The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead

Breathe. Just breathe and you may be able to get through some of the more difficult passages in Colson Whitehead's new novel, The Underground Railroad. I listened to the audio version of this book and closing my eyes to block out the words was not as effective as it can be with a written page. 

Whitehead's tale starts in Africa and arrives in America with Ajari (sorry, I listened so I have no idea how names are spelled). Ajari is the mother of Mabel, who is the mother of Cora, our central character. Cora, born into slavery on the Randall plantation in Georgia, is abandoned by Mabel when Cora is 10 years old. An outcast, she goes to live in a slave cabin with other outcasts - the lowest of the low of slave society. 

After a particularly brutal encounter, and trust me, the entire description of slave life on Randall is brutal even if it's just a hum in the background it's always present - she is approached by Caesar, a new slave on the Randall plantation. Caesar wants Cora to join him in running away, as her mother did. Cora agrees. And so we are finally introduced to The Underground Railroad. Not a metaphor in this book, an actual collection of railways and engines under the soil and ready to take Cora and Caesar north. 

The two fugitives head to South Carolina, which the railroad operator tells us has a more enlightened view towards colored advancement. In South Carolina, all the African Americans are owned by the government. They are given job placements and go to separate schools. In essence we have arrived in Jim Crowe times, where separate, but certainly not equal is the norm. Blacks are made to submit to recurring doctors visits where the medical staff offer sterilization to some, and mandate it to others. The medical staff also watches as a certain segment of the male black population descends further into syphilitic delirium. Is it better? Cora comes to understand that all of these efforts are just another form of slavery.

Cora is being chased by slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway, a blacksmith's son who found more power and status as a slave catcher than an honest trade. He makes it his mission to find Cora and return her to the Randall plantation and the particular cruelty of Terrence Randall. When Ridgeway appears in South Carolina, Cora goes on the move again, back to the tracks and on to North Carolina where the norm there is simply to eliminate all blacks from the state and any sympathetic whites. It's desolate and bleak and heartbreaking. 

It seems like this journey will never end for Cora, that each stop offers a different set of indignities. I've read a few reviews that felt like Cora was never fully developed. I don't agree. Cora is the center of the story. The looking glass through which we see America to its fullest potential for evil. She takes us with her to each new degradation and somehow allows us to continue to hope that each next stop will be better even through the very end. 

This book feels timely to me, as our national conversation for the past year has included such weighty topics as the Confederate flag, the building of the White House, and of course the all too frequent killing of unarmed black men and women by police. We can't afford to lose sight of where our country has come from if we really aim to move forward. A false narrative does nobody any good.

As important as the material is, I'd be remiss not to say that the prose itself is well written and engaging. I know some people took issue with the backstory chapters interspersed throughout the book, but I actually appreciated them, as they usually came just after the death of a minor character we never really got to know. Learning about their motivations after they disappear from the narrative rather than before had an interesting affect on the story. 

I can see why Oprah chose this book for her book club and I think it deserves all the accolades and success that are sure to follow.

5/5 Stars.

West with the Night - Beryl Markham

I'm shocked I'm about to write this, but I actually liked this book a bit better than Paula McClain's fictionalized account of Beryl in Circling the Sun (you can read that review here). I should add, however, that these two books are extremely different. 

I would hesitate to call West with the Night an autobiography. It is definitely a memoir and Beryl's life comes in flashes of feeling more than cold recitation of facts. I'm immensely impressed with her ability to weave a tale and create suspense, especially considering I'm more than casually familiar with her life story (even more so because she was an amateur writer). 

Perhaps reading Circling the Sun allowed me to enjoy this book more than I otherwise would, but Beryl's storytelling ability made me feel like I understood her better after reading almost 300 pages of her memories than reading almost 400 pages of a fictionalized account from her perspective. 

Perhaps the most telling parts of Beryl's book are not what she includes, but what she leaves out. The experiences she relates are singularly her own - details of her own achievements and lessons learned. There is no mention of her three husbands, of her child, or the struggles with money which took up a large portion of the other book. Here, Beryl is in full command of herself and her life - and in this way, we get a very honest picture of how she sees herself and perhaps of the person she really is. 

In the final chapter, Beryl says, "You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself." I find it extremely remarkable that Beryl wrote this book in 1942 when she was still young and had 40+ more years ahead of her. Because honestly, West with the Night provides such a complete picture of Beryl, without the aid of many concrete facts that make up her official biography. And for that, this book was a rare treasure. I completely agree with Hemingway that this is a "bloody wonderful book."

4.5/5 Stars.

The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware

I think halfway through this book I was kind of done with Lora Blacklock. She was irritating and a bit hysterical in parts. Should I give her a break because at the very beginning of the book she is the victim of a home invasion? Maybe, but I don't want to. I had to spend too much time with her and her false equivalencies to give her that big of a break.

So let's start at the beginning. Lora - "Lo" - as she repeatedly tells us to call her is the victim of a home invasion. Her stuff is stolen, her flat vandalized, and she's confronted out of sleep by a masked man wearing latex gloves as he burgles through her things. She's terrified, and finally frees herself after he locks her in a bathroom. Normally she'd have time to relax and cope with her resulting PTSD symptoms, but she works for a travel magazine, Velocity, and is scheduled to go on the maiden voyage of an ultra-boutique cruise-liner to see the Northern Lights in the Norwegian Fjords. 

This would be all well and good if Lo wasn't a completely horrible journalist. Home invasion aside, she gets burgled on Friday and is supposed to leave Sunday. She hasn't done any advanced work prior to then and gets on board without any clue on how she is actually going to be doing her job.

She arrives on ship and immediately makes contact with a woman in the cabin next door. The Women in Cabin 10. That first night she hears a scream, and then a large splash. She goes to investigate and is immediately thought crazy by the security officer on board. Oh, because she's seriously irritating and whiny. She keeps saying she knows what the woman in the cabin has gone through (being murdered) because she too was a victim of violence (being burgled). Puh-lease. It wouldn't be so bad, but eventually she just keeps repeating it and lamenting that no one is taking her seriously. 

Eventually everyone on board becomes a suspect. I irritatingly figured out the who-done-it long before Lo so an entire section of the book was me yelling at her to get a move on. 

Ultimately the book was entertaining, but Lo just a tad too unlikeable to warrant a good review, although Imogene Church's narration was good, and her horrible Brooklyn accent was entertaining. I liked In a Dark Dark Wood much better (you can read that review here).

2.5/5 Stars.

Ready, Set, Breathe: Practicing Mindfulness with Your Children for Fewer Meltdowns and a More Peaceful Family - Carla Naumburg

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I've been neglecting my NetGalley shelf until recently and I'm trying to work through those books and have come up with a few surprises lately.

This book suffered from a busy couple weeks over the labor day holiday and beyond. Ironically, as I read this parenting book about mindfulness and meditation, I was constantly interrupted by my sweet darling, but also sometimes exhausting children. So I never felt like I got into a flow for reading this book. 

The book is based on the principles of mindfulness - rather, noticing things and being curious about them in a compassionate way. I've tried several of the mindfulness exercises described in the book with my kids so far and with good results. For example, our short 3 1/2 mile drive from daycare to home in the evening is usually punctuated by extreme whining and crying. Hungry kids who have missed Mom and Dad all day are letting out their emotions as we drive home. It's a short 15 minute trip but it always seems to take ages because of all the crying. 

So on a recent trip home I decided to employ a noticing technique before the crying started in earnest. I asked the kids to describe the cars around us and asked them which colors they saw. Then I asked them to tell me what colors were missing. We then made it a mission to find those missing colors. Ever since that drive, when we are in the car driving anywhere, the kids are ecstatic when they see - notice - a rare colored car. (As a side note, God bless those of you driving yellow cars, it's their favorite). It's ratcheted down the amount of crying that happens in the car and for that I am grateful. 

My 4 1/2 year old is a real hitting machine. When he's made he screams and hits stuff, even people, mostly his sister. So I've started some of the noticing techniques with him so he can identify what is going on with him. He gets a real kick out of me asking him if "Grumpy Pete" has shown up at the dinner table. And I don't make judgments on Grumpy Pete, just that he's grumpy, and that I'd like to see if Hungry Pete is available for dinner. My son thinks this is hilarious, but it also reinforces the mindfulness lesson that our emotions can be changed, by us, and by our recognizing that those emotions exist. It's been a great exercise for us and has helped defuse some potential meltdowns. 

Overall I still thought Peaceful Parent Happy Kids (read that review here) was more sound. I found this one a bit repetitive and too unmoored from actual scientific study, but since I'm getting results with the practices, I can't actually complain. I don't consider this a foundational parenting book, but it definitely is a useful tool

3.5/5 Stars.

Ploughshares Summer 2016 Guest-Edited by Claire Messud & James Wood

Oh Ploughshares. I am not sure how much I can really explain how much this subscription enriches my life, but every opportunity I get, I try to mention this to other reading enthusiasts. This year is Ploughshares' 45th Anniversary year and I'm so happy for the influence it brings to short fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  You can link directly to their site here.

The Summer 2016 Edition was edited by Claire Messud and James Wood and at 155 pages, without any poetry, must be the shortest edition I've ever received. However, the editors explain in their introduction, the focus of this edition was to shown "an internationalism of voice and material, to suit a reality that is at once local and increasingly global and complex." This edition delivers on that goal perfectly. 

The second story in the collection, and an incredibly short one, Telling Stories about One's Life by Peter Bichsel explores the theme of important stories in our life sometimes not being particularly compelling - that there are moments in life that are of great importance and formative change, but ultimately don't make for good story telling. The funny thing is, as short as it is, the story is really boring - and it's about boring stories. So this is a win on a meta level.

The Ghost's Preface by Kamel Daoud is about a ghost writer who attempts to write a book the way he wants to write it, instead of the way the subject is telling it and the conflict that arises when he attempts to assert his own identity in the story. In the end, the subject dies shortly after burning the entire manuscript so neither story is told. But the ghost writer realizes that the story was never unique in the first place, that millions of copies exist out in the world and a reader could find a copy anywhere they looked. 

My favorite story in the edition has to be The Testimonie of Alyss Teeg by Carys Davies. The story is written in dialect that is at first distracting, taking concentration to fully comprehend, but somewhere mid-story - a tale told from the perspective of a younger sister about her non-gender conforming brother, and the shocking lengths the family goes to in order to "correct" his behavior - I was so startled by where the story was going, and so heartbroken for the characters, it was as if the dialect was clearing on the page and my mind rapidly consumed the words in order to get to the end. The pace quickened and my breathing altered. The story had that much of a physical effect on me and for that I absolutely adored it. 

Viet Dinh's story Lucky Dragon, about a fishing vessel that sails too close to a nuclear test site explores the transformation that overcomes the crew. It takes a plausible event and continues into a realm of imaginary consequences that I found odd but also delightful. 

Hollow Object by Amity Gaige explores the disconnect between a mother and her daughter and the lifestyles they choose to lead. When her daughter becomes sick, the mother Beth explores their relationship and the choices her daughter has made to that moment. She tries to connect with her daughter in numerous ways and is never fully capable. 

Georgi Gospodinov's Sonning a Father was a sad and beautiful tale of an orphan attempting to "Son a Father" much like someone would "Father a son" by forcing a relationship with objects. It's a sad look at the lengths someone would go to for comfort and guidance. 

Here is Where by Cate Kennedy follows Jim Carlyle as he looks back on an old friendship with friends who have gone while he himself experiences a stroke. He feels disassociated from his present time and place, an effect of the stroke, but also an effect of time.

Lastly, Hotel Majestic by Melissa Pritchard follows Ora Fitz as she visits Rome on holiday, two years after the death of a beloved husband. Ora flits between grief for her dead husband and an awakening of sensuality and desire while in Rome. It's a wonderful portrait of the notions and expectations society has of a widow and I appreciated the idea that women, at any age and stage of life, can still be passionate and sexual. 

I enjoyed so many of the stories in this edition. Another solid Ploughshares offering.

5/5 Stars.

Real Murders - Charlaine Harris

I honestly wasn't aware that Charlaine Harris wrote anything other than the Sookie Stackhouse books that became the True Blood TV series. So when audible.com had a sale and this was offered for a steal, I figured I'd give it a shot. 

It was a super fast read, as I think Harris is an expert at distilling her books to around 200 pages. I once read an entire Sookie Stackhouse book in a single day while temping at an ad agency answering phones. So it was no surprise that this one also came in a swift little package. 

The heroine of this series is Aurora Teagarden "Roe". She's a tiny little librarian, daughter to a wealthy mother, and a single gal in her late 20s. She's a brunette Sookie Stackhouse basically. However, there are no supernatural elements in this story. 

Aurora is a member of "Real Murders," a group of townspeople who get together to discuss real murders once a month. Each month, a different club member presents the details of a historical murder. On the appointed day when Aurora is supposed to present her murder, a club member is found murdered in a manner copied from the presentation that day. Over the course of the next week, more citizens of their little town are found murdered. Aurora is up to her elbows in crime scenes as the murderer attempts to implicate members of the club with each murder. 

Aided in her attempt to unravel the mystery by her new neighbor and love interest, Robin Crusoe, and detective, and love interest (because it's not a Harris book without a love triangle) Detective Arthur (can't remember his last name), Aurora finds herself suspicious of everyone. 

Harris does a good job creating several possible murder suspects so we are never entirely sure if Aurora is safe or not. I will pat myself on the back for figuring out the real murderer about 25 pages before the book did it for me.

Overall this book was entertaining but kind of mindless. A perfect summer capstone for Labor Day weekend.

3/5 Stars.