"Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle"

In honor of the movie that was recently released, I dusted off a review I originally posted in 2012.

A case of the blue meanies has interrupted these posts of late. Perhaps you've turned to other blogs in the meantime, but I hope you'll check back because a book called Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple has inspired me to start posting again.

Bee Branch, a Seattle eighth grader convinces her parents to take her on a cruise to Antarctica to celebrate her straight As. She is flummoxed, however, when her mother goes missing the day before the trip. When her mother doesn't return, her father, a Microsoft workaholic, decides to send Bee to boarding school a semester early. While at school, Bee receives an envelope filled with emails, magazine articles, and other documents leading up to her mother's disappearance. She immediately sits down at her PC (mocked by her Apple loving classmates) and begins writing her book. The book we've been reading.

I second Jonathan Franzen when he says on the front cover, "I tore through this book with heedless pleasure." A feeling I sort of vaguely remembered but welcomed anyway.

What is the price of copper?

It’s the summer of 1913. Death is commonplace in this small mining town in Michigan.

Annie Clements’ husband works in the mines. Despite his reluctance to join the union, Annie recognizes its potential after yet another neighbor dies a preventable death. Soon she organizes the other wives, mothers, and sisters to translate union materials into the 33 languages spoken in their community. Through their galvanizing efforts to enlist the men, enough votes are called for a strike. 

Soon the Women's Auxiliary is not only planning marches, but organizing food and clothing banks. Annie not only takes the lead behind the scenes, but can be seen at the head of every parade carrying the American flag.  “Although men are the backbone of the union,” Maria Doria Russell writes in The Women of Copper Country, “women are its heart and soul.”

James MacNaughton, general manager of Calumet & Hecla, prides himself on the neat appearance of the homes and businesses of his domain, but neglects to remember the names of his household staff. He stubbornly refuses to negotiate. The strike continues.  

As summer turns to fall and then winter, the strikers are galvanized by visitors such as Mother Jones and threatened by a team of professional strikebreakers. In addition to her cast of unforgettable characters, many drawn from real life, Russell gives us a glimpse of not only early 20^th century working conditions, but its penal system, photojournalism, politics, and attitude toward immigrants.

Just as the novel begins with a death, so it ends with a tragedy that leaves no family unaffected. Broken-spirited, those that haven't left town return to the mines. In a turn of poetic injustice, upon his return, each man is required to pay five cents to buy a gold watch of “gratitude” for MacNaughton.

“You, my fulgurite”

Some books offer the perfect escape route. You can ignore the pile of laundry that sits in the basket waiting to be folded, avoid looking at the stack of lesson plans waiting to be executed, and turn a deaf ear to kids fighting over a ukulele. Instead, you can slip into someone else’s inner thoughts, fears, worries, even joys.

Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life by Gunnhild Øyehaug (translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson) 

“Sigrid has her head on her arms on her desk and is thinking. She has to change. She has to toughen up. She has to stop analyzing everything and stop being so caught up in things that she forgets all else around her, and she has to stop thinking that people are all interested in the same things as her. Because they’re not! They’re not, Paul de Man, she says, and presses his nose with her finger. Naturally, Paul de Man doesn’t answer: after all, he’s Belgian, and a photograph.”

Some books have the opposite effect. Rather than offering a reprieve, they leave you discombobulated and grumpy. You don’t delight in the character’s observations, but scoff, shaking your head and asking, desolately, “Why?!”

The New Me by Halle Butler

“I get socked in the chest, thinking about how things never change. How they’re on a slow-rolling slope downward, and you can think up a long list of things you’d rather do, but because of some kind of inertia, or hard facts about who you are and what life is, you always end up back where you started, sitting drunk on a hard, sticky chair with someone you hate.” 

But even books like these work their magic, propelling you off the sofa to tackle that to-do list, compelling you to look inward to face the work that needs to be done.

Beloved

I can’t remember which came first: being assigned Beloved in my high school English class or finding the three volume collection of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, and Sula in a used bookstore. 

Regardless, I do remember reading Beloved over a long weekend in the dorm room I was assigned during a prospective students’ visit to the University of Dallas. Rather than socializing, I immersed myself in the world of Sethe, Denver, Paul D and Beloved.  I remember being challenged by “124” and trying to wrap my head around the horrors of slavery and its effect on subsequent generations. But also, entranced, as millions of others have been, by Morrison’s style and storytelling.

For more on Morrison’s life, I recommend this article and interview of its author, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah.

Summer of radio plays

In honor of our new summer tradition of podcasts (and more podcasts) and puzzles, today’s post is a review of Flora by Gail Godwin, reposted from 2013.

It's the summer of 1945 and Helen is ten. Her father is spending the summer overseeing construction for the war effort in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Helen is less than thrilled to find out her mother's cousin Flora will be spending the summer with her. To make matters worse, Helen's best friend contracts polio, and Helen and Flora must spend the remainder of the summer quarantined. They quickly befriend the young man who delivers their groceries, plying him with lemonade and cheese straws. Finn in turn starts showing up daily to give Flora driving lessons.  

 The peaceful routine of the summer is shattered in August when the household discovers an atomic bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima and Helen's father's work at Oak Ridge is somehow involved. That same night Helen's discovery of Finn's true feelings for her "simple-minded" cousin triggers a series of events that will have devastating consequences for everyone in the family.

Godwin's story, narrated by Helen, looks back with nostalgia and retrospection to that lonely summer of radio plays, daydreams, and a temptingly unread packet of her grandmother's letters. Helen discovers that what at first appears to be simple-minded in Flora's teaching is actually simple-hearted. And it is a distinction that the reader will also take to heart. 

Irasshaimase!

It’s only recently that I’ve noticed convenience stores in the U.S. upping up their prepared food game. Growing up, the thought of buying anything from 7-11 apart from maybe a Slurpee would have been inconceivable. However, when I lived in Japan, I looked forward to commuting by train just so I could stock up on konbini rice balls, bottled tea, and candy for the trip.

With the same eager anticipation of entering those sliding doors, I opened Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. Since it was translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori, it nicely meets the challenge of reading a translated book written by and/or translated by a woman.

Even when she’s not wearing her Smile Mart uniform, Keiko Furukura has internalized the rhythms of the store where she’s been employed for 18 years. Stocking, cleaning, promoting new products, and serving customers provides a much need structure to her days. She even chooses her evening meal and goes to bed early to ensure her body is ready for the next day’s work. As other employees come and go, she adopts their mannerisms, speech patterns, and wardrobe choices to make sure her life resembles “normal.”  

When a former coworker gets kicked out of his latest apartment, Keiko offers him a spare futon and meals in exchange for the privilege of telling her friends and family she’s living with someone. Rather than serving as a red flag, his blatant existence as a freeloader only serves to legitimize the relationship as “typical.”  

It’s only after the guy convinces Keiko to quit that she realizes just how much she depends on the store for survival – both financially and psychologically.

Murata provides not only a glimpse into the unique universe of the konbini, but tells a more universal tale of the struggle to fit in when one doesn’t.

"put your brain in your lunch box"

Although I went through a Stephen King phase in high school, bringing home Cujo and Christine home from the library where I volunteered shelving books, I have never had the stomach for the horror genre.

So it was with some trepidation that I reached into my TBR stack for a book that my mom had lent me some months ago, maybe even at Christmas?

If a novel could cause PTSD, My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent would be a top contender.  But with each new terror, you simply turn the page with squinted eyes waiting (hoping) for someone to die or seek vengeance or perhaps both. With that caveat, let me proceed.

Turtle lives with her widower father in rural Northern California. After downing a morning breakfast of raw eggs and a slurp of her father’s beer, she takes the bus to school. She doesn’t have any friends and resists the overtures of the new kid that doesn’t know any better than to try being friendly. Her interior monologue is a stream of berating comments that put down others – and herself.  She’d much rather be at home shooting, cleaning her vast arsenal of firearms, or perfecting her survival skills. The end of the world, in the guise of climate change, is at hand.

When she can’t stand her father’s “affection” for a moment longer, one night she does leave. She meets two teenagers lost in the woods and guides them to safety. (The rapid-fire dialogue between Brett and Jacob is incentive enough to keep reading). When she returns home, she realizes she’s entered a whole other world of hurt. Her friendship with Jacob proves harrowing, but exposes her to a new normal. She begins contemplating a more permanent escape.

Close to midnight, I was nearing the end of the book. Some neighbors thought that would be a good time to shoot off the last of their fireworks. Once I had climbed back into my skin, I could only manage to skim through the rest of scene where Turtle finally confronts her father.

In addition to trigger warnings, this book should also come with a “one-sitting” warning. If you can bear to pick it up, you won’t dare put it back down.