The Running Grave

The Running Grave

By Robert Galbraith  (J.K. Rowling)

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. 

The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organization that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths. 

In order to try to rescue Will, Strike's business partner, Robin Ellacott, decides to infiltrate the cult, and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito among its members. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her. . . 

I'm not even entirely sure how this happened, but I was randomly browsing books that might fit the prompt. I haven't read any earlier books in the series, but just decided to read the preview on a whim, and 10% of the book later (which turned out to be a sizable chunk, this book is over 900 pages long), I ended up checking it out. One of the biggest persuaders was "Jayson's" review on GoodReads which took multi-chapter chunks and reviewed them in turn, giving their own thoughts and predictions on the mysteries. It was just the right amount of intrigue without the dramatics. 

[Sidenote: I absolutely cannot stand the number of reviews on GoodReads which seem to exist solely to demonstrate the reviewer's library of gifs, reaction images, and emojis and describe the books only by superlatives. The YA ones are the worst, here's one I found after just three minutes of idle searching:

WHAT A GREAT BOOK!!! 🌷💖🎀

A BEAUTIFUL READ, JUST LIKE ITS BEAUTIFUL COVER! 💍🌹😼

If you’re a fan of Stephanie Garber and Holly Black, then read it IMMEDIATELY…😘
FINALLY, a lovely fantasy read after so long! 🤗

This person writes reviews like they have a brain injury. Anyway, the nicely organized review by Jayson  - and this seems to be Jayson's M.O. - was a nice surprise.]

So I was somewhat forewarned and forearmed against the potential problem of diving into a series halfway and not knowing who anyone is. I also had the bare bones of the relationship between Robin and Cormoran - apparently full of Unresolved Sexual Tension - and the nice thing about this book is that since they're separated for a good chunk of it while Robin is undercover, we spend a minimal amount of time on their interactions which, for someone like me who is only reading this because of a macabre interest in modern day cults rather than an interest in seeing whether Robin and Comoran smooch (Spoiler: they don't), bettered my reading experience.

I assume most people who read about cults assume that they themselves would never fall prey to one, which is exactly what I would assume about myself. I have enough confidence in my cynicism and venality to feel that I wouldn't be tempted by ideas of grandeur and hidden secrets to the meaning of life - if only I give up all my creature comforts.

Now, I absolutely think that anyone who doesn't have the choice to leave would be indoctrinated like anyone else - it's basically torture with a side of brainwashing. But the question is why people who have an opportunity to leave, like the retreat members, after one week, would ever stay. The Running Grave answers this question somewhat indirectly. Obviously Robin would leave, were she not investigating the cult, but we get to interact with Will Edensor, a cultist who is "questioning" - we can easily understand why would find himself trapped, as he comes across as someone who is trying to understand everything and, when given no rational explanation, finds he must believe the supernatural. He also seems to think he's smarter than he is. And people who have no experience with normal loving relationships could easily be taken in by the ersatz strings-attached kind of love that the cult provides. 

But as unpopular as Rowling is among the liberal faction these days, you have to give her credit where credit is due: she can write a doorstopper of a book that doesn't feel long at all. Little did I know that I would be gulping up a 960 page book in a matter of days (when I had other books to finish first). The sense of dread that permeates the chapters, particularly Robin's, as she gets further and further entangled, is a masterclass in keeping suspense up. And we're able to see how Robin's weeks and then months slowly begin to break her down, and the process doesn't feel rushed or unnatural.  Now I will say that with the length, I did find myself forgetting or confusing people. I had trouble keeping the Dougherty and the Pirbright families separate, even though the children were fairly distinct, since both involved young kids in the early days of the cult.

I congratulated myself on figuring out very early on that Daiyu, the Drowned Prophet, did not actually drown at the beach (and didn't even actually go), but I assumed for most of the book that she'd been drowned at the farm instead, possibly accidentally while her parents were trying to set her up as a cult icon.  I did not guess the actual mystery, or the explanation of the cult-within-the-cult. Humorously enough, the cult's actual crimes (which include concealment of corpses, medical maltreatment, rape, and baby snatching!) are basically footnotes by the time we progress to the climax. It all seemed to hang together although I can't say that I love the "detective confronts the killer by themselves in a long monologue tying it all together" which may be a hallmark of the series? I dunno, I ended up reading the first book in the series after this one, and Cormoran does the same thing in that one, so either I'm unlucky or it's a pattern. And, like the personal relationship stuff that I mostly skimmed since I care not a whit about Cormoran's exes or his and Robin's agony about whether to get together or not, the agency's other cases and shenanigans about their employees seemed like so much filler to me, but presumably for those who have been following the series from the beginning, it is more satisfying. For my part, I would have been fine with merely a 700 page book about going undercover at cults.

7: A Book About A Cult

 

 

Family Style

Family Style

By Thien Pham

Thien's first memory isn't a sight or a sound. It's the sweetness of watermelon and the saltiness of fish. It's the taste of the foods he ate while adrift at sea as his family fled Vietnam.

After the Pham family arrives at a refugee camp in Thailand, they struggle to survive. Things don't get much easier once they resettle in California. And through each chapter of their lives, food takes on a new meaning. Strawberries come to signify struggle as Thien's mom and dad look for work. Potato chips are an indulgence that bring Thien so much joy that they become a necessity.

Behind every cut of steak and inside every croissant lies a story. And for Thien Pham, that story is about a search―for belonging, for happiness, for the American dream.

 I liked Family Style, although it suffers from the same problem that so many graphic novels do: it's so fast (and relatively easy to read) that it feels less substantial than it should.  For example, I'm pretty sure I read and liked The Best We Could Do, but it doesn't stick in the memory the way a longer, heftier tome would. Anyway, maybe writing this review will help. 

 I liked the framing device that Pham uses, of focusing on certain moments in his life and spotlighting them, along with the food that they're associated with, the early chapters involving his family's escape from Vietnam and subsequent stay in a refugee camp, then culture shock in the United States, integration, and finally citizenship.  For some reason the last section felt very disconnected from the earlier parts, and I'm not sure if it's because it seemed like the author skipped so much time or what. I did read the book over several days so I guess that may be partially to blame, but it still took me a really long time to figure out that we were still following the main character (i.e., the author) and hadn't switched to his father's point of view.  

But by far the best part was the commentary and Q&A section at the end. His conversations and interviews directly with his family members (and illustrated, to boot!) were hilarious. I love the Calvin & Hobbes 20th Anniversary book for the same reason: we frequently get commentary and annotations from actors and singers but less common is an author's commentary on their own book (aside from introductions) and even less often (but very fun) is a comic artist's commentary. 

25: A Book Where The Main Character Is An Immigrant Or Refugee

 

 

One

 One

By Sarah Crossan

Grace and Tippi. Tippi and Grace. Two sisters. Two hearts. Two dreams. Two lives. But one body.

Grace and Tippi are conjoined twins, joined at the waist, defying the odds of survival for sixteen years. They share everything, and they are everything to each other. They would never imagine being apart. For them, that would be the real tragedy.

But something is happening to them. Something they hoped would never happen. And Grace doesn’t want to admit it. Not even to Tippi.

How long can they hide from the truth—how long before they must face the most impossible choice of their lives?

 

One is basically spoken word poetry about being a conjoined twin. Presumably Crossan has researched the topic so I'll trust in her characterization of Grace. While it seems unfathomable to me to want to remain physically attached to someone else, Crossan does a good job of explaining why, to Grace and Tippi, the question would be so offensive. The sisters aren't bad people, they're twins, and what's more natural than staying with your twin? And what kind of alternative is there? At one point, Grace overhears someone saying they can't imagine anything worse. Obviously hyperbole, but as Grace says, there are so many things worse than this, and brings it back to the idea that to be with a loved one forever is not the worst fate.  It reminds me that people are infinitely adaptable. What may be intolerable to someone used to living independently can be eminently reasonable to someone intertwined from birth.  

We're presented with the twins' growing pains over a period of a few short months: as they're unable to afford homeschooling and now have to attend (private) school for the first time.  They make friends, they watch their father wallow in alcohol, their sister slowly starve herself and their mother lose her job.  Grace develops a crush and a heart problem and the sisters have a choice to make. Several, in fact. 

It's a fast read, for all that it's 400 pages, since it is again, like poetry, half pages lost (another reviewer pointed out that the typeface changes alignment from left to center after the twins have surgery, which is a really cool detail) and trailing thoughts. Each "chapter" is basically a poem, and most are <2 pages. And that's fine, since the subject matter is pretty heavy. Prose would have taken ages to finish. 

 

Because of the style though, the book feels less rooted, more dreamlike. For all that Tippi is the person who is closest to Grace, I feel like we barely talk to her the entire book. We're at a crossroads in the twins' lives, which makes for more interesting dilemmas, but contrariwise, I'm not sure that the sisters' relationship feels as developed as it needs to be to support the climactic separation. And the sisters have to consider death and mortality when they consider the surgery options - but there's very little wrestling with that idea too. They make a couple of bucket lists and that's about it. Again, is that realistic? I don't know. As a sixteen year old, I was pretty confident I wouldn't die, but then again, I wasn't conjoined with anyone with a limited life expectancy. 

This feels like an incredibly interesting topic, nicely executed, but also lightly touched.  I don't know that it strikes as deeply as it ought to, considering.

50: A Book That Features A Character With Chronic Pain

The Echo of Old Books

The Echo of Old Books

By Barbara Davis

Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer’s affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books’ previous owners—an emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance.

With no trace of how these mysterious books came into the world, Ashlyn is caught up in a decades-old literary mystery, beckoned by two hearts in ruins, whoever they were, wherever they are. Determined to learn the truth behind the doomed lovers’ tale, she reads on, following a trail of broken promises and seemingly unforgivable betrayals. The more Ashlyn learns about Hemi and Belle, the nearer she comes to bringing closure to their love story—and to the unfinished chapters of her own life.

I have absolutely no idea how this is so highly rated on Goodreads. I don't want to be rude about it, but I found both romances unsatisfying, the mysteries unmysterious and the inclusion of Ashlyn's magical "book-sensing" power to be completely irrelevant and unnecessary. And look, it's not that bad! But an average of 4.26 stars??? Nothing like severe disappointment to ruin the experience for you.

Maybe we'll go in reverse order: Ashlyn, bookseller, who is sad and alone because (we find out in installments) her mother died of cancer instead of getting chemo, her father shot himself a few weeks later, and her cheating ex-boyfriend committed suicide to taunt her, has the ability to touch certain books and "feel" the emotions of the owner. This ability is described in detail in the first chapter, and has no impact on any of the rest of the story. Why is it included you might ask? I have no idea! It would be perfectly reasonable for Ashlyn to be interested in a privately published book with a sad love story even without sensing anguish from its owner. Nothing else in the book smacks of magical realism. It feels so weirdly shoehorned in that I have to imagine it was left over from a separate author idea and Davis just couldn't bear not to use it, no matter how little sense it made.

Then, we have two competing storylines, Ashlyn and Ethan in the present, tracking down the original lovers, and "Belle" and "Hemi" in the past. And of course this is a personal preference issue, but every time I wanted to read "Hemi" as a nickname I wanted to cringe (it's short for Hemingway because he wants to be a writer!). This was only made worse when it was apparent that Belle and Hemi (real names: Marian and Hugh) actually called each other these things in real life and they weren't just nom de plumes.

Marian and Hugh's love is supposed to be one for the ages, one so overpowering it conquered a prior engagement, and kept them bitter and in pain for DECADES after they split. In the book, we find out that they meet at her engagement party to another man, and they're together for about four months when they're 21 and 26, respectivey. Alas, our lovers begin fighting because even after four months, Marian hasn't ended her engagement, and then she finds out Hugh has lied to her about writing a hit piece about how her father shut her mother up in an asylum because she was Jewish, but also crazy, and then slipped a knife to her so she could commit suicide. This information upsets Marian, naturally, but Hugh blames her for not trusting that he wasn't actually going to publish it. Truly, a love to last. 

Also, there's a lot of suicide in this book.

Ethan and Ashlyn's love is less overwrought but correspondingly less interesting as well, so the chapters with them slowly deciding to kiss have all the appeal of a warm bowl of oatmeal. It's good for you, but it's not what you look forward to in the mornings. 

I liked Ashlyn fine until she decides to track down the original people in the book and (1) instead of looking for Belle/Marian, who we are told was super rich and her engagement party was the toast of the town and we know the date of the engagement party and also the identity of her fiance - instead of looking to see if there was a mention of the party in the papers (WHICH THERE WAS, we find out later) instead she tries to track down Hugh/Hemi's boss, a tangential character nicknamed Goldie, because she was a lady who owned a newspaper, despite the fact that knowing who Goldie was would absolutely not give you any more information about who either Belle or Hemi were. THEN (2), she assumes that some dude banging Goldie when she died thirty years later was Hemi. Why? I'm not sure, but I guess the idea was that this guy who was apparently so hung up on Belle that 13 years later he's writing bound books to her, becomes his old boss' lover twenty years later. I mean, it makes sense if you ignore logic and reasonable probability.

Ethan has no personality other than "willing to welcome a strange and nosy woman into his house and life".  Hemi/Hugh is distractingly obnoxious, given that he blames Marian for being upset that he lies multiple times - first about the fact that he was there to investigate her father and second that he was actually investigating her mother's suspicious death. He's also upset that she doesn't trust him more. Why should she, you wonder, but it's okay because in return, he later gets told he missed the first 43 years of his child's life. 

The fact that Marian was pregnant when she left New York was totally expected, so much so that I assumed that to be the case based on absolutely nothing but my sure confidence in this book's use of cliche. How else to stuff more melodrama into this whole affair than for her to discover she is carrying her terrible lover's child, but alas, too late! They are already parted forevermore. Also pretty obvious that Cee-cee, Marian's older sister, somehow swapped the notes so Hugh got the break up one instead of the "Wait for me!" one. The only surprise there was that the little messenger boy, Cee-cee's son and Ethan's father, Dickey, wasn't also involved, given how suspiciously guilty he acted.

The book is fine, it's FINE.  But there's no tension at any point - we know Marian and Hugh separate and we know they don't get back together before 1984.   As mentioned above, none of their separation brought tension or surprise either. In fact, I began to wish Marian and Hugh would separate sooner, since they were so much more annoying when they were together. Ashlyn and Ethan also don't carry any tension or surprise. They seem to get involved with each other more because it's expected of them as two of the primary characters in this book who are single and the same age. Perhaps it's a little surprising that Ashlyn doesn't end up with Marian's kid Zachary, but otherwise, ho hum. 

The only really bizarre thing is that SOMEHOW after 43 YEARS and several missed connections, Hugh decides to show up at Marian's big event the DAY AFTER Ashlyn and Ethan discuss the whole affair with Marian and find out that Zachary is actually Hugh's child. And the two events are completely unrelated. Now that really does take some magical thinking.

4: A Book With Two Or More Books On The Cover Or "Book" In The Title

Between Two Kingdoms

Between Two Kingdoms

By Suleika Jaouad

 In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

 It was an interesting experience to read about someone whose personality seems so diametrically opposed to mine. Cancer treatment notwithstanding, it seemed very clear to me that Jaouad is substantially extroverted, someone who thrives on interacting with people and a serial monogamist, seemingly incapable of being alone. Which makes her road trip all the more intriguing, although it does sound like she spent a good chunk of it dwelling on her romantic prospects. 

Jaouad spends the first half of the book detailing her first cancer treatment (since the time frame of the book, it sounds like she's had at least two more bouts) and then the first part of the second half talking about how hard it is to adjust to not being sick anymore, so the road trip takes up a fairly small chunk. For a road trip lasting 100 days and circumnavigating the continental United States, we spend a whole chapter and two weeks not even leaving the state of Vermont and then skip directly from Texas to the end of the story. 

She's a great writer. It's a long book but beautifully described. Naturally, almost all of it is internal musings and descriptions of her pain and care, but it's still well paced, and doesn't get bogged down. And as exhausting as she sounds to be around at points, I both admire and grimace at her bravery in writing about the end of her relationship with Will (again, not a spoiler for those who do a casual google search, she's currently married to Jon Baptiste). It sounds like she was lucky to have Will for as long as she did, doing as much as he did, but never felt lucky. But how could anyone feel lucky, with that kind of diagnosis and illness hanging over their heads? You're more likely to feel like the sword of Damocles is waiting to fall. 

In the end, I don't think that Jaouad comes up with any philosophical ideas outside of ones that seem common sense for someone in that position: focus on the present, not the past, learn to live comfortably with uncertainty, accept the love that others want to give you, etc., etc. But while I think much of the book is Jaouad trying (and mostly failing, so I hope that she's gotten better at this since 2015) to come to terms with her experience, I think much of the value of the book for others is the deep dive into what it feels to be so torn between being sick and being well - between two kingdoms, is the metaphor she uses over and over again. It is hard for many to imagine being so sick for so long that you have something like PTSD from it. And it is a small revelation to consider that being well again after something like that can be harder than being sick, and you should not expect unalloyed joy from a bill of good health.

12: A Book About A Road Trip

The Frozen River

The Frozen River

By Ariel Lawhon 

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

So I was reading the book and enjoying it reasonably well as one does, and then I come to the author's note at the end and apparently Martha Ballard is a real person! Whose diary entries were excerpted for the book! And it's based around a real rape case! Except that almost all of the rest of it was manufactured, i.e. bodies and murder plots and the Colonel's nefarious backstory about scalping people during the French and Indian War! All of the "juicy" bits.

I was thinking about why this made me so unsettled, and it reminds me of that terrible book The Ministry of Time where the author exhumed someone who died on the ill-fated Franklin Exhibition in 1846 and then wrote this whole book about him time travelling and having sex in lurid, graphic detail. I suppose in one sense, these people died hundreds of years ago and it's not like their relatives are going to be scandalized. And people write about long-dead famous people all the time - Cleopatra, Empress Sisi. But it feels weird that a "normal" person could be molded into this whole fantasy, especially when these modern books are likely going to be more readily accessible and certainly more popular than their actual true biographies. All of that is to say that I enjoyed the story more when I thought it was a story, and had I known it was a fictionalized version of true events, I would have preferred the author not to add their own spin on things.

And I did enjoy the story when it was a story. The mystery is interesting, given how many people seemed to have motive, both moral and immoral, to kill Burgess. The characters (which again, feels like a weird thing to say given that all of these people appear to be based on actual patients and neighbors and relatives) are all neatly drawn and delineated. The authors note humorously says Lawhon helpfully changed names so there weren't ten "Hannahs" in the book. There's a neat piece where [spoiler!] Martha's matchmaking and assumption about a girl who had a child out of wedlock are neatly turned on their head - something to give our hero feet of clay.

I agree the historical detail and setting is a big part of its charm, and it's a nice change of pace to read about a couple who love each other. Although rape plays a central role in both the current and flashback stories, and it is described (in a courtroom setting), it didn't feel exploitative.

It's nothing that strains your brain, or is meant to say something deep about our cultural institutions (except, perhaps, about the overweening arrogance of certain types of men - to take, to dismiss experience born of decades of work). The mystery of which of Martha's family members may be involved in Burgess' death is not hard to guess correctly, and Martha's victory over the villain is never much in doubt. It's just a good story, well-told. 

 

43: A Book That Includes A Nonverbal Character

The Woman They Could Not Silence

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear

By Kate Moore

1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth's intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.

The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they've been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line - conveniently labeled "crazy" so their voices are ignored.

No one is willing to fight for their freedom and, disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness, they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose...

Kate Moore writes about women whom history has forgotten, women who have suffered and whose lives have changed the course of history and whom, despite that, we know very little about. Her first book, The Radium Girls was distinguished more by the subject matter than by the writing. Moore's style is a bit flat here too - she cites constantly from the source material but in so doing, I find her use of quotations more distracting than anything else. I would much prefer her to present the facts and cite by footnotes than constantly insert quotations like a Zagat's Guide. There's almost too much focus on Elizabeth and her own thoughts. It's not a short book, although it does go pretty quickly, but in the last few sections, Elizabeth is released and we broaden our scope to her lobbying efforts. It's certainly less interesting, so I don't fault Moore for spending relatively little time on it, but it would be nice to get more of a sense of the effect these laws had on the systems and any long term impacts her anti-asylum groups had.

 

That being said, once again Moore has chosen an excellent subject. Elizabeth Packard is wholly compelling personage and, as seen in her own writings, eloquent and persuasive.  We see very little of her life prior to her institutionalization and perhaps a bit more background could have helped to explain why she felt so called upon to resist, especially given how common it seems it would have been to keep a low and biddable profile in order to return home. Moore's author's note indicates that she wrote, then cut, an entire beginning section that dealt with Elizabeth's church discussion groups, which seem to kick off the schism between Elizabeth and her husband.  Were there other moments of resistance before this that paved the road?

 

It's inspiring, and intentionally so. Moore writes that she deliberately chose a story with "a happy ending" for which I commend her. Nothing like reading about women needlessly thrown into asylums without proof to make you crave a happy ending.  Elizabeth's courage is manifest, but it's still a tragedy that she endured so many years of separation from her children. I did find it amusing that once her husband Theophilius accepts that she cannot be squashed, they seem to be able to live if not comfortably, at least compatibly.  It just goes to show the damage that a weak man, with all the tools of an unjust system, can do in the pursuit of his own protection. If only he had been able to admit that Elizabeth was always the stronger of the two, perhaps all of this could have been avoided. Maybe it was Theophilius all along who held the insane views since his belief in his own superiority was clearly contrary to the truth.

But Moore's central thesis, which she hammers hard at the beginning and slightly again at the end, that "insanity" is merely a convenient way to dismiss and thwart those who would challenge those in power, is a convincing one. It begs each of us to consider all the ways in which our own prejudices and judgments are informed not by truth but by habit. I find myself uncomfortably close to the subject matter right now, as I find myself advising a family that - for her own protection - a woman needs a guardianship. But Elizabeth's example should be a guide here as well - regardless of the circumstances, to treat everyone with kindness and dignity even if they cannot manage themselves.  

 

And if ever we needed a reminder to keep fighting, the book itself is proof that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The Arc of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends towards Justice." 160 years later, it is Elizabeth Packard's name, not the good doctor MacFarland, whose name adorns the Illinois state asylum in Springfield. 

 

32: A Book About An Overlooked Woman In History

An American Marriage

An American Marriage

By Tayari Jones

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.

I wasn't really looking forward to this, since I thought the subject matter would be very weighty and therefore depressing (I also considered Agatha Christie's Sleeping Murder for this prompt, and maybe I will read that too anyway, since it sounds intriguing). And the subject matter was weighty, I guess, but the book is pretty easy to read and skips over a lot of the time that Roy spends in prison, so it's mostly build-up and then the three characters wringing their hands over Roy's return to freedom.

It's fine. I did spoil the ending for myself, so maybe I would have been more rapt if I hadn't know how it would turn out, but as it was, Celestial mostly annoyed with what seemed to be small cruelty in separating herself from Roy, but not actually divorcing him, thus keeping him on her line and giving him false hope. I think it would have been ameliorated if we'd seen better why she did it, i.e., was it to give him strength while he was in prison? But we don't, we just see her realization that he's in prison for a long time, she doesn't really love him as much as she ought, and then her leaning on Andre because (and for real) he's right there. Honestly, if she hadn't gotten pregnant at the end, I would have said that if Andre would up in prison, she would have left him just as she had Roy. She just doesn't seem to be deeply committed to anyone but herself. And that's fine, I suppose, for her, but it does make the book seem like less of a tragedy and more of a pity.

Meanwhile, of course, Roy is out here not appearing to take his marriage vows super seriously either, so who knows. Perhaps there's an argument that they were married longer because he was in prison than they would have been if he'd been out. I did find it funny that the first question in the "book club" questions at the end was one I had been thinking about while reading it, namely, what makes this an "American" marriage? Is it the wrongful conviction? Certainly other countries are subject to the phenomenon as well, although perhaps it's less common. Is it the racism? Is it the ways in which the characters each justified their actions? I agree that it does "feel" uniquely American somehow, like this story could only have happened in this country, but it's hard to say why.

I liked the beginning of the book much more than the end. The beginning is the love story of Roy and Celestial, as well as their communications in prison. It felt like it might be a story about handling something terrible and life-altering, something that truly is not your fault, and living through it. Something like optimism. Something like Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, haha. But all the characters just wallow. For good reason, especially in Roy's case, but it never felt more than surface level.  I dunno, I just, this is the kind of book where you want to feel deeply for these characters and the loss of their hopes and dreams and the ruins of their marriage, and instead, you just wish they'd be a little more honest - with themselves first, and then with other people. And don't even get me started on the idea that Roy happens to end up in a prison cell with his biological father for five years. Now it's just hokey.

On the plus side, it was a very easy read.

48: A Book That Features A Married Couple Who Don't Live Together

The Book of Delights

The Book of Delights

By Ross Gay

The winner of the National Book Critics Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyrical essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.
In The Book of Delights, one of today’s most original literary voices offers up a genre-defying volume of lyric essays written over one tumultuous year. The first nonfiction book from award-winning poet Ross Gay is a record of the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgment between the only two black people in a room. But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything else, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world–his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis.
The Book of Delights is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.

I am finding it hard to write a review. When I recall the book, I have a sense of remembered pleasure, but moreso than anything it engenders calm and peace. I find myself relishing inactivity, breathing in and out and content to be at rest. A lassitude and quietude. Which of course ruins any hope of productivity. 

The Book of Delights is a series of short essays on the delights of daily life which may occur to you if you simply open yourself. I feel as though they are something like secular homilies, although this description does them no service. It falls short of the talent Gay displays in the transcription of his ideas, the poet's talent for wordplay, for following thoughts like twining vines, up and over and out again.

Below is an entire excerpt from one such essay, which is probably not the best in the bunch, but serves since it is so short and still amusing:

When my brother and I were little kids, maybe nine and seven, one of the big kids (this description has almost none of the gravity it once did, when kids actually went outside unsupervised and uncoached and so the small ones would on occasion be thrown by the big ones into the sticker bush or dropped into a sewer for sport) caught us in the woods and pinched us on the backs of our arms until we cursed, which we adamantly and unusually for our neighborhood did not do. (I wonder, in retrospect, if we acted a bit superior due to our linguistic chastity.)

"Asshole!" we screamed into the woods behind the apartments. "Shitbag!" The tears making our faces shine as this big twelve-year-old twisted the meat on our arms. When we went home crying to our mom (my brother more from the pinching than the cursing, which I suspect he was glad for the excuse to do), she found the kid and read him the riot act, calling him a gutter mouth, telling him that Rossy and Matty are not going to be little gutter mouths like him, before telling him he would probably grow up to be a child molester. She was fucking his ass up. I remember him listening quite calmly, almost demure, calling my mother Mrs. Gay and suggesting he would not become a child molester. I think Tim was probably right, and was just in a  sadistic phase, not unlike my own at around twelve.

But mostly I offer this story as a kind of background against which to enjoy the easy way my mother described her granddaughter's, my niece's, third-grade teacher, who evidently could sometimes not be very nice to some of the kids, as a real dickhead.

 It feels like a rope, a hand stretching out to pull us from the despair and pessimism of These Times and remind us not to sink into depression but to remember the point of life and remember to enjoy what we may while we have it. It is like a small flower, growing amidst adversity, and with love, and hope, I am fortified against the hordes once more. 

01: A Book About A POC Experiencing Joy And Not Trauma

Person of Interest

Person of Interest
By Theresa Schwegel

Leslie McHugh is married to an undercover cop. She thinks she knows what it’s like to share her life with a man who spends his days living a lie, who keeps secrets for a living, who trusts no one, not even her. She can see the pressure, the fear, the pent-up rage, and, worst of all, the distance growing between them that Craig promised he’d never allow. But what does she really know? Lonely, tired, and starting to drink too much, she knows that their marriage is on the rocks because her husband lives a second life she knows almost nothing about.

When a thousand dollars disappears from their bank account, she wants answers, but before she can even ask the questions, their seventeen-year-old daughter, a real cop’s kid already on a collision course with trouble, turns up at the center of Craig’s investigation into a snitch’s violent death. Leslie’s had enough; she’s determined to get to the truth and protect her family---no matter what the cost.

If not for the Challenge, this would not only have been a likely DNF, but, if finished, would have been forgotten quickly, blending into a mish-mash of other mediocre police thrillers.  However, in writing these reviews, I get to memorialize a book which I cannot, in good conscience, recommend to anyone.

The book is narrated in turn by married couple Craig, a police officer investigating drugs in Chinatown, and his wife, Leslie, dealing with their terrible teenage daughter, Ivy (more on Ivy later). We get off to a rousing start with a fight between the two of them wherein Craig calls Leslie a bitch, and they don't seem to like each other at all. In their separate chapters we also get a window into all the ways they're both individually fucking up: Craig by immersing himself much more deeply into the investigation than his superiors would approve, spending his own money on an underground gambling den, and Leslie by falling for her daughter's theoretical boyfriend, Niko.

The police investigation is totally confounding and I'm not sure it's intentional. Apparently in-fighting between Chinese and Vietnamese gangs is important to the plot, but it's barely explained. I guess, ultimately drugs=bad, but why or how Craig losing money at the gambling table will unlock the whole case is never explained to my satisfaction.

There's so many bad decisions made by Craig and Leslie in the early chapters that you never really get on their side. They never become sympathetic, a critical failure of the book. Aside from Craig's stealing marital funds for an unsanctioned job (while calling his wife a bitch) Leslie decides that her drug dealing daughter's activities should be kept from Craig at all costs. So Ivy gets picked up from a rave, high and carrying ecstasy and Leslie's reaction is to cover for her, to the extent that she won't even mention to Craig that Ivy is grounded, in case he asks why (and she's incapable of lying about THAT, I guess).  Great parenting! When she's not doing that, she's flirting with her daughter's boyfriend, going to his jazz shows, and assuming Craig is having an affair (he's not).

Nevertheless, the book offers no real points of interest until Leslie is drugged, followed home, and violently raped. It's gruesome and comes out of nowhere and completely changes the tone of the book. Now Craig and Leslie are united against the rapist, whose identity takes up the plot of most of the last section of the book. Then, Craig kills him off-screen.  It's like Schwegel wanted the emotional payoff of a revenge sequence but because both of these characters are so unsympathetic for so long, mostly you're just appalled.  

In retrospect, I realized that while I checked the general ratings on Choi's A Person of Interest, I'd just read the blurb on Schwegel's book and assumed it would be a typical run of the mill procedural. I did not expect (more fool me) how... unpleasant it would be. You feel grimy and unhappy reading it.

And a minor quibble, after all that, but the title makes no sense. There's never really a "person of interest" in the book. At point Craig and Leslie call someone that, but (a) it's a lie and (b) this is like 90% through the book. Nor is there ever really an investigation into a snitch's violent death, as the blurb suggests. There is a death, about halfway through, but I'm not sure he's a snitch. 

And finally, *spoiler alert* I guess but did they ever explain how the bad guy (completely forgot his name since it's introduced at the very end) knows that Leslie is the wife of this undercover cop? It sounds like he and Leslie were both somewhat coincidentally in the club together and he took a chance to sow more discord and frame Silk, but how did he know Craig was an undercover cop when none of the people Craig was gambling with seemed to know? For awhile we think the rapist is Juan/Yuan, which makes sense that he knows Craig is a cop, but how does this other guy know Leslie is related to the case? Is it a plot hole, or do I just not care enough to pay attention? We'll never know.

38: Two Books With The Same Title