Olive, Again

By Elizabeth Strout

Random House     2019

304 pages     Literary

Well, friends. I am a wreck. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout affected me like no book that I have read in the past several months. Was it because I identified so thoroughly with Olive as I watched her age like I am aging, or because she is a master of sarcasm, like my children accuse me of being, or because it was such a fitting and moving sequel to Olive’s story? My thinking was captivated by Olive’s life and her struggles, her burdens and her joys. I knew this woman.

Like Olive Kitteridge, Olive Again has stand-alone chapters with numerous characters from Crosby Maine that Olive interacts with intermittently. Olive has her opinion about everything, but she is willing to change her mind—very egalitarian as she deals with a rapidly changing community and world. One story line concerns the Somali Muslims that live in a neighboring community. Another mentions the problems in the national government with “that horrible orange-haired man” in the White House. In some stories, Mrs. Kitteridge is only mentioned as a former teacher, while in others she plays a major role. One story concerns a former student who is dying of cancer. Olive visits her frequently and listens to her fears and concerns. (That particular story affected me greatly.) She says to the woman, “You know, Cindy, if you should be dying, if you do die, the truth is — we’re all just a few steps behind you.”

Olive replays the moments of her life—the good and the bad. She grieves over the ways she treated her first husband and son Christopher, and reaffirms the moment that she decided to pursue a relationship with her second husband. Jack. Olive and Jack are a somewhat mismatched pair, but they made the decision to have a relationship at the end of the first book, and they remain together until Jack dies. Olive bemoans the fact that she had left the house by the ocean that she had with Henry, her first husband, and now she is stuck in Jack’s house.  I recently began watching the HBO series that bears her name from 2014 in order to remember her as a younger woman—the house, her husband Henry, and how she got to be the way she was. Frances McDormand played Olive brilliantly in the series.

As Olive ages in the book, her body begins to betray her, and she ends up in the community’s assisted living. Her son, Christopher, who lives in New York and seldom visits her, comes frequently and fills her life with a joy she had not expected. She has a heart attack, has trouble with her bowels and bladder, and ends up wearing Depends—"diapers for old people. . .my foolish poopie panties.”  

Through it all, Olive remains as cantankerous as always. Actually, the review in the New York Times is titled, The Curmudgeon Returns. She frequently is irritated and dismissive, yet she longs for the beauty of nature and craves human companionship, even though she is not very good at companionship. In the last chapter, for example, she finally finds a friend at the assisted living, plants some roses outside her window, and lives to see them bloom the second year.

Strout marvelously captures the inner lives of her characters. She is a brilliant author, and Olive, Again is a brilliant book. Thank goodness I got to read it.

Elizabeth Strout’s website.

Fire Trap

By Bob Kroll

ECW Press     2019

296 pages     Noir

T.J. Peterson is an ex-cop suffering from PTSD and depression. Apparently, some of the details of his fall happened in earlier books, since Fire Trap is the third book in the series. (The other books include The Drop Zone and The Hell of it All.) At any rate, the reader can glean that he lost his job after a shooting, his wife has died, his daughter is a druggie, and he and his girlfriend have reached an impasse. In the conclusion to the series, his daughter and her childhood friend are both missing, but Peterson keeps getting messages indicating that the young women are pawns in a game targeting Peterson. He springs into action to try to rescue both girls and solve a series of killings.

Peterson suffers numerous flashbacks as he searches for the women, interviews numerous sleezy characters, and uncovers the dark web of porn in his hometown of Halifax. Sometimes, the reader needs to keep a list of characters, so wide is the range of people and places Peterson investigates. One reviewer mentioned that the book would make more sense if it was read in one sitting—so intricate and involved is the book’s structure. When I finally decided I was going to finish the book and sat down to get through it, I was able to appreciate Peterson and his life situation. For example, his counselor tries to comfort him: “Life plays tricks on us, Peterson. It lines the road with obstacles. Some are more difficult than others to climb over. We never sought to bury the circumstances of your life, but to reconcile them with the torment inside your head.” About three-quarters of the way through, the plot starts to move quickly and becomes a page-turner.

The dark procedural takes place in Halifax Nova Scotia, a place I have never visited and thought I could visit by reading Fire Trap. I had met a couple from Halifax on my recent trip to Vietnam, and they convinced me to come and visit their town. Uh huh! Fire Trap was definitely not the Halifax I want to visit. Atlantic Books Today, a Canadian review site muses: “No city can possibly claim to be perfect and doubtless the municipality of Halifax, Nova Scotia is no exception. Despite its reputation as being a beautiful and outwardly friendly place to visit, Halifax cannot possibly be as idyllic a destination as tourism commercials would have us believe. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find a depiction of a major Canadian city as unremittingly bleak as the metropolitan nightmare author Bob Kroll makes of Halifax.”

Bob Kroll is a career-long author. It seems wise to me that he decided to make this only a trilogy. How much more could one ex-cop suffer? Publisher’s Weekly suggests that Fire Trap is a morality tale “strictly for serious fans,” and I would concur. I am not sure that I would have completed it were it not that it had been sent to me by the publisher.

Resilience: One Family's Story of Hope and Triumph over Evil

By Judy Stone MD

Mountainside MD Press     2019

357 pages           Biography

Many children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors relate how their parents/grandparents never told them anything about their Holocaust experiences. Such was the case with Judy Stone. Not until her mother was in her 90s. Then it was that she began to tell her grandchildren stories about her survival—and also, it was then that she asked her daughter to preserve the family stories.

Stone’s mother, Magdus, was not the only one with stories. Five of her six siblings, all Hungarian Holocaust survivors, as well as members of Stone’s father’s family were still alive when Stone began collecting stories. What she found were tales of remarkable resilience, ingenuity, and hidden strengths in the ways in which the families endured brutality and unspeakable horror. Their survival and arrival in the United States is chilling as well as uplifting.

The book also tells how Stone felt as a second-generation Holocaust survivor and how it affected her relationship with her mother and her own children. She remarks that "fear is a relentless legacy of the Holocaust." At the same time, Stone feels that the memory of the Holocaust must be kept alive by telling these stories and helping people move beyond antisemitism and bullying. She also fears that the current climate of nationalism is similar, in many ways, to the events that led to the Holocaust in the first place.

I was particularly touched by the book for two reasons: First, I had read how trauma can be passed on to the next generation through denial and unexpressed feelings; Stone’s narration reveals that phenomenon through her fraught relationship with her mother. Then, my sister is in the process of telling our family stories after a several-year genealogy search. I want her to read how Stone constructed her book, how she told the stories and added the documentation through pictures and other memorabilia. My sister has found that our families have been in North America since the 1600s, but through all the years, there have been many stories of loss and survival, triumph and defeat.

I love the title—Resilience—because more than a story of survival, the book is a testament to the will of one family to live purposeful, strong, and vibrant lives.

Dr. Judy Stone's website.

Flying Alone

By Beth Ruggiero York

Self-published     2019

236 pages     Memoir

The Shortlist

In her memoir, Flying Alone, Beth Ruggiero York tells the story of her young adulthood in the 1980s when she sought to learn to fly airplanes with the goal of becoming a pilot for a major airline.  She says, “Those were my first impressions of the world of aviation—Rod, bottles of Canadian whiskey, working the line. . .and my flight instructor, Steve. I started as official lineperson at New England Flyers on April 27, 1985, my twenty-third birthday, four months into flying lessons. Aviation had already swallowed me whole.”

York flew for about 5 years, eventually working as a pilot for Trans World Airways, until her health no longer allowed her to work. (She has MS.) She wrote her memoir originally in the 1990s and this week, with some modifications, it has finally been published. She felt her story could be beneficial to other women who aspire to be pilots, or women who are fighting chronic illness. After she wrote her story, she put the manuscript away for nearly 30 years and has worked as a Chinese translator and a photographer.

In many ways, Flying Alone is a story that any young woman could write—a book about aspirations, love, and loss. She said that 30 years later, when she revisited her writing, she was so glad that she had written her story, and knew that with some polishing, it was a book that would resonate with other young women.

Just recently, several women my age were talking about careers—and about our career choices as well as our career options. We had grown up in the era of the Cherry Ames nursing books and the Vicki Barr stewardess books, and most of us had chosen careers in education and nursing—about the

only choices we had available to us. It was exhilarating to read about a woman brave enough to plan a career as a pilot. York’s story can serve as an inspiration to other brave young women stepping out into careers not previously available to women. We are currently in a world that the women of my generation could not have imagined. Most women are no longer “flying alone.”

Beth Ruggiero York’s website. If you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, Flying Alone is free to download to your Kindle.

Law and Addiction

By Mike Papantonio

Waterside Productions     2019

296 pages     Thriller

Lots of books are advertised as “torn from today’s headlines.” But Law and Addiction actually is. 

Here is the summary:

“One week before Jake Rutledge is scheduled to graduate from law school, he receives the devastating news of the death of his fraternal twin, Blake. What makes this death even more terrible for Jake is that his brother died of a drug overdose. Until hearing of his death, Jake had no idea his brother was even using drugs.

When Jake returns home to Oakley, West Virginia, he takes a hard look at the circumstances of his brother's death. In the five years Jake has been away for his schooling, his hometown has drastically changed. Because of the opioid epidemic and the blight it has brought, many now call Oakley "Zombieland". Jake can see how his town's demise parallels his brother's.

Undeterred, the newly minted lawyer takes on the entrenched powers by filing two lawsuits. Jake quickly learns what happens when you upset a hornet's nest. The young attorney might be wet behind the ears, but he is sure there is no lawyer that could help him more than Nick "Deke" Deketomis and his law firm of Bergman/Deketomis. Deke is a legendary lawyer. When he was Jake's age he was making his name fighting Big Tobacco. Against all odds, Jake gets Nick and his firm to sign on to his case before it's too late.”

Jake is an appealing protagonist. He is modest, unassuming, and trusting. He is willing to accept the advise from Deke Deketomis, the lawyer who has appeared in Papantonio’s other novels, Law and Disorder and Law and Vengeance. Jake is also ambitious, because of his willingness to take on the “Big Three” drug companies while at the same time taking on a smaller local case for his high school “crush.” Jake soon realizes that the role of the lawyer is essential in cases such as these. “What was rarely acknowledged was the unofficial oversight role that was increasingly filled by lawyers, Without the potential threat of legal action, important checks and balances wouldn’t exist, especially in light of increasingly lax government oversight.”

My feelings about the plotline, the characters, and the writing is similar to that of the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer: “Readers, however, will have to look past wooden characters, the stilted dialogue, and the statistical information dumps to get to the novel’s well-intentioned core. Papantonio makes a passionate if clumsy case for the need to do more to fight opioid addiction.”

It is certainly a timely book. Just yesterday, the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy was front page news as word that the Sakler family, owners of the largest manufacturer of opioids, had raided the company coffers when they realized that the company was going down. And in Sunday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff had a heartbreaking editorial about babies in West Virginia who are born addicted. Fourteen percent of babies born in West Virginia are born exposed to drugs and another five percent more are exposed to alcohol—that’s about 20 percent of all babies born in that state.

Papantonio was on the cover of the July 1 issue of Publisher’s Weekly. He is certainly carving a niche for himself in the legal procedural genre.

   

Cornelius Sky

By Timothy Brandoff

Akashic Books     2019

224 pages     Literary

New York in 1974. Cornelius Sky (Connie) is a doorman in the building where a former First Lady and her son (think JFK Jr.) live. Connie hangs out with the teenage boy, tries to keep him safe from the prying eyes of the paparazzi, and offers him companionship and solace. Otherwise, Connie’s life is a mess.

He has estranged himself from his wife and his two young sons by his alcoholism, and finally his wife changes the locks, and Connie is out on the mean streets of the city—a city that seems to be falling apart right before his eyes. While he prides himself on his job and the great job he does buffing the marble floors, for example, he is haunted by his own past. This may be why he attaches himself to the fatherless boy and ignores his own sons.

Cornelius Sky is a superb character study, with vivid observations of Connie’s tumultuous life and the tumultuous city where he lives. Frankly, I loved Connie, in all his bruised glory. While I didn’t love the way he treated his family, I loved the way others saw the good in Connie and offered him redemption.

Most importantly, the author Timothy Brandoff is an astute observer of the human condition, and I found myself underlining entire passages of brilliant writing that moved my heart. For example, here is a description of the people in the bar Connie frequents:

“Longshoremen, mailmen, factory workers, auto mechanics, truck drivers, the unemployable, a couple of wet-brains, a misanthropic PhD or two hiding behind what they hoped people would consider academic beards of distinction, flabbergasted occupants of Chelsea’s swankier brownstones because their lives still somehow sucked despite impressive curriculum vitae and substantial earning power—all stood and drank at the bar together."

224 pages is a fairly short book but is an absolutely perfect length for Connie’s story. The Kirkus review concludes that “its detailed portrait of a self-destructive character retains a haunting power.” The reviewer is absolutely right about the “haunting power.” I read Cornelius Sky several weeks ago, and it has remained with me.

Timothy Brandoff has an interesting personal history. He wove together details from his own life as he created the character of Cornelius Sky.  He is a New York City bus driver and a former doorman, following the career path of his uncle and brother. He suggests, however, that while there are aspects of the book that follow his own life’s path, he hopes that the story is “true to itself.”

I hope that Brandoff will tell more stories of the characters he meets as he drives his bus through the city.

The Second Worst Restaurant in France

By Alexander McCall Smith

Pantheon     2019

256 pages     Fiction

A reader doesn’t pick up an Alexander McCall Smith book to delve into an elaborate, drawn-out plot. The reader chooses to read an Alexander McCall Smith book to be entertained. The Second Worst Restaurant in France is classic McCall Smith. It is witty and wise, with delightful characters, and cracking-good dialogue. Is it brilliant? No. Is it fun? Yes.

Paul Stuart is a Scottish cookbook author. He first appears in the book, My Italian Bulldozer, which I have not read. While that book has Paul writing a food guide to Tuscany, he is now under contract to write a larger tome about the philosophy of food—a task that is formidable, and he is having trouble getting a handle on the topic.

 Paul is an appealing character because, above all, he is very accommodating and understanding. We find out very early in The Second Worst Restaurant that he is not fond of cats, and he is driven away from his home by his girlfriend’s cats. A cousin, Chloe, offers to take him with her to a small village in France where she has rented a house. Paul thinks that if he separates from his girlfriend and her cats and goes to a quiet place, he might make some progress on writing his book.

When they get to the village, Paul finds that it has little to offer except a very good bakery and a very bad restaurant. Some actually consider it to be the “second worst restaurant in France.” Paul takes on the task of improving the restaurant because one of the cooks actually is quite talented. This part of the plot reads like a Restaurant Impossible episode. But again, we don’t read McCall Smith books for their sterling plots.

We read his books for characters like Chloe, who is brilliant, annoying, and memorable. Paul remarks that Chloe is a throwback to earlier times “when people made tactless remarks and rarely apologized for what they were.” Chloe can talk about everyone and everything, but Paul finds himself worrying about how much truth there is in her endless commentary. I think that Chloe is a remarkable character, and I found myself appreciating everything she had to say. Here is one quote I enjoyed: “I read the other day about a Corsican saint called St. Baltazaru of Calvi, who performed the miracle of changing wild boar into sausages without benefit of a charcutier. Apparently, he just had to touch a wild boar and it would become sausages—just like that.”

McCall Smith is an extremely prolific author of several series, all with delightful characters. The books are all a lot of fun. My favorite series remains The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, which are based in Botswana, where McCall Smith taught Law at the University of Botswana. 

I needed something light and fun to read on a long plane ride, and The Second Worst Restaurant in France was perfect. It almost made me want to head to France to seek out the restaurant and see how much it had improved.