Becky's Books –

I loved Steig Larsson’s “The Girl Who…” series (formally known as the Millennium series). But then I read the first of David Lagercrandtz’ continuation of Steig Larsson’s books. I was not impressed at all by them and I vowed off. This was not the Lisbeth Salander I knew.

BUT! it’s been a long time – years. So in trying out the local library’s Overdrive system I was able to get The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, the next in the series. (And the next one comes out in August.). This is good.

*******
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye
by David Lagercrantz
2017 / 348 pages
read by Simon Vance – 10h 50m
rating: B- / crime thriller
*******

Maybe because it’s been a few years since I read The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Larsson (#3 of the Millennium series – 2010) I was able to accept this version of Lisbeth. She’s not quite the same girl that Larsson wrote but she remains interesting, brilliant, different and dangerous. But there’s not quite enough of her – although there’s quite a bit.

This story opens with Lisbeth in a high security prison for participation in the events of the last novel (which I remembered, with Langercrantz’ backstory bit). There are dangerous people where she’s confined, but true to form, she’s up to it and before 40 minutes into the book she’s got connections.

The investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist is also on hand needing some help of his own and entertaining the women. Of course, Lisbeth’s troubled childhood is still the overarching issue and plot line as well as the international aspects of it. It gets a bit complex for my tastes.

There’s an interesting plot involved but for my tastes, a bit too much pointless “thriller” and violence.

Okay – so I had to try it again and yes, the book was a LOT better the second time. I even suppose that yes, it does belong on the Booker List, maybe even the Short List, but it’s not a winner, not this year, not against Milkman by Anna Burns. Still, it’s a worthwhile read.

Where Milkman was somewhat experimental, Everything Under is decidedly more so with an irregular chronology and dream-like sequences set into a very complex plot with odd characters. The 1st person narrator, Gretel, indulges in wordplay. Essentially, it’s a current day take-off on Oedipus Rex including a blind seer and a River Styx (river of death) – among other things.

*******
Everything Under 
by Daisy Johnson
2018/ 280 pages
read by Esther Wane – 7h 12m
rating: 8 / fiction 
(both read and listened)
*******

It’s not light reading so I went slowly with the Kindle propped next to my computer for the print perspective. The writing style is quite interesting with unusual metaphors and words. Pronouns were used way more than in conventional novels and that got confusing.

Still the novel is delicately imagined and nicely written and I certainly appreciate that. It’s just that the plot is a wee bit too weird for me to really relax and enjoy although there were parts where I did that.

Gretel’s mother abandoned her when she was 16 years old and Gretel has searched for her ever since – another 16 years. One day Mom re-appear in Gretel’s life. Mother and daughter had had a kind of magical life on the banks of the Isis River (Thames) north of London. They had even invented their own language, but then suddenly it was over and Gretel was in foster care. Gretel remembers parts of this as she tries to care for her Sarah, her mother, and Sarah remembers it differently.
The unreliable nature of memory along with the diminishing faculties of age are major themes

As an adult, Gretel works as a lexicographer. She is single and alone. Meanwhile, Sarah, is old and sometimes either loses her words or gets them mixed up But the pair share memories and then they look for the third person in their river trio of long ago, Marcus. But also threaded through the narrative is Marcus’ sad story and bits of Fiona’s, a blind fellow traveler (who is a seer) along the river with her own kind of creepy mystique.

It really is quite a good book.

This book was available in audio form via Overdrive from my library. Yay! I hope to get more that way but the wait time is usually prohibitive so except for some older crime novels and nonfiction I’ll likely not use it much.

I read Meltzer’s The Inner Circle back in 2015, and gave it a B, not too impressive except that I did mention that I enjoyed the characters and was considering reading the second and third in the series. I never did though. Okay fine –

*******
The Escape Artist
by Brad Meltzer
2018 / 416 pages
read by Scott Brick and January LaVoy ~ 12h 45m
rating: A- / crime-thriller

This book intrigued me because of the publisher’s description:

Nola is trouble.And Nola is supposed to be dead.Her body was found on a plane that mysteriously fell from the sky as it left a secret military base in the Alaskan wilderness. Her commanding officer verifies she’s dead. The US government confirms it. But Jim “Zig” Zigarowski has just found out the truth: Nola is still alive. And on the run.Zig works at Dover Air Force Base, helping put to rest the bodies of those who die on top-secret missions. Nola was a childhood friend of Zig’s daughter and someone who once saved his daughter’s life. So when Zig realizes Nola is still alive, he’s determined to find her. Yet as Zig digs into Nola’s past, he learns that trouble follows Nola everywhere she goes.

It’s a mystery and a thriller which, with Scott Brick reading it is a high tension adrenalin rush which doesn ‘t stop.

Okay – like this is a fantastical and experimental spin on Oedipus. I’ve quite enjoyed many of the spins on classical lit I’ve read, Circe (by Madeline Miller) and Nushell (by Ian McEwan) and others. But I did NOT appreciate this one and although I’d be willing to read it again as I do many of the Booker Short List books I read, but not Everything Under.

*******
Everything Under
by Daisy Johnson
2018/ 280 pages
read by Esther Wane – 7h 12m
rating: 3 / fiction
*******

I’m not crazy about experimental lit unless it works more for the story than the experiment. I think Everything Under is good in this respect, I do understand why Johnson did the story this way. And that’s my one positive note about this novel.

I almost never enjoy fantasy or horror (even light) and this is both. Between those elements and the experimental nature of the novel, I was mostly just confused.

Here’s the publisher’s summary:

The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries.

One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found community and shelter with them, and all three were haunted by their past and stalked by an ominous creature lurking in the canal: the bonak. Everything and nothing at once, the bonak was Gretel’s name for the thing she feared most. And now that she’s searching for her mother, she’ll have to face it.

In this electrifying reinterpretation of a classical myth, Daisy Johnson explores questions of fate and free will, gender fluidity, and fractured family relationships. Everything Under—a debut novel whose surreal, watery landscape will resonate with fans of Fen—is a daring, moving story that will leave you unsettled and unstrung.

Hmmm…. I wasn’t impressed by the hype so I delayed on reading this one. Silly woman (me)! The book actually lives up to the hype and maybe surpasses it. It’s a memoir, not a confessional, certainly the honest portrayal of a very real woman who lived a rather extraordinary life.

Michelle Robinson Obama moved from her beginnings in a regular African American family situation on the south side of Chicago through an Ivy League education and high stakes legal work to marriage, children, and then more fulfilling employment. Along with the latter and afterwards she moved on with her husband to politics and the campaign trail, finally ending up at the White House when her husband became the first African American President of the United States.

*******
Becoming ~ by Michelle Obama
2018 / 428 pages
read by Michelle Obama – 19h 3m
rating 10 / memoir
*******

Yup – I was impressed by everything from the clarity and flow of the wordsmithery to the thoughtfulness and honesty of the narrative. Even her reading voice is well done (although her Chicago accent does come through at times).

Make no mistake, this is Michelle’s story. It’s not Barack’s except tangentially. They fell in love and were married and had children. Although she was reluctant, she knew he had something important to contribute to the country so it was her job to stand by him as he rose one rung at a time in quick order to take the highest office in the land and then be succeeded by the next elected. This is the story of her struggles, not his.

As I read (listened) through the chapters I learned of her upbringing and her drive to succeed from an early age – to be “good enough.” I learned of her love for her family, her husband, her children and her friends. Her deep desire to be a good wife, mother and friend without losing her individuality, herself, in the process. Mostly I learned of her struggles with herself as well as with others.

It’s a long book and toward the end it seemed to drag a bit sometimes with the details of Barack Obama’s terms in office and again when Michelle seems to get a bit preachy. But even then it regularly picks up again pretty quickly. For the most part I was charmed or touched and there was one place I actually laughed out loud and the book is not generally funny.

Bottom line – highly recommended!

This was a fine, fine book, but I forgot to write a review and now I barely remember. I’ll just copy the publisher’s summary and add my comments. (First time I’ve done that – ) I read the second in the series simply because this was soooo good. I read it right the next day!

*******
Next of Kin
by James Tucker
2017 / 350 pages
Read by Christopher Lane – 8h 43m
rating: A++
*******

From the publisher:
New Year’s Eve celebration begins with the pop of a champagne cork – and ends with the bone-chilling screams of a killer’s victims . Ten-year-old Ben Brook is the lone survivor of the brutal murder of his wealthy family at their upstate New York compound. But from the moment he evades death, Ben’s life is in constant danger. Can NYPD detective Buddy Lock keep the boy safe from a killer intent on wiping out the entire Brook clan? 

When two more massacres decimate the Brookses’ ranks, Buddy’s hunt narrows. But his challenges grow as power, money, and secret crimes from the family’s past stand in the way. With Ben more and more at risk, Buddy steps closer to the edge, forcing a relentless killer to become more brazen, brutal, and cunning. Saving the boy will put all of Buddy’s skills to the test…and risk the lives of everyone he loves.

From me: – This book had everything – a who-done-it, a police procedural and a thriller. The tension-building was superb. The characters were wonderfully well drawn. And the twists kept coming. There is a sequels so the story arcs did not get completed but that was okay.

This one is interesting. I read it for a reading group (All-Nonfiction) and found myself bored for along time. I had only the Kindle version because the narrator in the sample sounded so bad. I’m not crazy about Kindle only anymore but I’ll still do it if necessary.

Back in 1986 the Los Angeles Public Library was pretty much destroyed by fire and in early 1987 a young wanna-be actor named Harry Peak was arrested for arson. think I might remember hearing about it but I’m really not sure.

*******
The Library Book
by Susan Orlean
2018 / 336 pages
rating – 8
*******

This book chronicles the life and functions of the library which are many and diverse – great fun from the origins thought the architecture and the lives of its librarians. It also explores the charges of arson against Peak and that’s page-turning.

There are chapters about the fire itself and those who reported it or fought it. There are chapters about the librarians who worked there and their jobs. There are chapters about the clean-up and restoration/remodeling. And of course there are chapters about Peak. It seems kind of wide ranging, but when you consider the title it could be a book about libraries in general rather than a book from the library. IT’s about one library and libraries in general plus the fact that this library was the victim of a terrible fire.

If you enjoy libraries you might find this book to your liking. At one point in my college days I seriously considered becoming a librarian so it was fascinating to me.

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/13/656896695/mystery-of-a-massive-library-fire-remains-unsolved-after-more-than-30-years

https://www.thedailybeast.com/susan-orlean-dissects-the-catastrophic-la-library-fire

ncredible book –  I’m not sure what I expected but it’s a whole lot better.   Maude Julen today is a therapist in France specializing in traumatic disorders in children.  She has the personal background for the job and this is her memoir.  

This book is often compared to of The Glass Castle, but I was never able to finish that book for some reason so I can’t do that comparison.

*******
The Only Girl in the World
by Maude Julien. (Translated by Adrianna Hunter)
2017 / 289 pages
read by Elizabeth Rogers
rating:  8
*******

At a very young age Maud’s mother,   , was “adopted” by a man old enough to be her father.  He sent her away to boarding schools to get the best education possible.  He then married her apparently for the purpose of producing a child who would be raised to be a “super-human.”  

The man,  Maud’s father, was born in 1902, fought in WWI, became enamored of Hitler during WWII but was ultimately disappointed.  Then come his own failures in life.  Having delusions of grandeur mixed with bits of conspiracy theories and the occult like extreme Freemasonry and Egyptology he escaped to a small estate in the far northwest of France.  

There he and Maud’s mother raised Maud using methods which were definitely abusive even if she was never hit or starved.  The freedom which saved her was that she was allowed books to read and between them and a few loving animals found the desire and strength to escape. 

Having enjoyed Next of Kin until way after my bedtime, I woke up the next morning and, after briefly considering Michelle Obama’s hot selling memoir,  decided to continue with Buddy Lock #2. I downloaded the second in this 2-part series.   The story line picks right up less than a month after the prior tale ends.  

*******
The Holdouts 
by James Tucker
2018/ 428 pages
read by Christopher Lane – 9h 24m
rating:  C+:   crime-thriller
*******

While waiting for a judge’s decision on a family matter, Buddy Lock gets a phone call telling him that two bodies have been pulled out of the Atlantic off Long Island. They turned up in the catch of some fishermen.  Being a homicide detective Buddy takes the case even though he is supposedly on leave. That’s the way he is.

The newly deceased are a middle-aged Asian couple, nicely dressed and wearing good jewelry including a couple of rather unusual pieces which are engraved.  

Buddy’s family includes his fiancé, Mei, and Ben, the wealthy 10-year old orphan- boy in their keeping. The judge’s decision is on who gets permanent custody of Ben – the other possibility is the boy’s uncle. That story is told in Next of Kin.  Even with the custody decision hanging over their heads, Buddy takes the case. Mei is not so eager.

The next thing we know, Buddy and his family are suddenly being followed and threatened by various unknown men and strange things happen at Mei’s job in an art gallery. Dangerous situations arise – like in NY traffic. And then Ward, Buddy’s wealthy but somewhat odd half-brother, shows up to help  These characters were featured in the prior novel, too.

The first book in this series was terrific,  but, for awhile,  The Holdouts goes over the top and becomes a hard-core and sometimes rather gory thriller.  At a couple points the plot takes second place to what all the three main characters go through with airplanes, guns and chases.  The suspense was beautifully done in Next of Kin, but it gets too much in sequel.

After awhile, it gets interesting again and then hard-core again and so on. I’m glad I finished,  but it’s mostly like a little war story in a domestic setting. 

 Too bad.

I’d waited for this book since it started getting such rave reviews in France. Then it won the Prix Goncourt (huge prize there) Then it got to the US but the Audible version was a bit late getting out of the gate. But I finally got it, read it and promptly forgot to blog it. (LOL!) – I read it within days of it coming out this month though. (Note – it did not make the Booker International List – probably, imo, because the literary value is not all that great and the translation is a case of simply “nicely done.”

*******
The Perfect Nanny
by Leila Slimani
2017 -(2018 US) / 238 pages
read by Finty Williams – 5h 45m
Rating: A / crime –
*******

It’s a very good book, but I wasn’t wow’d. Maybe it just wasn’t up to the hype and if I had not had such high expectations it would have been more impressive. I don’t know why. That’s happened before and even when I go into a book knowing I’ve let myself get hyped and try to lower my expectations, it sometimes happens anyway. (But other times I’m wow’d; it’s just hard telling.)

The book opens in the aftermath of a brutal double murder and suicide in a small but pricy New York apartment. The victims were two young children and their nanny. We know the nanny did it, so the question the remaining narrative explores is why – what drove the nanny to commit such a horrendous act?

In answering to that, Slimoni relates the lives of the parents, the children, and, of course, the nanny, Louise, a petite, blonde, middle-aged woman whose own daughter has grown up.

Yup – everyone has problems but the tension is expertly built as we get closer and closer to what we already know. It’s good. It’s quite good. It’ s just not quite brilliant and not even terribly original for contemporary American readers of crime/suspense fiction.

I put off reading this for some reason I don’t know now because I genuinely enjoyed her priors, The Flamethrowers and Telex from Cuba (my reviews on this site). And no surprise, this was also very, very good – I’d either forgot how good Kushner is or I didn’t want to be disappointed in a comparison. I’ll be reading it again for the Booker Group in a few months but I suddenly wanted to read it now. Fwiw, I live about one hunded miles south of Chowchilla and the main prison where this story takes place. It is the only woman’s prison facility in California where the female death row prisoners are held. But it could be about many prisons because there is a kind of universal element to poverty and legal trouble. As it turns out, The Mars Room is probably Kushner’s best book. 🙂

*******
The Mars Room
by Rachel Kushner
2018 / 352 pages
read by Rachel Kushner – 9h 41m
rating – 9 / contemp fiction
*******

The narrative is comprised of the situations of several characters, one 1st- person. They’re mostly prisoners, but there is a teacher who has a major role as well as a few of the prisoners. The characters are mostly almost likable folks who got into trouble, but there are a few who are revolting. Some are fascinated by more famous convicts – Susan Atkins, for instance, who was held there. (Manson’s gang).

The novel takes its title from a strip club in San Francisco where the first-person character, Romy Hall , worked prior to her arrest and many of the back-stories are set there as well.

The stories of the individual characters are the stories of people living in poverty and grit who get caught up in the legal system and land in jails and prisons for various reasons, usually of their own doing, sometimes not so much. Sometimes being out of jail for awhile is just a bit of a vacation. Few of them really had a fair chance at life, especially after contact with the “system.”

But the book is more than just plot – it’s a kind of statement about our socio-economic reality and how the judicial system is impacted and the results of the inequalities are visited on the lowest strata. Thoreau is addressed – along with Ted Kaczynski (the uni-bomber).

Kushner did quite a lot of research for the novel, visiting the prisons and interviewing inmates because this book is about people – poor people. The convicts are not (usually) where they are for light-weight activities and partly as a result there is trouble in the prisons, too.. But the system, rules and guards do their own share of making trouble. Life in prison seems to swing between very difficult and inhumane.

I’m not going to get into the main plot threads because there would unavoidably be spoilers. Let me only say that they are nicely interwoven through the brilliant character sketches and it doesn’t make for a “feel good” tale, but it’s real and avoids “gritty” by focusing on enormous humanity. The threads work together to create a whole world with “real” people, thugs and cons, strippers, addicts, gays and transexuals. – precious few of them are actually innocent of their crimes. But life goes on – it’s a sad book. Still, I know I’ll be rereading this one.

https://www.vogue.com/article/rachel-kushner-the-mars-room-interview

I likely would not have read this again had it not been for a reading group. Actually I might not have finished it if it had not been for that reading group – BookerPrize

But second readings (1st review on this site) are often surprising and although the first time round I “got” how much pain is hiding out in the routine of a B-grade club’s stand-up comedian. And I got what a truly great writer Grossman is – there was a dimension I missed – how these relate to the country and people of Israel as a whole.

*******
A Horse Walks Into a Bar 
by David Grossman
2014/ 208 pages
read by Joe Barrett – 5h1m
rating: 9.75 / contemp. fiction
*******

To recap –   One night, Avishai,  an older Israeli Supreme Court judge gets a phone call from a man, Dovaleh,  who says he is an old friend.  the judge has forgotten but it comes back – they’d been very close childhood friends.  Dovaleh is now an aging stand-up comic and wants the judge to come see his show and relate to Dovaleh what he sees.  

The book is Dovaleh’s routine which this night is a replay of much of the comic’s life from childhood to that stage. Interspersed with that story are the judge’s thoughts and memories.   

Dovaleh is dying,  both physically and on stage – he’s not funny.  The routine is kind of sick and hurtful but Dovaleh’s health and life have been in trouble for some time.  

Also in the audience is a small woman, Azulae, who knew him from their shared childhood neighborhood where he walked on his hands. She’s there by accident – but Dovaleh picks on her a bit.    

This book is the story of a trial in which there were many crimes and many victims and many criminals – sometimes all in the same person.

On my second reading I focused more on the development of the inner-story plots and the separation and differences between the judge’s pov and Dovaleh’s.  I did kind of what the author of the Guardian review did – I psychoanalyzed the characters – not the country.    I also really noted how skilled a writer Grossman is to get the insides of a man, a comic like that, a tragi-comedy of a man.  We’re witnessing the death of a standup comic as well as his routine. Through his bad jokes we witness his grief and his soul, I suppose. 

The second time I was really trying to understand where these three characters (Dovaleh, Judge, woman) were coming from personally – not societally at all. (Also to figure out where Grossman’s “peacenik-ism”  fits in – because he is that.) 
Your insights in no way contradicted what I found,  they just totally added to my attempts at understanding this brilliant but not fun novel.  It’s a difficult read in many ways.
 
I felt like the audience the first time and wanted to leave because those old sad stories get a bit much (like listening to another sad diatribe about Trump – sometimes I get tired of it – no matter how much I agree.) I can see many reasons for leaving.  

But I persevered and was hugely rewarded by the ending which blooms even brighter with my reading of your comments.   Thank you so much for sharing!!!

Oh my,  I like this book.  Yes,  it’s long, actually, at over 600 pages in other editions, it’s too long.  And yes,  it’s twisty and convoluted involving intertwined sub-plots all the way to China.  Finally yes, what with Scott Brick reading it’s over-dramatic even in the slower parts.   (Scott Brick could make a melodrama out of an old phone book.)  So I can’t think of why I enjoyed it except it was a certainly an escape. Think melodramatic-crime.

*******
Cemetery Road
by Greg Isles
2019 /
read by Scott Brick- 23h 43m
rating- A   / crime-thriller
*******

 If you’re familiar with Greg Isles you know that for the last two decades he has written crime novels set in and around Natchez, Mississippi where he grew up.  I personally have a kind of love/meh relationship with Iles’ books.

And these stories usually deal with old rich families and new crimes (mostly murders, of course) with tangled loves strewn throughout.    With Cemetery Road it’s the fictional town of Bienville, just down river and road from Natchez where the renowned journalist, Marshall McEwan, returns from Washington DC to help his mother with his dying father who is also the owner of the local newspaper.

There is an old power-group of the town’s wealthy who have pretty much run the town for decades, the “Poker Club.” Marshall’s girlfriend, Jet, from junior high days is there, married to Paul Matheson, Marshall’s old best buddy from school and their shared military day’s. Max Matheson is the leader of the Club and Paul’s father.

This is a story of fathers and sons and adultery and many more deadly secrets of money and power and love and so on. Sometimes a life is saved, but other times people die in many different ways. Every thread is tied up in a bloody bow.

The tension builds slowly and expertly to new heights then leveling off for awhile only to build again. The problem with this common practice is that Iles is so slow and methodical with it, layering every possible connection into each twisty build.

There are lots of complaints in various reader reviews about the politics involved in the narrative. Even the mention of Trump is peripheral, maybe a tiny part of the setting, but he’s not ignored. Still, even to me, certainly no fan, the negative commentary is kind of extraneous.

Back in 1948, in post-WWII Jim Crow Atlanta, segregation was the name of the game and it’s a huge theme, and an integral part of the plot to this interesting crime novel in which racial tensions (to say nothing of ugliness) play a big role in the police not only in generally getting and keeping their jobs, but in solving crimes even among “their own people.”

*******
Darktown 
by Thomas Mullen
2016 / 345 pages
read by  Andre Holland 11h 14m
rating:  B+ /  historical fiction
*******

Mullen seems to have the history right and created an interesting fictional story to go with it including believable characters and some skillfully built tension, twists, and action.

Responding to public pressure, the Atlanta police department has hired eight black police officers to work in the high-crime black sections of the city.  One of them, Lucius Boggs, smart and courageous is the son of a local minister.

The main crime Lucius and his partner Tommy Smith want to solve is that of the murder of a young black woman whose body was found in the trash. They had seen the woman earlier in a car driven by a white man – she’d run away when the car stopped. Later, Lucius and Rake, a young idealistic but white recruit, found out she had been murdered and their interest was piqued. They wanted to help, to get involved, to solve that case. Then it gets complicated in more than one way – solving the actual crime is a good twisty tale but the harassment of the new officers matches it.

There were plenty of rules about where they could go, whom they could arrest and so on.  Naturally,  there was quite a lot of opposition in the all-white force but they had a few allies. The opposition was both passive and outright, systemic and personal. That said, there was certainly not complete support from the black community. There was also some bad criminal types on all sides of every line . Leaving the city of Atlanta can be downright dangerous.

I got curious about the history so I had to Google for more background – always fun for me:

http://historyatlanta.com/atlantas-first-black-police-officers/
In other good news, the narrative is very nicely written with just a bit of subtle humor sprinkled throughout.

At only 160 pages (or 1 hour 15minutes) this is a very brief 1st person narrative of fiction. The Korea based Kang wrote the Man Booker International winner of a few years ago, The Vegetarian. That was a fine, fine book imo although overall reactions were mixed.

In The White Book our first narrator is still grieving the loss of her older sister who had very white skin and who died before the narrator was born. Then the book goes on into many other aspects and examples of white. The book is really a kind of meditation on white – and grieving.

*******
The White Book
by Han Kang
2019 / 160 pages
read by Jennifer Kim 1h 15m
rating: 8.5 / contemporary fiction (South Korea)
*******

In eastern cultures white is the color of mourning. This is a meditation on the color itself and things that are white as well as telling a story of a woman who is the daughter of a woman who lost two prior children.

It’s beautiful.

I couldn’t help but notice the similarity to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying in which a poor white Mississippi family has to transport mom’s dead body quite a distance in order to bury her.  The tale is told by several 1st person narrators, including Mom (Abby) each with his own problems.  Then I checked and the similarity to Sing Unburied Sing has NOT gone unremarked on by the critics and bloggers.  (I appreciate when that happens as I feel vindicated in  some way.)   

*******
Sing Unburied Sing
by Jesmyn West
2017 / 308 pages
read by Kevin Harrison/Chris Chalk and others
rating – 8.5 – contemporary fiction
*******

But that’s certainly not all there is – Sing Unburied Sing has, as the title implies, ghosts hovering over the family.  This is kind of reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.  But still,  although it took me half the book to see it,  there’s still more.   Lincoln in the Bardo by George Sanders comes to  mind 

The setting of the South,  including a very present historical background,  is very similar in the these books but the main family in Sing Unburied Sing is generally younger, black and definitely dealing with  21st century issues.  Drugs and racial tensions are involved in addition to   Some of the characters see ghosts or hear voices.  Mom is dying of cancer,  but it’s two younger women and their children who are traveling to pick up the white father of two of the children as he is released from a 3-year stay in prison.  

The reader has to finish the book to realize what brought all this on, similar to Beloved, but it’s definitely worth it. That’s where it all comes together and where the real action is.

There are some intense scenes like the one with the police officer or the one where Michael brings his family to visit his parents.  These are wonderfully well done – riveting.  The powerful scenes toward the end seemed to be a bit more ambitious than West was quite able to pull off successfully.  

Still,  I think this is one of those books which I would have enjoyed more had I read it. The readers slowed the pace down and they used too much  emotion, too much quiet drama and I don’t think it’s supposed to be a dramatic book. Rather there’s a sense of the melancholy to it which is powerful in itself, but lost in the narration. 

Interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/09/jesmyn-wards-eerie-powerful-unearthing-of-history/541230/

The title of this one is also the cliched opening for a joke, so we expect a funny book? Right. But Grossman is rarely just funny. He’s a Jewish-Israeli author with a good-size following. I’ve only read one of his books prior to this, To the End of the Land, but that was quite a long time ago. I remember it as being pretty good, although I didn’t rave. This book has gotten good reviews and because the Bookgroup List chose it I was game. A Horse Walks Into a Bar is short but it’s not ha-ha funny – it’s actually rather disturbing.

*******
A Horse Walks Into a Bar
by David Grossman
2014/ 208 pages
read by Joe Barrett – 5h1m
rating: 8.5 / contemp. fiction
*******

Dovaleh Greenstein is a stand-up comic putting on his show in a second rate club in the city of Netanya, Israel. A couple days prior to the show Dov calls Avishai Lazar a childhood friend, retired from being a superior court judge, to come and see him, then to tell him later what he sees. The story is told in the 1st person from Lazar’s point of view as a member of the audience.

The audience is made up of military people, some couples and some singles, average people out on the town for fun. Dov’s performance is not fun for most of them. His jokes are mostly old and many are not funny. As he says at one point, He’s “dying” up there. Also in the audience are Lazar and a woman who befriended him many years prior. During his routine Dov insults the audience and himself intermingling a story of how he survived a military stay after boarding school. Lazar follows the story and reveals parts of the it to the audience and reader. The customers are not happy with the show and many of them walk out.

It’s an originally structured book and Grossman is a wonderful writer. This reader was constantly wondering, intrigued, where all this was leading.