Columbus Noir

Edited by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Akashic Books     2020

284 pages     Noir/Short Stories

Columbus, Ohio, is a city that I know fairly well. My son, his wife, and my grandchildren lived there for several years when the children were young, and I currently have a niece and a nephew who live there, as well. So, the neighborhoods are familiar to me—especially German Village, which houses The Book Loft, one of the largest independent bookstores in the country.

Thus, I approached Columbus Noir, the new edition of the Akashic’s noir series with anticipation. The introduction was very appealing. The book’s editor is a journalist and author, and I really enjoyed his introduction to the idea of the ordinariness of Columbus, a concept that apparently no longer exists. He says, “Those who consider the old Columbus a comfy couch conveniently ignore the guns and knives that were hidden under the pillows.”

The collection contains 14 stories from 14 authors, including Welsh-Huggins. While the stories range in both content and quality, the most common aspects are sex and greed. Of course, some of the stories take place at Ohio State University, the pride of the state and the arch nemesis of the University of Michigan. Two of the stories introduce the reader to The Satin Fox, which must be a notorious strip club.

A story by Daniel Best is a great introduction to the well-known Short North neighborhood, and Welsh-Huggins story concerns the governor and his security guard/driver. The governor is on the short list to be Vice President, and his philandering must be covered up. A great story, by the way.

There is a very good interview with Welsh-Huggins in the Columbus Monthly. About Columbus as a setting for noir fiction, Welsh-Huggins says, “Columbus is the perfect noir package. On the ‘good’ side we have iconic neighborhoods, a diverse population, a strong economy and all our foodie and arts and fashion trend-setting. On the ‘bad’ side we struggle with opioids, street violence and political corruption. To top it off, we have a chip on our shoulders after decades of being looked down upon as ‘Cowtown,’ which sometimes makes us overeager to reach for the stars, with all the light and dark consequences of such striving.”

It's been my pleasure to review several of the Akashic Noir books over the past couple of years, and I have several more coming up. I like them because I am so curious as to the variety of interpretations of the term “noir, “ the variety of settings, and the vast numbers of authors who have contributed.

Here are some of my reviews: Montana Noir, Nairobi Noir, Vancouver Noir, Milwaukee Noir.

Little Fires Everywhere

By Celeste Ng

Penguin Press     2017

352 pages     Literary Fiction

Occasionally—and unfortunately too occasionally—you begin a book that you realize is brilliantly written almost immediately. That is the case of Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Ng tells us the end of the story in the first chapter, and then, in back and forth chapters, the entire story comes into view. 

The setting is Shaker Heights, Ohio, a wealthy Cleveland suburb, filled with educated, wealthy parents and privileged kids. Two of the three families in focus are the quintessential Shaker Heights families. The Richardsons have four children—all teenagers. The other Shaker Heights family, the McCulloughs, are fostering an abandoned Chinese baby and want to adopt her. Into this established middle class atmosphere comes the Warrens, Mia and Pearl, who are anything but establishment people. Mia is a photographer and artist, and she and her teenage daughter Pearl have lived all over the country. They rent a duplex from the Richardsons, and Mia promises her daughter that they will stay in this community until Pearl graduates from high school. Pearl becomes fascinated by the Richardson family and what she sees as their normal and ordinary life, and she desperately seeks to be part of that kind of life. As the book begins, there is a fire in the Richardson’s house. The rest of the book tells the story of what brought about the fire, who started it, and why.

There are many fires smoldering throughout the novel. One important fire is the controversy caused by the little Chinese baby, and the white family who wants her. In a moment of weakness, the Chinese mother has left her at the fire station, but now she wants the baby back. The McCulloughs, have fallen in love with the little girl, although controversy swirls in the community over whether a white family can successfully raise a child of another race. From my perspective as the grandmother of several adopted grandchildren, I did not find that this was overtly as racist as some reviewers complained. I felt that it was just part of the dialogue.

In my mind, however, motherhood is the major theme of the book—motherhood in many forms. Elena Richardson, for example, is seldom called Elena—always Mrs. Richardson. “She had been brought up to follow rules, to believe that the proper functioning of the world depended upon her compliance…” Mrs. Richardson has a job; she is a reporter for the local newspaper. But she has never made journalism a career—her career is a housewife and mother. She does know how to investigate,  and as she meets Mia, she becomes more than curious about Mia, the photographer, and Mia, the mother. She decides to investigate Mia’s background and what brought her to have such a nomadic life.

Mia has a huge back story, much of it hinging on her motherhood—how she got and kept Pearl. This makes her sympathetic to the Chinese mother, Bebe Chow, and the circumstances by which she abandoned her baby daughter. Mia’s empathy also helps her to mother Izzy Richardson, the fourth Richardson child, who is neither understood nor validated by her mother. She doesn’t fit the mold that her mother has so carefully defined. Truly, Izzy is one of the most interesting characters in the book, and I would love to know more about what happened to her after she ran away.

Other aspects of motherhood play lesser roles, including unplanned pregnancies and abortions, and the overwhelming desire of the childless to become parents. All contribute to the smoldering sparks of fire.

The little fires all become big fires at the climax of Little Fires Everywhere. I loved that Ng didn’t solve everything in neat and tidy ways. The ending is messy, just like life is messy. She has provided us with the moral dilemmas that affect most families to some degree or another. Mia sums it up as she confronts Mrs. Richardson. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” Why anyone would choose a different life from the one you’ve got? . . . It terrifies you. That you missed out on something. That you gave up something you didn’t know you wanted.”

The reader is left thinking about the life decisions that she made, the moral dilemmas presented during her lifetime, and the little fires that still smolder. The New York Times reviewer says that Little Fires Everywhere is an “utterly engrossing, often heartbreaking, deeply empathetic experience.”

Little Fires Everywhere has deservedly been on the best seller list for several weeks. I believe that Celeste Ng has a huge career ahead of her. Can't wait for her next book.

Hillbilly Elegy: A memoir of a family and culture in crisis

by J.D. Vance

HarperCollins     2016

264 pages     Memoir

I began seeing J.D. Vance on the news circuit in the weeks prior to the election. He represented the white working class voters among the pundits and the talking heads on CNN and explained to television audiences why his "people" voted for Donald Trump. He was an eloquent spokesperson for the conservative voters that the "liberal elite" have had a hard time understanding. In an interview, he said, "for those of us lucky enough to live the American Dream, the demons of a life we left behind continue to chase us."

He begins Hillbilly Elegy by saying that he finds it ludicrous that anyone would be reading his book, because he hadn't done anything "great in his life." But those of us reading his book find that he has done something quite remarkable. He has laid bare the life of the working poor in a way that builds understanding and acceptance. 

Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, just up the road from my sister's house in West Chester, Ohio, but it might as well be a world away. Vance's family moved en masse from Kentucky to work in the steel mills of Middletown, making more money than they could have in the hills of Kentucky, but then the jobs went away and misery ensued. The strong social ethic of the hills stayed with those transplants, and that social ethic continues to be the driving force in their lives.

Vance was raised by his grandparents and an older sister because his mother couldn't get her life together enough to care for him. His grandparents fiercely protected him, pushed him, prodded him, and threatened him. “The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future — that if they’re lucky, they’ll manage to avoid welfare; and if they’re unlucky, they’ll die of a heroin overdose.” He nearly didn't graduate from high school, but following graduation, he enlisted in the Marines and served in Iraq. Following his military service, he attended Ohio State and Yale Law School. Today, at 31,  he is a business executive, married and living in Silicon Valley.

In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance tells the difficult story of his upbringing,  and as he probes for us (and even more importantly, for himself) how he survived and figured out how to thrive, we liberal intellectuals begin to understand how those people around us, like J.D. and his family, came to feel disenfranchised and thus elected a billionaire populist to the presidency. My husband said that the book helped him understand why Michigan's rural areas went pretty solidly for Trump.

I asked my husband what he had learned from reading Hillbilly Elegy. He said that he was struck by the intense loyalty Vance feels for his family, for his grandparents (both now dead), for his sister, and even for his drug addicted mother. My husband said he respected so much how Vance could look beyond the pain of his upbringing to understand the circumstances that caused it. For instance, Vance ponders how some members of his family built stable families, held decent jobs, and maintained sound economic foundations, while his mother floundered so badly. My husband inferred, however, that there is just as much potential for painful upbringings in the lives of "so-called intellectuals" as there is in the white working class. 

At the same time that Vance speaks about how much he loves his family, he is highly critical of those people who feel that they have little control over their lives. He concludes: “I believe we hillbillies are the toughest god----ed people on this earth. But are we tough enough to look ourselves in the mirror and admit that our conduct harms our children? Public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us. . . . I don’t know what the answer is precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”

My husband and I read Hillbilly Elegy aloud, and we like everyone else we know who read it, greatly appreciated its lessons for us. We highly recommend it for its readability and its life lessons. It is easy to see why it has remained on the bestseller lists for so long.

Review in Washington Post.

J.D. Vance website.