The Death of Mrs. Westaway

 

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes the marketing gets in the way of the novel. All the blurbs I read compared this to du Maurier's Rebecca, which I optimistically presumed would include all of the beautiful atmospheric descriptions in du Maurier's work, with the suspense nearly jumping off the page in those descriptions of whirling leaves and dark, locked passages. So this is probably a better novel than I give it credit for, because it is not that. It is a mystery using the same building blocks as Rebecca , in new formations and a different ending. It is modernized and unique and has a few unexpected twists and turns. So if you go into it with the right mindset, it would be an entertaining read--I just couldn't help feeling a little hoodwinked.

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in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy--that's when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back.

When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.

Hollywood Park

Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was a fan of The Airborne Toxic Event before I started reading this, and this just made me love them more. Jollet tells the story of his life in an amazingly self-aware and candid manner. His story about growing up in and escaping from a cult could be sensational enough, but also dealing with the aftermath of what the separation from his parents did to both him, his brother, and his parents and how they deal with it is compelling. Jollet is a gifted song-writer and his prose doesn't disappoint. The fact that he was able to shape his story into a satisfying, revealing narrative makes this one of the best memoirs I've read.

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It's a strange word, F-A-M-I-L-Y.  It's big and comforting and each letter is different. Just look at it.  The F is for father right there at the front.  The M for mother is in the middle, connecting all the others.  It's a long word but usually people say it in one breath, like "famly" as if the I doesn't matter.  Without the F it's just an "ambly," a thing that ambles around from place to place.  Without the M it's just a "Fably"which is a story about something that does not exist. 

That's probably why we put people in containers when they die: coffins, urns, mausoleums--to give physical shape to the absence.

 

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was just what I needed after reading some rather heavy stuff lately. It is a smart, creative "re-telling" of Rumpelstiltskin. When I say, re-telling, what I mean is Novik simply uses the basic concepts as a jumping off point for a whole new fantasy. There is an underpinning theme about climate change and capitalism, but what I loved were the clever, strong, and determined women who refused to let circumstances dictate their choices, but to act and then act again, always searching for ways to solve problems or change their predicaments. Sometimes their actions did not result in ideal solutions, but they kept preserving, and by continuing to act they were led to a satisfactory ending. A great female-driven fantasy.

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Just Us

 

Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book points out several ways microagressions are perpetrated from whites to blacks, and their ensuing hurt, and it is eye-opening and humbling. However, this book is not a conversation. It is Rankine pointing out these offenses in essays that she then gives to the offender to respond to. These are mostly people she is friends with, and who are trying to be actively non-racist. And although she receives several different types of replies, her response is always to find more offenses, even in the friend who chose not to reply at all. Once again I am left wondering if there is anything I can do as a white person that won't cause offense somehow--or maybe that is the message--that I can't. What I would love to read is ways we can extend grace, forgiveness, and understanding across all cultural and racial boundaries.

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"James Baldwin Discusses the Problem of Being White in America" (1985);  "When Americans say change in the generality, they really mean progress.  And when they say progress, they really mean--and they don't know they mean this--they really mean how quickly and to what extent and how profoundly a black person becomes white.  They take themselves quite helplessly as the only possible model of what they call change."

Homi Bhabha from The Location of Culture, in conversation with Toni Morrison: "Remembering is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection.  It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present."

My Absolute Darling

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow. This was so complex, so painstakingly viewed from every angle. This is about an abusive relationship, so it isn't an easy read, and I did almost quit reading it at one point early on. I kept wondering if Tallent didn't need to recount so much detail. But I think this is the most real, most complex telling of what it is like in an abusive relationship, that I don't think he could have told it in any other way. Turtle is definitely one of a kind. Perhaps the most unbelievable things about her--her survival and shooting skills--makes her one of the most interesting subjects. How can she know so much about defending herself, surviving by herself, and still allow herself to be subjugated? Tallent also knows how to pace through the book, turning her adventures with her new-found friends into welcome respites. Also, I loved watching Turtle slowly gain confidence and self-worth. Nothing rarely works out like you think it should, but it ended with me reading far into the night (and I don't normally do that).

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so I trespass again to see if he will again do something so bad; it is a way to see if I am right to hate him.

The Golden House

 

The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While the plot is not as propulsive as it sets itself up to be (countless," but we could not foresee the damage it would cause", etc.) and there are a thousand references to books and movies that I think only a movie nut would know, the writing is so good that you read it just to keep consuming the sentences. There is something ineffable in Rushdie's writing--I can't tell you why it is so good. It is neither particularly poetic or uniquely creative; it just flows along in long sentences that glide like honey. There is a lot of mediation about what identity actually means in this day and age--can we choose it, it is chosen for us, can we change it, is it all about perception? Having an aspiring film maker tell it is genius too, because don't we all view our lives and those around us as being the subject of our own special film--we edit and revise to let the situation suit us. I've never read Rushdie before, but I will seek him out now.

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"If you use that it opens de third eye in your pineal gland in de center of your forehead and you become clairvoyant and few secrets can be kept from you".   "Then why have you never used it," I asked.  "Because a world vissout mystery its like a picture with no showdown," he said.  "By seeing too much it shows you nossing."

A name is nothing, it's a handle, as they say here, just a way of opening a door.

Construction work was the art of making the city become aware of itself as a fragile organism at the mercy of forces against which there was no appeal.

When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this a few years ago, but somehow did not add it to my list. Re-reading it again now, I am struck again with Kalanithi's insights into life and death. Throughout his life, Kalanithi seeks for understanding about life, and wants to make a difference. He uses language, reading and writing, and he uses medicine, as a surgeon. When he finds out about his cancer he struggles to know how to spend his remaining time. His love for his wife and daughter remind us that the relationships we make here are really the best way for us to understand life and create a future.

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formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant

Cadavers reverse the polarity.  The mannequins you pretend are real, the cadavers you pretend are fake.

Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder wherein one loses the ability to see faces.  Pretty soon I would have it hacksaw in hand.

we were all silently apologizing to our cadavers, not because we sensed the transgression but because we did not.

All of medicine, not just cadaver dissection, trespasses into sacred spheres.  Doctors invade the body in every way imaginable.

What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?

I began to suspect that being so close to the fiery light of such moments only blinded me to their nature, like trying to learn astronomy by staring directly at the sun.

When there's no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon's only tool.

The root of disaster means a star coming apart

A tureen of tragedy was best allotted by the spoonful

What kind of life exists without language?

the defining characteristic of the organism is striving.