Just So Happens

Struggling to overcome my jet lag from a much anticipated trip (17 years) to Japan and the demands of dirty clothes, science fairs, and baseball practice kept me from writing last week.  In addition, they almost kept me from reading. Every time I sat down to read, I would fall into a disorienting nap, dreaming I was still in Kyoto or Kamiyahagi.   

Rewind to April 7. After the novelty of the in-flight entertainment had worn off, a couple of movies had been watched, and dinner had been served, I turned to my Kindle for some late-night reading. I thought it would be fun to read a book set 5,000 miles from my location…5,000 miles (or so) from my location. Finding one available for the Kindle the day before my trip proved much harder. 

Luckily, I discovered and downloaded Just So Happens by Fumio Obata.

In this graphic novel, the main character Yumiko sets the scene, “I am Japanese and still go back to Japan now and then. But here, London, is my home.” After hearing of her father’s death, she returns for the funeral. On the plane, she remembers her last trip to visit her father in the sweltering heat of summer. In the midst of fireworks and fans, she stumbles into a nighttime Noh performance. Later at the funeral, as she questions the meaning of the ritual, she remembers the masked dancer she saw on that earlier visit.

With realistic drawings that capture the essence of both London and Japan, Obata tells a story that is sparing in words but rich in emotion. Anyone who has traveled or moved far away from home can relate. 

Cotton and Cyanoacrylate

This week’s challenge was to read a fantasy novel. Enter Anna-Marie McLemore. Reminiscent of those written by Alice Hoffman and Laura Esquivel, her novel The Weight of Feathers is a magical romance between the children of two feuding families. 

The Corbeau and Paloma families have been rivals for as long as Lace can remember. Lace Paloma is a performer in her family’s traveling mermaid show. Cluck Corbeau makes the wings for the high climbing dance performances of his family.

One night an accident at the chemical plant causes a searing rain. Lace is saved from severe damage only because Cluck carries her to safety.Her beauty damaged, Lace becomes an outcast.  She finds refuge in Cluck’s family only by leading everyone to believe she is a local instead of a Paloma. 

As her relationship with Cluck deepens, she discovers the extent of his scars and the truth behind the generation-old family feud.

McLemore blends the magical realism of feathered humans and bloody curses with the all too real problem of abusive families and deep-seated prejudices. Readers will be swept up in the spectacle and brought back down to hard realities.  

The Nameless City

In preparation for landing here, I’ve prepared a couple of posts in advance. Needing to catch up on my reading challenge (It's April already?), I went for challenge #6 – read an all-ages comic.

Using this handy list, I found The Nameless City by Faith Erin Hicks (color by Jordie Bellaire). Volume one follows the adventures of Kai, a young Dao fighter-in-training. In the first pages of the book, Kai meets his father, a higher up in the army, for the first time. Having been raised by his mother outside the city, Kai is eager to reunite with his father who decides to show him around the city. After one taste of city life, Kai is in love. Eager to find more meat on a stick, he returns the next day on his own and meets city dweller (and orphan) Rat. Impressed by Rat’s running skills, Kai returns morning after morning, bearing baskets of food in exchange, to learn her tricks. In the meantime, a plot is unfolding to assassinate the current leaders. With Rat and Kai’s help, the plot is …well, you’ll just have to read the book.

Hicks’ drawings contrast the austerity of the palace training, the grit of the city, and the tranquility of the monk’s enclave. Younger readers will appreciate the action scenes and marvel at Rat’s leaps across the city’s rooftops. Older readers will appreciate the allusions to the fragile balance between war and peace and the arbitrary nature of language when it comes to ownership and power. 

Two-Top

Books about the restaurant industry have found their way to my nightstand lately. After a short stint as a hostess at an Italian restaurant in college, I decided I wasn’t cut out for restaurant life. I didn’t like the shifts that could start or end at any time, the ice machine flirting, and periods of stress and boredom that could occur on any night. With the right author, that same hectic pace makes for good reading.   

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan

Just before Christmas, Red Lobster manager Manny DeLeon finds out his branch of the restaurant is closing. We follow him from his opening checklist to his last task. An impending snow storm, a skeleton crew, and a bus full of seniors show up to ensure his last night is anything but typical. Former wait staff will cringe in recognition at the demanding (and messy) toddler, the tool who always shows up late, and the annoyance of that song that is constantly playing night after night. They will also nod in recognition at the manager who can calm the most demanding customer and the awkward dance working next to past hookups. (This one also counts toward the book challenge of reading a book you've read before.)

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

You’ve read the story before. Girl moves to New York. Girl gets job in a restaurant. Girl parties after work.  However, Sweetbitter tells the story well. Just days after landing in New York, Tess is the girl who manages to find work at a high-end restaurant with only her barista experience. Through perseverance and canny knowledge of who to befriend, she begins to learn the ropes of each station, running food, drinks, and shadowing the more experienced waiters. She also begins educating her palate. Staying after work for a drink leads to later and later nights and an education of a tawdrier sort. Danler intersperses the narrative with snippets of spoken word heard in the restaurant. The flavor is true.

A Good Kick

We all have a curmudgeon in our lives. Someone who laments the loose morals of today’s kids. Someone who doesn’t get the Internet. Someone whose jaw twitches when the student driver stalls out when he’s teaching her how to drive a standard. Someone who takes his cat for a walk and gets hamburgers thrown at him from passing cars. Someone who gives his grandkids permission to go swimming, but only if they don’t get wet.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman chronicles the days in the life of one such curmudgeon after his wife has died. Ove is the man who is flabbergasted that the neighbors can’t back up a trailer without knocking over his mail box. On his morning inspection of his neighborhood, he muses, “Can’t a man calmly and quietly stand over a cat-shaped hole in a snowdrift in his own garden anymore?”

Only wanting to reunite with his wife, he finds suicide attempt after suicide attempt thwarted. He’s interrupted by his pregnant neighbor Parvaneh, the cat he’s reluctantly adopted, and the man whose seizure causes him to fall on the very tracks Ove is about to jump onto. This leaves him no choice but to save the man instead.

Eventually, despite his distaste for engaging with others, he begins to see a way to begin living again through small acts of kindness. Begrudgingly he concedes, “Tomorrow’s as good a day as any to kill oneself.”

And those people in your life that make you cringe or cry? They are just as likely to make you smile or even laugh because maybe like Ove’s, their hearts are too big. 

News Break

Sometimes I need to turn off NPR and turn up the song that comes on KISS FM. It helps if the kids are in the car because they actually know the lyrics.

Sometimes I need to set aside The New Yorker and dog-ear the pages of a recipe book. It helps if I don’t check the mail for a while.

Sometimes I need to eat cereal for dinner instead of salad. It helps if my husband has to work late.

Sometimes I need to log out of Facebook. It helps if I hide my phone.

Sometimes I need to close the book club book and open one of these. It helps.

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

For fans of Jenny Han and Nina Lacour

The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close

For fans of Maria Semple and, well, Jennifer Close

Mystic Summer by Hannah McKinnon

For fans of Emily Giffin and Elin Hilderbrand

The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelley Rowley

For fans of Claire Messud and Emma Straub

When It Happens to You by Molly Ringwald

For fans of Maile Meloy and Celeste Ng

Losing Track

This week’s challenge was to read a book set in South America by a South American author.

The Blue Line by Ingrid Betancourt opens on a middle-aged Julia in Connecticut. Blessed, or rather cursed, with the gift of premonition from the time she was a little girl in Uruguay and Argentina, Julia has always been compelled to seek out the scene of her visions in hopes of intervening.

While living in Buenos Aires as a child, she became close to her grandmother, Mama Fina, who also has visions. As Julia grows, Mama Fina helps her to analyze each vision and develop a plan to intercede. Whether it’s protecting a priest, escaping political imprisonment, or later, uncovering an affair, Julia’s experience (and foresight) is harrowing, thrilling, and horrifying to read.

It’s not an easy read. Shifting in time from 2006 America to 1970s Argentina to 2002 France and several times in between, Julia lives with Theo, meets Theo, loses Theo, and finds Theo. The reader must pay attention but is rewarded as the story begins to make sense, the loss understood.

Betancourt, herself, was held by a Colombian guerrilla organization for more than six years. If truth is stronger than fiction, Even Silence Has an End will be a knockout.