their failures, test out their new war toys, and provide more orphans who are the key to their society.

    Oh yes, there are dragons, quarkbeasts, tralfamosaurs, and other magically created beasts. And while magic is on the decline, it remains useful for things such as repairing bridges and the like.

    Enter Jennifer Strange, whom we first meet in the first book at age 15 when her orphanage apprenticeship has her going to work for Kazam Mystical Arts Management -- and who ends up running the place, despite her lack of magical skills.

   Fast forward through three books while she does her duty, and we learn more about the skills of this irreverent and brilliant character.

The Great Troll War with my breakfast*

    In this long-delayed fourth book, The Great Troll War, the trolls have taken over and surrounded most of the Kingdoms, creating Greater Trollvania. They are on the verge of invading the Kingdom of Hereford, where Jennifer and her magical friends live, but have been stopped at the border by a ditch filled with buttons (it's one of their few fears; so is a certain shade of cerulean). 

    Jennifer must somehow fix this problem. Her army includes a dozen spoiled princesses and two teenaged dragons. Along the way she negotiates with Molly, a troll who cannot eat her because she is part of the 6.67 percent of vegetarian trolls. (Keep that math in mind. It's important.) (Also, because there are quarkbeasts, physics may be involved. But just a little.)

    So, that's the plot, more or less. I may have explained some things improperly, but it's sometimes hard to keep track of everything in the Ununited Kingdoms. But it sure is amusing to try. 

                _______________________________________  

*Tea and scones play a role in the books as a treat or snack. Particularly at the Globe, "a late-night scone bar . . . that served top-quality scones until the clotted cream ran out or a fight started."

Book Review

Under the Whispering Door, by TJ Klune

• Where I bought this book: The Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, Colo.
• Why I bought this book: I enjoyed his previous novel, The House in the Cerulean Sea

* * * * * * *

    The main transfer station in the afterlife is a tea shop. With scones and a baker who enjoys blasting punk music on the radio.

    I can live (or die) happily with that thought. And Klune's novel, while a bit long-winded in parts, truth be told, is an  uplifting story about how we can overcome what life and death may throw at us. 

    Charon's Crossing Tea and Treats is a homey, if unnerving place. You are taken there after death by a reaper to meet people whose stated purpose is to help you cross over. But to where? That they don't say.

     You're upset, scared, and disbelieving. Eventually you meet the proprietor, one Hugo Freeman, who is mellow, soothing, and gentle. He offers you a cuppa tea, and calmly explains what happens next. You may or may not believe it. You may or may not need more time to figure things out.

    For Walter Price -- a meticulous, prideful, and implacable attorney in his life -- Hugo doesn't make a good first impression. Walter demands an end to the nonsense, and insists on leaving. When he does flee, he discovery why he should listen to those who know more..

    So he returns and winds up spending time with Hugo; Nelson, Hugo's wisecracking and wise ghost of a grandfather; Apollo, grandad's ghost dog, and Mei, the reaper who found Walter at his own funeral and brought him to Charon's Crossing. She's also the punk fan and scone-maker at the shop, and the force who holds everything together.

    We learn a lot about them, their lives, their loves, and their fantasies. A potential gay romance. Other characters come in and out, and while they add to the tale, their asppearance could have been shortened and written tighter.

    Walter is in the middle of all this -- sometimes exasperated, sometimes accepting, sometimes questioning. In life, he was a lawyer focused on the prize. In death, he's trying to figure it all out.

    And that's the genius of this novel -- like Walter, you'll yawn and wish you could slip past the parts in the middle. But by the end, you'll be wanting more. 

Black Friday: Books and tea

Although I am far from a shopping aficionado, I did have my own little excursion this Black Friday.

I drove some 60 miles from where I was visiting at my brother's house in upstate New York to my favorite small town -- Millerton, N.Y. -- to partake in tea and books.

My first stop was, of course, Harney & Sons tea shop. It's a great tea company with its headquarters in town, and it has a store/restaurant right on Main Street. While waiting for a table where I would soon order a cuppa and snack on scones, jam, and clotted cream, I perused the small shop and put in my semi-annual tea order.

Afterward, I strolled across the street to one of my favorite bookstores in the country, Oblong Books & Music. This store is a gem. It has a children's toy and book shop downstairs. Climb the stairs, past the Harry Potter Wall -- or enter from around the corner -- and you will find one of the widest array of books in the smallest of spaces. OK, it's not that small, but it is cozy.

And here is what I love about it: Instead of carrying dozens of copies of best sellers or books by authors one can find at your local Wal-Mart, the store will have a few volumes by hundreds of different writers, both well-known and those waiting to be found. I discovered the Irish writer Kevin Barry here. Last year, I found a compelling book, Submission, by Michel Houellebecq, on its shelves.

This year, I was pleased to find The Obama Inheritance in the store. Ever since I heard the review on NPR recently, I have searched in several bookstores but have been unable to find this treasure. All the stores claimed not to carry it, and I began to wonder: Was the book that told stories about the various conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama a conspiracy in itself? Barnes & Noble did confirm it existed, but mysteriously told me it was unavailable -- even on its website.

But now I hold a copy in my hands, and I am eager to start reading it.


But that's was only part of my haul. I also picked up Artemis, a story of moon colonization by Andy Weir, the author of Martian; Elmet, a Man Booker Prize finalist, by Fiona Mozley; and A Line Made by Walking, by Irish novelist Sara Baume.

The next day, while treating my daughter to her visit to The Drama Book Shop in midtown Manhattan -- where she hauled in her own collection of books -- I picked up Uncommon Type, the collection of short stories written by actor Tom Hanks.

Yep, I believe in shopping small and shopping local -- even if that local shopping is hundreds of miles from my home.