Stephanie Dray's "My Dear Hamilton" Historic/Romatic Biopic on Eliza Hamilton

HAMILTON, for those living under a rock, is a Tony Award play on Broadway written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.  As Oscar Eustis, artistic dir. of The Public Theater said, "He's Shakespeare - there I've said it."  I say, Stephanie Dray has a way of teaching history, but it's no mystery - she's no Shakespeare.  Dray is a fictional writer with a proclivity for women whose lives are imbedded in monumental epochs & been overshadowed by the omnipotent men with historic legacies.  Miranda paid an immense homage to Eliza Hamilton (EH), in his show.  EH outlived AH 50 years & proved altruistic in many ways.  She created an orphanage which flourishes today in NYC known as Graham-Windham, cared for impoverished widows despite her own minimal means, & established the first school to educate Native American youths whose lives were & continue to be decimated by non-indigenous people.  I offer a smattering of applause for the immersion into our country's birth; pre, during & post Amer. Revolution.  We're offered a front row seat to the founding of our nation.  I don't offer a zealous ovation for the novel despite its interesting narration from Eliza because her frippery morphs the novel into a Harlequin romance.  Our founding fathers' pre-eminence; in particular Alexander Hamilton (AH), are quashed by the flirtatious & feeble depiction Dray portrayed EH.  Perhaps, Dray's intent was to present an early female pioneer in a prominent fashion but she doesn't pay EH any  great honor.  While AH's role in birthing, nurturing and solidifying our nation is imminent, she lavishes too much adulation on EH (which subjugates women as subservient).  EH speaks throughout in 1st person to the reader.  Towards the end of her life's diatribe Washington is being canonized & EH tells us "Washington might be first in the hearts of his country men.  But this is AH's country."  She lauds her husband' "I live in a better world because of Alexander Hamilton.  And so do we all.  It's the promise he fulfilled while other men took credit for it."  AH did accomplish much in helping found our nation's and was privy to the lives of other extraordinary men of this epoch.  I admire EH's candor for calling out the disingenuous foundation of equality "...the great project of securing human rights through our revolution remains unfinished."  Still, EH is shamefully hypocritical for retaining slaves as did members of her family.  Reminders of our significant history is all too easily forgotten.  Dray's enrichment of our past is valuable.  In summary, AH's brilliance & essential contributions and  failings are measured & the sum of his life is deemed with great esteem.  Dray's novel is merely admirable.  

Melinda's Top Ten Literary Picks for 2019

The following novels, non-fiction works are my top ten picks for 2019 in alphabetical order by author.  Included in my picks are two Pulitzer Prize winning poets and two literary semi-autobiographical novels:

1.  Be With - Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet Forrest Gander

2.   The CAPITAL by Austrian author Robert Menasse

3.   The RESIDUE YEARS - a semi-autobiography by Mitchell Jackson

4.  An ORCHESTRA of MINORITIES by Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma

5.  The GHOST CLAUSE by Howard Norman

6.   The BEST of US - Pulitzer Prize winning poet Kay Ryan

7.   10 Minutes and 38 Seconds by Turkish author Elif Shafak

8.   OLIVE, AGAIN - by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Elizabeth Strout

9.  On EARTH WE'RE briefly GORGEOUS - semi-autobiographical novel by Vietnamese/American
         Ocean Vuong

10.  From GENEROSITY to JUSTICE - Non-Fiction by Darren Walker, Pres. of the Ford Fdtn.

OLIVE, AGAIN - Elizabeth Strout"s Reprisal on Olive

Elizabeth Strout (b Amer. 1956) is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist.  Her 2nd novel "Olive Kitteridge" received the Pulitzer for Fiction ('09) and was made into an Emmy winning mini-series starring Bill Murray and Frances McDormand.  Strout's innovative style morphs short stories into a novel intertwining characters with our unique central figure, Olive Kitteridge.  Then as in now, Kitteridge and the sharply drawn people in the novel are all intriguing; even more so for the interactions and spin Olive puts on these quirky people residing in Crystal Falls, ME.  The reprisal of past characters from previous novels are delightfully brought back to life.  Most beguiling, off-putting and endearing is the gristly Olive.  Olive is a modern day anti-heroine.  She is irksome, lovable, cantankerous, compassionate, opinionated and someone we want to spend time getting to know although "She's not everyone's cup of tea."  You can't help but wonder how Olive might regard us, if at all.  Thankfully, Strout brings revives Olive as she's aged although still obdurate, she's become more sagacious.  Olive is more outgoing and reflects back on her life.  She concedes regrets and is  more open-minded with a willingness to make accommodations for others.  We catch-up with Olive a decade later; after her husband Henry has passed and her estranged son Chris is now a father of four.  This time Olive is shaken, but not stirred away from broaching others and mending fences.  Jack returns in this novel as an important companion in Olive's life.  Jack serves as her sounding board, voice of reason & catalysis to experience new things.  Jack enables Oliver to consider matters from different points of view.  This exquisitely written novel about an obstreperous, older woman is moreover a lugubrious lament on loneliness.  "It should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect."  Interspersed within the melancholic motif of loneliness are highlighted moments of elegance and utter beauty.  Olive is observant & elegiac about the world around her.  "There was a kind of horrifying beauty to the world:  The oak trees held their leaves, gold & shriveled...everything sort of ghastly and absolutely gorgeous with the sunlight that fell at an angle, never reaching the top of the sky."  OLIVE, AGAIN delights us once again.

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish - The Hunt for Historical Fiction is Fascinating

Rachel Kadish's historical novel brings to life the story of Ester Valesquez, a Jewish woman living in the 1660s during the time of the Spanish Inquisition who immigrates to London and becomes the unlikely scribe for a Rabbi received the National Jewish Book Award ('17).  This multi-layered theological & philosophical tale is set in the milieu of life in London for the Jewish community amidst the perils of anti-semitism, societal norms and pestilence.  Ester's life is revealed through a trove of papers discovered in a home 3 centuries old.  The story within a story is framed around contemporary London through the pursuit of priceless historic correspondences in a race for time for deciphering.  Prof. Helen Watt & her American cad, grad. student Aaron, are desperately trying to unlock the trove's mysteries that should prove to be historically revelatory if not revolutionary in significance.  This construct has been done with literary flair by Wallace Stegner in his brilliant novel "Angle of Repose."  Both enlightening works depict important epochs expounding from a strong female heroine.  Ester is allotted the rare (and frowned upon) opportunity to scribe for a blind Rabbi.  Both the Rabbi & Ester have fled religious prosecution as Jews to London.  Ester's exceptionally gifted mind & pursuit for intellectual discourse is honed by the Rabbi's mentorship.  The Rabbi's sight was destroyed for refusing to foreswear his faith.  He's not blind to the societal constrictions limiting gender equality and heretical questioning. Both Ester & the Rabbi covertly enrich each other's lives.  Ester becomes wiser without pulling the wool over the Rabbi's eyes. "Why forbid woman or man from questioning what we are taught, for is not intelligence holy?" is one of Ester's many contemplations considered contemptible. The novel is at its best when submerged in the historic events & figures of the 1660s in London & Europe.  Kadish's serendipitous foray into the past elucidates the past in a palatable fashion much as Manuel's "Hamilton."  One's knowledge is enriched and intrigue for further study & consideration are piqued by Kadish's perspicacious writing.  The present day story (and past love story)  of Prof. Watts and Aaron's love life are essential impediments to the endlessly fascinating conveyance of the quotidian as perceived by a free-thinking woman living in an oppressive era with multiple strikes against her.  Among Ester's radical thoughts: "the impulse toward life to be of surpassing value.  Therefore all imperatives that oppose it, chief among them martyrdom, are in error," were punishable by death.  "The Weight of Ink" is worth more than its weight in gold.

"Look Both Ways" a Y/A Novel Well Worth Reading by both Teens and Adults

"Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks" by Jason Reynolds was a finalist for the Nat'l Book Award ('19).  Reynolds' clever & disarming writing combines 10 short stories interconnected by the students who live within 10 blocks of each other and attend the same school.  Each winning story intersect and connect by a school bus falling from the sky unobserved and a crossing guard ensured with the safe passage home of her awarded charges.  This magical work finds the humor, vulnerabilities, wisdom and fervor amongst adolescent friendships that surmount all else.  The friendship between 2 misfits, Simeon the gentle giant and Kenzi, one of the tiniest students comprises "a kingdom full of princes...no one ever bet on anyway.  Their earnest & unflappable excuses charm their way out of trouble. Simeon tells Kenzi "We family."  The other smallest student in school is Bit,  big on cunning and leader of 4 friends dubbed the "low cuts."  "The way they were-a braid of brilliance and bravado-concerned everyone."  The most timid & diffident girl at school is Fatima.  Fatima developed a tool for maneuvering a safe sojourn home.  She makes a checklist of things noted on her journey home. "28.  Look both ways. 29. One-way sign.  Right at the beginning.  Always there.  I still look both ways."  There's a fast & steady friendship between Jasmine and TJ.  They leave each other "friendship flags" in each others' lockers; empty snack bags; the litter of love, basically notes that said I've missed you.  In Cheeto dust."  Even though Jasmine is a girl and TJ a boy, they're best friends anyways because he'd always get her to laugh whether she wanted to or not.  "He was always there to chip some of the hard off."  Bullies seem to thrive on humiliating others until someone with temerity stands up to them.  Ty is often prey to his classmates' cruelties. That ended when Bryson, one of the coolest kids at school interjects in the lunchroom.  Bryson sat himself next to Ty and "pointed at all the jokesters.  Like my father always says 'Those that scar you are you.'"  But, Bryson could tell they had no idea what he meant.  "A gem dropped in the mud."  "Look Both Ways" is a trove of stories that sparkle with sagacious hindsight and keen insight into the mindsets of today's youngsters.  Look for this dazzling collection of tales.  It was a to begin with a school bus falling from the sky.  But this improbable event went overlooked.  Don't miss out on this delightful detour.  It's enjoyable through both the eyes of young people and those who recall being young, once.

Ocean Vuong's " On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" a Semi-biographical Novel

Ocean Vuong (b Viet Nam 1988) is American poet & essayist.  "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" is Vuong's debut novel which is a semi-biographical pastiche of poetry, family history and self-awakening.  "Little Dog' (as he's called by his grandmother) narrates a coming of age tale told in hindsight as a young man in his 20s. Vuong, like Little Dog (LD) were both born in Viet Nam & immigrated to Hartford, CT in the 90s with family after spending a year in a Philippine refugee camp.  LD's mother Rose is loving & brutal, overbearing and neglectful, demoralized and omnipotent.  As a young boy just learning English, LD becomes the voice for the household.  He struggles to fit in at school while yearning to be accepted.  His grandmother is schizophrenic and an artful raconteur for  folklore & life in Viet Nam.  Lan's daughter Rose is the daughter of an American soldier and mother to LD.  This elegiac novel reads as on-going dialogue LD maintains with his mother in attempt to bear his soul to her, reckon with his own life and mostly with the hope of bridging the chasms that set them apart.  In so doing, Vuong becomes a conduit for reflecting deeper into one's own innermost being.  This is achieved through Vuong's revelatory gift for unmasking beauty born of hardship and  pondering connections between irreconcilable forces.  LD writes hauntingly of his first love and sexual encounters with Trevor one of several young men who die from a drug over-dose.  We learn  of LD's physical abuse at the hands of his mother and the brutality his mother suffered by his father who remains apart of the family.  Vuong's memories are viewed with an innocence that paint an amber glow over the indignities and hardships he & his family endured & flourished from as refugees struggling for a foothold. "An individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly." LD's reconciles the lives he & his mother shared as a phoenix rising from ashes.  "All this time I told myself we were born from war-but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty.  Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence-but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it."  Vuong's novel is overly ripe with loveliness rendering a contemplation of serenity.

Ford Fdtn Pres. Darren Walker's "From Generosity to Justice - A New Gospel of Wealth"

Ford Fdtn.'s Pres. Darren Walker heads a $13 Billion int'l social justice philanthropy.  In his revelatory & contemplative manifesto of how we as a society can approach charitable giving in a self-less & meaningful way to wrought efficacious change by establishing equality in access to opportunities, education, creative expression, health care & acceptance.  Walker expounds on how philanthropy is about more than financial giving, it's about an inclusive, humbling process for achieving equality of basic human rights.  Andrew Carnegie noted "some people have a fuller experience of basic human rights than others do."  Walker is transparent with his oversights at Ford and the institution's tax breaks.  He challenges himself and everyone to acknowledge our allotted privileges.  "Privilege blinds because it is the nature of privilege to blind."  (C Adichie). Identifying the inequalities that philanthropy attempts to realign and examining the root causes in order to stop  perpetuating the needs for assistance will achieve significant change.  Walker's honest & insightful thinking are progressive & inspiring.  So too are his intimate interviews with business leaders, heads of philanthropic organizataions and quotes from major seekers of justice.  "Those of us who are willing to position ourselves in proximity to the poor, who understand how we're creating new narratives, who are willing to do uncomfortable things, who will endure some challenges and hardships-these are the ones, you are the ones, who will honor what it means to create a truly just community."  (Bryan Stevenson).  "From Generosity to Justice" allows everyone has abilities to contribute; time, money, experiences, skillsets or networks towards creating a better and more just world. This meaningful and graceful call for justice shifts the focus from outcomes to systemic issues.  It requires grappling with the past that impacts our present & future.  It necessitates investing in markets to keep funds flourishing with the intent of investing back into the undeserved community. The more fully we include people the fuller we reconcile liberation as the means that binds humanity together.

Kristin Hannah "The Great Alone" - Don't Go There!

Kristin Hannah (b US 1950) is a prolific novelist of historic, romantic adventures.  Hannah's novel "The Nightingale" ('15) was made into a feature film.  "The Great Alone" is a young adult novel, filled with adventure on the harsh & untamed Alaskan frontier.   Hannah's depiction of life on the Alaskan tundra for our young heroine Lenora, "Leni" is what's great in the novel.  The spectacular otherworldly beauty of Alaska was magical in its vast expanse, and incomparable landscape of soaring glacier filled white mountains that ran the length of the horizon.  Leni came to live in Alaska in the 1980s with her  parents Cora & Ernt.  Up until this fatal move Leni & her parents led a peripatetic lifestyle.  Ernt was a former Viet Nam POW.  Nothing seemed to work out for Leni's dad.  He was unable to sleep or hold a job.  Leni knew as a child of a PoW how fragile & easily broken people were.  Ernt was bequeathed land in Kaneq, AK from a friend who served in Viet Nam.  Cora hopes a fresh start in Kaneq will be the panacea for Ernt's deteriorating mental health and escalating, violent outbursts.  The cabin the family moves into has no electricity or running water.  Winters are long & unforgiving.  Cora seems endlessly forgiving of Ernt's brutal attacks tending to blame herself.  Leni perceives something is seriously wrong with her family &  felt like the only adult but as the child unable to confront her folks.  The family does learn to fend mostly for themselves growing their own vegetables, hunting, fishing and overcoming the harsh & severe environment.  There are other rugged settlers willing to help.  And, there's Matthew, one of 6 students in the town's makeshift one room schoolhouse.  Matthew & Leni are the same age, of the same mind & become each other's "one true thing."  Matthew is the son of Ernt's nemesis and their forbidden love must remain hidden fearing what harm Ernt would inflict on either Leni, Matthew or both.  Here's where "The Great Alone" left me out in the cold.  Their star crossed love story was obtuse.  I'm captious of glossing over issues of teen pregnancies.  The tales & means for survival in AK are enchanting.  But, the survival story of a daughter caught in the line of fire of a mentally ill, menacing parent was repugnant. .  Leni harbors numerous regrets.  If only she had broken free, asked for help - anything but remain in the purgatory of an alcoholic & abusive dad & mom who failed to shield her.  "Were you ever out in the Great Alone when the moon was awful clear."  Veering from the wild frontier into domestic abuse and an overly sentimental love story put the novel on thin ice.  "The Great Alone" becomes muddled and loses its appeal for young readers, adults or anyone.  Don't go there!

Richard Russo's Novel CHANCES ARE - Not Good for a Good Read

Richard Russo is nobody's fool when it comes to writing clever novels.  I'll give it to you straight,  "Chances Are" is a major fall from his previous imperial works.  The novel is about 4 friends whose friendship was forged as freshmen in college during the turbulent Viet Nam years.  Lincoln, Teddy, Mickey, the 3 male musketeers all vie for despite maintaining a motto of all for one.  And, one female Jacy for whom the 3 buddies vie for and would die for.  The individual back stories these four insipid guys are a complete bore.  Jacy's backstory is full incredulous melodrama.  Mickey's number comes up top in the draft.  Can you sing revelie or Oh Canada?   Jacy's determined to steer Mickey to dodge the draft.  The 3 buddies & gal pal plan a last hoorah after graduating at Lincoln's family home in Nantucket before they spread apart in different directions.  The novel is broken up into the 3 Musketeers which all revolve around their love for Jacy.  On the last day of their weekend swan song Jacy departs early leaving a note; never to be seen again nor forgotten.  Therein lies a mystery of what happened to their beloved Jacy.  Could there have been foul play?  The real mystery is how such witty writer could write such a shallow & facetious novel.  The characters are insipid and unappealing.  The payoff of what happened to the damsel that dazzled everyone in college is off-putting and trite.  Russo attempts to be profoundly philosophical about fate comes too late and only irritates.   "What made the contest between fate and free will so lopsided was that human beings invariably mistook one for the other, hurling themselves furiously against that which is fixed and immutable while ignoring the very things over which they actually had some control."  The time  wasted reading "Chances Are" makes me want to hurl.

Nathan Englander's Dinner at the Center of the Earth - Implausible Paths for Peace

"Dinner at the Center of the Earth" is Nathan Englander's brilliant new novel centers around the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians.  Englander's clever and calculating novel, in addition to being a political & historic novel is also a love story between Shira, an Israeli spy and a Palestinian spy.  There's also prisoner Z whose hapless imprisonment serves as ground zero from which other narratives arise.  Z's duplicity endangering Israel is captured by Shira who had captured his heart. Z's held without charges or communication to the outside world.  His confinement is a punitive purgatory.  His only contact is with his unnamed guard whose mother Ruthie secured him this top secret job.  Ruthie was the right hand assistant to the General known for his ruthless retribution for any attacks on Israelis.  The General has been in a decades long coma caused during a destruction mission that killed a mother and her children in their home.   The General's voice while in limbo chronicles his life and his crucial role in orchestrating battles against Palestine.  Each story and their interconnections are riveting.  The apex of this heart rendering novel is Shira's hopeless love story which echoes an essential need to compromise, meet in the middle and come to the table to negotiate peace.  The ephemeral hope for an end to bloodshed seems possible when people come face to face.  Unfortunately, the cyclical, never ending killings is imbedded in an inherent system of killing in mankind and man's firm conviction of retaliation that thrives eternally.  Englander, a Pulitzer Prize nominated writer eloquently eulogizes our fate.  " Once the invasion begins - There's no knowing how and when, or even if the bloodshed will ever end.  Only that both sides will battle for justice, killing each other in the name of those freshly killed, honoring the men who died avenging those, who by then, died avenging."  This astonishing novel, as with Englander's other works conveys  mistrust, hatred and violence.  "Dinner at the Center...." implores the the most violent and steady escalation of war but it also poses the implausible but possible hope for a resolve to end enmity.

Tea Obhret's INLAND The America Western Frontier

Tea Obhret's stunning debut novel "The Tigers Wife" was a Nat'l Book  Finalist and receive the Orange Prize.  This lyrical & mystical novel was set in an unnamed Balkan country.  Obhret's 2nd novel INLAND is an American Western Frontier 19th C saga.  The story originates in an unnamed Serbian nation. Our first raconteur is Djuric (Americanized to Lurie).  He travels across the Atlantic with his father at a young age with little memory of the crossing but for the dead laid out in shrouds along the stern.  When Lurie father dies shortly after arriving, Lurie recalls his father's corpse being loaded into the Coachman's wagon for burial.  After his death "my father never came to me again, not in the waters, not even in dreams."  Lurie augurs the cohabitation between the living and the dead.  The next time Lurie meets the Coachman he goes to work with him robbing graves.  Lurie found work robbing graves.  He recalls the ghost of a corpse "I knew he'd put his ghost arm about my shoulders.  That was the first I ever got this strange feeling at the edges of myself."  Lurie falls in with a gang of robbers.  Fleeing the Marshall leads Lurie to the Wild West.  The narration picks up with Nora, a pioneer in unsettled AZ with her husband to raise their family.  Nora's first born, Evelyn dies in infancy but maintains an omnipresent conversant with her mother.  Nora finds normalcy & comfort  in their ongoing dialogues.  Josie comes to live with the family.  She professes to sense apparitions around their homestead.  Nora debunks this as utter nonsense despite accepting her daughter's ubiquitous spirit.  The novel reads similarly to Sebastian Barry's "Days without End".   Obhret paints a mosaic of the beauty of an unspoiled, unsettled and lawless west with its harsh struggles & violent ways of life.  Obhret is a remarkable & commanding writer.  She writes of those who believe in the power of communion with the dead and other living unmoored souls.  INLAND speaks mournfully of duplicity, loneliness and regret.  Nora recognizes falsehood as the preservative that enables the world to maintain itself.  Everyone keeps some part of themselves hidden away,  even from their loved ones.

Turkish/British Author Elif Shafak's 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds

Novelist Elif Shafak is a British/Turkish novelist whose latest novel "10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World" received a 2019 Booker nomination and put Shafak under investigation by Turkish authorities.  The novel is set in and around Istanbul.  Shafak doesn't paint a flattering picture of the cruelties in Turkish society and the extremest views of Muslim religious zealots.  The title refers to the 10 minutes and 38 seconds Leila retains consciousness after her murder. Leila conjures up memories she didn't realize she possessed and reminisces on her life in the family she was born and the friends she loved that formed her chosen family.  The novel starts with the mystifying premise that despite her demise, Leila's mind hasn't shut down.  "The dead did not die instantly, they could, in fact continue to select on things, including their own demise."  Leila's heart stopped but her brain enters a realm of heightened awareness.  She reflects on her remarkable entry into the world and observations of the equanimity in death.  The midwife recognized the newborn as a stubborn & rebellious soul.  The wise midwife knew the way to get through life unscathed is to know when to enter & when to exit. Leila noted in the morgue "Cops and criminals shed their dead skin cells on the same floor, and the same dust mites gobbled them up, without favor or partiality."  The journey through Leila's life as viewed from within her corpse are hauntingly vivid.  The clock runs down on Leila's remaining minutes within her being uncovering moments in time that marked unknown milestones.  The ephemeral storytelling of the first half of the novel is intoxicating.  The 2nd half takes Leila out of the narration and delves into the lives of the friends who formed her true family.  These colorful characters mark outcasts of society: whores, transvestites, or political activists.  The novel's trajectory turns theological & political as viewed through these individuals.  Religion, power, money and politics are a manmade construct, construed as superstitious beliefs that hinder humans of insight and quashes self-esteem to the point where people mistrust & fear anything & everything.  Leila's devout friend is pained by the actualization religion which had brought her hope, love & resiliency oppresses others.  "The teachings that warmed her heart and brought her close to all humanity, regardless of creed, color or nationality, could be interpreted in such a way that they divided, confused and separated human beings, sowing seeds of enmity and bloodshed".  Shafak's astonishing novel adheres in the mind long after having been digested.  

Sarah Winman's TIN MAN is Mawkish Love Triangle

 Sarah Winman (b UK 1954) is a novelist and actress.  Her latest novel "Tin Man" is a mawkish love triangle between 2 men and a woman.  The two men met as young lads outside London and developed a life-long friendship.  Their friendship develops into a physical relationship between Michael and Ellis.  Michael is assured with his homosexuality whereas Ellis' emotions ebb and flow between love and shame.  As adults, Ellis meets Annie and the two marry.  A family of sorts is formed between all 3 with Ellis at the center of the happy trio.  Michael bears the horrible pain of loss & worry during the AIDS epidemic of the 80s.  Ellis' melancholy follows the death of his beloved mother and his equivocations regarding his sexual identity.  Annie is happy forming a trio. The novel is structured around a copy of Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers.  There is a major theme of loneliness and analogies of gay men who live their lives hidden.  Both Ellis and Michael narrate.  Michael's story is revealed mainly in an epistolary manner read by Ellis after Michael's death.  "Tin Man" aspires to be a literary elegy on art, love, loneliness and compassion.  I found the story mawkish & dull.  The writing is pedantic and the drama fatuous.  Ellis reflects on when their lives were less complicated.  "A brief window, not yet shattered, when music still stirred, when beer still tasted good when dreams could still be hatched at the sight of a plane careering across a perfect sky."  "Tin Man" aspires to an epiphany of transformation & acceptance.  I do not recommend TIN MAN which aims for loftiness but rings as hallow sounding as banging on the Tin Man where his heart was missing.    

Lucy Grealy's "Autobiography of a Face"

Irish/American award winning poet & memoirist Lucy Grealy (b Ireland 1963-02) has written a candid and absorbing auto-biography describing her consuming torment & self-loathing after surgery & treatment for cancer at age 9 left her face terribly disfigured.  The surgery necessitated the removal of a major portion of her lower jaw.  The next 15 years were consumed with multiple surgeries and permanent scaring from cruel comments & humiliating stares at her grossly misshapen face.  Grealy explores her feelings for the many years of feeling ostracized & unworthy of love because of her hideous face.  "I had lost out on the world of love only because of my looks."  Being ugly for Grealy meant a perpetual fear of being alone and isolated. Her attempts to feel gratitude did not suffice to stave off depression & misery.  The burden of being an outcast are marked by highlighted turning points in her life.  These cause us to pondering unassuming events that befall us yet mark profound impact on our lives.   The epiphanous moments jolting Grealy into reckoning how her life would play out strike a sharp cord within us.  She recalls the definitive moments in time when she believed she'd never have a boyfriend, acknowledged others the right to torment her and accepted a world in which ease & normalcy were not meant for her.  Sometimes, the subtlest moments descend upon us forging the way we perceive our lives.  Sometimes it's as impossible to reconcile the past as it is to foresee the future.  Grealy's writing is scathing, poetic and painful.  Grealy confronts our feelings of empathy, shame and insecurity.  "Autobiography of a Face" is a stark awakening of human foibles and the good fortunes taken for granted.  We're counseled against postponing happiness pending wishful circumstances.  Grealy discovers "Joy was a kind of fearlessness, a letting go of expectations that the world should be anything other than what it was."

The Grammarians - Identical Twins Obsessed with Each Other and Words - It's Absurd!

Identical twins Laurel and Daphne delight in their doppleganger attributes and are inseparable - until they're not!  As young girls they develop their own cryptic langue and fascination with words they find absurd.  Cathleen Schine's novel is at its beguiling best when the twin's were a complicated organism circumventing superfulous attachments.  The twins were within a magic circle that protected them from being alone.  They derided pleasure in their glib torment of those befuddled by their profound alignment. They share everything including a fatuous fascination with erudite vernacular.  Both are sticklers for grooming precise grammar.  (Their favorite musical is "My Fair Lady").  Oh wouldn't it be loverly if all remain in harmony between the sisters.  Whoa to the mister who comes between the sisters.  In actuality, the perfidy that forges a fissure between the sisters isn't caused by their spouses.  Their feud is fermented over a gargantuas Webster Dictionary and its pedestal.  Their beloved dad brought it home when they were saplings.  A shared cavalcade of tears following their father's death doesn't mitigate an altercation over sole ownership and tears their bond asunder.  Daphne dabbles as a pedantic copy editor & columnist.  Laurel's career as a school teacher takes a trajectory towards poetry.  The arcane prattle dissecting language is lugubrious. And, their quotidian lives banal. Schine's attempt to educate readers on the elusive and obvious fragments of the English language is lame.  "Language keeps changing.  And to understand language and teach it you have to know what is actually spoken."  Oh, lots of chatter that didn't matter. Why didn't Schine find twin dynamics dramatic enough material to materialize into something...loverly?

Nigerian Author Chigozie Obioma's Novel "An Orchestra of Minorities" is a Masterpiece

"An Orchestra of Minorities" is Chigozie Obioma's 2nd novel.  Both "The Fisherman" and this year's novel have been short-listed for the Man Booker.  Both works of fiction are beautifully crafted and deeply moving.  The narrator of "Minorities" is a chi; a guardian spirit who inhabits the body of a human host to offer protection and advice.  Chinonso is the chi's current host.  Chis are reincarnated spirits that are fused between spirit and body to form the ultimate bodily expression of creation.  The  chi presents Chinoso's life in testimony before a higher entities to dissuade them from condemning him for his errors an akliogoli, a vagabond spirit without a home in the heavenlies or on earth.  The chi speaks plaintively and regretfully for not having instilled Chinoso with wiser judgements.  This beautifuly written and tormenting tale contains a mixture of Igbo cosmology and African Lore, religion and culture.  At its core is a love story between Chinoso and Ndali.  A profound love derailed by an odyssey of tribulations befallen Chinoso that ruptures their union and destroys Chinoso and his beloved.  The chi argues nothing cripples a human being more than unrequited and rebuffed love.  "To harbor hatred in the heart is to keep an unfed tiger in a house filled with children."  There are rules governing how much influence a chi may impose on his host.  A chi cannot coerce its host, even in the face of the most violent dangers to himself or others.  It's the persuasive voice of man's conscience that is omnipotent and relinquishes the guidance of one's chi.  Obioma's skill with language is entrancing. We hear native tongues and current cadences in the "White Man's Language."  Chigozie's imagined world of Igbo cosmology is captivating and mystifying.  Still, it's the magnificent literary power of this absorbing work that gives "An Orchestra of Minorities" its celestial resonance. "The old fathers say that if a secret is kept for too long, even the deaf will come to hear it."

Margaret Atwood's THE TESTAMENTS The Chill is Nil in HANDMAID's Sequel

Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE published in 1985 was a shocking depiction of a dystopian future which was Hell on wheels for women.  The novel received the 1st Arthur C Clarke Award and a Booker nomination.  The fictional country of Gilead created by Atwood was a living nightmare that gave serious pause as to what horrors could come to pass.  Atwood's ORYX and CRAKE was another classic sci-fi apocalyptic future of sheer terror.  About to turn 80, Atwood is one of Canada's most talented & beloved writers.  Returning to THE HANDMAID'S TALE in a greatly anticipated sequel, THE TESTAMENTS proves to be a thriller that offers little in literary fiction.  There is a prequel, plodding escape & exacting revenge leading to the demise of Gilead but fails to deliver a revolutionary communique.  THE TESTAMENTS reads as a sequel for another successful TV series but it's staid and unremarkable.  The oppressive society against women and back stabbing espionage is entertaining, nevertheless, its power to evoke a sense of impending doom is sorely lacking.  There are parallels to the US's history of slavery and the devised Underground Railroad.  The novel overtly preaches warnings of diligence in maintaining a just society.  "We must continue to remind ourselves of the wrong turnings taken in the past so we do not repeat them."  THE TESTAMENTS is an equanimous novel in comparison to the imbedded & imaginative messaging in Atwood's earlier works.  I admire her ability to spin a twisted yarn but THE TESTAMENTS is more of a yawn.  I do agree with her concerns regarding  memory and thus how history is perceived.  "Such a cruel thing, memory.  We can't remember what it is that we've forgotten.  That we have been made to forget." "The collective memory is notoriously faulty, and much of the past sinks into the ocean of time."  THE TESTAMENTS fails to deliver a worthy tribute to THE HANDMAIDS TALE or her legacy of literary brilliance.

"The Gifted School" a Dramedy that Mirrors the College Scandal of the Social Elite

Bruce Holsinger's novel "The Gifted School" is a prescient dramedy that mirrors today's college scandals of privileged parents with plenty of means and believe the means justify the ends where their precious prodigies are concerned.  Felicity Hoffman is the first among a throng of celebrities and wealthy families sentenced for fraudulent tactics taken to insure their teens a backdoor entrance to elite universities.  This easy read, real housewives parody brings together 4 women in Crystal, CO whose friendships were born after the births of their children.  The mommy and me group has lasted more than a decade and consists of a colorful foursome including Rose, a neurological physician whose head needs examining.  Holsinger has written a romp of female friendships that sours into frenemies as they vie to get their pre-teens into a new public school for the gifted child.  Rose is not the only voice we hear and the multi-narratives becomes somewhat muddled between the women, their spouses and their offspring.  The young bloods include competitive twins Aidan & Charlie and two Emmas attached at the hip.  The strains of over programed privileged children parodies the tilted playing field that already favors the rich.  Almost no one comes off smelling like a rose except for the twins mother Azra and a young Atik, a self-taught origami talent.  Atik's single mom & grandma make ends meet by cleaning the homes of the rich on the sparkling side of Crystal.  Holsinger scores with the unscrupulous measures taken by parents to provide an added edge and appearance of perfection.  The vloggings by Tessa, a talented but troubled teen are particularly noteworthy.  Tessa and her younger, quirky chess wiz brother bring down the house of cards of pretentious preening and scandalous secrets.  "The Gifted School" raises good questions regarding the allocation of educational investments and focus for the general population but reads like a pop culture reality show.  "The Gifted School" gets a grade of B-.    

Ian McEwan's MACHINES LIKE ME - Artificial Intelligence v. Irrationality of Humans

Renowned British author Ian McEwan latest novel MACHINES LIKE ME examines artificial intelligence of humanoid robots by challenging the logic of human reasoning found flawed by illogic.   Set in London in the 1980s (amidst anachronistic events) the first limited roll-out of robots made to be discernible from humans in physicalities are rare, highly priced, coveted possession.  The male/female robots are all named Adam or Eve but each is given unique physical features & ethnicities.  Charlie recently came into a windfall inheritance and splurges on the purchase of an Adam (although he would have preferred an Eve).  Charlie enlists the help of the attractive female tenant Miranda to transport Adam into his apartment.  Both Adam & Miranda are fascinated to learn Adam's abilities and behaviors.  Charlie has fallen in love with Miranda and decides to allow her to select half the personality traits (unbeknownst to him) that will determine Adam's characteristic sets.  Still, there is a learning curve for Adam to develop human interaction skills and for Charlie & Miranda to appreciate or not Adam's presence in their lives.  As much as science as advanced in the field of AI mastery of the mind remains an elusive enigma influenced by indeterminate emotions & morals.  Adam's mind built on logic is in turmoil confronted with the hurricane of contradictions noted in human's behaviors. McEwan's thought provoking novel manufactures dilemmas that are mind bending.  The distinctive inherent essence of human existence that heretofore believed pertained to humans alone become ambiguous as relationships progress between Charlie, Miranda and Adam.  The implications for a future where brain-machines interface and merge androids and man seem both chilling and probable.

HELLO UNIVERSE the 2018 Newberry Award Winner by Erin Kelly for Young Readers

HELLO UNIVERSE is children's literature at its finest.  Writer Erin Entrada Kelly is a Filipino-American whose delightful novel captures the the creative imagination of youth, its angst and mixes with a twist of magical folklore.  Virgil is the youngest child in a family with 2 older, exceptional brothers.  He's been mostly overlooked & underestimated.  That is until his grandmother Lola arrives from the Philippines and takes a special interest in her grandson.  Lola is sensitive to Virgil's feelings and shares legends of her homeland that are foreign & fearful.  Virgil is haunted by his grandmother's tales.  He and 3 middle schoolers will cross paths in the woods and the wonders of the universe will come into play in a heroic and magical way.  Valencia is a classmate of Virgil's whom he's admired from afar. Valencia relies on her hearing aids & lip reading which casts her aside from her classmates.  Forward thinking sisters Kaori & Gen are open to signs in the universe for guidance.  This motley crew of likable characters collide courageously.   A bully Chet torments Virgil & Valencia but his meanness doesn't measure up against friendship.  HELLO UNIVERSE is a creative & clever story that doesn't talk down to young readers about kindness or virtue.  It opens onto a world of self-awareness in an entertaining escapade.  I highly recommend HELLO UNIVERSE for young readers & adults alike.

"The Ghost Clause" A Haunting Tale Mirroring 2 Marriages and a Missing Child

"The Ghost Clause" gives pause to ponder marital relationships and the skeptical realm of mystic anomalies.  Howard Norman received the Nat'l Book Award for "The Bird Artist". "The Ghost Clause" is an intriguing intertwining of 2 marriages connected by a gossamer entity.  Simon & his wife Lorca inhabited the charming home that gets purchased by Muriel & Zach after Simon's death at 48.  Simon's passing transforms his existence into a spiritual realm where he doesn't exist - yet exists.  He's an invisible voyeur of the newly married couple; Muriel a writer & Zach a detective.  The novel is enriched by Japanese poetry adding a layer of artistry and consternation considering what gets lost in translation.   Praise bestowed to Muriel by her editor reflect Norman's novel "a truly original and intellectually...emotionally - provocative book."  Zach's first case in the new home is the missing 11 yr. old, autistic girl Corrine.  Corrine has an endless fascination with moths.  She benevolently gathers, studies and releases these moths.  Zach successfully recovers the kidnapped child.  The case itself is a fascinating study which relies on critical listening and questioning.  Corrine's birthday celebration is held in Zach & Muriel's yard.  A large sheet strung up and lit from behind elicits a magical magnet gathering a phalanx of moths.  The many tiers of perception and patience add transcendent & iridescent elements.  Simon's presence doesn't go unnoticed.  The house cat, Epilogue, is constantly aware of his presence.  Lorca is drawn to the property & visits often where she speaks to Simon. Muriel perceives a ghostly presence and Zach's logical deductions eventually  arrives at the same conclusion.  But, when Lorca is presented with the legible diaries of Simon's ongoing observations on the family, Lorca steps in.  She addresses Simon "Your writing about their marriage can't complete the years taken from your and my marriage."  She warns Simon he must allow this family to lead their own lives in privacy or she'll never forgive him.  Lorca tells him, "We had a good marriage with some difficult things in it.  We began 2 or 3 marriages within the one we had."  Simon's omnipresent eavesdropping served as a conduit to his memories & relationship with Lorca; their happiness and sadness.  It gave him an overwhelming sense of loss because their intimate conversations opened realms of wisdom and emotion he could no long alter. The house sale has a legal ghost clause stating should the seller be aware of an entity residing in the house the seller is obliged to inform the buyers and should an entity prove problematic the seller is obligated to buy back the home.  "The Ghost Clause" is a mesmerizing novel of elegiac anticipation and contemplative wonders.  Prior to the light fading before gathering moths, Corrine who rarely speaks repeats softly "Wait, wait, wait, wait."  This novel is great, great, great.

Jayson Green's "Once More We Saw Stars" Navigating Grief of His Daughter Greta Aged 2

 Jayson Green recounts the tragic death of his daughter Greta caused by a falling brick in NYC and the unfathomable grief he and his wife Stacy bore. "The worst affliction that can happen in a lifetime, and no can understand how we feel?"  We cannot fathom the depths of grief or the agonizing purgatory in the aftermath nor their journey into the future with their irrevocable loss. We shudder  to consider that the unthinkable; the worst thing that befall a parent.  Jayson is professional music critic and former editor of "Pitchfork".  Jayson purging the incomprehensible pain on page in a his raw & soul bearing manner it gets the reader keenly aware of our human feelings and our how we express our feelings and behaviors.  "Grief at its peak has a terrible beauty to it, a blinding fission of every emotion."  Jayson tells us "We learn to live with the sadness like a great, lovely companion, because it's a soft sadness that softens the heart and makes you op to everything."  Jayson's elegiac prose paints a vivid portrait of his daughter that is filled with joy, wonder & love.  The ripples in the wake of Greta's death continue to reverberate in expanding circles of family, friends and into the future.   Jayson shares his journey along with his wife carrying on with their lives while maneuvering around a bottomless cavern of grief and oftentimes being enfolded into this omnipresent aperture.  Wallace Styron's auto-bio "Darkness Visible" shares his battle with depression which shines a light on his personal bouts that illuminate for others its overwhelming darkness.  Green's book "Once More We Saw Stars" also provides a close proximity & empathy for this horrendous tragedy.  The reader passes through realms of emotions in a momentous ways that leaves its indelible mark that serves as a tendon to keep us connected to life and expanding our openness to our existence and those of others.  .

Rachel Howard's "The Risk of Us" The Instability and Challenges for Foster Families

Rachel Howard's debut novel "The Risk of Us" gives us a piercing portrait of a married couple who choose to foster 7 year old Maresa intending to adopt her.  Maresa is an aggressive child resorting from trauma, abuse and separation from her birth mother.  The book is written from the foster's mother's perspective as she records the traumatic toll of events & emotions that wreck havoc on her, her husband, Maresa and their marriage.  The book deals with the distress of loving a child deserving of love only to feel incapable of coping and unsure of wanting to accept the formidable demands.  Howard's written a heart wrenching tale that is true of many children in foster care hoping for a permanent home, having dealt with abuse and torn between their birth their mothers & foster parents.  The endless social service workers, therapy and legal entanglements inherent in the system are taxing and oftentimes borders on lunacy.  At the center of the story we're torn between feeling empathetic with Maresa and sympathetic with the mother who waffles in her steadfast commitment for fear of destroying her marriage and waning abilities to cope.  The mother speaks to Maresa in a memoir that is excruciatingly draining.  The reader understand the couple's urge not to finalize the adoption and give up on Maresa for their own well-being.  There are phalanx of people who interact with Merasa & her foster parents including family, social workers, educators to varying degrees of patience, understanding, frustration & resentment.  The risk of providing unconditional love knowing the tumultuous course of caring for a child filled with rage & destructive behavior bearing the gravitas of  concern meshed with guilt.  Howard's elegant writing winds gracefully though the intricacies of adoption and the tempestuous capacities of tenacious love.  There is a driving mystery as to how the family dynamics will play-out.  This is an unflinching & compelling novel of the harrowing risks of selfless love that speaks directly to all of us.

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - A Bibliophile's Dream but Downhill for the Mainstream

Abbi Waxman's novel "The Bookish Life of Nina Hill" is meant to be endearing but waxes ones interest but for those who identify with literary loners with witty repartee.  In other words, this novel is one big cliche and serves as a diversion on a beach or in a cozy chair by a fire on an inclement day (which is probably the author's preference).  Nina grew up an only child of a globe-trotting, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer.  She leaves Nina in the loving care of a dotting Nanny.  Her childhood & young adulthood are blessedly filled with books, a "talking" cat Phil and a plethora of books that would make Belle envious.  Nina is not what you'd call a name dropper unless you consider dropping authors' names & book titles.  She works in a neighborhood bookstore with alongside an eccentric manager and close friend.  Nina can count on her hand the number of friends she has which is fine and on one finger the number of family members.  Until, she unexpectedly gets contacted by an atty. who informs her that her unbeknownst father (mom never said) left her an inheritance and an instant family of siblings, nieces & nephews.  Nina is new to the family gig and is not doing a dance about her new found family & serendipitous inheritance.  Nonetheless, she agrees to meet a few family members she never knew existed before the reading of the will.  Nina discovers she might actually enjoy being part of a larger family.  Otherwise for fun Nina loves trivia contests, old space movies, being organized & precise on her planner and nothing better than to be left alone to read.  Being left alone is not in the cards for Nina who meets Tom a sexy trivia opponent.  Nina as with many people deals with anxiety (mainly by being alone).  Like a lot of other bookish novels found inside to be  insipid there's still charm & distractions to amuse many a member of the Jane Austen Society, or not.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone - Don't Waste Time with this Id Platitude Made for TV

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist, writer and contributor to The Atlantic.  The genre of her latest book "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" generates a pastiche of psycho babble, self-help & self-grandiose memoir.  The most honest classification would call it out as a TV script.  Gottlieb own's up towards the end of her voyeuristic psychotherapy sessions as both patient & psychotherapist, "turning these late night laptop sessions into a real book."  She also flatters herself without fooling anyone that perhaps "{she'll} decide to use my own experience to help others."  Gottlieb's gregarious back-story to her life story as a writer/psychotherapist is grandstanding into her elite erudite education & positions as script writer in LA.  You don't have to be Sherlock to stumble on "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" is written under an altruistic guise to benefit her readers by learning from her work as a therapist and from her own therapy sessions.  Read between the lines - this is flippant entertainment that could garner a TV sitcom.   Eva Longoria picked up the rights from Gottlieb's book with the intent of turning into a TV series.  The most driving character is Gottlieb's client, John, the top writer for a popular TV show.  John begins his therapy as an abrasive asshole who calls everyone an idiot.  The books' characters' identities & issues are given a disclosure of obscurity but consider the ethicality of this voyeuristic exploitation into patients' sessions.  Gottlieb drags us into her role as patient working with Wendell (a nom de plum as in Oliver Wendell Holmes perhaps?).   Her reason for seeking advice seems trifling; a break-up with the Boyfriend.  Without intending, Gottlieb gob smacks the seriousness of seeking what for many would be beneficial if not essential means to improved mental health.   The phalanx of platitudes prescribed are unenlightening,"We can't have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same."  Furthermore, Lori is a shameless self-promoter "I believe that of all my credentials, my most significant is I'm a card carrying member of the human race."  The most sagacious sane advice comes from Lori's hairdresser "just be - let it be."  Save yourself time and money.  Get your hair done & garner some smart lifestyle wisdom simultaneously. John, Lori's most colorful character writes a therapist into his sitcom and ends her therapy with Wendell dancing together to "Let it Be."  Puh-leeze.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet Kay Ryan's "The Best of It" US Poet Laureate '08-10

Kay Ryan (b Amer 1945) has received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and named US Poet Laureate ('08-10).  I first came upon one of her poems in the NY subway as part of the MTA's poetry in motion.  I'm a huge fan of the poems & artistic posters that pop up serendipitously like jewels uncovered in a scavenger hunt.  The treasure wrought by gifted poets, and Ms. Ryan is more than just gifted, she bestows luminosity and lyricism to a compilation of words that is miraculous.  Ryan presents us with breathtaking poems in "The Best of It" that are arresting & consuming.  Ryan's haunting legacy speaks to the potency & artistry that can be construed & relished from the deliberate alignment of words strung together.                        TUNE

Imagine a sea
of ultramarine
suspending a
million jellyfish
as soft as moons
Imagine the
interlocking uninsistent
tunes of drifting things.
This is the deep machine
that powers the lamps
of dreams and accounts
for their bluish tint,
How can something
so grand and serene
vanish again and again
without a hint?

Indeed...

Stay Up with Hugo Best - Late Night Talk Host's Last Night Lingers on with Young Staffer

The plot of Erin Somers debut novel focuses on a facetious, flirtatious & unflappable femme fatale who encounters her idol, legendary late night TV host is remarkably fierce, farcical storytelling.  Somers mystifies us by pulling us in to the heroine's melancholy, Memorial Day weekend spent with iconic comic/TV celebrity, Hugo Best.  Best's long running show has just been cancelled.  June finds herself out of a job along with the rest of the cast & crew.  After a pathetic & shallow send off party for Hugo he somehow materializes up at the dank comedy club June went to wallow on stage for her  quelled career path.  Hugo's send off party with his cronies & celebrity clingers is a harbinger for the Memorial Day party Hugo will be  hosting at his CT home.  Hugo & June strike up a spontaneous conversation and coaxes June to join him at his home for the long weekend; no strings attached.  Not surprisingly June accepts and while Hugo & his chauffeur wait outside her ramshackle apartment complex she haphazardly throws together her tote.  Hugo has had an illustrious climb from stand-up comic to decades long late night TV host.  Along the way, Hugo has acquired fame & fortune, several wives, a son & a notorious scandal.  June whose aspired for life in the Big Apple in comedy writing shows potential comedic talents.  She has a dry wit and a strong will that serves well in bizarre & trying situations.  June demonstrates her strong sense of self even when she's skeptical and uncomfortable regarding how her connection with Hugo will unfold.  There's plenty of pathos, satire and dark comedy in Somers' drawn out observations over 3 days.  The days feel interminable yet drench the reader under a siege of convincing characters and scathing satires.   "Stay up with Hugo Best" somewhat resembles Kaling's "Late Night" and Scorsesse's "The King of Comedy."  However, this clever & sophisticated debut novel by Erin Somers is just the opening act to a writer we'll be clamoring for in the years to come.

French Author Antoine Laurain's "Vintage 1954" A Weak Blend of Sci-Fi for the Francophile

"Vintage 1954" is a harmless, somewhat charming time travel fantasy that is a pastiche of Paris chic, time travel mystique that is easily forgettable.  A motley mix of Parisians abiding in the same apartment building along with Bob, from Milwaukee, WI come together under precarious circumstances and imbibe a bottle of "Vintage 1954."  They wake up the following morning to get their cafe au lait and croissant and voila, they've all traveled back to the year 1954.  There's not much  to add this syrupy mixture that aims to cultivate a refined taste for the colorful artists and picturesque quotidian of the epoch.  There is little flair in this facile novel.  The ideas are not nouveau nor intriguing.  This is a sweet blend of nostalgia, romance with non rien regrette.  The novel serves much as a sorbet between courses; a palette cleanser betwixt denser, literary fiction.  Lauren (b Paris 1970) is a best selling award-winning novelist whose most recent novel "Vintage 1954" does not entice me to read more of his works.  Laurain pours out a full-bodied rant about our high tech, disillusioned contemporary world. While back in time, the group concurs "The bucolic scene seemed far removed from the city and the world and they all felt as though they had found the essence of life: humans were not meant to sit in an office chair answering emails...{but} decided that technical advances would lead humanity to great heights."  "Vintage 1954" is to be sniffed, swirled and spit out.  Adieu.    

Elizabeth Gilbert's "City of Girls" Pray Don't Waste Time on this Vapid Vixen's Tale

It's great to have a kindle, especially one you share with a friend.  If you run out of reading material you can try a the book on put there by someone else.  This isn't fool proof.  The name Elizabeth Gilbert did ring a bell.  Gilbert is the best selling author of her memoir "Eat, Love, Pray" which I loathed.  It was made into an unwatchable movie despite the talents of Julia Roberts & Xavier Bardem.  Admittedly, I did finish the memoir.   And, though I checked out the film version, it wasn't  for long.  "City of Girls" is a dreadful, droll novel.  It's a stale saga of 19 year old Vivian, a Vassar drop-out who hits the bit time in the Big Apple.  Gilbert's structure is somewhat enticing.  An elderly woman looking back on her life when addressing her story to Angela, the daughter of a posthumous great love.  Vivian was born into aristocracy on the East coast in the late 1920s.  The epoch for the story is late 30s early 40s; prior to the outbreak of WWII.  Vivian showed no interest in her college curriculum.   Already a disappointment to her parents prior to her expulsion for never attending class, and having no skills other than sewing taught by her beloved grandmother, they ship her to NYC to live with her father's sister, Peg.  Peg is a sblacksheep in the family having led a bohemian thespian life abroad.  Peg is now manages a shabby NYC theater with a cast of characters including glitzy  showgirls.  Vivian falls for what appears a glamorous & exciting lifestyle.  Vivian is in awe of the incredibly gorgeous Celia, a conceited femme fatal out to for gusto & sexual escapades when she's able to pull herself away from the mirror.  Celia flatters "Viv" & turns her into her wingman for hitting the town.  Vivian recalls hearing Billy Holiday, seeing Joe Lewis fight without either making an impression & is oblivious to the approaching war.   I was over this dribble before war broke out on the home front.  War was a rude awakening for our insipid heroine whose only regret was not having sex with the men who went off to become soldiers.  The intrigue of learning when & how the man who will become Angela's father became torturous.  Poor Angela who had to wade through Viv's boring & self-indulgent backstory. "City of Girls" isn't worth a dime.

Mitchell Jackson's The Residue Years - Stains the Soul A MUST READ

Mitchell S Jackson's unforgettable auto-biographical literary work of fiction has a prowess that leaves a human stain upon the heart.  Jackson writes in the first person as Champ, a.k.a. Shawn Thomas speaking directly to the reader's The other storyteller, his beloved mother Grace, breaks your heart. The prologue lays the groundwork for the wretchedness that overshadow their lives.  Grace is visiting Shawn through the glass divide in prison.  He admits his shameful solace is witnessing others worse off. "I have no more than the Wed transport to get me through, the tiny comfort of seeing dudes more inconsolable than me." He tells his mom "This is all we have and this must make do...So we reach out, the two of us, you and your eldest young bastard, and hold one another for a time that flouts the limit of allotted contact."  We sympathize with Grace, but can we really empathize with what it is to be an addict?  Grace tells us "How could you ever really know what us addicts, us experts, are up against in this life." We deeply care for both Shawn & his mother fighting her drug addiction as well as her ex to retain custody of her two younger sons.  Grace darts between religious fervor and the omnipotent drive to get high.  Both Champ & Grace are wise, vulnerable and their own worst enemies.  Champ loathes the church.  "Why is a nigger thanking God?"  Grace understands you become the wrong choices you've made but is ensnared in bad choices.  Still, she counsels Champ to marry the mother of his child "Living against the risk of love is no way to live."  Jackson grew up in OR & spent time in prison where his penchant for writing developed.  Champ's a brilliant writer  & encouraged by his prof. to continue in academia.  Champ's erudite vocabulary is chided by his peers "There you go with those SAT words.  Man, don't you know the shop got rules against this smart boy vocab?  Champ takes on a crusade to save his mom, brothers, girlfriend & their baby.  Selling drugs is the only way to get rich if you don't get caught. Champ is aware blacks now land drug-related prison terms 18 times the rate of whites.  Grace struggles but can't shake the monkey of drugs off her back though she strives "Just for today, my recovery will be my world.  This feels like day one.  It feels like the end....it hurts to be alive.  Mitchell's writing is painfully flawless.  He pays homage to Hansberry's play "A Raisin in the Sun" and the poem "Harlem." Champ clamors "For my family, for all of us, I can't let this dream defer.  My dreams are bigger than this place, and you or nor no one else is going to kill them." Jackson's title is found in his astonishingly moving work "Most of us, if we're lucky, we see a few seconds of the high life. And the rest are the residue years."  A MUST READ

"Tell Me Everything" by Cambria Brockman is a Beach Read that's Not All That

"Tell Me Everything" is the first novel by Cambria Brockman.  The novel's protagonist is college freshman, Malin who leaves home in TX to attend a 2nd tier Ivy League school in NH.  The novel reflects Brockman's peripatetic upbringing in TX, NH, the UK & Scotland.  These locales are all in keeping with Malin & the college friendships/roommates she acquires while studying literature & living away from home for the first time.  This first time novelist may mature into a richer author but this novel reads like a loose script for a B movie.  Malin makes allusions to her upbringing with an older brother, her tormentor and sociopath who died when they were both young & living at home.  The novel skips from her present days in college back to her youth in TX.  She paints an opaque picture of herself as a loner but not in a self-sufficient, admirable manner.  Never having had friendships growing up, given in part to the fact that her older brother died when they were young, Malin is on a mission to make friends, get top grades and fit in.  Malin takes to heart her father's words of wisdom when leaving her on campus freshman year, "pretend."  Malin narrates her own story which reveals her triumphant acceptance by a band of friends (not unlike the popular TV show "Friends") which include a girl from London, Gemma, and Ruby.  Ruby is the golden best friend who allows Malin as her best friend and has been in a 4 year relationship with her boyfriend John, one of the 3 guys with whom the 3 girls share a home and ongoing bond with for all 4 years.  If this novel seems reminiscent of Donna Tart's intriguing murder mystery set amongst a group of friends on a New England campus, it's due to a deja vu premise.  But, while Tart's novel is an intriguing, literary mystery Brockman's novel is a Y/A coming of age heroine that is sophomoric with a twisted ending that most adults would have seen coming before Malin moves in with her classmates.  For young adult readers, there is a public health warning for toxic controlling relationships which require terminating and perhaps with help from peers & family.  "His hobbies became her hobbies.  Her life had become his.  He had sucked her dry. draining her body of all life and personality." And, be wary of a friend who crosses creepy boundaries.  Malin confides to the reader "I knew reading her diary was wrong.  It was a fucked up, creepy secret of mine."  "Tell Me Everything" gets a passing grade but barely.

Philiip Roth's The Ghost Writer - Whiney Writing at Its Wittiest

Philip Roth is one of America's finest and highly bestowed authors.  NY Magazine named him the greatest Amer. writer ('13).   He's received the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, the Man Booker and Named Commander of the Legion d'honer.  Pres. Obama honored Roth in 2011 with the Nat'l Humanities Medal.  Roth (b 1933-2018) is a literary giant with a legacy that will likely label him a writer whose memes portrayed Jewish life in American, Jewish self-loathing, Anti-semitism, Jewish assimilation, self-congratulations to his literary & sexual prowess and perhaps, masturbation.  I laud Roth as an extraordinary writer with a fierce, clarion voice.  His style is defiant, irreverent, unapologetic and astutely aware of the pulse of social & cultural conundrums.  "The Ghost Writer" was published in 1979.  It is his 1st work in which he introduces the young Jewish writer Nathan Zuckerman (a.k.a. a nom de plume for himself).  The novel spans two days in the rural home of a renown author E. I Lonoff for whom Nathan worships and is flattered beyond measure to receive his praise & attention.  There are other intriguing storylines that include a rift with his family who are appalled he intends to publish a short story that casts aspersions on Jews.  Lonoff is married to an uppercrust gentile, Hope.  Hope is fed up with their marriage and Lonoff's houseguest, a young co-ed Amy with whom his is having an affair.  Nathan is besotted with Amy & her nebulous, delusional claim to be Anne Frank.  This early work of Roth's prolific career portends a skillful writer with a brilliant gift for self-revelation and societal accusations.  Roth will remain one of the most talented & significant writers of the 20th C.  His clever & prolific works created in the 21st C do not mitigate his luminescence but they tend to focus heavily on himself; his despair with aging and his disconnect from today's technically advanced younger & vital youth.   I recommend reading Roth's novels.  "The Ghost Writer" is a paradigm of the phalanx of his many notable novels.

Austrian Author Robert Menasse's Novel "The Capital" Wins German Book Prize '17

Menasse's complex, confusing and astute social commentaries make "The Capital" an ingenuous prescient work of profound insights.  It's a compilation of self-serving characters that are mistrustful, perfidious, non-committal and as such, unable to bridge meaningful connections.  The confusion & absurdity in Menasse's writing argue the futility of establishing a functioning European Union.  Progress towards a social union, a fiscal union, the formation of common European alliance with the goal of turning competing European nations into a united Europe of sovereign citizens all enjoying the same rights is ephemeral.  The unification of the EU is unachievable in lieu of the persistence of nationalist ideology indigenous to one's country of citizenship and is likely to underly all criminalities.  Menasse argues nationalism has a proclivity towards evil as it's used as the justification of ethnic purging & genocide.  Menasse points towards Nazi Germany's extermination of 6 million Jews during WWII.  The novel is set in Brussels, the capital of the European Union which hosts the headquarters of the main EU institutions.  The tale begins with a murder mystery that becomes totally effaced in sinister bureaucratic manipulations.   A pig runs rampant down the streets of Brussels setting the tone for an absurdist black comedy imbued with many political innuendos hidden within this wickedly convoluted novel.  The police cover-ups appear benign betwixt the Catholic Diocese control and bureaucratic back-stabbing for climbing the corporate ladder.  There is a plethora of characters:  a police detective, a hired hitman, Holocaust survivor, a Catholic priest and multiple executives that exchange double-talk divulging little that would assist another.  "The Capital" is clever & abstruse. It's both amusing & disconcerting and particularly relevant at present.  Menasse argues that today the world has selected a new scapegoat slated for vehement anathema, not the Jews or the communists but immigrants in general.  Specifically the Islamic nations and individuals who would threaten to lord over everyone with austerity, misogynistic rule & religious fanaticism as justification for barbarities inflicted on all infidels.  There is a harshness to the debilitating preparedness the individuals take which proves stifling & deleterious to functioning in society.  And yet, there is a lyricism for pondering how history is recorded.  What do we remember, what do we forget or chose to forget and why we forget.  "For the living, death is always the death of others."

"Be With" Forrest Gander Wins Pulitzer Prize ('16) for Poetry - Elegant & Melancholy Eulogy

Forrest Gander is a novelist, professor & poet.  His poetry collection "Be With" earned the Pulitzer Prize in 2016.  It's no wonder - "Be With" is a compilation of poems that are deeply felt reflections on life, mortality and love.  "Be With" begs to be read & treasured.  Gander is a national treasure and deserving of the Presidential Medal of Honor.  "Be With" is packed with poignancy and tenderness.  "Such fervid love entwined the two together in one voice both possessed.  A plenum of the world.  The more that love was one, the more of love there was."  Gander's gentle & pensive wisdom weave into one's conscience.  "Forgive yourself, they say, but after you forgive what you have lived, what is left."  And regrets rain upon one's psyche, "I gave my life to strangers.  I kept it from the one's I love."  "Be With" is overflowing with life affirming homages.  There are also keen harbingers warning us of legacies laden with maleficence.  "Though I also wear my life into death, the ugliness I originate outlives me."  I have high praise for Forrest Gander's exquisite lyrical gift with words.  "Be With" should be read, revered and re-read.

Mary Robison's Novel "Why did I Ever" - Ever Wonder What It's Like Living with ADD?

"Why did I ever" is a cleverly written novel that gets inside the head of a very smart, but very troubled and erratic woman, Monica.  Forget the name, because she only mentions it once; a quick wink while delving into the psyche and stress of a mother with rapid fire acerbic comments (many directed to herself) and a prolonged magical regard of serious issues plaguing her adult son & daughter.  Robison's (b Amer. 1949) novel is very crafty & creative with her writing style.  There's an intriguing blend of Didion's "Year of Magical Thinking," Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night?" and Kennedy's "Confederacy of Dunces."  The  storytelling unwinds through the mind of a very intelligent, quirky outsider.  Monica is aware of her porous filter but her diatribe just flies much to our amusement and disconcertment.  "I just regret everything and using my turn signal is too much trouble.  Fuck you!  Why should you get to know where I'm going?  I don't."  She's a loving mother who intermittently reveals her son & daughter's heartbreaking ordeals.  She is often the smartest person in the room, "Bit of a wonder that my mind can house such a melange."  Being so edgy doesn't make for smooth sailing at work.  Her forlorn travails in love & friendship& oddities ingratiate or irritate (depending on the reader.)  Her only female friend is a homeless woman she calls the deaf lady.   Her male companion teaches drivers ed to teens and has little direction in life.  The genre falls somewhere in the absurdist, comic-tragedy genre.  Robison suffered from serious writer's block for years in the 90s.  During this period she scribbled fragmented thoughts on thousands of scraps of paper which evolved into "Why did I ever" which received the 2001 LA Times Book Prize.  I've nEVER read anything quite as beguiling, bothersome & brilliant.  It gets a strong recommendation from me with the caveat it's not for EVERyone.

Luis Alberto Urrea's Novel "House of Broken Angels" Patriach's Mexican Social Critique

"House of Broken Angels" is both a social commentary of envy & resentment felt by Mexican's south of the US border towards the ease of the white gringo's on the US side of the border.   Luis Alberto Urrea (b Tijuana 1955 - an American born abroad) is the son of a Mexican father and American mother.  In Urrea's sprawling novel that spans only a few days covers a life-time of resentment, envy, regrets and ephiphanies for its protagonist, Big Angel (BA), the patriarch of his Mexican family.  This arduous and antagonist novel depicts the struggles & familial binds of Big Angel's family living in Tijuana.  The novel starts with the family gathering for the funeral of BA's mother.  The following day is planned for a celebration of Big Angel's 70th (and final) birthday.  Weazened and immobile, BA is aware (as is most of his family) he's at death's door.  The novel reflects Urrea's upbringing allowing for what could be considered subversive or at the very least, politically incorrect stereotypes of Mexicans "...border peasants, feeling sorry for {themselves}."  There is an overriding resentment of BA's 1/2 brother, Little Angel (LA) born to the woman his father left his mother.  LA is raised in a San Diego suburbs with "...the ease that world of fancy pale bastards up north" are entitled. Urrea claims "Each side has something to prove, and none of them knew what it was."  This is a complex and excruciating look at a dysfunctional family and ethnic generaliztions all centered around BA at the precipice of his death.  BA is reckoning with his mortality and legacies.  "All BA ever wanted was to inspire awe." BA's birthday celebration is broken down by interminable minutes and takes  trajectories into the lives of BA and his immediate family. The cultural status and comparisons are most clearly drawn between BA & LA; brothers who love each other but who've had very different upbringings.  BA is an undesirable wet-backs and LA the pampered white gringo.  Even BA admits "he was ashamed of his father, what a beaner."  And he says to LA "Pink nipples are more intoxicating than brown."  There is plenty of self-pity, self-loathing measured against omnipotent love for family and life itself.  "A life was a long struggle to come to terms with..."  A lyrical voice rings through an oppressive saga from BA.  He recently started jotting down what things to be grateful for "...rainy days, when shadows make their mysterious way around corners."  The unflattering & unapologetic look at the pathetic quotidian Tijuana lives resonate with universal awakenings for what's valued most.  Urrea notes when confronting one's mortality this incurs regrets, one's stupidities and the acceptance of continual learning especially when it comes to loving others.    

Melinda's Top Ten Pick Best Reads for the First Half of the Year

The following list in alphabetical order by author and is a mix of fiction, non-fiction, memoirs & short story collection from international writers (American writers where not indicated):


1.   James Brinkley short story collection "A Lucky Man" - Nat'l Book Award '18

2.   Anna Burns, Belfast-UK, "MILKMAN" Man Booker Prize 2019

3.   Nathan Englander's novel "Kaddish"

4.    Father Gregory Boyle's memoir "Tattoos on the Heart"

5.    Hisham Matar, Libyan-British "The Return". Pulitzer Prizer 2017

6.    Sy Montgomery's "The Soul of an Octopus" Nat'l Book Award for Non-Fiction 2015

7.    Tommy Orange's "There, There" short-listed for Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019

8.    ZZ Packer's short story collection "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2013

9.    Sally Rooney, Irish "Normal People"

10 .  Yoko Tawada - Japanese-German "The Emissary" Nat'l Book Award 2018

Meg Wolitzer's "The 10 Year Nap" Feminism and the Generation Gap

Meg Wolitzer (b Amer 1959) is an acclaimed novelist.  Three of her novels have been made into feature films including "The Wife" with Glenn Close & Jonathan Pryce.  Meg's memes tend to deal with feminism as in "The Wife" and "The 10 Year Nap."  Wolitzer writes about a world that feels dated and obsolete.  As for feminism, it's obscure as to what (if any) debt is owed to women from the 50s & 60s who claim credit for liberating future generation to the luxury of infinite opportunities & choices heretofore denied before the 70s.   Regardless, Wolitzer's wonderful writing creates a world that reflects modern women's wonderland & dilemmas.  Praising past generations for paving the way doesn't seem relevant.  Reading "The 10 Year Nap" (' 08) does awaken multiple topics: generational divides, longterm marital demise, female friendships & intimacies, women aging, children separating,  financial woes and working moms versus non-working (particularly in NYC.)  The novel outlines its  thesis "...the women were startled awake, they sometimes took a momentary dip into the memory of what they had left behind and then, with varying degrees of relief or regret, they let the memory go."  Wolitzer goes on to support her thesis as though her novel were a term paper striving for accolades from mentors.  The novel dallies in the dilemma of bright co-eds for whom their college years cast a lustful sheen upon their glory days.  Without the structure of assignments & grades, the waning years mark an evanescent life before marriage & family.   The usage of interchangeable adjectives for luminescence cannot be overlook and lowers the grade of this (interminable) paper from an A- to a B-.  The 4 main female characters connect through their sons who attend the same elite upper west side private school.  These women offer intriguing insights into women's psyche.  The observations are best made as voyeuristic revelations as when the women came upon their husbands & sons unobserved on their camp out or one friend feeling privileged to share in another's secret tryst.   Most poignant is the central character Amy when she evaluates her marriage.  "Married for 13 years and in the middle of their life together, they often lay in bed at night like two tired prehistoric animals that had individually been out in the world for many hours fighting for survival."  The coffee shop, the Golden Horn, is where the ladies all stop after drop-off.  It became their common foddering ground.  The summations for each of these women are too tidy.  The Golden Horn owner realizes this group is no longer gathering at his establishment.  He didn't think they abandoned his place for another but realized "{it} had held them in place over such a long stretch of time...But now the world, he thought had taken them.  One day you just woke up, and there was somewhere that you needed to be."

Literary Sci-Fi Future Apocalyptic Fantasy "The Fifth Season" by N K Jemisin

"The Fifth Season" by N K Jemisin (b Amer 1972) is the 1st of a sci-fi, fantasy trilogy series.  It's the first such trilogy to win the Hugo Award 3 consecutive years.  (Even the Warriors couldn't do a 3 peat).  This honor, along with many other literary awards, including the Hugo Award for best novel distinguishes this skillful writer as a crafty short story writer, novelist & psychologist with a very singular writing style.  The author cleverly combines an imaginative, colorful hero in a futuristic fantasy world auguring environmental disaster.   "This is what you must remember the ending of one story is just the beginning of another."  Lerna (when will we learn?) is a middle-aged, overweight guy trying to get by in a world that has crumbled.  In other words, he's an atypical hero heralded for his ingenuity & resiliency doing his best to survive against insurmountable odds.  I'm all for an odd, sci-fi, imaginative world that takes you out of your element.  But, Jemisin's lyrical prose posed some obstacles for me.  I found it difficult to gain access into this made-up, likely to happen world.  There is disastrous geological upheaval on earth that is not healthy for children and other living things.  Are you with me here?  Because this writing felt too ephemeral I was held at bay from inhabiting this peculiar planet (our own) & prevented from leaning into Lerna's unconventional (though essential) personality.  Hmm...Jemision's "The Fifth Season" should appeal to most sci-fi literary lovers(and environmentalists) the first go round.  I'm going to re-read this remarkable fantasy a 2nd time at a later date but it's doubtful I'll try the other two in this trilogy. Of course, this may prove untrue in the future.  

"Kaddish" by Nathan Englander - Extreme Observances Extremely Engaging

Nathan Englander (b Amer. 1970) is a Pulitzer Prize nominated author ("What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank") and winner of the Pen/Malamud & Frank O'Connor Int'l Short Story Awards.  His novels & short stories center around Jewish families and the spectrum of observances and assimilations in the Jewish faith.  "Kaddish" begins with a yahrzeit (a weeklong period of mourning) for the father of Larry and his sister Dina.  The siblings were raised in an Orthodox household.  Dina has maintained her religious fervor.  She is forever grieved by Larry who has distanced himself from his Jewish faith and traditions.   At the end of Larry's confining week of bereavement, Dina pleads with him to carry out the tradition of reciting Kaddish (the mourner's prayer) for their father for an entire year, an important obligation of the male family member to carryout.  Dina is skeptical. Larry is practical.  Larry found a portal to porn on the internet & discovered a site where you can hire a Talmudic student to fulfill this commitment.  Larry makes an about face with his faith.  He returns to his Orthodox roots and Brooklyn where he is now Rev (Rabbi) Shuli.  Shuli is happily married with young children when he has an epiphany of hypocrisy, guilt & remorse for shirking his religious duty of saying Kaddish for his beloved father who was also Rabbi and religious leader.  Englander delves so deeply into his characters they become vibrant & multifaceted.  Shuli's obsession of seeking redemption becomes an ordeal which overrides reason & protocal.  Yet, Englander's clever writing instinctually leads you alongside Shuli's search for answers & forgiveness.  Shuli's return to his faith seems a natural shift for one who has strayed from his fold.  While revealing the ultra-Orthodox rituals, Englander makes clear universal sagacious views on life.  Shuli shares his tale to tell us "It's never too late to live one's true life."  His wife Miri, a miraculous wife & mother (or perhaps saint) has her patience tested by Shuli's unorthodox pursuit or redemption.  Miri tells her husband it's permissible to forgive oneself and what makes a marriage work is the knowledge that no relationship should be taken for granted.  Englander's talent as a storyteller is phenomenal.  The profuse references to what I perceive as extreme religious observances & beliefs do not shroud Englander's gifts as a writer they only enhance the transformative power of his elegant prose.  Leave no doubt, you don't have to be Jewish to love "Kaddish."  I pay my respects to Englander's talent as a writer and offer a prayer for universal peace.

Casey Gerald's Auto-bio "There Will be No Miracles Here" NPR & PBS Book Picks

Casey Gerald's uniquely told coming of age revelations depict his early unstable years shuffled from one home to another in TX while trying to negotiate salvation in this life and the next.  Born to a legendary football father whose glory days are over and a mother with mental health issues who flits in and out & ultimately vanishes from his life, Casey searches for any welcoming port wherever it may come.  Casey possesses a preternatural pluckiness while at odds with himself.  He is forever questioning his masculinity & divinity with apprehension sensing his homosexuality is perceived as an abomination; the ultimate sin.  Casey struggles to secure deliverance in this life while wary of jeopardizing his chances in the one yet to come.  We learn early on he'll be attending Yale & Harvard although neither Casey or the reader have a clue how this remote opportunity will be achieved and maintained.  Gerald's writing warbles timelines and is indiscriminate in placing gravitas on events that bear more significance.  It feels as though his influences & maturations are more serendipitous than strategically planned.  I had difficulty deciphering the ephiphanies or moments that molded Gerald.  However much his writing meandered as is more in keeping with memory, the glimpses of greatness outshine confusion.  "Our time is too short and our odds are too long to wait for 2nd comings.  When the truth is there will be no miracles here... It will not be our blind faith but our humble doubt that shines a little light into the darkness of our lives and our world."

Martin Greenfield's Auto-bio "Measure of a Man From Auschwitz Survivor to President's Tailor

"Measure of a Man" is Martin Greenfield's life-story where he tells of the inhumane suffering under Hitler's Nazi regime.  This is his account of his miraculous survival during the genocide of 6 million human beings; mainly European Jews during WWII.  Martin (b. Ukraine 1928) named Maximilian Grunfeld, his parents, 2 brothers & 2 sisters were forced from their homes in April '1944.   Jewish families were herded from their homes onto cattle cars & sent to Auschwitz where millions were exterminated.  Martin takes us back to his beloved family & beautiful hometown of Pavlovo near the Hungarian border and shares what he felt & experienced at 15 when  separated from his family.  He questions whether his parents knew what their fates would be.  Was there a plan to remain together or whether his parents had put on brave facades knowing they were being sent to their deaths.  Martin's realization of religious hatred and the understanding of what horrible things happen when people don't think for themselves are harsh lessons he learned and that mankind must learn from.  The atrocities are inconceivable making Martin's account so imperative to be told and heard.  He writes of his internment & struggle to survive in his 15 year old voice, reliving the horrors he experienced & witnessed making his narrative accessible, comprehensible and impactful. The torment of being separated from his father at the camps and his father's imparting wisdom are especially poignant.  "Together, we will never survive, because working together we will suffer one for the other.  We will suffer double." His father's parting words provided strength to survive and freedom to live a full life afterwards with gratitude, love, humanity without the burden of survivor guilt.  "You are young and strong and I know you will survive.  If you survive by yourself, you must honor us by living, by not feeling sorry for us."  Today, Greenfield says "I am grateful for those words.  They echo in my heart even still.  It is a cruel thing, feeling guilty for surviving."  His journey to America, hard work and zest for life that garnered him a loving family & a remarkably successful tailoring business is an impressive, hilarious, humbling and mindful account rendering the entire auto-bio a vital & essential read.   "My life has been filled with far more light than darkness."  At Martin's Bar Mitzvah at age 80, his Rabbi said "Here you have a survivor of the Holocaust who understands that {the} response to destruction is construction.  Marty reconstructed his life.  He built a successful business, and also a beautiful, loving family."  Martin believes strongly life is too short to hoard one's gifts and considers the deliberate severing of family ties abhorrent.  "Measure of a Man" is a first hand testament to history, humanity from a remarkable man with an incredible outlook & regard for the value of life.








Holocaust Survivor and Inspiring Thriver

Japanese Author Yoko Tawada's "The Emissary" - Receives the Nat'l Bk Award '18

The hauntingly beautiful futuristic tale "The Emissary" is a sci-fi dystopian genre that is story of devotion between multi-generational family members.  Great-grandpa Yoshiro has been left with the sole care of his great-grandson Mumei.  Yoshiro takes on the responsibility fully & lovingly.  Mumei is an extraordinary young boy living in the not too distant future during an exceedingly restrictive epoch in Japan which has closed its doors to all foreign entities.  Besides becoming an isolated nation, the country is struggling with the fall-outs of catastrophic toxicity resulting in scarce food supplies and creating a corrosive environment causing a generation of frail children.  Yoshiro and his contemporaries are living into their 100s with little signs of wearing down while Mumei and his classmates are becoming weaker & dying young.  There's an irrepressible  spirit for Mumei's generation.  They appear equipped with natural defenses against despair unaware of any reason to feel sorry for themselves.  This irrepressible outlook evokes a fondness & obligation to care for our environment to ensure a future for our descendants.  Tawada's warning of self-destruction comes in the waves of love and empathy. The state of Japanese children's health was being studied hopefully to be beneficial for their young & useful for similar disastrous phenomena occurring throughout the world. Yoshiro's generation appeared to be living forever robbed of their own deaths and obligated with caring for a lost generation of infirm children.  Mumei notes that unlike his great-grandpa, he's unable to chew or swallow easily and the slightest activity drains him of strength. Mumei senses without understanding why Yoshiro should pity him. Yoshiro has the desire to laugh & cry simultaneously for Mumei while providing an unremitting devotion to be there for him.  "Assuming he had knowledge and wealth to leave his descendants was mere arrogance, Yoshiro now realized. This life with his great-grandson was about all he could manage."  Tawada's unique framing of a gloomy future through the outlook of familial loving eyes.  It's enough to make you weep for a doomed society unwilling to suppress its humanity.  Tawada (b Japan 1960) received the Nat'l Book Award for Translated Literature ('18).  This is a rare work of elegance amidst a melancholy & terrifying world that feels all too real.

"A Lucky Man" Jamel Brinkley''s Nat'l Book Award Winning Short Story Collection

Jamel Brinkley makes an impressive debut with his short story collection "A Lucky Man" earning the Nat'l Bk Award '18.  These 9 stories set in and around Brooklyn provide a voyeuristic view into the lives of its characters.  Permission is given from father to son or big brother to younger brother to view may offers an inkling of taboo regarding sex, nudity or of appreciating the female form.  Of the 9 varied and nuanced stories expose the rights of passage into manhood.  "The man he was about to become was beginning to erupt out of him like a flourish of horns."  Males are allotted the unabashed admiration of the female form except for the books' title story "A Lucky Man."  Lincoln Murray is a married man with a daughter.  He works at an elite private school on the upper west side.  Now in his mid-50s he finds himself estranged from his wife after she discovered numerous photos of women on his phone.  He's also in a vicarious situation with his security guard job at the school.  He's been called out by as a pervert by a parent for taking photos of the young girls.  Somehow, Lincoln's compulsion to take clandestine photos fails to register as inappropriate.  In Brinkley's other stories, male bonding is strengthed by engaging in the blatant ogling of women.  Brinkley stories convey universal themes of failed expectations, dysfunctional families, aging and racial disparities.  Brinkley's characters shed light from the perspectives of men of color from a broad range of ages.  Freddy, a young boy being taken on a field trip to the suburbs is let down by his high expectations of a fun day swimming in a large pool & great food hosted by a white family only to be disappointed by the murky pool & lousy meal served by their black hostess in a modest home. Freddy can't contain himself from wandering through the home on his own and into the master bedroom of the hostess.  Most of the women are presented as fierce, regal and commanding.  The stories contain mixed families raised by single mothers without father figures.  Boundaries are blurred and loyalties questioned.  Role models for masculinity are looked up to or disregarded.  Brinkley's clear voice is ferocious, tender and heartbreaking.  A recurring theme that speaks with poignancy is the human desire to be someone your child will look up to.  "I keep imagining what it would be like to be a father to a boy who loves and believes in me and despite all our differences wants nothing more than to be a man in my image."  Brinkley is a brilliant writer, with great insights and affecting observations.  "A Lucky Man" winning the Nat'l Book Award was no fluke.  It's an elegant and eye-opening collection that glows with energy.

Irish Author Sally Rooney's Novel "Normal People" Is an Unconventional Coming of Age Story

 Sally Rooney (b Ireland 1991) has written a quirky and touching story of two teens from a small Irish town who see themselves as navigating outside the perceived norms of their peers.  Marianne is from a wealthy but totally dysfunctional family.  She has no friends, no idea how to make friends nor  feels compelled to conform to imposed social constraints.  She attends the same local high school as Connell, a handsome, athletic and popular boy she admires from afar.  Connell's mother is the housekeeper for Marianne's mother and the two have a fractured relationship drawn from short interactions at Marianne's home.  Their relationship becomes sexual but is kept under wraps from everyone for fear of...what exactly?  Humiliation and shame on Connell's part for his liaison with Marianne?  Further alienation from her peers on Marianne's part  for whom she feigns not to care.  Believing they both share similar views on the world they're  drawn into a symbiotic relationship that is fulfilling, comforting and destructive.  Rooney gets us into the mindset for both and we're simultaneously empathetic, appreciative and repulsed by their behaviors and co-dependence.   The two leave their small town for the Univ. in Dublin where their relationship flourishes without the guise of subterfuge.  As Connell grows more adjusted to the world and Marianne's world regresses they grow apart yet remain tightly rooted to one another.  Rooney's unique coming of age tale is incredibly perceptive of how and why people interact.  Connell wonders "Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest most abusive forms of violence."  Marianne thinks that those obsessed with popularity become desperate and capable of cruelty.  Both view themselves as flawed and desperately wish themselves able to feel normal and concede the parts of themselves they think shameful and confusing.  "Normal People" is a deeply sensitive and intriguing novel that is far superior than the normal coming of age story.