The Address by Fiona Davis

The city of New York is iconic in the history of the United States.  The Big Apple has been the crown jewel of locations for the rich and famous to live for centuries.  The Rockefeller’s, The Astors, The Vanderbilts were the gentry of New York and lived in luxury in the 1800s. Luckily, the American dream was not limited to the super wealthy.  In 1879 Edward Clark began his dream building project, a place where wealthy upper middle class people could live in a communal setting where each individual family would have their own apartment, but all would share the amenities of an onsite chef, barber, cleaners, tailor and maid services.  This building was known as The Dakota. Each owner designed their apartment and added any and all features that they deemed necessary.  The apartments ranged from four rooms to twenty; there were no two alike. The Dakota was located across from a park we now know as Central Park, but it was at that time quite a distance from what was considered the heart of the city.  Never the less, the building was occupied immediately and had a waiting list of those eager to move in.  Fiona Davis in her historical fiction novel, The Address, used the Dakota as the setting around which she built her story.  In the novel, Davis wove together lives of characters who lived hundreds of years apart, but who were mysteriously connected.  The author spent a great deal of time addressing the emotional termoil that people create when they constantly seek to live up to the life of the “Jones.”  Davis also showed the destructive nature of people in dealing with others of different social class, ethnicity, and wealth status as well as the almost inherent need to maintain control and dominance over those we deem lesser or inferior.  The Dakota became the symbol of the divide between the haves and the have nots.  This book revealed much about the plight of women, children, servants and misfits during the 1880s but it also demonstrated that even though things have changed and improved for those groups, there is still a chasm that separates us.  The history of The Dakota and the people who lived in it made this book a unique peek into their lives that in so many ways mirror our own.  As readers, we are able to see the struggles of all people, then and now, as they try to find their place in the world.

One in a Million Boy by Monica Wood

Unlikely friendships, misunderstood emotions, and unexpected relationships were the central core of Monica Wood’s book One in a Million Boy.  Told through flashback,  the story is centered around a socially awkward 11 year old boy and his relationship with 104 year old Ona.  We meet these two eccentric characters when the boy arrives to fulfill his Boy Scout service requirements.  What he finds is a persnickety old woman who is known for finding fault in all the helpers who come to her house to pitch in.  However, this boy with his pention for making lists and counting everything soon becomes her friend.   The story heartbreakingly turns when the boy (whose name we are never told) dies suddenly and unexpectedly.  Once this bright, engaging child is gone,  the redemptive story of the boy’s father, Quinn, whose guilty conscious forces his decision to take over the boy’s weekly treks to Ona’s to fulfill the promise made by his son takes over.  We soon see the father had not been connected to his son emotionally or in many cases physically because he just did not “get” his son and he was selfishly chasing his dream of rock stardom and therefore was on the road.  But because of the son’s death, Quinn begins to reevaluate his life and the life of his son.  Because of the boy and his connection to their lives, the relationship between Quinn and Ona solidifies.  Because of the boy, these people find purpose and fulfillment.  This was a warm, satisfying book that gave us wonderful characters to live with and love.  Enjoy!

Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig

Ivan Doig’s prolific writing career was firmly grounded in the working class life of post war western USA.  Montana specifically was central to much of Doig’s writing.  Last Bus to Wisdom is the last novel written by this author at the age of 75 and it has been widely received as one of his best.  Filled with relatable characters, this novel centers around the orphan boy, Donal, who is sent on the journey of his life on a Greyhound bus (the “dog” bus) when his grandmother, who was raising him, falls ill and has to send him to a relative in Manitowoc.  The storyline is divided into two separate bus trips:  the first is the trip to his aunt and uncle’s and the second is his escape from the mean spirited aunt who never wanted him to come in the first place.  Each trip is filled with interesting characters who show the best and worst of human nature.  Donal’s adventures give the reader an eye witness view of this clever and mischievous young boy.  We are charmed by is imaginative stories used to entertain and rescue him throughout the novel.  There is danger at every turn it seems, but Donal manages to elude most troubles with his sharp mind and engaging personality.  Thankfully, the boy’s story is uplifting and comes to a satisfying conclusion when he is reunited with his loving grandmother in a stable environment.  If you read and enjoyed Hucklebery Finn, you will love Last Bus to Wisdom.  Donal and Huck share many of the same personality traits.  The adventures of Donal mirror Huck:  he rescues a man who will surely pay a high price for his “crimes” if he is not saved; he encounters scalliwags who take advantage of his naïveté; and he comes to realize that the world is not easy, but that if you look, you will always find good people even in the most unlikely places.  Good choice for heart warming read.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Frederik Backman

Growing up I never knew my grandparents. They all died rather young, so I never had the pleasure of listening to my grandparents' stories. I have often wondered about the stories they would have told:  crossing the ocean from Germany; the hardships of the depression and scrabbling to succeed as a small farmer in Kentucky.  They surely would have had adventures to tell too and I think I would have loved those stories best because all children appreciate quests and heroes and monsters and beasts.  In Frederik Backman's, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, we are once again introduced to wonderful characters but most importantly seven year old Elsa and her "paint ball firing" grandmother.  Elsa is a precocious, almost adult-like child who has no friends her own age and is bullied relentlessly at school.  But at home, with her granny, she travels to their magical land of the "Land of Almost Awake", speaking their own private language and enjoying and joining into adventures in each of the seven lands.  Sadly, Elsa's grandmother is sick and she dies leaving Elsa alone and heartbroken but also with a "quest" of her own.  She is instructed to deliver letters to the people she does not realize are connected to her grandmother and to herself.  Through her connections to the special people who live in her building, Elsa come to know her grandmother better; she learns to accept herself and those she thought were weird and different and unloveable; plus, she realizes her life is blessed by the "family" her grandmother created and introduced her to through her magical stories.  Granny's musings are life lessons for all of us.  Granny explained that "the real trick of life is to see that almost no one is enriely a sh#t, and almost no one is entirely not a sh#t".  and most importantly,"only different people change the world."  Words of wisdom to be sure.

Manhattan Beach by Jenifer Egan

Pulitzer prize winner Jennifer Egan is credited with employing original, stylized literary forms in her writing.  While this is significant and makes her writing stand out, in her latest novel, Manhattan Beach, the stream of consciousness and over packed story lines makes the book difficult and unnecessarily burdened with many plotlines that are not needed or helpful to the main themes. The list of the many story lines includes those involving gangsters, union workers, deep sea divers, undeveloped love interests, handicapped children, and disappearing parents.   The main characters, Anna, Stiles, Eddie, Dexter, and Charlie's trials were sometimes fully developed but often we are left with questions as to why the character said or did what they did. There were a good number of unexplained connections between characters also.  Was Anna in love with Stiles? Was she a good woman or was she somehow damaged? Did Eddie turn on Dexter because he had a change of heart about what was right and wrong?  All of this detracted from the important themes that Egan included.  The main story line of Anna fighting against the male dominated world was engaging because she managed to become an underwater diver working during the war repairing ships.  The number of female characters that "played the game" to survive or to avoid social  backlash was significant and demonstrated the plight that the women faced every day.  This theme alone was enough to build the story around, but Egan also included the rampant attitudes of racial inequality and aversion to physical handicaps showing the  painful results of these prejudices that seemed to be the norm during this time in our history.  Perhaps the most important theme for Egan is the almost existential idea of "time" that has its way with all of us.  We all may try to fight the good fight; we may struggle tirelessly to change our lives.  We may believe we can reconcile our lives but in the end we all sink slowly into the unknowable dark when we die.  "Time" is the looming hazard that we all face and that we all fail to concur.  This novel was gloomy and left the reader with a sense of futility.  Well written but dark.

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

I grew up listening to stories detailing my parents lives during the depression years.  They told unbelievable tales of having little food, being grateful for hand me down clothes, and of working multiple odd jobs and then giving the money earned to their parents in support of the family as a whole.  Even as desperately poor as my parents were their lives really were not as horrible as many.  In Lisa Wingate's novel, Before We Were Yours, we see that the trauma felt by many children of the depression was almost unbearable and the depravity of some adults was beyond evil.  Wingate incorporates the real life orphanage director, Georgia Tann, into her historical fiction.  Hailed as a visionary philanthropist, Tann in fact kidnapped children from poor desperate families and "sold" them to people who longed for children for but were unable to have them on their own.  Large sums of money was given to Tann,  some in the form of blackmail after she placed a child.  Before We Were Yours is told through two viewpoints.  The first narrator, Avery, comes from a wealthy, political family with deep southern roots and years of social service.  This family works at being upstanding and beyond reproach.  The second narrator is Rill a depression river rat, who we discover is one of the stolen children in Georgia Tann's network.  Wingate tells us the story of these two women and their families with careful intertwining narratives that unravel a mystery filled with unexpected connections and surprising decisions made to protect the innocent.  This is a really satisfying read.  The characters are sympathetic,  the choices they made are understandable and the informative backstory is really unbelievably heart wrenching.  None of us can ever really understand the affect the Depression had on the people who lived through it, but we can appreciate the resiliency of those who came through it and lived a full and productive life.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

In Kristin Hannah's new novel, The Great Alone, readers watch helplessly as the Allbright family (Ernt, Cora and Leni) breakdown and disintegrate into their catastrophic and dysfunctional end. Sadly, the parents in this family of three were crippled by the PTSD Ernt, the father, suffers from after returning from Vietnam and a POW camp.  Paranoid and dangerous, Ernt decides to move the family to Alaska to live off the grid.  Desperate to appease Ernt, Cora and Leni follow blindly to furthest reaches of Alaska because as Cora says, "you don't stop loving someone when they're hurt."  Unfortunately, Ernt had no help or support in the wilderness and he slowly spiraled totally out of control.  Mama and Leni bore the brunt of his violence and survived their first years in the outback primarily because of the kindness of the small community of people who lived nearby.  Remarkably, Leni and her mother learned to survive in the harsh environment and they even came to love Alaska.  Called the Great Alone, this natural wilderness area showed itself to be terrible and beautiful, turbulent and grand.  Likewise, Leni's life demonstrated unbelievable highs and lows as she grapples her way to adulthood.  Somehow, she managed to traverse the minefield of her life while finding love and community.  This book is not without its problems.  There is a "too pat" ending that somehow puts a rosy top on the horrific events that fill the novel.  But regardless of the Greek tragedy/Romeo and Juliet storyline the ending leaves you with a sense of satisfaction and even a bit of awe with regard to the resilient characters who survive the Great Alone.

The Immortalist by Chloe Benjamin

Would you want to know the date of your death?  Would it propel you to action or freeze you with fear?  Would you love more generously or isolate yourself from others?  Chloe Benjamin in her novel, The Immortalist, opens these questions and more in her examination of the four Gold siblings.  A slow unwinding of each of their lives reveals the impact of the prophecy given to them by the traveling "seer" when they were just children.  Simon, the youngest, throws caution to the wind and embarks on an all out hedonistic search for physical pleasure and experiences.  Klara, with her fierce determination to succeed as a magician, finds life a precarious balancing act that she does not really want to endure.  Daniel, who becomes an army doctor sacrifices self in his efforts to "save" as many soldiers as he can.  And lastly, Varya the eldest, spends her life in pursuit of longevity enhancements for humanity through her research and studies.  Each of the Gold's probe into the unanswerable questions we all face.  What in our life is destined and what is our choice?  What power does our mind have over our life?  Will we succumb to our own fears or can we succeed against all odds?  Do we need connections with family and friends or do we suffer more for having them?  Readers are left with more questions than answers, and yet there were moments of memorable and thought provoking descriptions of love and family and life.  This is not a "light" read but it was interesting and brought out much to be discussed.

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

Over the last few years we have been given the wonderful gift of great books about WWII driven by female heroines. We met strong women who fought against they evil they faced in the dark world and who enlightened us and inspired us to believer we too could be more than we ever thought possible  Jessica Shattuck tells a female driven story of WWII with a much different perspective.  He novel, The Women in the Castle, is historical fiction but it is grounded in truth.  Shattuck researched her book for seven years, but it really was a  lifetime in the making.  One of her three main female characters, Ania, is based on Shattuck's grandmother who was in reality a Nazi, a true believer in Hitler's youth movement and propaganda.  The other two women who we follow are reflective of "real" Germans also.  Marianne is the owner of the castle and is the strong moral backbone of the resistance population in Gernany and Benita is the poor but beautiful farm girl who just wants to escape her dreadful reality which traps her in a life of poverty.  Over the years, Shattuck realized that the Germans she knew were not able to or willing to answer such basic questions as, "Did you not know what was happening? or Were you not seeing what Hitler was doing?"  Using these three characters with totally different connections to the Nazi regime, we are given a realistic portrayal of what German people really saw and accepted and why they reacted as they did.  This book does not in any way excuse the horrific acts of Hitler and his followers, but it does give a viable explanation of the actions of the everyday Germans.  When we ask ourselves "How could they do that?" Shattuck seems to say "Walk in their shoes before you judge."  This was a really eye opening book.  The storyline was interesting and complicated but truly enlightening.