Artemis

By Andy Weir

Broadway Books 2017

320 pages     Science Fiction

Ever wondered what life will be like on the moon after it is settled and developed? Andy Weir explores this intriguing notion with his futuristic novel, Artemis—his follow-up the highly successful The Martian. My husband and I watched The Martian, and I suggested that we read Artemis as our morning read aloud. It was more fun for me than I anticipated, being that I am no big fan of science fiction, and the main reason is because I enjoyed getting acquainted with the protagonist and heroine, Jasmine Bashara--Jazz. My husband enjoyed it for the science.

Jazz and her father, a welder, had come to live on the moon from Saudi Arabia when Jazz was a little girl, so she really had known no other home. The reader readily acknowledges that Jazz is really smart, but she has chosen a “career” as a smuggler and porter. In an attempt to make enough money to move to larger living quarters, she signs on to commit a huge crime that involves sabotaging the colony’s aluminum factory.

Jazz is a fun character, but she is really the only fully realized character. I rather enjoyed her crass take on life, but I also appreciated her brilliance and ingenuity. Jazz really knows her science and totally understands the ways in which science is at play in everything that happens on Artemis. She uses her innate knowledge to her advantage as she undertakes the crime at hand. The other characters are only important as far as they supplement what Jazz is doing. There is a lot of rough language, but we felt that it was appropriate and probably essential to the character development. I kept wondering what actress will play Jazz when they make the movie.

The backdrop for the adventure, the small bubble-town of Artemis, is very skillfully set. The details are so clear that the reader can visualize exactly where every event is taking place and can follow the plot explicitly. All the details that made The Martian such a big hit are readily present in Artemis. It makes the novel flow easily and the morning read alouds a lot of fun.

The major strength of the novel is how accessible the author makes the science. It was one of the things that made my husband keep reading. He wants to know the facts, and Weir delivers the real world facts that keep the plot moving. The NPR reviewer says, “In keeping with the book’s matter-of-fact storytelling, characters keep flatly telling Jazz she’s brilliant and talented. But that comes across more believably when she’s contriving a clever way to disable an aggressive remote-controlled rock harvester, or open a jammed valve from inside a sealed environmental bubble.”

French Exit

By Patrick deWitt

Ecco     2018

256 pages     Literary

Frances Price is a New York socialite with a adult son, Malcolm, who lives with her, and a family cat, Small Frank, who apparently is the spirit of Frances’ dead husband, Franklin. Frances is everything you could imagine a 65-year-old socialite to be: sharp-tongued, full of preconceptions, and mannerisms. She delights in “implied insults and needling insinuations.” As an example, Frances doesn’t like Malcolm’s fiancé because she once ordered gazpacho out of season.

A scandal has defined Frances through the years in New York society. She had returned home and found her husband Frank dead in bed. Instead of calling the police, Frances went skiing for the weekend—because there wasn’t anything to be done about it. Now, Frances has no one but her son and one friend, Joan. She also has just a limited amount of money and decides to sell her apartment and move to France to live in Joan’s Paris apartment.

A French exit, by the way, means to leave a social gathering without saying your farewells. And in the first, really funny scene, she does exactly that. However, for Frances, the meaning of French exit has a slightly sinister tone to it. She actually plans to exit herself once she gets to Paris. “Sometimes the world corrected itself, she knew this, for it had so many times in her past. She understood intuitively that it would not correct itself now, though.” In other words, Frances is bored with life and wants to make her own “French exit.”

Why Malcolm joins her in Paris is one of the unanswered questions in the book. Is he so spineless that he has to follow his mother around endlessly? And indeed he does, leaving behind a fiancée who is not sure why she loves him. Susan, Malcolm’s fiancée, wonders why she had “come to care for this lugubrious toddler of a man.”

Well, once they get to Paris, they collect a cadre of crazy people, including a psychic, who calls the presence of Frances’ husband from the cat, a private investigator, a doctor named Touche, and a great cook who feeds them souffles and cocktails. Friend Joan arrives at her apartment, and she is soon followed by Malcolm’s fiancée Susan and her new boyfriend. Chaos ensues. These scenes have been compared to a Noel Coward comedy of manners. French Exit may best be called a tragic comedy, because although there is always a comic turn to everything, we know from the very beginning tragedy is just around the corner. The NPR reviewer suggests that you can’t take anything too seriously, because if you do, the entire novel falls apart.

Frankly, once I got into the premise of French Exit, I enjoyed all of it. The New Yorker calls the novel “stealth absurdism.” It took me a bit to realize that was what I was reading, but when I figured it out, I settled in and just went along for the ride. Patrick deWitt has written books in several genres, but this is his first comedy of manners. Out now,  movie The Sisters Brothers is a slapstick Western starring inept outlaws. The movie is based on another of deWitt's novels. I really wanted to see the movie before I wrote the review of French Exit, but the movie hasn’t come to Kalamazoo yet.

Liza Jane and the Dragon

By Laura Lippman

Illustrated by Kate Samworth

Akashic Books     2018

32 pages              Picture Book

Liza Jane is upset with her parents. Even though her life is excellent, with a canopy bed, pizza and a movie on Friday nights, and plenty of pretend dress-up clothes, Liza Jane feels put upon. She thinks her parents don’t listen to her or care about her feelings. So she fires them and hires a dragon who promises to do everything for her that her parents don’t do—like order pizza on nights other than Friday. However, the dragon doesn’t obey Liza Jane's commands perfectly, so she fires him and hires her parents back.

I read this book with 7-year-old Adela, my granddaughter, who is never hesitant to add her opinion to a discussion. We both felt that Liza Jane had to be 7-years-old. She thought Liza Jane sounded just like her, and I felt that Lippman got  7-year-old sassiness and sense of injustice down pat.  Adela and I were both only mildly intrigued by the plot line, and not at all sure why a dragon was who Liza Jane should have hired. The dragon is as sassy as Liza and absolutely as annoying as she is.

The illustrations are cute with Liza Jane and the dragon in bright colors and the background in sepia. Because of the sepia tones, I didn’t even notice the first time through that Liza Jane is biracial—her father is white, and mother is African American. This is definitely not a book about female empowerment, but basically about a bratty little girl and her bratty dragon.

In other words, I would not consider Liza Jane and the Dragon to be a necessary purchase. Cute but not essential.

Dead Cats and Other Reflections on Parenthood

By Jesse McKinnell

Shine Box Publishing     2018

215 pages     Fiction

I have spent several days trying to come to terms with what I want to say in this posting about Dead Cats. I can’t answer the question over whether I liked it or not—although I am not sure that the author Jesse McKinnell cares whether I “liked” it. Frankly, it is not a book one "likes."

Do you remember Orin Scrivello, the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors? Well, Joel Peterson, the protagonist in Dead Cats, reminded me a lot of Orin. He is sadistic, abusive, and drug addicted—and a dentist. One of the first scenes in Dead Cats concerns Dr. Peterson torturing patients while under the influence. He mentions: “Here’s a little-known fact: Dentists have all the good drugs. Here’s another one: It’s really easy for some of these delicious little vials to get lost.” Unlike Orin, however, Dr. Peterson doesn’t drive a motorcycle; he drives a Porsche, which he wrecks early in the novel.

Everything starts to go downhill with the death of the family cat, Friskers. In the silliest first scene in all of literature, Dr. Peterson drives over the cat with the aforementioned Porsche. Peterson has already been banished to the guest house behind the main house where his estranged wife and two young daughters live, but when the little girls see their father kill the cat, his wife Mary files for divorce.The divorce court scene with the dead cat in attendance is equally ridiculous.

Oh, and then there is Kurt Cobain, the dead rocker, who is a constant presence in Peterson’s life and seems to guide Peterson’s every downward movement. The reader can’t tell whether Cobain is trying to save Peterson or save himself. At the point Cobain enters, the plot moves from funny to pathetic. I really hoped that Peterson could come to his senses and try to put his life back together, and occasionally the reader glimpses a future. At one point, I thought that Peterson might be in a coma after his accident and the rest of the plot was just  a convoluted dream that Peterson might wake from to solve every problem. Finished the book still hoping for that conclusion.

The redeeming grace of the novel is the writing. It is strong—alternating between extremely funny and extremely grotesque. Couldn’t decide. This is McKinnell's first novel. McKinnell says that he dreamed the plot of Dead Cats. All I can say is that it must have been quite a dream!

Here is an interview with McKinnell by one of the book’s reviewers.

  

Praise Song for the Butterflies

By Bernice L. McFadden

Akashic Books     2018

244 pages     Literary Fiction

Praise Song for the Butterflies is my first exposure to author, Bernice McFadden, although she is the author of nine previous novels and the winner of several awards. Her books primarily deal with the experiences of the African American community, and Praise Song moves the experience from the United States to Africa and back.

The novel begins with a rather startling 2009 stabbing in Harlem by a woman named Abeo, who we learn is married with two children. This scene is designed to capture the reader’s attention, which it does immediately. The shock is real; wow! I didn’t see that coming!

The book then moves to “before” in 1978 when Abeo Kata is a young girl in Port Masi, Ukemby, a fictional African country situated between Ghana and Togo. Abeo’s family are substantial members of the community; her father Wasik a government employee, and her mother, Isme, a stay-at-home mother of Abeo and a baby boy. They are practicing Catholics having been converted in their village, but when Wasik’s mother came from the village to live with them after her husband died, the climate in the home changed. Wasik’s mother believes in the Gods of the countryside, and when Wasik is accused of  unethical behavior at work and put on leave, his mother encourages him to take Abeo to the priest out in the countryside shrine to appease the Gods. The next section of the book concerns Abeo’s horrendous 15-year-experience as a ritual shrine slave, a tradition called Trokosi.  Abeo is completely broken in body and spirit when she is rescued by an American woman who has made it her mission to rescue the girls in Trokosi slavery and offer them hope and a new life.

The theme of the book follows a quotation of Charles Dickens; “I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.” The plot moves swiftly and the chapters are short, a compelling format that keeps the reader’s sadness and anxiety at bay a bit. At the end of the novel, we are thoroughly engrossed in Abeo’s new life and her butterfly-like freedom, so when we return to the stabbing in Harlem, we understand fully why it must happen. We are finally honored to see a young woman, one who has survived unspeakable pain, become a woman of grace and courage.

I loved this book. I had been exposed to ritual slavery in some other books, but McFadden’s writing style as well as the length of the book made reading about this horrendous practice bearable and enlightening. It also expresses the indomitability of the human experience and gives the reader the courage to face her own life tragedies. I appreciate so much being introduced to Bernice McFadden by the publisher. I appreciate so much getting to know Abeo Kata.

Praise Song for the Butterflies will be published on Tuesday, August 28.

Here is an interview on NBC news with Bernice McFadden: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/author-bernice-mcfadden-gets-heart-good-story-n799636

The Third Hotel

By Laura van den Berg

Farrar, Straus & Giroux     2018

224 pages     Fiction

I have spent 3 days reading The Third Hotel, and I have no idea what I have just finished. One reviewer called it “strange, unsettling, and profound from start to finish.” Ok. I believe that.

Don’t quite know where to start. Here is the summary:

“In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death―and the truth about their marriage―in Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery.
Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way.” 

Yeah! I told you. The Third Hotel is strange and unsettling. I looked up the definition of magical realism in my search to put a name on the genre in which the book might fit. Wikipedia defines it this way: “a genre of narrative fiction that, while encompassing a range of subtly different concepts, expresses a primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements.” I believe this fits the bill, although in many ways, van den Berg’s writing defies categorization.

At its heart The Third Hotel is a meditation on grief and loss. Clare has just lost her husband Richard. Her level of grief is profound, and when she sees him from a distance in Havana, she follows him as she seeks answers to all the unanswered questions of her life and marriage. When she finally meets up with him and they take a journey into the mountains of Cuba, the mystery that is her husband is amplified and her grief is compounded rather than appeased. The reader never comes to a conclusion about who or what Clare is seeing when she discovers Richard; is he a ghost, a doppelganger? “She ordered herself to stop recognizing him, since what she was recognizing was plainly impossible, but then she crept closer and saw just how possible it was.”

What is absolutely certain is that Laura van den Berg is an incredible writer. The setting, the imagery, and the language is absolutely breathtaking. I loved the descriptions of Cuba, and I felt like I was on the scene every moment, even if I didn’t quite see Richard like Clare did (or did she actually see Richard?). We are so very clearly exposed to the inner workings of Clare’s mind; “the gap between her inner reality and the world around felt so enormous she feared she was going to be swallowed up.” All the way through the novel, we are privvy to Clare’s inner reality. We are never sure what to believe—what she is seeing. One of my favorite lines relating to Clare is: “the ice cube she had pressed against her heart in childhood was proving slow to thaw.”

The New York Times reviewer cautions the reader looking for noir, a mystery, or a thriller. He says,  “Don’t take the bait when “The Third Hotel” starts voguing like a thriller. Instead, read it as the inscrutable future cult classic it probably is, and let yourself be carried along by its twisting, unsettling currents.”

In his praise for the novel and its author, the Washington Post reviewer says, “The most transforming kind of fiction is capable of causing a dislocation of reality: a bit of the bizarre, a lot kept beneath the surface and worlds opening within worlds.”

I recommend The Third Hotel with caution. Look out so that you don’t become crazed trying to figure out the plot; rejoice in the vivid descriptions of Cuba and the incredible writing; and breathe a sigh of relief when it is finished—if indeed it is finished. 

Additionally, I am done reading about grief-stricken widows for a while. I feel like my summer has been filled with their stories. On to other stuff. 

From the Corner of the Oval

By Beck Dorey-Stein

Spiegel & Grau     2018

352 pages     Memoir

“This place. This place. This place could break your heart.” With this poignant reminder, Beck Dorey-Stein begins her memoir of the five years (2012-2016) she spent as a stenographer in President Barack Obama’s White House. Beck, short for Rebecca, got the job through a rather unimaginable way. She had been working as a tutor and teacher at the Sidwell School, where the Obama girls went to school, but in an attempt to move on, she answered a Craigslist ad for a stenographer at a Washington law firm. Surprising, she finds during the second interview that it isn’t a job at a law firm at all, but a job transcribing notes “from the corner of the oval” office. Over the ensuing years, she kept meticulous notes of this incredible experience, fully aware that she was part of history in the making.

At once extremely funny and gut-wrenching, Dorey-Stein describes the men she dated (and bedded), the places she was privileged to visit, and the great friends she made among the White House staff. Once she is confident in her position and her gift for writing, she shares her reflections with White House staffers, and they all encourage her to become an author.  While she is critical of the “ladder-climbing bobbleheads” that make up a great deal of the Washington young adults, she is clear-eyed about her own experiences among those bobbleheads.

I stopped counting the number of times that Jason, the scoundrel, came to Beck’s hotel room on Presidential trips. And I laughed aloud when she was afraid that Jay Carney thought her hair straightening machine was a vibrator or the time she forgot her underwear and mentioned, “Today I’ll be traveling commando with the commander in chief.” Throughout, you never forget that Dorey-Stein is a young woman who parties a lot, drinks too much, and is far too critical of herself and her failings.

I was already feeling tremendously nostalgic for a president of integrity, grace, and humor when I opened From The Corner of the Oval. This account of Obama’s second term from the eyes of his stenographer just made watching Omarosa expose details about the Trump White House all the more painful. Dorey-Stein witnessed some of the greatest moments in the Obama years. I almost cried when she told about watching the speech after the church shootings in Charleston when Obama broke into singing “Amazing Grace.” I was touched when on Dorey-Stein’s birthday, her friends got her a ride on the Presidential helicopter and the President told her about how he met Michelle. Ah—the humanity of the man, and the humility with which he faced his job.

The most interesting review came from Paul Begala who calls it “equal parts C-Span and ‘Sex and the City.’” Other former White House staffers have expressed their impressions of this memoir, but as Begala says, you just keep rooting for Beck to succeed, become a writer (which, of course, she has) and find love. This is not a book about Obama policy or Obama wins and losses, but it  charmingly relates the brief interactions Dorey-Stein had with a wonderful man. The reader ends up being sad that the presidency is currently a laughing stock and longing, like Dorey-Stein does, for those glory days when a beautiful family brought honor to the office of President of the United States.