marriage

One Book a Week-40: “Wifedom”, Anna Funder

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I found this new non-fiction book both fascinating and disturbing. Like Funder, I’ve always considered George Orwell (not his real name) a great writer and appreciate his insights into the methods used to gain power and control people plus the clever ways those who wield power draw masses under their influence.

After reading several biographies of Orwell, Funder began to wonder about his wife whom these authors barely mention. What Funder discovers is both enlightening and dismaying. Did Orwell love her or just use her as an editor and fancy typist? Did he even like women or just use them? Would “Animal Farm” and “1984” even have been written without her help? The subtitle of Funder’s work is “Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life”. Her real name was Eileen O’Shaughnessy. She married him in 1936.

What does it mean to be a writer” What does it mean to be a writer’s wife?

In many ways this work is a tribute to the unrecognized contributions of women though out time and everywhere.

Note: While reading about Orwell and his wife and family, the reader also learns about what it was like to live in the middle of nowhere in the English countryside without adequate heat and even sometimes a lack of food. It also details Orwell’s stay in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and his travels to France as a journalist toward end of WWII. He also suffered from TB about which he continually lied to everyone.

One Book a Week, 36-39: See notes below plus “Mrs. Caliban”, Rachel Ingalls

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“Mrs. Caliban”, once called “The Perfect Novel” by the New York Times, was a book ahead of its time. A sort of magical realism story, its message remains relevant over the decades. Mrs. Caliban’s husband just lives with her and only returns home to eat, and after going out for the evening, to sleep. He’s polite and indifferent. One day a green, sort of humanlike, highly intelligent monster shows up. He is hiding from the authorities who found him and experimented on him. She listens to his relating the horrible things done to him and hides him in the guest room where her husband never goes. He transforms her life. In the meantime, she goes to visit a close friend and listens to the friend’s stories of multiple simultaneous affairs she is having with multiple men friends. They give each other advice, exchange stories about various people they know. Mrs. Caliban tells no one about her house guest. Then a shocking accident and astonishing information she never guessed occur.

This short novel reveals so much about life, human behavior, and the status of men and women. I highly recommend it.

Note: The other three books I read for a project and cannot discuss them at this time.

One Book a Week-34: “If I Survive You”, Jonathan Escoffery

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After reading about this book and its author in a recent issue of the Sunday “Los Angeles Times”, I saw it while wandering around the local library and checked it out. Although the author’s work has been published in various magazines, this is his first book.

This collection of short stories reads like a novel because the characters in the stories are either identical or related from Trelawny and his brother Delano to their ill-fated cousin, Cukie, all of whom are the descendants of Jamaican immigrants living in or near Miami, Florida. Sometimes excluded because they are Black, they face other challenges, e.g. Trelawny because people cannot figure out what he is ethnically or racially due to his complexion and hair, light and only somewhat curly. All struggle to discover who they are and where they belong, if anywhere.

While many of their experiences remain heart wrenching, Escoffery has the ability to also make their stories funny. I kept think of some works by Sherman Alexie whose stories are both horrifying and hilarious.

Note: The next three books will remain anonymous and no blogs about them because they are for a project and I cannot report about them. I will be blogging poems and essays about other topics.

One Book a Week-32: “gilead”, Marilynne Robinson

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A theological treatise, a family history, and a love story, this winner of the Pulitzer Prize, left me wondering. It is nothing like any of the other books I’ve previously read. As a long letter from an aging preacher to his young son, it contains family stories of his pacifist preacher father and his violent preacher grandfather, an ardent abolitionist who knew and aided John Brown, theological religious analyses and musings, personal beliefs and doubts, and his own unlikely love story only found at the age of 67, and his views and feelings toward the Iowa prairie and the tiny town where he lives.

For a substantial portion of this letter, the narrator discusses the mixed feelings he holds toward his namesake, the wayward son of his best friend, another local preacher. In the paperback version I read, the first 215 pages continue, no breaks, no chapters. Then, suddenly, there is a blank page and the narrator relates some rather unexpected new information about his friend’s wayward son and his own reactions to this information. In the last two pages, the narrator discusses his love of the prairie and the town and why he never left.

I read several reviews on Amazon and find some do not really review the book but rather rant about their religious opposing views to what the narrator relates or criticize the style and subject matter with which they disagree. For me I can read a book and even though I may disagree with some of the material, if it is well written. Well, this novel is well written. The prose is lovely, often poetic, and some of the descriptions remain memorable. However, if you want a traditional plot, do not want to think about religious views and philosophies, then this novel is not for you.

One Book a Week-30: “Deacon King Kong”, James McBride

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It takes genius to write a novel about serious topics, e.g. racism, poverty, addiction, drug dealing, crime, which is also very funny. This is the first book I’ve read this year where I found myself frequently laughing out loud. In the projects of South Brooklyn in 1969, an elderly church deacon shoots a young drug dealer, who is also a star local baseball pitcher. Thus begins a saga about the Black and Hispanic residents who live there, the cops who patrol the area, the Italian mobsters who control the docks, and the church where the shooter is a deacon. The “New York Times” listed this as one of the ten best books of 2020. Indeed it is. This is the third book I have read by this author, and I will soon progress to another one.

One Book A Week-28: “The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane”, Lisa See

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My view of this book remains somewhat mixed. I know it was a best seller, but some parts of the storyline seem extremely contrived rags to riches stories without evidence to back them up. Nevertheless, it is a powerful novel about the ritualistic Akha tribal people of the southern Chinese region of Yunnan who were viewed as backward and remained mostly unknown until their superior Pu’er tea was discovered. Additionally, the novel explores Chinese adoptions, issues Chinese children experience when adopted by white people, and how so-called primitive practices, e.g. killing twins and banishing their parents, can change over time even in remote areas.

I prefer to read books that provide me the opportunity to learn something new. This book definitely provided that. Before reading this novel, I knew nothing about the Akha people, even though I have visited tribal areas not too distant, nothing about Pu’er tea or tea processing and how tea can be as valuable a commodity as gold. Pu’er tea is different from other teas because of the types of trees from which it is harvested and its unique fermentation process which makes it a probiotic.

One Book A Week-27: “Lucy By The Sea”, Elizabeth Strout

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A short, honest, realistic view of life, this book by Strout, written from the viewpoint of Lucy
Barton, continues the story started in her book, “Oh, William”, where Lucy and her ex, William, go to Maine to seek out his long lost sister whom he did not know existed until he took a DNA test. Once again they head to Maine, but for a much more stressful reason, the Covid pandemic. They both live separately in NYC where Covid hit early and hard. After accurately assessing the danger, William finds a large, old house to rent on the Maine coast and convinces Lucy to go with him there to save their lives. He convinces one daughter to leave NYC but the other insists on staying.

The book addresses the issues of isolation brought on by the pandemic and how people deal with stress and isolation differently and with the difficulties which arise when once close families can no longer see each other. It also shows that isolation can bring the positives that can be found in a more quiet life. Strout’s uniquely simple style emphasizes the emotions and stresses as well as the joys life can bring to all of us.

One Book A Week-25: “The Daughters of Madurai”, Rajasree Variyar

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The first sentence of the book reads: “A girl is a burden. A girl is a curse.”

In India in early 1990s, Janani lives with her abusive mother-in-law and an alcoholic husband who is often absent, chauffeuring people here and there. Although she is allowed to keep daughter number one, the fate of the next daughters is death. She, who is Tamil lower caste, is lucky enough to work for the same higher caste family for whom her mother worked and with whom she spent most of her childhood. They treat her much better than her husband and mother-in-law who hate her for not bearing a boy baby.

The book goes back and forth between this time period and 2019 Australia where the fate of Indian girls and women is far different. The family returns to India for the funeral when the family patriarch dies. Those who know little about their family history learn some shocking revelations.

In the Afterward, the author discusses female infanticide. Although many educated families oppose it and national laws prohibit the practice, it remains so common in parts of rural India that in those places there is a shortage of women for marriage. As a consequence, men resort to kidnapping women from other areas.

I thought it would take me a while to read this 326 page novel. However, I became so engrossed, I finished it in two days while also engaging in several other activities.

A Book a Week-24: “The Water Museum”, Luis Alberto Urrea

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What an amazing story collection!! As I read these incredibly diverse stories featuring so many different types of people, I kept wondering how does he know so much about different sorts of individuals:

-An older white lady in a tiny town in Idaho who runs a little restaurant.

-Chicanos in San Diego–this one I “get”; he grew up near there in Tijuana.

-A divorced white guy, wandering aimlessly cross country.

-A teen in Arizona who loves a nice girl from a dangerous family.

-A “weird” old man in a Mexican village.

-A young man trying to save his dead dad’s possessions from questionable friends.

-A strange magical realism Mexican story. I love magical realism so if I think it strange…

-A kids’ trip to a water museum ( the title) in the drought ridden plains.

-A sad South Dakota story of a white man married to an woman from Pine Ridge.

-In Iowa a widowed farmer trying his best to befriend and understand his Mexican neighbors.

Book a Week-21: “Boy, Snow, Bird”, Helen Oyeyemi

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A unique and sometimes frightening story with a surprising ending, this is another tale of the lengths to which people of color will go to pass for white to gain the benefits of whiteness. For one New England family this has succeeded quite well by sending a too dark daughter back South to live with relatives and never allowing her to come to the town where the rest of the family lives. It fails when a too dark child is born and the parents keep her with them. It is also a tale of gender identity and how rape and abuse can destroy and deform and of resilience in the face of endless obstacles. This is not an ordinary novel.