It has been a long time since I have actually wanted to throw a book at the wall, years in fact, but March of 2021 proved exceptional in that there were two such books in my reading queue, although only one actually took flight. The second was a digital edition and I was loathe to break my iPad in a fit of pique.
But first, what did I read?
21. Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes.
22. Annette Valentine, Down to the Potter's House.
23. Joe Ide, Wrecked.
24. Kristin Neff, Self Compassion.
25. Joe Ide, Hi Five.
26. Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half.
27. Bill Gates, How to Avoid A Climate Disaster.
28. Ivan Doig, The Whistling Season.
29. Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance.
Mostly March was about reading fiction, but there were two exceptions, one of which I finished, one which I did not. If you follow this blog you know I read How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, which I wrote about here. It is an interesting book, and a useful book, but rather lightweight. I believe this was the intent. Still although I feel Gates occasionally glosses over individual responsibility, he brings insight and the book is worth reading. If you are interested in greater detail on energy use, driving, and individual responsibility, my friend Grace has put up a remarkable series of posts recently, which I highly recommend.
Which gets me to the other non-fiction book, and one of the two books that earned a flight rating. I have heard Kristin Neff speak, and I do think her book Self Compassion makes some important points about the way we treat ourselves and how that relates to our compassion for others, and about the dangers of self-criticism and the tendency to push oneself with mental abuse when one feels one is not achieving at a desired level. This is, in a sense, the protestant ethic and self actualization gone horribly awry. But the language of the book itself, and the examples just drove me crazy. It seemed shallow and self-indulgent to me, which is a shame because it is not a trivial subject. This is the book I literally threw at the wall, with a loud verbal "bah". This doesn't mean this book is bad. As I said the information is important. And I am certain that Neff's approach will help many, many whom could not be reached perhaps by the kind of book that would appeal to me. In fact I do not believe the book is trivial or shallow, but it is written from a perspective that does not align with my own perspective, either culturally or generationally, and that this is one of its strengths, because if this explosion of self-criticism that Neff sees is indeed a growing phenomenon, a cancer even, it is perhaps even more a problem in younger generations than in my own. Just because this is not MY book, does not mean it is not an important book.
Alas I have less to say about the second flight-worthy book. As you might recall, I was not thrilled with the first Annette Valentine novel, which I read in February for a book club. I purchased both books in kindle format, and I was determined to read the second with an open mind. I did not succeed. Whereas, with Eastbound from Flagstaff, I found the story compelling enough to drive me forward despite my struggles with sanctimonious language and less than artful transitions, I found that I simply could not read Down to the Potter's House. I believe the subject matter of the novel should have been compelling, and perhaps the language was not an issue for those drawn to this kind of Christian historical family drama, but I found the language artificial, sanctimonious, and the story, oddly, without soul. Had I not read Dostoevsky and Chekhov, Shakespeare and Tolkien, Saunders and Murakami, perhaps I would have found this novel rich. This does not mean that reading certain kinds of books makes me a better person, it does not, but because what I have absorbed from those books as inalterably changed my perception of the world. In that sense this is a problem of my own internal wiring and my own perspective on things seen and unseen.
Notice that I balanced the two flight-worthy books with two books in Joe Ide's IQ series, Wrecked and Hi Five. Both are over the top suspense/crime novels. Both were adequately distracting. I don't know that this was planned, but it was certainly intentional as I felt I needed some kind of shock to my system, palate-cleansing, novel following each of the previously mentioned books.
The rest of the month was occupied with novels, and rather good novels at that.
I started with Mary Beth Keane's novel Ask Again, Yes, which is a sensitive and humanizing novel about small things, about the human condition really. The story revolves around the intertwined stories of two families of NYPD officers who move to the suburbs. It spans decades and, although this is the story of these particular families, it is also a story that could be told on almost every block in every city in America. The telling is straightforward, from the perspectives of several of the characters, and although there were moments in each telling that I wanted to roust the characters out of their own self-absorbed pity, I also have to admit that I have to do the same thing to myself, and this is very much a story of late 20th Century America. That said, although I found this novel mostly satisfying, I wanted to like it a bit more than I did. At times the main characters seemed more like wraiths, as if they existed merely to illustrate an emotion, a reaction, an internal state, rather than becoming characters fully formed. It felt as if their internal lives, or specific aspects of their internal lives, were more important than any external aspects of their lives, or even the complexities that makes us fully human. I found the novel deft, intriguing and deeply thought-provoking but somehow still wanting. I wanted to know these characters deeply but felt I could only grab onto their shadow-selves.
Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half was much more rewarding but suffered to some extent from the same malaise. Here, identical twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes grow up in a small town in Louisiana, a bubble of isolation and racism although all the residents of Mallard are "light". In many ways this story is a fairy tale and unapologetically so, but fairy tales give us a structure for examining truth and culture, and The Vanishing Half does this well. Mallard is an almost mythical town, which eventually disappears, never officially recorded as it is, more a state of mind than a place, where the residents pride themselves on their lightness, and take pride on their breeding — only with people lighter than themselves — yearning to be white, but never actually crossing that line. It is no surprise that the girls, Stella and Desiree, in leaving this fishbowl of their upbringing cross that line in different ways. Stella, light, becomes white, marries a wealthy man, and moves into an entirely different world whereas her sister Desiree, or desire, marries the seemingly blackest man she can find and produces a child, Jude, with "blue-black" skin, escapes for a while, but ends up back in Mallard, almost as if some part of her feels she must atone for her love of "blackness". The sisters are separated for decades, each living in their own special kind of hell, riddled by their own absorbed prejudices, fears, and sense of inadequacy. They are ultimately brought together again through their daughters, but are never fully reunited. This is a fascinating and moving novel which explores the deep psychological loathing and pain brought about by racism, the way it is absorbed, the way it taints perception and creates both fear and need, a need that in its own yearning causes yet more pain and keeps the characters from finding connection, even when that connection would benefit them and bring some degree of healing. This novel is hauntingly sad, and filled with heart-rending moments of human cruelty to one another, but it also shows the toll this cruelty takes on the victim's self-esteem and the ongoing repercussions, in perpetuated bias, denial, lack of self-esteem, echoed over generations, which steal joy from people's lives. Some of these characters do find a place of acceptance, and although I found the book poignantly sad and unsettling, it is also thought provoking and well worth the investment in reading time.
After the depths of Bennett, I stumbled into The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig. This is a book filled with well drawn, complicated characters, and with beautifully evocative writing. It is another "small" novel, by which I mean a novel about family, about a time, a place, a moment really, less than a year, when a boy begins the process of observation and outside awareness that will lead him from childhood to adulthood, and the realization of the deeper, sometimes hidden consequences of action and inaction, or the choices involved in becoming a caring, responsible adult. It is also an homage to place, to a time now gone, to the spirit of the American West and the people who made it. It is a novel about deeply invested in the joy and power of language and a novel for the reader who loves the beauty and power of words and the images and emotions they invoke. If you can't tell, I adored this novel, and, of the three novels discussed so far, it may be the novel I've written the least about, but it is the novel I would most likely consider reading again.
Which brings me to Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, a novel I have just read for the third time. The first time I read this book, shortly after it came out, I certainly loved it, and saved it, thinking it was the kind of big grand book one could throw oneself into. And there it rested, on my shelves, through two moves but I am not certain I read it again until three years ago, when I was packing it up, yet again, for yet another move. It is always a gamble with a book one has not reread for decades, and it could have gone either way. Certainly there are other novels from the 1990s that I thought were fabulous at the time, that I have since decided either now seemed dated, or that I once loved, but which are no longer suited the person I have become (see White Noise in my January book list). But I loved A Fine Balance perhaps even more the second time I read it than I had the first. And it has not fallen in my esteem after a third reading. The novel concerns four friends during the period referred to as The Emergency in India (1975 – 1977). I remain convinced that the characters, Dina, Maneck, Ishvar and Om, were created specifically to illustrate the atrocities of the period and to show the reader how the cultural biases and norms of the time, as well as how the policies enacted during The Emergency, affected the various cultural groups. In that sense the characters have something in common with Bennett's characters, except that this novel is far richer, and these characters far more deeply and humanely drawn. This is a big grand novel in the style of Dickens perhaps. One member of my book group commented that she had read a review (after reading the book) that compared it to Tolstoy, and I can see the comparison. I myself was thinking more of Dostoevsky, especially in the character of Maneck — the bright, naive, idealistic depressive who could not reconcile his hopes with the world in which he lived. Maneck was much a character of his time, but lost in his own time, and and yet a young man who could very much be a young man of the burgeoning 21st century. In this reading I see more transformation, about the way love and friendship, but also tragedy, can refine us and transform us. I suppose, however the biggest shift for me in this book is that my younger self found the ending depressing, but my older self finds the end hopeful, or at least a combination of tragedy and hope. The world remains a vicious and horrible place, but I see transformation there, and love — perhaps that "fine balance" after all.