The Turnout

 By Megan Abbott

G.P. Putnam’s Sons         2021

352 pages     Thriller

It has been several days since I finished reading The Turnout by Megan Abbott, and the book is still haunting me! Abbott writes, “Ballet was full of dark fairy tales.” And for Marie and Dara Durant the fairy tale darkness comes true as they prepare their young ballet students for this year’s coming production of the Nutcracker. Marie, Dara, and Dara’s husband Charlie run the school that the girls’ mother started in the 1980s. Charlie was a dancer, but because of a variety of injuries, he can no longer dance. The three live in the same house that the family has owned for years and teach in the building that has been the studio since the beginning. This is the foundation for the "dark fairy tales."

Marie is at odds with her sister and husband and has moved to the attic of the studio to live. The heater she is using causes a fire which burns one of the studios just as the Nutcracker practices begin in earnest. The insurance agent recommends Derek, a local contractor, to do the repairs, and Derek invades the space, the lives, and the minds of Marie, Dara, and Charlie. Tension builds, illusions are shattered, and lives are destroyed.

The Kirkus reviewer says that “the mesmerizing prose will keep you turning the pages.” Abbott does a spectacular job of setting the scene. For example, after Derek begins the work on the ruined studio, she writes, “All day there were thunderous tremors from Studio B, the floors coming up, leaving a haze of debris. The old planks like matchsticks, the smell of mold, mice. The silt from decades of young girls: stray earring studs, hair elastics, dusted ribbons, Band-Aids curled with browned blood.” Every moment is filled with these captivating images.

 While there is no murder to solve, the plot is surprisingly propulsive. Abbott knows a lot about ballet, and while the main plot concerns the relationship between the ballet studio owners and Derek, the contractor, the sub-plot of putting together the Nutcracker ballet with all the tryouts, the practices, the pre-teen girl drama, the injuries, and the costuming is enlightening and repulsive at the same time. I don’t believe that I will ever look at ballet lessons and/or The Nutcracker with the same eyes again. One reviewer notes, “For all its beauty, ballet can be born out of pain.” Abbott explores that concept relentlessly, and the reader moves from fond childhood Nutcracker memories to visions of turned ankles, spiteful girls, and unraveled dreams.

Last week, I had a timeout trip to the family cottage on Lake Michigan. The Turnout was the book I took with me to read. I knew it had been well reviewed, and I felt that it would be an excellent respite book. I was in and out of the house all day and took several walks—every time the tension in the book got to be more than I could stand. It was about 10:30 at night when other family members arrived. According to my Kindle I was 97% through the book. How dare they come when I was this close to getting some final closure on the horrifying events! I excused myself as quickly as I could and retreated to my bedroom to bring the whole sordid affair to the end.

Here is a fascinating interview with Megan Abbott on the Book Page website.

Just published, The Turnout is on many lists of the best books of summer 2021. 

The Book of Eels

 By Patrik Svensson

Ecco     2019

245 pages     Nature

What! I read a book about eels? Who would imagine that could happen? And what’s more—I read it for our book group.

Even more—I loved it!

As I began to read the book, I researched the author, Patrik Svensson, who is a journalist based in Malmo, Sweden. That amazed and surprised me, because I had just finished reading and reviewing Alexander McCall Smith’s Detective Varg book, The Man with the Silver Saab. Detective Varg is based in Malmo, Sweden. What a remarkable coincidence, even though McCall Smith’s book didn’t mention eels.

When reading The Book of Eels, you ponder three topics: the science of eels; the history of the study of eels; and Svensson’s childhood memories of fishing for eels with his father.

Here are things that I learned that I never had known before about eels, because, frankly,  I had never thought about eels—not once in my life. Nor had I ever seen an eel or eaten eel—although apparently my friend Jan has. Although I did eat a tarantula when I was in Cambodia, but that’s another story.

1)      European and American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea, which in case you didn’t know, is a portion of the Atlantic Ocean. Svensson says, “The Sargasso Sea is like a dream: you can rarely pinpoint the moment you enter or exit; all you know is that you’ve been there.” For my part, I didn’t know there was such a place as the Sargasso Sea.

2)      There are four stages in the life of the eel. They are: willow leaf (tiny little things) when they leave the Sargasso Sea and head a thousand miles or more to European or American waters. Next stage is the glass eel. This is what they are when they arrive in fresh water rivers and streams. They are yellow eels for the majority of their lives, which can be 30-50 years. Glass eels are aged eels who return to the Sargasso Sea of their birth to procreate before they die.

3)      Scientists through the ages have pondered the existence of eels and the mysteries surrounding them. Svensson says, “Science has come up against many mysteries, but few have proven as intractable and difficult to solve as the eel. . .Somewhere in the darkness and mud, the eel has managed to hide away from human knowledge.” Among the many unsolved mysteries has been the lack of understanding about how they procreate.

4)      Many famous scientists have studied eels, including Aristotle, Freud, and Rachel Carson.

5)      Eel fishermen and women are a breed apart as well. Svensson remembers with great love and respect fishing with his father as well as attending eel festivals and visiting eel fishing sites. This is the memoir part of the book, and Svensson dos a great job of binding together the science and the history into the memoir as well as engaging the reader in a lot of metaphysical musings.

Here is something that amused me as I was reading The Book of Eels. When I would mention to someone that I was reading about eels, nearly everyone would ask me if I had seen the recent documentary about an octopus, My Octopus Teacher, which won the 2021 Oscar for best documentary. It can be viewed on Netflix. I can understand the connection; both the movie and the book are about elusive animals and about the mystery surrounding them.

The book was a New York Times notable book for 2020. Here is the review. The reviewer called it “strange and nerdy”

Since I read the book, I have come across several interviews with Svensson and several You Tube videos about eels. I think its quite remarkable that this book has developed such a following and expansion of the study of eels. I am so grateful to the member of our book group who introduced me to this wonder of a book. 

Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old

 By Richard J. Leider & David Shapiro

Berrett-Koehler     2021

145 pages     Self-Help

“Everyone is getting older; not everyone is growing older.” This is the premise of a compact, but profound look at aging. The authors, Leider and Shapiro, have been friends for many years. They are intrigued by their own aging as well as the concept of aging in general, and offer a guidebook to thinking about the process, without offering definitive conclusions. My husband and I used the book as our morning reading exercise, taking turns reading and then discussing what we read.

If we have fewer outward responsibilities, the authors propose, then we should have greater inner growth. This has been one of the concepts that my husband and I have struggled with for several years. The struggle has never been more pronounced than when we were reading this book. My husband has always felt that he would work at his business forever. Yet, now that he is in his 80s, he has begun to rethink his purpose. Each day, as we read, he considered some alternatives; finally he announced that he was going to stop working on Fridays. I almost fell over with surprise. Now we will see if he is going to follow the plan.

On the other hand, I have been completely retired from my career as a librarian for several years, and this year, I retired from my editing business. The retirement was very short-lived, because family members needed covid-related help with children. I felt lucky that my schedule was flexible enough that I could help out. The points made in Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old helped me in my decision-making. One of the authors’ points is that often retirees feel a loss of relevance. Lucky for me, I still feel very relevant.

Finally, the last chapters of the book concern death and dying, and we were able to have some significant conversations about what we still wanted to do, but also how we felt about dying. There are excellent discussion questions in the last chapter: “1) What do you think happens when you die? 2) How would you like to die? 3) What gifts do you want to leave the world before you die?” These questions offered us several hours of thought and discussion. As we read each morning, we felt our relationship grow closer and our conversations become more significant. We would certainly encourage couples to have these discussions. I am very grateful to the authors for opening these doors for us. I appreciated their personal stories as well as the people they quoted. The final discussion questions are excellent.

“The path of purposeful aging is a choice to wake up every day with the intention to grow and give.”

An interview with the authors.

 

The Man with the Silver Saab

 By Alexander McCall Smith

Pantheon     2021

256 pages           Mystery (?)

I am not at all sure in which genre to place The Man with the Silver Saab, and indeed, any of the writings of Alexander McCall Smith. In seeking out the answer to that question, I noticed that few of the reviewers had the same classification. Some placed it in mystery, some in humor, and some in satire. I might place it in philosophy because McCall Smith infuses his philosophy of life into every aspect of the narration.

This particular series, the Detective Varg series, takes place in the Swedish city of Malmo, where Ulf Varg is the head of the Department of Sensitive Crimes. The Man with the Silver Saab is the third book in the series, but the reader can drop in anywhere. (That’s part of the genius of McCall Smith.) Although we never truly understand what constitutes a “sensitive crime,” we end up loving Ulf Varg, especially as he deals with a very boring colleague, as well as with the colleague for whom he has romantic feelings.

The reader quickly finds that the plot is secondary to the musings of the characters and the laugh-out-loud humor that infuses every moment of the plot. I genuinely laughed out loud several times and was emotionally touched at other times. An example of this occurred when Varg was looking out the window. He noticed a man and woman walking down the street. Their pace changed when the man took the woman’s arm. It appeared to Varg that they belonged together. “That was security; that was completeness. And then two young men came along, walking behind them, and one of the young men suddenly put an arm around the other, and Ulf thought: that is exactly the same thing.” It is this type of narration that warms the heart of the reader and expresses the soul of the author. There is a sensitive crime, to be sure, a strange situation with a painting and the art expert who believes his life is being damaged because of bad publicity. And here is a picture of a silver Saab, similar to the one Varg drives, in case you, like me, had no idea what a Saab looks like.

The Man with the Silver Saab is a perfect read for warm summer days and a foil against disturbing daily media. McCall Smith says in an interview with the Scottish newspaper, The Herald: “I, like most people, want to be uplifted and presented with a vision of the world that has some hope in it. I believe in being positive – what’s the point of being negative? It doesn’t improve life. I don’t want to be a Pollyanna claiming everything is wonderful, but we should leave room in life for the positive and uplifting.”

Not much more needs to be said about The Man with the Silver Saab except to escape into its pages. Publisher’s Weekly suggests that the plot is “gossamer thin” and “almost irrelevant. The novel’s pleasures lie in Ulf’s philosophical asides and comments on how to live a good, just life.” You will be uplifted and will contemplate how Ulf lives a life that is filled with kindness and civility while solving sensitive crimes. Oh, and you will discover how a veterinarian could possible sew the nose of a dog upside down after the dog has been attacked by a squirrel.

I have read—and I am sure you have as well—several books in the many series of Alexander McCall Smith. He wrote and published 7 books during the pandemic, including a new entry in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, my personal favorite.

Great American Road Trips Scenic Drives

 Readers Digest  2020

191 pages     Travel

I returned recently from a trip to my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, where my grandchildren and I had ventured up the North Shore Scenic Drive, one of the scenic drives featured in Reader’s Digest’s lovely Great American Road Trips Scenic Drives. Imagine my pleasure when I returned home to find a copy of the book waiting for me, sent by the publicist. 

Beautiful photographs lure the reader into marvelous vistas and not-to-be-missed sites. I immediately searched out the section on the North Shore Scenic Drive that we had just visited. We had been on Highway 61 on a dramatically beautiful day, eaten at Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors, jetted down the alpine slide in Lutsen, saw the Split Rock Lighthouse on the horizon, and let Gooseberry Falls wash over us. It had been a glorious day, so it was fun to read the narrator’s take on the drive that I knew so well. What is not told is the magnificence of the city of Duluth, which on the three nice days of the year is the most beautiful city in America.  

I then went to the Table of Contents and checked off all of the scenic roads I had traveled, and it was a nostalgic pleasure to read about all the wonderful places I had been—17 I think. I especially enjoyed remembering the Heart of the Palouse outside of Spokane, which a friend drove us on. (We had not known a thing about the Palouse before our ride.) I also loved our visit to Door County, Wisconsin, and Monument Valley in Arizona and Utah.

Several years ago, my sister gave us the book, The Most Scenic Drives in America, a detailed look at 120 drives all over the United States. It was published in 1997 by Reader’s Digest. The current book, Great American Road Trips Scenic Drives, is more compact and easier to handle than the older version. The book gave me renewed interest in taking a scenic autumn trip to the Central Adirondack Trail in New York this year.

Read this book and get inspired! Happy trails to you!

Truth is in The House

 By Michael J. Coffino

Koehlerbooks     2021

355 pages     Literary

We seldom, if ever, notice how one life can parallel another. In his first novel, Michael Coffino, a California attorney and high school basketball coach, narrates the story of two men who keep “running into each other,” first as boys, then young soldiers, as adults, and finally as retirees. Here is a summary of the plot. The subtitle indicates that the novel was inspired by true events.

As a young boy in the late 1950s, Jimmy O'Farrell emigrates with his family from Ireland to Manhattan to bask in the dawn of a new life. Thousands of miles away, the family of Jaylen Jackson seeks to build a life amid Jim Crow culture in Mississippi. As teenagers, both boys struggle to come of age in a racially divisive world, suffering horrific tragedies that shape their characters and life missions. Jimmy seeks to define what it means to stand for someone when the chips are down, while Jaylen embarks on a journey to gain respect beyond the color of his skin. 

Fleeing the past, both families land in neighboring Bronx communities in the 1960s, where Jimmy and Jaylen's lives first intersect, on the basketball courts and then in the Vietnam jungle. Repeatedly tested as men of different races, their friendship faces its toughest challenge outside a Bronx bar-with fatal consequences. Truth Is in the House is an epic and provocative tale that plumbs historical and modern racial themes and explores redemption, forgiveness, and the power of connecting through the human spirit.

 

Here are several things that I appreciated about the book. I especially liked the love and care expressed by the parents of Jimmy and Jaylen. They were clear in the ways in which they wanted their children to succeed in life and tried very hard to shield their children from hardships and tragedy, even though both young men were exposed to and lived through both hardship and tragedy. Both boys were taught a work ethic by their parents. And finally, both men were loving and caring grandparents in their older years—something I could very well relate to.

 

And I loved reading about the sports. I was especially taken by the chapter about the 1960 World Series between the Yankees and the Pirates. Jimmy and his father bonded by listening to the final game on the radio. (I suppose I got a kick out of this particular story because I remember listening to that game during my civics class at my high school in Minnesota. What a great teacher to let us listen!) Sports continues to play a large role in the lives of the characters throughout the novel.

 

The language Coffino chooses to use in the novel is quite erudite, with some of the dialogue a bit stilted and uncomfortable. He gets his message across sometimes by hitting us over the head with the point he is trying to make. Coffino is better at narrating the settings and the plot, and I really appreciated the arrangement of the chapters. I always knew who and what the upcoming chapter was going to be about. I also appreciated the striking cover.

 

Through the plot and the narration, the author’s views on the racial divide come shining through, and were very much appreciated. I kept thinking of Caste by Isabel Wilkerson that I am currently reading and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates that I read several years ago. These books plus Truth is in The House have given me a new perspective on the world of racial differences in which we live. What really shines in Truth is in The House is the humanity we share, no matter our origins or our life circumstances.

 

The author’s website. I thank the publicist for offering me a copy of the book. It is published this month. 

Anxious People

 By Fredrik Backman

Atria Books     2020

352 pages     Literary

As Fredrik Backman asserts at the beginning of Anxious People, “This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”

I had just begun reading Anxious People when a book club friend said that she hated the book and couldn’t wait to finish it. “Too much stupid stuff happening in one day.” I, on the other hand, was laughing my head off at the ridiculous stuff that was happening, and the character study that was emerging.

An apartment-viewing goes horribly wrong on the day before New Year’s Eve in a small Swedish town. A bank robber had just tried to rob a cashless bank. Confused and scared, the robber ran into a neighboring apartment building where a viewing is in progress. The robber proceeds to hold all the viewers hostage. Besides the realtor, there is an older couple who buy and sell apartments, a young Lesbian couple looking for a home before their baby is born, a middle-aged well-to-do woman, and an old woman whose husband is parking the car. A father and son pair of policemen are first on the scene. What transpires is both hysterically funny and very introspective. And—oh yes—a bridge across the road from the apartment building plays a crucial role in the plot.

Backman is a master of creating interesting characters. We grow to know all the characters intimately, including their back stories, the reasons why they were viewing this particular apartment, and why they are such idiots. He has written several best sellers, including A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie was Here, and Beartown. Tom Hanks is going to star in the American movie version of A Man Called Ove. I am not sure that I have read many books where the characters are so well-defined and interesting. His commentary about human nature in the first chapter of Anxious People is only matched by his closing comments, when he thanks all the people who influenced the creation of the book.

Apparently suicide is something Backman has pondered in several of  his books, and I was especially taken by this quote: “So we learn to pretend, all the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else. We pretend we’re normal. . . Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours. Sometimes we panic because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don’t know how, because it’s so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.”

My book club had a lively discussion about Anxious People last night. We talked about characters, motivation, and the idiocy of the entire scenario. We all felt that Anxious People was a remarkable book. This morning one club member sent everyone this article, which we all felt, explained Backman’s gifts. The author says “ All of Backman’s books focus on the amazingly complicated, beautiful, funny, unexpected, and sometimes tragic experience that we call life while featuring quirky characters that try to do their best at living it. That’s exactly where the magic of these books lies.”

I also appreciated the review in USA Today. Apparently Anxious People has been optioned for a movie. It should be great!