"when things are sad and awful, crying is an appropriate response"

As one of the characters remarks in Goodbye for Now, “When things are sad and awful, crying is an appropriate response.” Turns out laughing is too. Two of Laurie Frankel’s novels will have you doing both.

Although I haven’t see it, apparently there’s a show on Prime that imagines a world in which life goes on in a digital afterlife. A similar premise is at work in Frankel’s Goodbye for Now. After Sam and Meredith are matched in an online dating program that Sam developed, their tenuous relationship is tested by the death of Meredith’s grandmother Livvie. To help Meredith through her grief, Sam develops a program that draws from Livvie’s digital footprint to generate and respond to emails and eventually simulates her video chatting. They develop the idea into a new venture they call RePose and, for a price, offer the service to others who have recently lost a loved one. (spoiler alert) When an unforeseen accident occurs, Sam discovers first-hand the comforts and caveats of his creation.

Although Frankel’s humor and spot-on dialogue are apparent in Goodbye, she kicks it up a notch in her subsequent novel This is How it Always Is (another winning pick of Reese’s book club). Rosie Walsh, a physician, and her husband Penn, a writer, have a house-full of boys. When she gets pregnant with their fifth child (“Are you Catholic?” friends ask), they hope for a girl. Instead, tumbling into their messy lives is Claude. Precocious, he announces at three that he wants to be a chef,  a scientist, an ice cream cone, and a girl. The transition takes some time, but eventually Claude becomes Poppy. 

When the family moves to Seattle, Rosie and Penn introduce their four sons and daughter to their new friends and neighbors. Entangled within the story is Penn’s fairy tale about a prince and a magical suit of armor through which he grapples with the life lessons his family is learning and re-learning about acceptance. Frankel, who draws from her own experience raising a transgender child, portrays in Rosie the tensions of feeling hopeful and anxious that every mother can instantly recognize as her own.

"rehearsing fake smiles before toothpaste-flecked mirrors"

With all the talk of back to school, I’ve almost forgotten it’s still summer. Normally, I would have posted a summer reading list or list of beach reads by now. Since this year has been anything but normal, I haven’t felt as motivated to do so.

But whether you’ve managed to find a beach, or are sticking with the couch, here are two books by Colson Whitehead that will transport you to a different time and place – the hallmark of any beach read, worth, well, its salt.

Sag Harbor 

It’s the summer of 1985. Benji has settled in for his stay at his family’s beach house in Sag Harbor. During the school, he's one of a few Black students at his private school in Manhattan. During the summer, he looks forward to, and at the same time has doubts about, fitting in to this summer community of African-American professionals established by his grandparents.  His ambitions –  meet a girl, get a job, and keep his affection for The Smiths to himself.  

During the week he and his brother are left to fend for themselves, only the threat of their parents’ arrival on Friday keeps the  house from sinking into total disrepair. Working at Burger King and the local ice cream shop keeps them stocked in Campbell’s and beer purchased by older cousins.  The weekends his parents do stay bring home-cooked meals, but also the tension of his parents’ troubling relationship.

The Underground Railroad 

That misperception you had in elementary school that the Underground Railroad was, like, a real train,  is brought to life in this novel. Cora, the protagonist, flees from the Georgia cotton plantation where she is enslaved via an underground train to the north. Each subsequent station offers the promise of freedom, but something nefarious is always lurking. It’s hard to tell which is more terrifying – the slave catcher Ridgeway or the well-meaning white people in power she encounters along the way.