The Book of Harlan - Bernice McFadden

It's February and for Black History Month, I wanted to read something from an African American author and also something about Black History. The Book of Harlan is written by Bernice McFadden, an award winning African American author of nine critically acclaimed novels. The average Goodreads score on this book was 4.1 which is pretty fantastic. 

So let's start with what's working in this book. McFadden's prose is well done and the first 1/4 of the book detailing Harlan's parents, Sam and Emma Elliott, who meet in Macon, Georgia and then after becoming pregnant with Harlan (much to the displeasure of Emma's preacher father), move around the country looking for the right fit, while the grandparents bring up Harlan. Finally, in Harlan's fourth year, Sam and Emma return to Macon for Harlan, having found their niche in 1920s Harlem. The pacing and the writing in this section of the book was the best part about the entire book. Even the parts that followed about Harlan's childhood and early adulthood in Harlem, playing in jazz bands and travelling the country was well done. And then, well then stuff started to get weird.

So about the midpoint of the book, when, in 1940, Harlan goes to Paris to play the jazz clubs there, unkowningly having fathered twin sons in Brooklyn, the suspense of the book started to ratchet up. When Harlan and his bandmate Lizard are picked up after curfew during the Nazi occupation of Paris, they are swept off to Buchenwald. Here I thought the book was going to settle in, and really delve into what it meant to be a black American in a German concentration camp. So I was completely surprised when this only took up a little more than two chapters. Much of this section of the book was Lizard's back story, which came a little too late as we'd already been introduced to Lizard for several chapters and well, then like many characters in this book, we never see him again. And although what happens to Lizard is terrible, he's in a concentration camp, you can probably figure it out, and it's supposed to be incredibly damaging to Harlan, there's something that is missing in the elements to give it a great emotional weight. 

When Harlan returns to his parent's home, he's completely broken and suffering from PTSD for several years, until he isn't and all of a sudden is out womanizing again. He moves to New Jersey with his parents, plays in some clubs, then all of a sudden his parents are killed in a car accident and he's once again devastated. He takes a job in Brooklyn as a superintendant of a building. Great, I thought, he's going to end up meeting his children finally, since the book spent a significant portion of time on the mother of his children and her family, but no. Instead of his children, Harlan finds Ilse Koch, the notorious wife of a Nazi administrator of Buchenwald who took sadistic pleasure in torturing prisoners in her husband's camp. Ilse Koch has taken refuge in the United States, disguised as recluse Andrew Mailer. (Except Ilse Koch in reality was tried twice for war crimes in Germany and committed suicide in prison in 1967 at the age of 60). 

Harlan, upon finding Ilse, strangles her to death and then turns himself into the police. Conveniently, the police detective who takes his statement has a wife who was also a prisoner at Buchenwald so he takes Harlan out the back door and sets him free, giving him all the money in his wallet and telling Harlan to make a new life somewhere. Harland decides to go to Macon, and then the book ends. YES! It ends there! 

So about what kind of fell flat for me: the book takes on too much. There are too many characters who show up to ground the story into factual time and place, but their factual stories get distorted by the narrative into untrue endings (Ilse Koch). 

There are also too many characters who are included, described in detail, only to be never seen again. The fact that we never know what happens to Harlan's twin sons was kind of a big gaping hole in the narrative. Yes, okay Harlan never met them, so if you take the story from only Harlan's perspective, then he didn't know what happened to them either, BUT in that vein, he never knew they existed in the first place, and he certainly didn't know anything about the family of the woman he slept with to make those children in the first place, but we had loads of details about those individuals in the story. It's almost as if they ceased to exist after the interesting portions of their own narratives were used up. 

The dialogue at times worked against the story. McFadden can get into a good rhythm of prose wherein the story flows well and the plot is driven forward. When dialogue is used for this purpose it has less effect and comes out awkwardly. 

Lastly, the scope of time taken on in this book was too great. Less time was spent on really interesting or complicated issues than were probably warranted given their weight and importance in the life of the characters. 

Basically I thought the first half of the book was pretty good and the book would have rated higher if the second half would have included mostly Buchenwald with a bit of the later life wrapped up at the end. The murder of Ilse Koch in the final chapters seemed an effort to create a dazzling ending where one wasn't really needed. This is a man who survived four years in a concentration camp, that struggle, and the changes it made in him, and how it redefines how we look at victims of the Holocaust should have been enough. That it wasn't is somehow telling on how this book fell short.

2/5 Stars.

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese

Cutting for Stone has been on my to-read shelf for such a long time. It's a book that came highly rated from a friend of mine who I casually stalk as to what she is reading. If she likes it, it goes on my to-read shelf. And I was not disappointed. I don't give out a five-star rating casually. I would say this wasn't quite as good as The Goldfinch (you can read that review here), but four stars just wouldn't be enough for this engrossing tale of two twin brothers, Marion and Shiva, growing up in Ethiopia during turbulent times.

Marion and Shiva are the children of a love affair between an English doctor and an Indian nun, working together at Mission hospital in Ethiopia. Their mother dies in childbirth and they are adopted by another physician at the hospital after their father's hasty departure. 

The characters in this book are so richly drawn, flawed, human. Marion and Shiva grow up on the doorsteps of the surgery and patient rooms at the hospital. It's inevitable both would pursue medical professions. A teenage rift unspools resulting in Marion's departure to the United States to complete his medical training. 

I admired the depths explored into various subjects, Ethiopian politics, surgery, Christian evangelism, the state of American medicine and safety-net hospitals. There were so many background facts that informed just who Marion and Shiva were as themselves and to each other. Beautifully written and painstakingly laid out, this book was a real pleasure. The audio version was wonderfully narrated as well.

5/5 Stars.

Ploughshares Winter 2016-2017

When I didn't receive this edition in the mail right away, I went to the Ploughshares website and signed up for three more years in subscription because I was so afraid I had run out of my old subscription. That was silly, I still had the rest of this year left, so no at least I know I'm locked in for four more years of this fantastic publication. If you're still not reading Ploughshares, perhaps you'll be lucky enough to find my old copy at the gym, in the work breakroom, at my kids reading center, or any of the other random places I leave these after I read them for people to find. 

This staff edited edition is full of poetry and short fiction which I read with relish, but it also contains the winners of the Ploughshares Emerging Writers contest and those entries did not disappoint. So as per usual, here are a few highlights:

Poetry:
Rob Arnold - What We Did Under the Tree
Yes, you can imagine, sometimes what they did was naughty. But when it comes in verse like:
"Holding our breath, muddied and spent
while tectonics shifted
]imperceptibly under our feet, 
the late century sputtering onward"
It's all quite lovely.

Anders Carlson-Wee - Asking for Work at Flathead Bible
I loved the storytelling quality of this poem and the sense of time as fluid but ever moving. 

Stuart Dybek - Moderation
I love poems and stories that make me feel the passage of time, the lessons of growing up and growing older. This poem was one of those.
"Back then regret hadn't had time to grow. It arrived as suddenly"

Daniel Lawless - The Dean Has No Comment
A streaking girl at the zoo startles everyone it seems except the gorillas.

Jo Sarzotti - Waiting for Achilles
Are we brave in ourselves? Or are we waiting for a hero? 

Hilma Wolitzer - The Separation
Another poem about siblings. I loved it. 

Non-Fiction:
Roohi Choudhry - The Undertaker's Home
A writer living in Ireland at the historic home of a famous writer as part of a fellowship was brilliant. The narrator, of Pakistani descent, is drawn to the cliffs by the cottage and the stories they could tell on their own. His own past lingers like an extra character in the story. 

Beth Ann Fennelly - When Dusk Fell an Hour Earlier
A woman who returns to the Czech Republic after a 20 year absence. Her earlier stint, as a ESL teacher in a far flung coal town was nothing like the study abroad stories of emerging cities and carefree spending in newly independent eastern Europe. She was in a coal town where the people had lived hard and knew nothing of excess or easy friendship. When she returns, she learns that her memories are colored by her own youth and inexperience and she learns a new appreciation for what she experienced. 

Farah Peterson - Illness and Identity
This story also involved siblings, a brother and sister, and how the sister deals with her brother's mental illness. As the title suggests, it really digs into illness and how that shapes or informs identity, not only of ourselves, but how we see others who suffer from illness. Who decides the identity of a mentally ill person?

Fiction:
Tristan Hughes - Up Here
This story centered around the boyfriend of a park ranger, living mostly off the grid. At the beginning of the story, the ranger asks the boyfriend to shoot her dog, an old girl for whom even getting off the ground in the morning has become an extremely painful experience. There's a wisp of something more happening with the ranger in the background, but we don't really get to see it and the mood this lays over the story is supremely effective.

Katie Knoll - IED
I love sibling stories. I'm currently listening to Cutting for Stone, which is about twins in Ethiopia and so this story fell right into that vibe I'm getting from Cutting for Stone. This one is from the sister's perspective. Her brother, the "love of my life" has been injured by an IED. And the story ticks back and forth from their childhood to the present. We're not entirely certain the extent of the devastation the IED has wrought to the brother, but I got the impression it was rather severe. The feeling in this story was so convincingly solid, I was certain this story was not fiction. 

Magogodi Oampela Makhene - The Caretaker
This story really delved into guilt and responsibility. It involved a rabid dog and an injured teen and people who have nothing and a slightly more than nothing. 

Josh Weil - The Essential Constituent of Modern Living Standards
I loved this one about a group of farmers who take on the power company in order to gain electricity for their rural area. I'd never thought about the setting up of the electric grid, and how prohibitively expensive it would have been to provide power over long distances to small populations. 

Finally, I should note that all three Emerging Writer selections were fantastic.
Poetry - Leila Chatti - Confession 
As a Catholic, this view of Mary laboring, as a woman, not as a saint, was a wonderful look at a venerated person.

Nonfiction - Mimi Dixon - Breath
A daughter copes with the loss of her father, a famous oboist. The daughter works to finish her father's book while also dealing with her own medical issues. The story centered around the concept of breath and breathing, and it kept coming back to this concept in so many ways. 

Fiction - Lydia Martin - The Adjustment Act
A Cuban immigrant deals with feelings of guilt and dissatisfaction as he works to bring his sisters and stepmother to America at any cost. 

I'm so thrilled to be exposed to so many great writers with every Ploughshares edition.

4/5 Stars.

The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown

So many great things to say about The Boys in the Boat. This book has been on my "to-read" shelf for quite a while and I'm glad I finally came around to it as I really enjoyed it.

The book tells the story of the 9-man crew who won gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The story begins in 1933 with Joe Rantz arriving at the University of Washington's boat house in Seattle. He, and a hundred more freshmen are there to try out for the freshman crew team. At this point Joe has already overcome adversity in his life - being abandoned twice by his widowed and remarried father to LITERALLY fend for himself as a young teen. How this is possible is just completely beyond my sense of understanding people and I was deeply saddened for him.

But Joe starts to find himself and trust in others through the task of rowing, and working with a team to win. Through Joe we are introduced to the other members of the crew, coxswain Bobby Moch, Roger Morris, Shorty Hunt, stroke Don Hume, Johnny White, Stub McMillan, Chuck Day, and Gordy Adams. How this group of men came to be together through coach Al Ulbrickson's tinkering is laid out well by the story. 

Brown provides excellent surrounding facts and circumstances to set the stage in which the men would row. The tactics of Hitler and Goebbels to have Germany appear as a legitimate civilized country amid the systematic oppression and eventual murder of jews, homosexuals, gypsies, catholics and political opponents, and the United States own troubles during the depression, including the crippling poverty experienced by several members of the crew.

The story is beautifully and faithfully told. And having never rowed, I cared deeply about the men and really felt I understood the mechanics of rowing. And, despite knowing the outcome of the medal race, I found my heart rate increase when it came to the chapters detailing the races. I knew they would win, but I was worried for them because the odds did not look good. That they triumphed over so much was so lovely and uplifting. 

I wish I had met them.

5/5 Stars

Be Frank With Me - Julia Claiborne Johnson

There were a lot of things that just didn't work for me in Be Frank With Me. While the overall premise has promise, the pieces of the story didn't come together to make a pleasing narrative. 

Alice Whitley, an assistant at a publishing company, is sent to live in LA with eccentric novelist Mimi Gillespie. Mimi, writing under the pen name of M.M. Banning, wrote one critically acclaimed novel, married a movie star, divorced a movie star, had a son - Frank, and became a recluse in Los Angeles, talking to few people and never publishing another word. Sort of like a, if J.D. Salinger had only ever written Catcher in the Rye, and was a woman kind of vibe. 

Alice is called upon to help Mimi while she completes another book. Turns out that Mimi is now broke and needs the money so has promised to write another book for her publisher. Alice is sent to help with the transcription of the novel into type and to provide Mimi with whatever other assistance she needs in order to write the novel. 

This assistance is being a playmate to Mimi's ten year old son - Frank. Frank is eccentric. We know this because we are told over and over that he is eccentric, by the characters, by Alice. What we are shown is that Frank talks in a flat monotone, favors old movies, has a good memory for facts from old movies, and dresses in the fashion of said old movies. He is endlessly bullied at school by both the kids, and eventually by an overbearing principal. 

All the while, Mimi is presented as basically a horrible person. She loves Frank at least, but she's horrible to Alice. I can deal with an unlikeable character if it does something for the story, but here it doesn't. Mimi herself never talks much with Alice, and the only other two characters who know her, Xander, the handyman, and Mr. Vargus, the publisher, don't give much information about why they remain friends with Mimi aside from the fact that it appears Xander kind of feels sorry for her, and he has his own heap of issues as well.

Alice flits naively from person to person in the story, and I didn't mind her that much until she becomes romantically involved with Xander, a vaguely described and poorly executed romance wherein both the characters' dialogue is eye-roll inducing. 

In the end, the story had no punch, and Frank, who while interesting and ultimately loveable, wasn't enough to carry the story over the rough patches.

2/5 Stars.