Book Report, March
Fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, speculative, and memoir. That's a lot of genres
Jodi Picoult (2013). The Storyteller. [Kindle]. Atria/Emily Bestler Books.
I was not planning to finish another book this month. I intended to start this one and have it ready for the first book of April. BUT, I could not put this one down. It is a Holocaust story, and in that sense it follows a familiar narrative that needs to be told again and again so we never forget. However, Picoult chose a unique point of view: the adult granddaughter of a survivor who didn't know her grandmother's history. Sage (and her sisters Saffron and Pepper--odd choices, but their roles are minor) grew up in a nominally Jewish home, a faith tradition that Sage abandoned after the death of her mother. Sage is a baker, working magic with bread overnight, alone in the bakery, which she prefers. Her face is scarred by the accident that killed her mother, but at a deeper level her heart is scarred by a lifetime of not feeling good enough.Â
In a grief group, Sage meets Josef Weber, a man who harbors 70 years of secrets from his life in 1930s and 1940s Germany. At this point, Picoult brings in her inspiration for the book, The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal which I reviewed in June of 2023. My review read, in part:
This is a heart wrenching narrative followed by a multitude of philosophical responses. The essence of part one is set in the Lemberg concentration camp in Poland. Simon Wiesethal is taken to the bedside of a dying Nazi who wants absolution for his horrific actions from a Jew--any Jew.
That review is enough information to know what to expect from this novel without any spoilers. The storyteller is Minka, Sage's grandmother, who condescends to tell her story about surviving the death camps by virtue of a horror folk tale she composed, like a Jewish prisoner Scheherazade. The survival story encompasses the middle third of the book. The remainder of the book follows Sage as baker, confidante to a liar, insecure woman grappling with moral decisions she is ill-equipped to make. Any more information than that steps into spoiler territory. If you read this one, let me know. I'd love to have a conversation about the moral dilemma. I will leave with this word from Wiesenthal, "It is impossible to believe anything in a world that has ceased to regard man as man, which repeatedly 'proves' that one is no longer a man" (9).
Reference: Wiesenthal, Simon. The Sunflower. Schocken Books, 1998/1969.
Evelyn Skye (2023). Damsel. [Audible]. Narrated by Imani Jade Powers. Random House Worlds/ Random House Audio.
I enjoyed this book. The narrator never missed a beat. Every character's voice was carefully crafted, and the dragon's voice was perfect. As fantasy novels go, this one hits all the marks: dragons, magic, princesses, evil vs. good, with the added benefit of an unexpected ending.
The Netflix movie version available makes for an intriguing comparison. In a twist, the screenplay came before the book, which makes some of Skye's decisions and alterations interesting. I liked her scrappy Elodie and the detailed stories within the caves.Â
I didn't buy Millie Bobby Brown as Elodie, but the actress does offer excellent marketing material. The movie has a cast of all-stars, including Angela Bassett and Robin Wright.Â
The strengths of the book lay in language. The English teacher and Tolkien lover in me found a kindred spirit in linguistics with Elodie (and the author's daughter who is credited with its invention). Dragon language has both grammar and syntax. In the print version, three appendices explain how the language works, but the audiobook doesn't include a PDF, which is disappointing. I have a request at the library for a hard copy, but it seems to me that purchasing the audiobook should include those appendices. Granted, the narrator reads them, but hearing is not enough for literary and linguistic minds that rely on multiple sources.
The ending of the book and the ending of the movie are quite different and I found both unsatisfying. If I had to choose one, it would be the book version, but my preference might have been for something in between the two offerings. There is more than enough in the book to compensate for the ending. Â
Marianne Holdzkom (2023). Remembering John Adams: The Second President in History, Memory, and Popular Culture. McFarland
The second President of the United States is often relegated to the one between Washington and Jefferson. While the first and third presidents had stories and charisma that allowed them to become demigods of the U.S., John Adams was altogether human. Often dismissed as vain, arrogant, and short-tempered, Adams may be best known in contemporary culture for his wife, Abigail Adams, or a brief reference by King George in Broadway's Hamilton, "John Adams?! I know him. That can't be. That's the little guy who spoke to me all those years ago…President John Adams, Good Luck" (Hamilton, 2015).
It isn't that there are no biographies of the man, nor is it because he didn't leave behind documentation about his life. On the contrary, of all the Founders, Adams may have archived more personal documents the most. His hometown is carefully preserved. He has been the subject of books, mini-series, and a Broadway show. So how is it that we still know so little?
In this text, Marianne Holdzkom avoided writing yet another biography, but instead analyzed and evaluated all the writings, films, and productions to create a well-rounded perspective of John Adams. She carefully considered what each attempt to capture Adams got right and what they likely got wrong. In doing so, Holdzkom created possibly the best picture of a complex man who lived a long and complicated life. She wrote, "His honesty, his integrity, his arrogance, and his temper are all fodder for a writer's imagination" (126). Imaginations turned him into caricatures or simplistic versions of a man who hardly understood himself.
Holdzkom considered both writers and actors who took on the task of bringing Adams to life, and found that each medium has its own limitations. Actors often struggled to get inside his head, but once they did, each one found respect for the man they portrayed. Writers encountered a man who could not be contained within his own story. For all his reported querulousness, Adams was happily married. For all his mistakes as a father, his work as a Founding Father contributed as much as Jefferson did, or more to the forming of a new nation. Holdzkom noted, "He is a flawed man doing the best he can in extreme circumstances. He is both hero and anti-hero, a fully human man who continues to speak truth to power" (270). The book is well-researched, well-written, and well worth the read for anyone interested in President John Adams, the myth and the man behind it.
References: Hamilton: An American Musical (Original Broadway Cast Recording). Performances by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, and Jonathan Groff, Atlantic Records, 2015.
Tina Less Forsee (2023). A Footnote to Plato: A Novel. [Spotify Audiobook) Narrated by the Author.
I came across this author on Substack (again, there is a lot of great writing on the site) and when she offered a free audiobook, I leapt at the opportunity to take a break from American Prometheus. Â Couched within a story of a philosophy professor and students at a small university in Vermont, the book offers a sharp critique of academia through the lens of the Platonic virtues: wisdom, temperance, courage, justice, and piety. As a former university assistant professor, I resonated with the hapless professor who just wanted to teach Plato and ignore the politics of university life.
The virtues are represented through the different characters, with Professor Fischelson as the unified whole, although imperfectly so. Fischelson cannot fully live until he masters the virtues, or at least, helps the representative characters to reach their potential. So, the paying-for-college-because-his-mother-is-awful-drug-dealer becomes the icon for temperance and courage. The Bible-thumping maintenance guy and the sweet truly devoted girl illustrate the two sides of piety. Justice comes through repentant accusers, while wisdom comes in the form of a ghost.
There are flaws in the story, mostly in how characters are abandoned once they serve their plot purpose and some timeline jumps, but for the most part, the novel is entertaining and an interesting attempt to represent Platonic ideals in a 21st-century world.Â
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (2007). American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. [Kindle] Narrated by Jeff Cummings. Blackstone Audio.
This Pulitzer Prize-winning tome inspired the Oscar-winning movie Oppenheimer of 2023. The audiobook contains more than 26 hours of excruciating details about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Truthfully, I found the movie beautifully filmed, but dull. However, condensing this book of quotes, statistics, and dates into the three-hour movie is a triumph. For people interested in the details of how influential people lived in the 1930s-60s, this book will satisfy. Students of mid-century politics after WW2 will find much to glean about how the Soviet Union and the US moved from Allies to enemies. For the rest of us, the book is LONG and often tedious. Â
My key takeaways:
Oppenheimer was a genius in many areas, but not in politics.
J. Edgar Hoover may have been the most odious politician of the mid-20th century (Reading Killers of the Flower Moon further illustrates Hoover's power-hungry narcissism
Politicians should never be allowed to define the roles of military science unless they are part of the military or scientific communities
Oppenheimer was not a loyal person to anyone and he could be mean to the people closest to him (his wife and children, especially)
Oppenheimer was canceled (in modern vernacular) for refusing to fit perfectly into any political box.
The review in the New York Times captured the essence of this text well, "A work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer's essential nature.... It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging, self-contradictory behavior."Â
The narrator's voice did not help the listenability of the book, but that may be partly because I set the speed to 2.0 just to get through it. Â
Kevin Hazzard (2016). A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back. Simon and Schuster.
I am not sure how this book ended up in my library queue; I don't remember putting it there. I figured I must have seen something about it that intrigued me, so I brought it home and read it in about three days.Â
Set in Fulton County (read, Atlanta and the seedier parts thereof) in the early 2000s, the book is a collection of incidents and reflections by the author of his time as an EMT and then paramedic. The stories are pretty gruesome, and it requires a mortician's sense of dark humor to fully appreciate Hazzard's responses to them. Still, it is fast-paced and has enough editing to make the book both terrifying and exciting.Â
At the end of the book Hazzard leaves the profession (not a spoiler), but when I looked up the author, I noted that he is now in nursing school, so there's something about the ability to save a life that still speaks to him (he spent a few years in LA writing for a television series about a trauma ER, so the paramedic in his blood never really quit.)Â
It should be no surprise that first responders like EMTs do not often make a career of the job. The pay is not great, the hours are long, the demands of the populace are often ridiculous, and the lack of respect between EMTs and doctors (along with the fire and police departments) are exhausting. Even the most enthusiastic EMT deals with discouragement (of cases and the cycle of partners) and fatigue of missing the happier parts of living. The book might serve as an imaginary ride-along that offers reason for heightened gratitude for those who do the work.
Emma Straub (2022). This Time Tomorrow. [Kindle]
I love a good time-travel book, especially when there's an unexpected twist. This novel borrows heavily from other books in the genre, and to the author's credit, she names them (Peggy Sue Got Married, Back to the Future, Doctor Who). In this iteration, Alice finds herself able to return to her 16th birthday through a portal in a small guardhouse between 3 and 4 a.m. Her father is on his deathbed and she decides she can save his life by making changes in her timeline that would alter his future.
Anyone who reads enough speculative fiction knows that you can only really change your life trajectory by stepping back in time. If a person is going to die on a particular day, no amount of historical tweaking can stop it. The cause might be different and the circumstances might be altered, but people are only responsible for their own stories.
What does work in this story are two key relationships: Alice's friendship with Sam and the father/daughter relationship between Alice and Leonard. What doesn't work is the pacing. The first half is plodding. The second half picks up nicely.
My favorite line in the book is almost a throwaway, but it's an excellent summary of marriage: " We're both humans, you know, with different baggage about different sh*t. The things that drive me crazy about him might not drive someone else crazy. But it's a choice---still. We've been married for fifteen years. But I still have to choose it. That doesn't stop" (268). That is solid truth.
Robert Mazur (2022). The Betrayal: The true story of my brush with death in the world of Narcos and Launderers. [Kindle] Little A.
After I read the book I checked the reviews. Most of them complained that the writing was more like a report than a memoir, devoid of emotion and including too many characters. I rather liked the no-nonsense approach because it gave me a sense of just how much compartmentalizing these agents do just to survive.Â
The events of the book are both fascinating and terrifying. It makes the reader wonder whether any institution is exempt from corruption. Banks, police departments, restaurants, and governments all include people who engage in the activities of the Narcos and money launderers. The dangers faced by every person interacting with crime syndicates are real and usually deadly. I had thought of the world of drug running to be mostly limited to the Americas and East Asia. I was not aware that Hamas, among other terror organizations, also profits from laundering money and running drugs. Of course, if I thought about it, I already knew that international criminals know no borders, but the media has been successful in its coverage of drug running as mostly a Central American issue.
Infiltrating the crime families is complex and layered. Those who pursue undercover work must be able to divide their minds into two distinct personalities while balancing the dictates of their superiors and the demands of their Bosses. Their families also pay a price of secrecy, uncertainty, and potential exposure if betrayal occurs. Added to the danger is the fact that the battle is like an endless game of Whack-a-Mole; knock down one player, and the void is quickly filled as long as there is demand for oblivion by the users and wealth by the suppliers.
Thank you so much for taking the time to review my book. I really appreciate your thoughtful analysis!