In the Margins: on the Pleasures of Reading and Writing

 By Elena Ferrante

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Europa Editions 2022

111 pages     Essays

We do not know exactly who Elena Ferrante is, except that she is a gifted writer. In 2020, she wrote some lectures that were intended to be read by actors, not the author herself. She remains anonymous, but we learn a little more about her writing style in these four essays, aptly named In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing. 

She discusses the difficulties of growing up female and trying to compete in the male-dominated literary scene. She says, “I had to write like a man, staying strictly within the male tradition: although a woman, I couldn’t write like a woman except by violating what I was diligently trying to learn from the male tradition.” It wasn’t until she read Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that she affirmed her voice as a female writer.

This very much reminded me of a paper I wrote for a philosophy class my senior year of university, probably 1965. The professor gave me an A+ on the paper and wrote, “Now you are starting to think like a man” on the paper’s margins. While I appreciated the A+, I was deeply offended by the comment. Because Ferrante must be about my age, I was able to understand her perturbation about trying to find her own voice as a writer.

The essays are a bit meandering. However, I really appreciated the essay that she calls, Histories I. This is where the reader comes to understand Ferrante’s skill as a writer telling the story of women’s lives and the challenges female authors face. She closes this essay by saying, “ I believe that the pure and simple joining of the female ‘I’ to History changes history.” She is proud that no one can now say of her writing that finally she is thinking like a man.

The reviewer in The Guardian writes, “The book feels uneven, tantalising in places, opaque in others. Her ideas can be distilled down into: powerful prose emerges from dutiful prose; all writing is built on the shoulders of great literature; the paradox of realism is it requires truthful lies; and it’s a real bitch to get what’s in your head on to the page.” 

Although I read My Brilliant Friend and watched the first season on HBO, that is the only Ferrante that I have read or watched. I may go back now and read her latest novel, The Lying Life of Adults, which has lingered on my Kindle for a couple of years.

In the Margins is an excellent footnote on the art of writing, and the skill that a woman writer must develop. Besides that, focus on the incredible book cover. The cover highlights and explains the book's contents explicitly. 

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

 By Tiya Miles

Random House     2021

385 pages     History

A very quick summary: A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft an extraordinary testament to people who are left out of the archives.

Dr. Tiya Miles is a Harvard historian. All That She Carried won the 2021 National Award for nonfiction. It is a meticulously-researched look at an embroidered feed sack that was found among a lot of fabric at a Nashville flea market in 2007. The purchaser realized that this was more than very old fabric, and donated it to the Middleton Place museum. The book’s author saw the sack while it was on loan to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. She was immediately attracted to the sack and sought to learn and reconstruct what turned out to be an amazing story. Her research showed that Rose, a slave,  filled the sack with three items when her daughter Ashley was sold as a little girl. The sack contained a lock of Rose’s hair, a tattered dress, and three handfuls of pecans. When the sack came to the great-granddaughter Ruth, she embroidered the story of the sack on the front of the bag.

More than telling the story of the sack, Miles relates those three items to historical evidence of their importance. For example, the lock of hair examines the importance of African American women’s hair, up to the present. The tattered dress leads to a discussion of the importance and skill of dressmaking, embroidery, and quilt making in defining a woman’s role—in the Black community—and in women’s roles across the ages. The pecans could either have been eaten or planted, and Miles discusses slave labor and what Rose and Ashley’s role might have been during their life and times. She says, “Out of the shadows Rose would emerge, bearing the sack as a lifeline and staking a claim on her family’s continuance amid and despite unrelenting change.”

My sister has been creating a history of our families, and she has traced our people to some of the first settlers in what would become the United States. While Miles was attempting to trace the family that included Rose, Ashley, and Ruth, she ran into many dead ends, and was only able to find the possibility of who the family members were, not who they actually were. I was so struck by the differences. One of her discoveries was a record that turned up both names in an estate inventory shortly after the slave owner, Robert Martin, died in 1852. Because there were very few women named Ashley, Miles is quite sure that she had the correct family, and Ashley had a value price, just like the cattle.

The trauma of separation is a major theme of the book, and we must assume that there were thousands of stories similar to the story of Rose, Ashley, and Ruth.  What Miles shows is that the sack marks “ a spot in our national story where great wrongs were committed, deep sufferings were felt, love was sustained against all odds and a vision of survival for future generations persisted.”

 I believe that All That She Carried is one of the most significant books of our generation, not only because of the research that went into creating it, but because of its relationship to our current world situation. I watched the Supreme Court confirmation hearing with Judge Jackson yesterday, and I realized that fragile sack is still being filled.

All That She Carried will continue to haunt me in the weeks and months ahead. At my church book group, where we read and discussed the book, everyone brought something that they would take with them if they had to leave home quickly. What would you carry?

Here is a book talk with Dr. Miles at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. The New York Times carried a remarkable review.

Girl in Ice

 By Erica Ferencik

Gallery     2022

304 pages     Thriller

It is 2023, just a year from the present, but climate change has increased its activity. One of the strange happenings is what the scientists are calling "ice wind," a strong freezing, sudden wind that immediately freezes any animal or human that is caught in the blast. On a small island off the coast of Greenland within the Artic Circle, a group of scientists led by Wyatt Speeks are trying to understand this climate phenomenon. They discover a young girl in the ice on the island, bring her back to the station, and thaw her out to try to learn whatever they can about her and the ice wind. Unbelievably, the girl thaws out alive. She is trying to talk to the scientists, but they can’t understand her language, nor can any of the indigenous people who bring supplies to the station.

Val Chesterfield is a brilliant linguist specializing in extinct Nordic languages. Wyatt sends for her, thinking that she might be able to decode what the girl is saying. Val has another connection to the science station: her brother Andy, also a climate scientist, committed suicide at the station. Val accepts Wyatt’s offer because she is tremendously curious about the little girl, but also because she hopes to solve what she believes is not a suicide by her brother, but more than likely a murder.

There are a tremendous number of details to unravel, and Ferencik has an amazing grasp of the setting, of the science involved, as well as the language difficulties being explored. I spent the first half of the book in awe of her expertise in all things Greenland as well as the Nordic languages she explores. I was so intrigued by how she wove all these details into an almost believable plot. Because of all the climate-driven science explored and explained by Ferencik, I read slowly through the book’s first half. However, when the action ramped up, and Val starts to understand what little Sigrid is trying to tell her, and Wyatt gets crazier, I really tuned in and hurriedly read to finish the novel. Unfortunately, the conclusion, itself, was a bit off, rushed, and inconclusive. One reviewer said that it appeared that Ferencik drafted a few options and “randomly decided to go with this version of the choose-your-own-adventure.” I felt let down after I had spent most of the novel being in awe of the subject and the plot.

Girl in Ice was at its best when Ferencik was developing the relationship between Val and little Sigrid. Sigrid, of course, is suffering greatly from PTSD, and no one understands what she is trying to say or explain. Val bonds greatly with her, because she herself is suffering from tremendous anxiety, and because she identifies so completely with Sigrid and her needs. The relationship felt very real as Sigrid tries to explain herself to Val, and Val is struggling to understand what her random words mean and what her enigmatic drawings are illustrating.

The NY Times reviewer calls it “hauntingly beautiful,” and Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review. Their reviewer says, “Trenchant details about catastrophic climate change bolster a creative plot featuring authentic characters, particularly the anxious, flawed Val. Ferencik outdoes Michael Crichton in the convincing way she mixes emotion and science.”

Here is Ferencik’s website

The Lincoln Highway

 By Amor Towles

Viking 2021

575 pages     Literary

Four boys. One huge adventure. Lots of life lessons learned.

It is 1954. Emmett has been released from a juvenile detention center in Kansas because his little brother, Billy age 8, was left alone following the death of their father. The new warden drives him home to Emmett’s Nebraska farmstead to take responsibility for his brother. Once the warden has gone, Emmett discovers that Woolly and Duchess, two fellow detention-mates, have hidden in the trunk of the warden’s car and are ready for an adventure.

Billy, an extraordinary young child, has two things going for him—he is obsessed with a book of heroes and adventurers, and he has also learned about the Lincoln Highway, which is the first East to West highway in the United States. He wants Emmett to drive West on the highway to San Francisco, where Billy is sure his mother is waiting for them. Their mother left them when Billy was a baby.

Woolly and Duchess have other ideas. They steel Emmett’s Studebaker and travel East to New York, where they are going to find Woolly’s inheritance and Duchess’ erstwhile father, a Shakespearian actor. Thus the adventure begins; Woolly and Duchess by car and Emmett and Billy by boxcar. The reader can’t help to be amazed at how independent and mature these young men are. Emmett is the steady character, while Duchess is the boldest. Billy the intellectual, and Woolly the dreamer.  

The structure of the book, itself, is innovative. It is written in ten sections, with the climax building from section ten to section one, and while section one doesn’t bring about the answers the reader is seeking, it certainly is a dramatic ending.

Every character is marvelously created. I expected that would be the case after having read A Gentleman in Moscow a few years ago. Towles has the ability to see inside the minds of his characters. I especially enjoyed the chapters about Sally, who is a young woman who took care of Billy before Emmett got home. She is a farm girl and a very efficient homemaker, but she is searching for some adventure in her life. She has served others all her teen years, but as she joins the boys on their adventure, she muses: “I thought to myself that there are surely a lot of big things in America. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty are big. But there is nothing bigger than a man’s opinion of himself.” Made me laugh.

There are several other great characters that I could write about including the author of Billy’s book and a traveling man named Ulysses, who bonds with Billy as well as the author of Billy’s book. But primarily, the book is about the adventure. The NPR reviewer closes by saying: “There’s so much to enjoy in this generous novel packed with fantastic characters—male and female, black and white, rich and poor—and filled with digressions, magic tricks, sorry sagas, retributions, and the messy business of balancing accounts. ‘How easily we forget—we in the business of storytelling—that life was the point all along,’ Towles oldest character comments as he heads off on an unexpected adventure. It’s something Towles never forgets.”

When I first began to read The Lincoln Highway for my book club, I was enthusiastic but a bit intimidated by the size of the book. But I reasoned that it had won many awards for a reason, including the fact that it has remained on the bestseller list for weeks and weeks. I soon became completely enthralled with the characters, the settings, the plot, and the humor. It was when I read a question and answer session that appeared on Towles’ website that the book began to make complete sense to me, including its innovative structure.

I was also struck by the title and it’s origin. I didn’t know that there was such a thing as the Lincoln Highway, but when Towles discovered the existence of the Lincoln Highway, I realized that I was not alone, and when I looked at the map, I realized that the Lincoln Highway runs just south of us through the northern part of Indiana. I want a summer adventure to take us from South Bend to Pittsburgh on the highway.

Don’t be intimidated by the size of The Lincoln Highway. You will be so caught up in the adventure and the characters that the pages, like miles, will fly by.

One Italian Summer

by Rebecca Serle

Atria     2022

272 pages     Magical Realism

As I am writing this, I am looking out the window on the Gulf Cost in Alabama, but dreaming of the Amalfi coast, the setting for One Italian Summer. It was the perfect book to read on vacation, because I was able to spend a great deal of time thinking about my relationship to my mother, when I was a young woman.

Kate Silver and her mother, Carol, had made plans and purchased tickets to visit the beautiful village of Positano, Italy. Positano was Carol’s favorite place, and she really wanted to share the beauty with her daughter, but after several months of suffering, Carol died. As a way to assuage her grief, Kate decides to leave her husband Eric and take the trip by herself to try to understand who she is without her mother, who had been her rock. She muses: “I cannot yet conceive of a world without her, what that will look like, who I am in her absence.”

Once she arrives, Kate is overwhelmed by the beauty of Positano and begins to follow the plans that her mother has laid out. She feels a little guilty about leaving Eric, who has been another constant in her life, but one of the goals for her trip was to decide what their relationship will be going forward. The views, the restaurants, and the hiking paths immediately call to her, and she begins to find some peace. Shockingly, she meets a young woman named Carol, who is 30, and Kate is sure that this is her mother as a young woman. As the two women become fast friends, Kate’s confusion is palpable. How is this possible? To add to her stress and confusion, Kate meets a businessman named Adam, to whom she is immediately attracted. How is this going to play out?

The plot is somewhat predictable, once the reader understands that Serle specializes in magical realism. It did intrigue me enough to keep turning the pages, but I found that the real strength of the books lies in the character development. We learn so much about Kate through her narration; young Carol is also strong, and you can’t help but be as attracted to Adam as Kate is.

The most important aspect of the book for me was the strength of the bond between Kate and her mother. My relationship with my mother was quite different from Kate’s, but I have watched a similar relationship between my sister and her daughters. My daughter and I have a very strong relationship, but I work hard not to offer too much advice. The book certainly caused me a lot of thought and contemplation about familial relationships.

The other aspect that I appreciated was my introduction to limoncello, an Italian drink that Kate learns to appreciate. I bought a bottle to see how I would like it—and indeed I did. A little bit goes a long way! 

This is my first book by Rebecca Serle, but I very much liked her poetic word choices and the delightful way in which she introduces the reader to magical realism. I scratched my head several times trying to figure out how in the world Kate could have met her mother as a young woman. When the reason emerges, it was obvious—and wonderful.

I loved the final comment from the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer, “Once again, Serle gets the job done just fine.” And indeed, she did. One Italian Summer will be released next Tuesday.

The Best We Could Do

 By Thi Bui

Abrams Comicarts     2018

344 pages     Graphic Memoir    

Not too long ago, I was exposed to the concept of inherited trauma, identified in the children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors. (Here is an article that discusses the concept.) Certainly the graphic memoir The Best We Could Do perfectly describes inherited trauma. The book is a fascinating look at Thi Bui’s family history leading up to their migration from Viet Nam to the United States and the years following their arrival. Notes on the book suggest that the book is about “the search for a better future and a longing for the past.” She indicated that the stories her parents told her “cast a shadow over her life.” Creating this graphic memoir helped her make sense of the trauma, and when she had her own son, she intended to filter out the trauma “so she could pass on something cleaner.”

Thi Bui is an illustrator and writer, best known for this haunting memoir, which is the Kalamazoo Public Library Community Read for 2022. It is a fascinating choice, and the author will be in Kalamazoo in March. The Best We Could Do tells the story of Bui’s birth and early years in war-torn Viet Nam and the family’s daring escape after the fall of South Viet Nam in the 1970s. In part, the narrative helps Thi Bui understand her father’s mental health  issues as well as her own struggles as a new mother. By drawing the story of her mother’s life, she probes deeply into the divisions that society creates. By seeking to remember the family’s struggles adapting to culture of the United States, she appreciates the bubble her parents created to keep the Vietnamese culture alive in their children’s lives. All of this Bui tells through compelling pictures and poetic text.

The illustrated memoir is the perfect vehicle for Bui to tell her story. She is greatly talented and I could not take my eyes off the pictures. In an interview with NPR, Bui says she sought to “weave the personal and the political and the historical to tell a story of the Viet Nam War and all the things that caused it, in a way that I felt like I hadn’t seen before.” Indeed she has done just that. The story of the war is compelling, in part because it comes from the Vietnamese perspective rather than the American soldier perspective.

I also was very intrigued by the comparison of The Best We Could Do with Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Currently Maus and the retelling of the trauma of the Holocaust is the brunt of a censorship battle in public schools across the country, and I am curious to know if Bui’s book could undergo the same kind of scrutiny. Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis faced the same kind of scrutiny in 2012, and I wrote about the banning  here and here. I am hopeful that this book can get through the community read events without facing censorship. I had thought that my 10-year-old granddaughter who loves graphic novels, would read it with me and then attend the presentation with me, but as I read the book, I realized that perhaps 5^th grade is a little early for the book, although I think it would be very appropriate for middle and high school students.

My trip in 2018 to Vietnam and Cambodia was an eye-opening experience for me, primarily in the understanding of resilience and growth. The Vietnamese are beautiful people, and as they are presented by Thi Bui, worthy of all that the world can offer them.  I highly recommend The Best We Could Do.

 

Paris Noir: The Suburbs

 Edited by Hervé DeLouche

Akashic     2022

280 pages           Noir

Why did the Baroness engage in the drug trade? “I wanted to spice up my life.” 

Why do I read noir fiction, especially the noir that comes from the Akashic Noir Series? Because I want to spice up my life! I am not sure, however, that this particular iteration of the series, Paris Noir: The Suburbs, will spice up life too much. Dirty, gritty, and crime-laden, indeed the stories are that, but I was disappointed that they were not very intriguing or immersive. Not even the story about the Baroness. Having just read and reviewed Palm Springs Noir, which I really enjoyed, I was a bit disappointed. 

The editor says that the goal of the book “was to depict the Parisian suburbs in all their plurality and diversity.” Thus, the editor elected to let the authors pick the suburb they wanted to depict in the story each had in mind. The stories in these settings are not the cozy neighborhoods Americans connect with the term “suburb”, but factory sites, run-down apartments, and neighborhood dives. The editor says, “When the suburbs are dumping grounds for the excluded, they breed insulted and rebellious individuals.” Many of the characters in the stories are just that—few are appealing at all.

It was hard to get involved in the thirteen stories in the anthology. If you want to delve into the Akashic Noir series, I would not start with Paris Noir: The Suburbs. The Publishers Weekly reviewer suggests that “this entry in this acclaimed series is only average at best.”

I am moving on to Denver Noir, which will be coming out soon. At least, the scenery there is beautiful.