One Italian Summer

by Rebecca Serle

Atria     2022

272 pages     Magical Realism

As I am writing this, I am looking out the window on the Gulf Cost in Alabama, but dreaming of the Amalfi coast, the setting for One Italian Summer. It was the perfect book to read on vacation, because I was able to spend a great deal of time thinking about my relationship to my mother, when I was a young woman.

Kate Silver and her mother, Carol, had made plans and purchased tickets to visit the beautiful village of Positano, Italy. Positano was Carol’s favorite place, and she really wanted to share the beauty with her daughter, but after several months of suffering, Carol died. As a way to assuage her grief, Kate decides to leave her husband Eric and take the trip by herself to try to understand who she is without her mother, who had been her rock. She muses: “I cannot yet conceive of a world without her, what that will look like, who I am in her absence.”

Once she arrives, Kate is overwhelmed by the beauty of Positano and begins to follow the plans that her mother has laid out. She feels a little guilty about leaving Eric, who has been another constant in her life, but one of the goals for her trip was to decide what their relationship will be going forward. The views, the restaurants, and the hiking paths immediately call to her, and she begins to find some peace. Shockingly, she meets a young woman named Carol, who is 30, and Kate is sure that this is her mother as a young woman. As the two women become fast friends, Kate’s confusion is palpable. How is this possible? To add to her stress and confusion, Kate meets a businessman named Adam, to whom she is immediately attracted. How is this going to play out?

The plot is somewhat predictable, once the reader understands that Serle specializes in magical realism. It did intrigue me enough to keep turning the pages, but I found that the real strength of the books lies in the character development. We learn so much about Kate through her narration; young Carol is also strong, and you can’t help but be as attracted to Adam as Kate is.

The most important aspect of the book for me was the strength of the bond between Kate and her mother. My relationship with my mother was quite different from Kate’s, but I have watched a similar relationship between my sister and her daughters. My daughter and I have a very strong relationship, but I work hard not to offer too much advice. The book certainly caused me a lot of thought and contemplation about familial relationships.

The other aspect that I appreciated was my introduction to limoncello, an Italian drink that Kate learns to appreciate. I bought a bottle to see how I would like it—and indeed I did. A little bit goes a long way! 

This is my first book by Rebecca Serle, but I very much liked her poetic word choices and the delightful way in which she introduces the reader to magical realism. I scratched my head several times trying to figure out how in the world Kate could have met her mother as a young woman. When the reason emerges, it was obvious—and wonderful.

I loved the final comment from the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer, “Once again, Serle gets the job done just fine.” And indeed, she did. One Italian Summer will be released next Tuesday.

The Best We Could Do

 By Thi Bui

Abrams Comicarts     2018

344 pages     Graphic Memoir    

Not too long ago, I was exposed to the concept of inherited trauma, identified in the children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors. (Here is an article that discusses the concept.) Certainly the graphic memoir The Best We Could Do perfectly describes inherited trauma. The book is a fascinating look at Thi Bui’s family history leading up to their migration from Viet Nam to the United States and the years following their arrival. Notes on the book suggest that the book is about “the search for a better future and a longing for the past.” She indicated that the stories her parents told her “cast a shadow over her life.” Creating this graphic memoir helped her make sense of the trauma, and when she had her own son, she intended to filter out the trauma “so she could pass on something cleaner.”

Thi Bui is an illustrator and writer, best known for this haunting memoir, which is the Kalamazoo Public Library Community Read for 2022. It is a fascinating choice, and the author will be in Kalamazoo in March. The Best We Could Do tells the story of Bui’s birth and early years in war-torn Viet Nam and the family’s daring escape after the fall of South Viet Nam in the 1970s. In part, the narrative helps Thi Bui understand her father’s mental health  issues as well as her own struggles as a new mother. By drawing the story of her mother’s life, she probes deeply into the divisions that society creates. By seeking to remember the family’s struggles adapting to culture of the United States, she appreciates the bubble her parents created to keep the Vietnamese culture alive in their children’s lives. All of this Bui tells through compelling pictures and poetic text.

The illustrated memoir is the perfect vehicle for Bui to tell her story. She is greatly talented and I could not take my eyes off the pictures. In an interview with NPR, Bui says she sought to “weave the personal and the political and the historical to tell a story of the Viet Nam War and all the things that caused it, in a way that I felt like I hadn’t seen before.” Indeed she has done just that. The story of the war is compelling, in part because it comes from the Vietnamese perspective rather than the American soldier perspective.

I also was very intrigued by the comparison of The Best We Could Do with Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Currently Maus and the retelling of the trauma of the Holocaust is the brunt of a censorship battle in public schools across the country, and I am curious to know if Bui’s book could undergo the same kind of scrutiny. Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis faced the same kind of scrutiny in 2012, and I wrote about the banning  here and here. I am hopeful that this book can get through the community read events without facing censorship. I had thought that my 10-year-old granddaughter who loves graphic novels, would read it with me and then attend the presentation with me, but as I read the book, I realized that perhaps 5^th grade is a little early for the book, although I think it would be very appropriate for middle and high school students.

My trip in 2018 to Vietnam and Cambodia was an eye-opening experience for me, primarily in the understanding of resilience and growth. The Vietnamese are beautiful people, and as they are presented by Thi Bui, worthy of all that the world can offer them.  I highly recommend The Best We Could Do.

 

Paris Noir: The Suburbs

 Edited by Hervé DeLouche

Akashic     2022

280 pages           Noir

Why did the Baroness engage in the drug trade? “I wanted to spice up my life.” 

Why do I read noir fiction, especially the noir that comes from the Akashic Noir Series? Because I want to spice up my life! I am not sure, however, that this particular iteration of the series, Paris Noir: The Suburbs, will spice up life too much. Dirty, gritty, and crime-laden, indeed the stories are that, but I was disappointed that they were not very intriguing or immersive. Not even the story about the Baroness. Having just read and reviewed Palm Springs Noir, which I really enjoyed, I was a bit disappointed. 

The editor says that the goal of the book “was to depict the Parisian suburbs in all their plurality and diversity.” Thus, the editor elected to let the authors pick the suburb they wanted to depict in the story each had in mind. The stories in these settings are not the cozy neighborhoods Americans connect with the term “suburb”, but factory sites, run-down apartments, and neighborhood dives. The editor says, “When the suburbs are dumping grounds for the excluded, they breed insulted and rebellious individuals.” Many of the characters in the stories are just that—few are appealing at all.

It was hard to get involved in the thirteen stories in the anthology. If you want to delve into the Akashic Noir series, I would not start with Paris Noir: The Suburbs. The Publishers Weekly reviewer suggests that “this entry in this acclaimed series is only average at best.”

I am moving on to Denver Noir, which will be coming out soon. At least, the scenery there is beautiful.