October
Fiction:
*“The Hazards of Good Breeding,” by Jessica Shattuck (“The Women in the Castle”) tells the story from five perspectives of a WASPy, old-Boston family coming face to face with an America much larger than the one it was born into. Caroline Dunlap has written off the insular world of the Boston social life she grew up with, but when she reluctantly returns home after her college graduation, she finds that not everything is quite as predictable as she had imagined. Her father, the eccentric, puritanical Jack Dunlap, is carrying on stoically after the breakup of his marriage, but he can’t stop thinking about Rosita, the family housekeeper he fired almost six months ago. Faith, Jack’s wife, who left him two years ago and has since had a nervous breakdown, now rarely sees her children. Then there’s Caroline’s little brother, the withdrawn and secretive Eliot, who is working on a giant papier-mache diorama of their town – or is he? Caroline’s naivete makes her the pawn of Stephan, a handsome documentary filmmaker at work on a film entitled “The Last WASPS – From Puritans to Preppies,” who is clearly milking her for her connections as well as scheming to cash in on rumors of a Dunlap family crisis. By the time these disparate plotlines ultimately converge, we have shared and relished the inner lives of these characters, so effectively portrayed, and the ending is a knockout.
I really enjoyed “Beantown,” by Fredrik Backman, and hoped I would feel the same about its sequel, “Us Against You.” Actually, I did like the story line, and was pleased to revisit Beantown’s interesting and varied characters, but felt the book should have been half its length. Beantown is a small community tucked deep in the forest, home to tough, hardworking people who don’t expect life to be easy or fair – but no matter how difficult times get, they’ve always taken pride in their local hockey team. It’s a blow when they learn that ice hockey might soon be disbanded, and, even worse, how satisfying that is to the former Beartown players who now play for their arch rival team in the nearby town of Hed. As tension mounts, a newcomer arrives, and Beartown hockey gets a surprising new coach and a chance at a comeback. There are many twists and turns in this story, which has so many characters with multiple quirks and motivations it’s hard to keep track of a cohesive plot line, and there’s waaay too much philosophizing. I kept thinking, let’s just get back to hockey and get on with it! Okay, I admit that I did get misty a couple of times when reading about a few very moving interactions between some of the most appealing characters, but in general this book left me wanting to put my red editing pencil to work, because the underlying story had great charm.
Non-Fiction:
*When I finished “American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment,” by Shane Bauer, I said “Wow,” and not in a good way. In 2009 Bauer was one of the three American hikers in Iraqi Kurdistan who unknowingly neared the Iranian border and were arrested and taken to Iran’s infamous Evin prison, where he spent 26 months. Once home, struggling to overcome PTSD, he began to study and visit US prisons and eventually to correspond with some of the men in solitary. The abyss these prisoners lived in helped him to put his own struggle in perspective, and he was never able to turn away from the American prison system. The U.S. imprisons a higher portion of its population than any country in the world – we account for 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of the world’s prison population. Our system isn’t just inequitable, it is also heinously expensive – 40 states annually spend more on inmates than they do on students in Pre-K through 12th grade. One key issue is private for-profit prisons that operate with little oversight, mandate prisoner quotas, and make millions. In 2014 Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. He used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later his employment came to an abrupt end, but he had seen enough, and soon wrote about his experiences in an award-winning article that became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Because he still had more to say, and to help us understand the cruelty of our current system, he wrote this book to weave his own experiences more deeply with a history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins before the Civil War. They became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these origins are with us still. In 1890, Alabama Inspector of Convicts W. D. Lee told the annual congress of the National Prison Association, “While slavery is degrading, the Negro in slavery has reached a higher state of civilization than he ever reached anywhere else. What would become of him away from the white man, I do not know.” Today, immigrant detention is the frontier of private prison growth – during the last decade, the portion of immigrant detention beds contracted out to private prison companies has gone up from 25% to 65%, and nine of the ten largest immigrant detention centers are now privately operated. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly trained prison staff. The need to make a profit rules. A disturbing sidelight is how Bauer, to his horror, found himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he worked in the prison. We may not want to know or acknowledge the tough information that is in this gripping story, but we need to.
*On the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin: “Well, doctor, what have we got – a republic or a monarchy?” He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” In “If We Can Keep It,” Michael Tomasky asks, “Why has American politics fallen into such a state of horrible dysfunction? Can it ever be fixed?” He ranges across centuries and disciplines to show how America’s system of representative government was conjured into being, why it is so peculiar compared to political systems around the world, and why it has only rarely worked the way its creators intended. Tomasky says this book could have appeared just as it now stands no matter who became president, because polarization isn’t a merely a political problem – it’s also social, and cultural, and economic . The problems he describes long predate the current situation, but having Trump in the White House makes these questions and the search for answers to them far more urgent. He wants to play a role in correcting two misconceptions: 1) that an earlier, more civil time, was “normal,” when actually what’s normal, if you take a longer look at history, is polarization; and 2) that we are divided because of some lack of will or maturity on the part of politicians, when in fact it has to do with historical and social and institutional forces that push on these people rather than will. According to Tomasky, the two parties are totally different creatures – the Republican Party is a movement party, rather than an amalgam of interests; the Democratic Party is a patchwork of the various interest groups that have come into being over the last forty or fifty years, all liberal to one degree or another but too disparate to add up to a movement. I made so many notes I could go on and on, but suffice it to say this is a fascinating book, which concludes with the author’s Reform Agenda to Reduce Polarization. He admits it’s not especially realistic, but we have a dire situation, so isn’t it time to think outside the box?
| “Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen,” by Mary Norris, may not be of interest to everyone, but if you’re into grammar, languages, and – especially – Greek language, culture, and mythology, you will find this book charming. In “Between You and Me,” Norris wrote about her time in The New Yorker’s celebrated copy department; here she shares her greatest passion – all things Greek. She explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, searches for the gabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. With her we encounter Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine, and more than a few Greek men. The result is a book that is both educational and great fun, a fine combination.
Mysteries: Chris Pavone’s thrillers are fast-paced and suspenseful, always an engrossing read. In “The Paris Diversion,” while American expat Kate Moore drops her kids at the international school in Paris, across the Seine tech CEO Hunter Forsyth wonders why his police escort has left and his cell service has cut out and on the nearby rue de Rivoli Mahmoud Khalid carries his metal briefcase into the crowded courtyard of the world’s largest museum. Each has big plans for the day, but the ingenious plot twists in this story of international intrigue ensure that none of them will turn out as they – or we – expect. “The Unquiet Heart,” a sequel to Kaite Welsh’s “Wages of Sin,” returns us to 1893 Edinburgh, where Sarah Gilchrist has no intention of marrying her dull fiancé Miles, the man her family hopes will put an end to her “unladylike” dream of becoming a doctor. When he is accused of murder, she finds herself his reluctant ally. To further complicate matters, is she more than the protégé of her mercurial professor, Gregory Merchiston? In “Who Slays the Wicked,” by C. S. Harris, it is London, 1814, and sadistic young Lord Ashworth is found brutally murdered in his silk-hung, blood-soaked bed. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, is called in to help catch the killer – and to keep his troubled and headstrong young niece, Stephanie, who had entered into a disastrous marriage with the dangerous nobleman, from being convicted of the murder. Welcome to the dark underside of Regency London. When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.” – Jules Renard |
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