Unsheltered

By Barbara Kingsolver

Harper     2018

496 pages     Literary

Barbara Kingsolver is a beloved American author, most likely best known for The Poisonwood Bible, a condemning look at the culture of Christian missionaries. I read that book as well as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the story of the year Kingsolver’s family determined to live off what they grew on their farm. I also read and reviewed Flight Behavior, a fictional look at Monarch Butterflies.  Most, if not all, of Kingsolver’s books have themes of social justice in addition to well-drawn characters and appealing plot lines.

Such is the case with Unsheltered, a novel with two story lines alternating between two centuries (the 1870s and 2015-16). My Covid-19-addled brain had trouble sorting out which characters belonged in which century, and in which story line, but I soon caught on to the purpose and social intent of the book.

What binds both stories together are two crumbling houses in Vineland New Jersey, outside Philadelphia. In the 19^th century, Vineland was the scene of a Utopian community, begun by Charles Landis, who hoped that the village would evolve “into an epicenter for the country’s greatest thinkers, writers, spiritualists and entrepreneurs, as well as farmers and grape growers” (njmonthly.com).

Thatcher Greenwood and his wife moved into an old family home in Vineland in the 1870s. Thatcher is a teacher totally enamored with the work of Charles Darwin, but he is forbidden to teach those theories in his classroom. He befriends a naturalist, Mary Treat, (who, by the way, was a real-life naturalist) and discovers that she frequently corresponds with Darwin and other naturalists of the era. An unlikely friendship ensues, and Thatcher is given courage to defend his educational principles.

Then, in the 21^st century, Willa Knox, and her professor husband Iano Tavoularis, his father, Nick, and their family move into a similar crumbling family home in Vineland. Willa believes that this house may be the house that Thatcher Greenwood had lived in, and she believes that if she can prove this, the city might pay for its repair. In this way, the two stories intersect, some of it historically factual, and in other ways, fictional.

At the core, the book is about shelter and the need for shelter. Additionally, Kingsolver speculates about collapse—the collapse of houses, the collapse of the body, and the collapse of the social structure. Although only a minor part of the plot, the pending election of Donald Trump and the collapse of the political system is never far from Kingsolver’s mind, even as she explores the collapse of Charles Landis and the Vineland utopia.

Many of the characters are very well created. I was particularly drawn to Tig, Willa’s 20-something daughter, who comes to live with her family in the crumbling house and brings a sense of order to her family’s crumbling lives. One of her more poignant observations is: “All the rules have changed and its hard to watch people keep carrying on just the same, like it’s business as usual.” I also liked Kingsolver’s recreation of Mary Treat. She comes to life as an incredible woman going her own way, in contrast to Thatcher’s wife Rose, who is very conventional. Tig and Mary Treat would have been friends if they had lived next door to each other in the same era.

There is a lot going on in Unsheltered, and sometimes the themes get mixed up with Kingsolver’s own passionate sympathies, both political and natural. For example, Charles Landis shoots a reporter in the street for criticizing him. (Does that sound at all familiar?) I appreciated her bringing to my understanding a community I knew nothing about, and also for exposing me to Mary Treat. What a remarkable woman! I particularly like Kingsolver’s turn of phrase, and found myself underlining stray sentences and thoughts. For instance, Willa’s comment about setting up housekeeping in this broken-down house: “Nesting was ludicrous, given the doomed state of the nest.”

On the whole, Unsheltered is a successful venture. It is not a pleasant story, nor a joyous one. It showed me that there have always been times when people were under threat for choosing to bear witness to their beliefs; that there have always been times when society, like a house, can crumble; and that there are always people who believe in the enduring nature of truth and justice.

The Apartment

The Apartment

By K.L. Slater

Thomas & Mercer    2020

270 pages     Thriller

I wrote this review while I was sick. It is very incomplete, but it needs to be included in my “books read.”

As I have been healing from Covid 19, I have had trouble finding a book that would hold my interest. I was experiencing too much anxiety and too little energy. The Apartment by Karen Slater met my needs.

The Apartment is very skillfully written; it holds the reader’s attention all the way through. Part of the reason for this is the way the plot keeps moving, mostly because the reader gets immediately caught up in this “too good to be true” situation. Freya and her little daughter Skye will soon be homeless because of some  unfortunate life circumstances, when they are offered an apartment in the magnificent old Adder House near Kensington Palace. 

But nothing seems right from the very beginning, and  suspense fills every page. Freya is a very appealing character as is little Skye.  We want the best for them and yet we know that the best isn’t going to happen for them. There is a great deal of suspense, and I had trouble figuring out how all the pieces fit together. Unfortunately, the ending was quite rushed and the pieces did not all get tied up. That was a major disappointment in an otherwise taut thriller.

Interestingly, this book came out first as an Audible exclusive. The paperback and Kindle copies came out today, April 28. The Kindle Unlimited copy is currently free.

The Return

Well, I am learning that I can change my mind. I suffered for about a month with Covid-19, which took a great deal out of me, both physically and emotionally. I thought maybe it was time to quit writing my blog, but as I recovered, I realized how much I missed the exercise of writing that had become second nature. I found that I loved reading a book with the goal of forming an opinion about it. I enjoyed reading reviews from expert book reviewers. I enjoyed expanding my horizons by reading books outside my comfort zone. More than anything, I enjoyed finding ways that my life intersected with the book—with the plot, or the setting, or the author.

So, with that in mind and with the fact that while my life will never be quite the same, I want this part of my life to return to normal. I hope that my readers haven’t given up on me, and will continue to consider my thoughts on the books I read. Thanks for being here.

Notice

Hello dear friends,

I am suspending my blog after posting weekly for 10 years. It has been a fun ride. I have had books on my mind every day since I began accepting advanced reader copies.

 I have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to gracefully end the endeavor, and I finally decided that I would just have to quit. 

Thank you for your kind attention. I hope that you have enjoyed my meanderings. Best Wishes. Miriam

A Good Neighborhood

By Therese Anne Fowler
St. Martins     2020
311 pages     Literary

 Well this is an interesting conundrum. I really wanted to like A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler. I tried extremely hard to like it. Here is a synopsis of the book. In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son. Xavier is headed to college in the fall, and after years of single parenting, Valerie is facing the prospect of an empty nest. All is well until the Whitmans move in next door—an apparently traditional family with new money, ambition, and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter. Thanks to his thriving local business, Brad Whitman is something of a celebrity around town, and he's made a small fortune on his customer service and charm, while his wife, Julia, escaped her trailer park upbringing for the security of marriage and homemaking. Their new house is more than she ever imagined for herself, and who wouldn't want to live in Oak Knoll? With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over a historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.

 I was so intrigued by the structure. In the book, the neighbors in that “good” neighborhood serve as a Greek chorus, and just like all neighbors in “tight knit” communities, they seem to know the details before anyone else. (Frankly, that is why I moved out of a small community.) And, I might add, as the storytellers, the neighbors are proud to know the details and to be telling the story. This is a neighborhood much like mine—middle class, established, fifty to eighty year-old homes, educated population, pretty much white. The Book Page reviewer says of the structure: “Throughout, a chorus of neighbors intrudes to speculate and offer background information, an intriguing mix of omniscient narration and gossipy lamentation. Although the transitions between the chorus and the other perspectives aren’t always seamless, this structure adds depth to the sense of Shakespearean tragedy ... fast-paced and thoughtful.”

Fowler excuses herself in the acknowledgement as a white woman trying to speak from the perspective of the two African American residents—mother and son. She says that she did her homework, as was recommended by author, Zadie Smith. At the same time, the characters all seem to be one-dimensional and to a certain extent to be caricatures. Particularly Brad Whitman, who bandies around his success as a businessman for all to see. He is a creepy step-father to Juniper, the teen-aged daughter of his wife, Julia. He thinks that he can have her in the same way that he can have a fancy car, a huge house, and six television sets. He appears as a character without depth, as does his wife Julia, although Julia, in the end, shows some guts and leaves the man.

Xavier, the bi-racial teenager is a striver. Yet, he can never get beyond the fact that his mother is black and his deceased father was white. And Juniper, the teenage girl in the story has to deal with her own stigma—that her parents made her take a purity oath when she was fourteen. Please!

Yeah, I didn’t like any of these characters. Didn’t like the plot. I think basically all I liked was the structure, and I kept reading because the structure fascinated me. The reviewer in the New York Times, Kiley Reid, who is the author of Such a Fun Age, helped me put into words what I was feeling. After having been burned by the negative cultural reviews of American Dirt, I perhaps was extra sensitive to the cultural inferences and assumptions in A Good Neighborhood, so I was receptive to what Reid wrote. Reid says, “’A Good Neighborhood’ is a pitch-perfect example of how literary endeavors. . .can limit a novel’s understanding of human behavior.” Her review is quite scathing, and frankly, I had to agree with it. She also says, “But her novel breaks the promise of its premise, revealing weaknesses in both craft and conviction. In the same way that activism cannot be sold for $26, black characters cannot be bought when they lack depth and accessibility.”

Read A Good Neighborhood if you are interested in reading a book about good intentions, good development, but very poor understanding of cultural norms.

Wow, No Thank You

By Samantha Irby

Random House     2020

311 pages     Humor/Essays

Discovering Samantha Irby is like being transported to humor heaven. Filled with zingy one-liners about all facets of life, Irby is in rare form in Wow, No Thank You. The essays in the book cover an enormous number of topics, from Crone’s disease, to marrying a woman with children, to house repair, to being an introvert,  to urination and poop. Nothing is taboo to Irby, and everything in life can be a source of humor.

The other day, my sister said to me, “You laugh inappropriately, you know!” Well, I have to tell you I did a lot of inappropriate laughing while reading Wow, No Thank You. Frankly, my favorite people are those who don’t take themselves too seriously, and if there is one thing that can be said about Samantha Irby is that she doesn’t take herself too seriously.

My favorite essay concerns her move to Kalamazoo. Wait??? Kalamazoo??? I live in Kalamazoo. How did I not know about her? Then, as I looked closer, she started to look familiar to me. Had I actually met her sometime? She describes herself as a “middle-aged depressed lady with chronic diarrhea.” Well, many of my friends are middle-aged depressed ladies with chronic diarrhea. Finally, when I watched an interview on You Tube, I realized that while I hadn’t met her, I instantly identified with her work and her views on life. On the other hand, I think that I may have met her wife, who is a Kalamazoo school social worker and works part time at our neighborhood bookstore, Book Bug. Actually, the book launch was supposed to happen at the Book Bug this week. By the way, you can buy an autographed copy of Wow, No Thank You at This is a Bookstore, which is part of the Book Bug.  Kalamazoo friends, run, don’t walk, over there. Grab a copy before they are gone. They will curbside deliver it to you.

One of her favorite topics is her introversion. She says that she used to party a lot. “The only reason I stopped is because I got too old to do it right.” Being an introvert has become her theme for the interviews that have come since the book was released on Tuesday of this week. Because of Covid-19, she hasn’t been able to do any book launch events. Therefore, there are many, many online interviews. Here are a couple of interviews that I found especially pleasing: a written interview and a video interview.

When asked about how she was surviving being housebound for the past few weeks, Irby mentioned  that she is the master of social distancing, so being stuck at home was not a problem for her. What being housebound offered for me was the opportunity to revel in Irby’s crazy humor, quirky thinking, and downright gross musings. Would that I had the kind of verbal guts Samantha Irby has! You gotta love her! The New York Times reviewer absolutely adores her writing.

Irby says that she has had trouble making friends in Kalamazoo. Samantha, I want to be your friend. Find me on Facebook.

The Hope of Glory

By Jon Meacham

Convergent Books    2020

112 pages     Spiritual

The historian and author, Jon Meacham, is a frequent speaker at Episcopal churches. In his book, The Hope of Glory, these meditations on the final words of Jesus were presented at Good Friday services in Meacham’s church in New York City. The book contains a prologue telling about how Meacham came to write these sermons, or meditations. In the prologue, he also describes how the words purported to come from Jesus came to be important in scripture and in the foundations of the Christian church.  He says, “I am sharing these meditations in the hope that a sense of history and an appreciation of theology might help readers make more sense of the cross in a world too much given to the competing forces of hostile skepticism, blind acceptance, or remote indifference.” He is interested in “illumination, not conversion.”

Meacham then devotes one meditation to each of the seven phrases or sentences that Jesus spoke from the cross. He outlines the traditional historical reasoning for why each of those phrases were spoken and why these particular phrases are included in the scriptures. Within each meditation, Meacham elaborates on what he considers to be the theological meanings for each phrase.

I read each of the chapters as a daily meditation, and found that Meacham has a very similar outlook to his faith as I do. At one point, he acknowledges “that we cannot know everything does not mean we can know nothing.” He also suggests that “for the thoughtful believer, then, there is nothing more certain than the reality of uncertainty, nothing more natural than doubt, which is perhaps thirty seconds younger than faith itself.”

I found myself underlining many of Meacham’s thoughts as I pondered these last words of Jesus. By reading some every day, I was able to really think through his ideas and come to my own understandings. Beyond Meacham’s meditations on Jesus’ words, I was able to have a Lenten time of growth in the midst of anxiety and mountains of bad news. As Meacham says, “Light can neither emanate from, nor enter into a closed mind.” For this time of meditation and insight, I am extremely grateful.

A couple of other things. When I was a girl, my Good Friday always included a presentation of the oratorio of The Seven Last Words of Christ by Theodore Dubois. My father, a tenor, always sang the tenor solos, wherever we were. A very fond memory. Here is a beautiful YouTube presentation from a church in Texas.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the Kirkus reviewer complained that the theology of The Hope of Glory  is very Episcopalian, and said that the book was a “middling contribution to Christian studies.” I, on the other hand, found the book to be insightful and thoughtful, and I could see it being used for a Lenten study series or a book discussion for “progressive” Christians, as the Publisher’s Weekly writer suggests.