On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity & Getting Old

By Parker Palmer

Berrett-Koehler     2018

198 pages     Spiritual

Parker Palmer, author, poet, visionary, has been a part of the spiritual growth movement for almost forty years. I first met him when we read The Courage to Teach in an education group. Then I read A Hidden Wholeness in the church library. So, when my spiritual growth book club at church chose On the Brink of Everything as our January book,  I was so pleased. The group met today and the discussion was outstanding.

Parker Palmer is 80 years old—the same age as my husband—and I know how my husband felt on his 80^th birthday! Palmer believed he had at least one more book in him, so he created a compendium of essays he has written through the years. In On the Brink of Everything,  he explores how he is responding to this new era in his life, and he is not hesitant to express everything he is feeling--the  good and the bad. The essays and poems that he chose to include fit the several themes outlined at the beginning of each section. 

  

I embrace his feelings about aging. He says, “I like being old because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life—and a bracing breeze awakens me to new ways of understanding my own past, present, and future.” I honor his struggle with depression and his ability to speak about it with humor and understanding. I appreciate his candor when he announces his disdain for the current president in an essay called “The Soul of a Patriot.” I agree with his desire to reframe aging “as a passage of discovery and engagement, not decline and inactivity.”

I love how he wove his love of nature into every chapter of his book. I could very much relate, because I am finding that as I am aging, I love to just sit and observe the natural world. I love taking walks with my grandchildren and pointing out the little pieces of nature that could so easily pass us by. Besides that, Palmer loves to hike and canoe in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota—part of the world where I grew  up.

I enjoyed so much the self-deprecating humor with which he faces life—except for the righteous anger with which he deals with our broken political system. A lot of our discussion yesterday at book club was about people's fear of “the other.” His essay entitled “In Praise of Diversity” addresses this issue head on when he quotes Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people” and then goes on to say: “My hell is much more specific. It’s a place populated exclusively by straight white males over fifty who have college degrees and financial security—which is to say, people like me. For me, variety is more, much more, than the spice of life. It’s a basic ingredient of a life lived fully and well."
 

One of the best parts of On the Brink of Everything is the inclusion of a great deal of poetry, both Palmer’s and others. He closes each section with one of his poems—all beautiful, all meaningful. Several years ago Palmer began a collaboration with the singer Carrie Newcomer. I heard Newcomer in concert several years ago, and for some reason, I had not remembered that she frequently composed works using Palmer’s poetry for the lyrics. Her musical partnership with Palmer can be found here.  

This is an easy book to read in small bursts, but I suggest that you sit down with a pencil because you will find yourself underlining passages on nearly every page. The Publisher’s Weekly review closes with this astute observation; “Warm, generous, and funny, this impassioned book invites readers to the deep end of life where authentic soul work and human transformation become pressing concerns.”

Kidnapped on Safari

By Peter Riva

Skyhorse     2020

288 pages     Thriller

Kidnapped on Safari is number three in the Mbuno and Pero thriller series. The books primarily take place in East Africa. I began Kidnapped on Safari with a great deal of anticipation. After all, I’d been on safari! I’d read the #1 Ladies Detective Agency books! I’d been chased by an elephant mother protecting her baby! In many ways, the photo safari descriptions met my expectations, and the plot was definitely more than I expected.

Author Peter Riva has spent a great deal of time in Africa, and his intimate knowledge is very much in evidence in his novel, which is part mystery, part thriller, part espionage, and part terrorist plot. Pero is a wildlife television producer, and he has worked with Mbuno, an expert safari guide, for many years. On this particular filming adventure, they get word that Mbuno’s son has been kidnapped, so they set out to rescue him.

Pero and his buddy Mbuno have been through a lot together. “In the past two years or more, he (Pero) had been shot at, poisoned with radioactivity, landed in the hospital twice, and narrowly escaped major catastrophes that would also have affected his friends and hundreds of thousands of innocent people. He was proud of what he had helped achieve, but that did not diminish the terror he felt at the prospect of a repeated trial against an unknown enemy.” But nevertheless, he and Mbuno, as well as a small group of associates and an American operative, head out to find the young man—against amazing odds.

About half-way through the book,  the action thickens as the group heads across Tanzania to save Mbuno’s son but ultimately to save the country. The start of the book is a bit sluggish, but it ends with a race through the jungle on a hijacked train and includes the rescue of a group of kidnapped schoolgirls. The Publishers Weekly review calls it a “solid, if somewhat plodding, yarn.”

I love mysteries and thrillers that take me to places that I have been, places that I want to visit, or places I will never see in person. Kidnapped on Safari brought back a lot of memories of one of the great adventures of my life. I invite you to take this safari adventure for yourself.

Peter Riva’s website. Other books in this series include Murder on Safari and The Berlin Package.

The Dutch House

By Ann Patchett

Harper  2019

352 pages     Literary

The Dutch House is a novel whose impact stays with the reader long after she turns the last page. Or in the case of this reader, long after she turns off her Kindle.  It is an insightful look at what makes a family—is it blood, or is it care—and asks questions about the past and the impact of memory.

 Maeve and Danny Conroy are two children lost; they were lost when their mother leaves them and then further lost when their father marries a much younger woman with two daughters. Finally, they are lost when their father dies and they have only each other. Looming over it all is a house, the “Dutch House” as it is called.  

Danny Conroy tells the story through all the years, and the story weaves a bit from past to present and back again. Always, the story always  ends up at the Dutch House. Their father was a real estate entrepreneur. In his quest to buy and sell in the Philadelphia area in the mid-20^th century, he bought the Dutch House as a present for his wife. She hated the house; it was too big, too elaborate, too filled with someone else’s treasures. She finds herself lost  in the house, the marriage ends, and Mother leaves her children only to return when they are middle-aged adults. As Maeve says of their marriage, “Our father was a man who had never met his own wife.”

The house is named The Dutch House, because of its owners, the Van Hoebeek family. The street in front of the house is even named for the family. Nothing has changed in the house, the Van Hoebeek’s portraits are still over the mantle and all of their treasures remain in the house through all the decades of the story. When Danny and Maeve finely return to the inside of the home near the end of the book, they find the house exactly as they left it—immaculate and well-cared for by the same housekeeper that they knew and loved. It is then that Maeve is able to remove  the portrait that hung opposite the Van Hoebeek’s. It is a portrait of herself as a ten-year-old; thus, the cover of the book.

There is the aspect of the fairy tale to the narrative. Andrea (i.e. the wicked stepmother) marries the father and brings along her two daughters thus invoking a Cinderella-like aspect to the lives of Maeve and Danny. When the new step-family “invades” the Conroy family, Maeve is exiled to a third-floor bedroom, giving up her lovely room for her two step-sisters. She invokes The Little Princess, warning the girls that she will not be their servant. Finally, after they are kicked out of the house when their father dies, Danny and Maeve are always trying to get home, just like Hansel and Gretel.

However, the fairytale aspect of the narrative does not diminish the power of the story. It is, at its heart, about family—what makes family, who makes family, and why is family all there is. Also, it attempts to deal with the questions about how much the past determines our future. I had a discussion last night with a young woman who told me that her birth father was trying to get back into her life, and she wasn’t sure where to put all the feelings surrounding this issue. I wanted to tell her about Danny Conroy and all his conflicted feelings when his mother reentered his life. 

Patchett is an incredible writer. Over and over, I found myself underlining passages that were profound, meaningful, and incredibly well written. The NPR reviewer suggests that The Dutch House was written by an author “who embodies compassion.” Danny is so lost in his past, his mother’s leaving, his father’s seeming indifference, his exile from the Dutch House, that he has trouble living in the present, even as he has a wife and children. He continues to ask, “What kind of person leaves their kids?” long after he should have moved on. Yet, Patchett’s writing makes us cry out in compassion for Danny and his family. Give them some peace. Help them let go of the life they didn’t have. Help them move on.

Here is a good interview of Ann Patchett. The Dutch House appeared on many lists of the best books of 2019. I am sure that it will go on my list of best books of 2020.

   

The Wives

By Tarryn Fisher

Graydon House     2019

336 pages     Domestic Thriller

Why, why, why are there so many books with unreliable narrators? And. . . .are there ever mysteries where the unreliable narrator is a man? Well, I guess there are, but most of the unreliable narrators I have read during the course of this blog have been female; i.e. The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window, or Speaking of Summer.

Thursday is the narrator of The Wives, and boy is she ever unreliable! She is a nurse married to a businessman named Seth. Seth, we find out very early, is married to three women—two in Portland, and Thursday in Seattle. Seth has business in both places. Thursday knew this about Seth when she married him. She calls the other two wives Monday and Tuesday because those are the days when Seth is with those women, and that is all Thursday knows about them. Seth comes from a family of polygamists, but he is not interested in a sister wife situation, and over the span of several years, he has done a good job keeping all lives separate.

Thursday becomes quite restless with this marriage situation for several reasons: she is tired of only seeing Seth one day a week (Thursday, of course); she is curious about the Monday and Tuesday wives, and she has recently suffered a disastrous miscarriage that has left her unable to have children. Her world begins to fall apart. At this point, the book takes a sharp turn that is frankly not surprising. The Kirkus reviewer says, “It’s all a bit over the top, but Fisher is a slick writer who keeps a tight reign on her lightning-fast plot, and the lengths that her feisty narrator goes to in order to reclaim her life.”

I have a huge pile of to-be-read books, and the number of interesting books coming out in January is intense. Occasionally, while I was reading The Wives, I asked myself why I kept spending time on this domestic thriller, but it is to the author’s credit that I kept reading. Today, I reached the point of no return, and I spent the entire afternoon turning pages as fast as I could. The conclusion is shocking, and satisfying all at the same time!

Although Thursday is not an appealing protagonist, Fisher is able to portray her so that the reader doesn’t hate her. Sometimes she seems very aware of the crisis she is creating, but other times she is totally out of control. At one point Thursday muses, “We busy ourselves trying not to be lonely, trying to find purpose in careers, and lovers, and children, but at any moment, those things we work so hard to possess could be taken from us.” She feels that “the whole world is as fragile and lonely as I am.” Besides that, Seth, her husband, is a first-class jerk!

Tarryn Fisher is the author of ten novels. Her website says that she “writes about villains.” Love that!

               

The Best of 2019

Happy New Year everyone. I just finished my tenth year of blogging about the books that I have read. I had thought that I would quit after ten years, but my list of TBR is very long, and I have several publishers and publicists depending (?) on me. So, I guess I will keep it going.

This was a good year for literary fiction, but not such a good year for mysteries and spiritual books. I read two historical nonfiction books I really liked, but the rest seems like a blur. So, here it goes: The best of 2019.

My Favorite Book of the Year

Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout. I think I loved Olive Again so much because I identified so thoroughly with Olive. I knew this old woman with sarcasm always on her lips and a heart full of love.

Other Literary Fiction I loved (in no particular order)

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. Odie tells the story of 1932, a year in his childhood in Minnesota when his life was totally upended. It is an adventure tale, but one filled with hope.

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. This was humor writing at its best—a great story told with humor and pathos.

Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Aker. A tough look at marriage and divorce. It is a meditation on the joys of marriage as well as its fragility.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Of course, this was the biggest fiction bestseller of the year. I absolutely loved the story of the girl making her way alone in the marshlands of North Carolina.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. The Kalamazoo Community Read for 2019,  this book will stay with me forever. It is powerful and devastating.

Two Good Thrillers (not a stellar year for mysteries or thrillers.)

Watching You by Lisa Jewel. Everyone is watching everyone else in this British thriller, making it very suspenseful.

An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. These two women are a great team. Their books are page turners. They have a new book coming out in March, You Are Not Alone.

Historical Nonfiction at Its Best. Both of these books were read-alouds with my husband.

The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch. A great deal of relatively unknown information about a Revolutionary War plot to end the rebellion that is told in a fascinating way.

The Pioneers: The Heroic story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough. We really loved this book, and we are planning a trip to the early settlements along the Ohio River to visit the sites in the book.

Well dear readers. If you continue to read my blog, I will continue to read and write about the books that come into my life.