The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett

Stella and Desiree are twins who grow up in Mallard, Louisiana where the lightness of your skin is prized above all else. When the girls leave as teens, they shock the town who see nothing wrong with the place they live.

The book begins with Desiree returning to town with her dark child in tow. What has become of Stella we don't know but it is eventually teased out over the course of the book. Desiree rebelled against Mallard by going to DC eventually and working for the FBI as a fingerprint examiner. She married a dark man and had a dark child. But when the man ended up being violent and abusive she went back to Mallard. Preferring to live a smaller life of safety even if it meant returning to Mallard. Desiree puts no value on the lightness of her skin. And she guides her daughter through the difficulty of living in that environment.

We then find out that Stella left New Orleans without telling her sister. Passing as white and living under a cloud of shame. She can never fully relax, can never be herself truly as she knows the cost to her life if anyone were to find out her secret. She makes a life for herself and then eventually, through her daughter, finds some way to pursue the studies and qualities of herself that she has suppressed for so long. There is so much narrative tension created through all the Stella chapters. Brit Bennett does a remarkable job stretching that out for the reader.

The book then moves on to Stella and Desiree's daughters. The two could not be more different but as they learn about each other it makes them explore the ways they are similar and what their lives have meant. This book is beautifully written. Even the minor male characters are so well drawn by the pages I can see them in my mind.

The Vanishing Half is a joy to read, even as it tackles some very deep family rifts and personal traumas.

5/5 Stars. 

The Dutch House - Ann Patchett

I loved this book. I love Ann Patchett. I love siblings. This was a definite five star read for me. Danny and his sister Maeve grow up in an architectural gem of a house in suburban Philadelphia - The Dutch House. The house was purchased by their father Cyril, a real estate prospector who built a thriving business. Their mother hated the house. Hated the opulence that was associated with the house. She felt out of place and not useful to the world shut up in the house. So she leaves. And the children are bereft. Maeve is diagnosed with diabetes - a dangerous disease in the late 60s.

Everything develops a new rhythm after their mother leaves until their father begins dating a woman named Andrea. When their father eventually married Andrea, Maeve has gone off to college and two little girls move into her room. Danny is aghast at the way Andrea is obsessed with the house. He wants nothing to do with her, and she with him. But when their father dies unexpectedly, Danny finds himself at Andrea's mercy. And she has none. She kicks this 16 year old boy out on his own to fend for himself.

Luckily the love between Danny and Maeve is the strongest in the whole book and she is there for Danny. She's always been his mother figure and she remains so. Their love is also tied up in their shared childhood trauma and the vengeance they feed between themselves. The hate they have for Andrea is almost a tertiary character in the book.

I love the nuance Patchett drives into Danny and Maeve's relationship. I love the way she teases out the characters and their motivations, the ripples their childhood creates through their life. It's so well done.

5/5 Stars

Dragon Pearl - Yoon Ha Lee

I've been reading books with my middle reader as he gets more into deeper narratives. I loved that middle reader books have these young protagonists that make the story more accessible. In Dragon Pearl, Min gets disturbing news about the disappearance of her brother Jun. He's off serving on a starship in the Space Forces as a cadet. He went missing during his training mission and is considered a deserter. Rumor is that he was in pursuit of the Dragon Pearl, a rare object that is said to be able to transform whole worlds turning barren landscapes into lush environs - a task currently reserved for the Dragon Guild, who, for obvious reasons, is not interested in anyone else getting possession of the pearl. 

Min's family are fox spirits, able to shape shift into anything their hearts' desire and use charm to persuade others to do their will. They are therefore distrusted and like to keep their identities secret. Min goes in pursuit of Jun and must find her way onto a starship and into the eerie Ghost sector where the terraforming went terrible wrong. Ghosts now populate the colony and space pirates frequent the area. But this is where the Pearl is rumored to be so this is where everyone is gravitating. Throw in a menacing Tiger spirit captain, and Min must best them all to find the truth about her brother, and the missing Pearl. 

I didn't realize this was based off Korean folklore but I really liked that aspect combined with the sci-fi space theme. A well done narrative that will capture the imagination of a middle reader. 

3.5/5. 

The Immortalists - Chloe Benjamin

The Immortalists is a book that ends up on a lot of Pride month reading lists because one of the four main characters is gay. It's been on my kindle for a while and I've been meaning to read it for a while. It is not, however, Own Voices, which is one of the goals I had for reading books during Pride. So I missed the mark on this for my own goals. But that's not to say that I don't think The Immortalists is a worthy read.

I think I've said before that I love sibling books. I love exploration of the sibling relationship. I have only one sister, so larger sibling groups are a mystery to me. The Immortalists explores four siblings from New York who visit a fortune teller to learn their future. Eldest Varya, Daniel, Klara and youngest Simon are all given the dates of their deaths. We get limited views of the each sibling but learn that Simon is told he will die "very young" and Klara at 31, Daniel in his 40s and Varya at 88. The book then spends 1/4 of its pages with each sibling.

Simon is first and his journey is heartbreaking as he rushes to fit as much life as he can prior to the early death predicted in his youth. I ripped through this section of the book. I loved Simon very much and his young and tragic life were particularly compelling. The knowledge of the dates of their deaths compel the characters in odd and fascinating ways.

Are they doomed to the dates they were given? Or does the knowledge of the date create a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a question that is played with and explored in the story without actually giving a real answer. Benjamin lets her readers reach their own conclusions. The Immortalists is part character dissection and part psychological exploration. It tells the story of the four siblings without resorting to odd narrative devices like The Last Romantics (you can read that review here). The characters are compelling and the book is well written. 

4/5 Stars. 

The Last Romantics - Tara Conklin

I really enjoyed portions of The Last Romantics. In the end, it felt a little bit too long, but I really did enjoy this story of four siblings making their way through a world in which their father dies young and their mother, unable to handle the strain of living as a widow responsible for the lives of four children, who shuts down and puts a "pause" on their mothering. I love sibling stories. Sibling relationships contain so many multitudes of depth and understanding.

I only have one sister. And our relationship has lasted through rivalry, separation, and now a close bond of friendship, mutual admiration and respect, and shared lifestyles. It's sometimes hard for me to imagine having similar experiences with two additional people.

Renee, Caroline, Joe, and Fiona are each individually shaped by their experiences during "the pause" and it carries them into adulthood in varied ways. Never able to fully unload their baggage, they go through periods of self denial. Joe perhaps the worst, because he has been coddled and protected from his choices until he also dies an early death, which leaves each of the sisters grieving in their own destructive ways.

The story is told in flashbacks with Fiona giving an author talk at some point over the age of 100. I didn't quite understand the need for this narrative voice as I found it a distraction that teetered on the edge of unbelievability. Will modern medicine improve our lives and outcomes, extending out life spans to well past 100? Perhaps, but the contemplation of this question added nothing to the story except a hint at the secret hiding in the middle.

On the whole, this was a well crafted novel about the complicated relationships between siblings, needlessly complicated by a contemplated future in which we experience extended lifespans and unnamed security crises.

3/5 Stars. 

Home - Toni Morrison

When it comes to picking an author for Women's History Month, it just makes sense to spend some time with Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. She's phenomenal. Her prose is smooth and if you're not careful will lull you into an odd sense of peace to only be broken by the truths she brings from the characters she brings to life. 

This short Novella follows brother and sister Frank and Cee Money. Frank has returned from the Korean War with wounds unseen. Having lost his two best friends, one who died right in his arms, Frank is haunted by the things he saw and the things he did during the war. What we would now call PTSD has led him to drink himself into oblivion. He seems to have found sanctuary and peace with Lily out in the Pacific Northwest. But when he receives a letter that his sister Cee "be dead" he knows he has to hurry to save her. 

Crossing the country has a black man in the 1950s is not easy and Frank is quickly waylaid into a mental institution. His escape and eventual arrival in Atlanta, Georgia is a master class as only Toni Morrison can present in the large and small cruelties of living in Jim Crow, segregated and overtly racist America. 

In the meantime, we're told that Cee left home as soon as she could, accompanied by a young man who professed love, but really had his eye on her father's car. Abandoned in Atlanta, Cee is determined to make her own life rather than return to the abusive taunts of her step-grandmother. Cee knows she needs a better job to make ends meet, so she applied to be a doctors assistant at a suburban home-office of Dr. Beau. Only, well Dr. Beau shows a little to much interest in his new assistant's anatomy and too little interest in her status as a human being. So this is how Cee becomes ill, only it's never really detailed, it doesn't need to be. One can google medical experiments of black women and find enough historical details to choke the joy from you for the day. 

This book is as much about Cee as it is about Frank, and their mutual healing after trauma. It's a shame that the brief descriptions offered mention Cee not at all, since her journey is just as moving. 

In such a short time, Toni Morrison paints a vivid and dense picture of redemptive sibling and self loves.

4/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Winter 2017-2018

It's Ploughshares Time! Do you subscribe yet? There are a lot of good stories in this Winter 2017-2018 Edition. So here are some of my favorites:

Fiction:
The War Ghosts Bureau by Eric Fair was achingly delicious and dark. I loved so much about this story. Its subtle moments and its over the top moments. It deftly explores the theme of collective guilt and the dirty secret of the paltry percentage of Americans who serve in the modern all-volunteer armed forces. In order to avoid the burden of collective guilt, former military personnel are required to carry their ghosts around with them until they achieve understanding and forgiveness. If they start to lift the burden on themselves and forget their deeds in war, the War Ghosts Bureau is there to keep them in check. It's brilliant. 

Almost by Carol Dines explores a complicated sister relationship wherein one sister seems to make herself the patron saint of lost causes (despite Jude already having that job) and the other sister tries to keep her distance so as not to entangle herself in the drama. I love stories that explore siblinghood. I think it's one of the most important relationships you can have in your life. And this story's exploration of siblinghood into adulthood was excellent and nuanced. 

Minnows by Nathan Go is the story of five sailors living on a beached ship claiming territory for the Philippines, or rather, keeping the Chinese from claiming the territory. It's a lonely duty and frankly a situation I had just never thought of before. I love that Ploughshares can take me to far away lands and worlds and existences of which I know nothing about.

Il Piccolo Tesoro by Valerie Miner was a lovely story of strangers who live in a pensione in Italy and come to be a family under the watch of the Scottish proprietor. It was a cute diverting story that took me back to my twenties and days spent in a cafe in Italy and not quite grasping the novelty and luck that had brought me there. 

Nonfiction: 
Eulogy by Patricia Foster is a great story in which a wife uncovers the past of her mother in law. Her husband's painful childhood is brought into clearer focus as the wife comes to terms with the woman her mother-in-law had been. It has that muddy clarity of grace we can offer people as we get older.

Poetry:
It's so hard to describe what it poems are about or what makes them my favorites in Ploughshares. Some I like because of the lyrical quality. Others I like because of the meter, or I'm struck by 
a single line, a single word. So without further explanation, here are the poems that struck me, stuck with me, inspired me, comforted me, or merely amused me:

Theodicy by J. Estanislao Lopez
Glimpse by Amy Gerstler
The Woman Who Had the Job by Jenny Irish
Pavlov was the Son of a Priest by Paige Lewis
Mementomori.com by Owen McLeod
Epistle from the Hospital for Cheaters by Jenny Molberg
Fine Despite by Dzvinia Orlowsky

4/5 Stars. 

Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings: How to Stop the Fighting and Raise Friends for Life - Laura Markham

Every time I read a Laura Markham book I vacillate between thinking I'm a terrible parent, and then that maybe I'm doing okay. As my children are getting older and conflict seems to be inevitable, Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings was a good resource to find some ways to foster their relationship.

Markham begins the book with some of the foundational precepts that made me appreciate Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids (you can read that review here), and served as good reminders of those things I have casually forgotten in the two years since I read the earlier book. 

I'm thankful to have the reminder and have been trying to put the ideas into practice, even as our post-Christmas euphoria has devolved into the same petty squabbles of finding and equipping ourselves with shoes and coats which make up the most stressful 20 minutes of my morning.

4/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Solos Omnibus Volue 5

This will likely be the last book I finish for 2017 and it's a fitting end to this weird tumultuous year. Nine stories that take you so completely out of your element and make things seem upside down but normal at the same time. Solos Omnibus #5 was a really great way to experience multiple places and time in one short volume.

Face the Music by Michael Lowenthal - This excellent story of a jazz music student learning under the visiting professor tutelage of Sun Ra was sort of a musical coming of age story. Wherein the student realizes that all the notes he'll ever learn of jazz won't make a difference when it comes to actually playing jazz. Sun Ra forces the students to look at music, not academically, but intrinsically. In the end, the student recognizes his own limitations, and therefore, Sun Ra's genius. 

Koppargruva by Hugh Coyle - Before Nobel was the name of a prize given out in Sweden, it was the name of a man, an inventor, whose work in dynamite and nitroglycerin helped revolutionize the mining industry. This short selection of a book in progress (which I am looking forward to purchasing and devouring upon release), tells the story of Nobel's travels to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and his attempts to sell his products and his innocence in the death of his brother and several other miners in Sweden. 

Footing Slow: A Walk with Keats by Eli Payne Mandel - Keats was an English poet who was underappreciated while he lived, died young, and then became an integral part of the English literary fabric. In this story, Mandel attempts to recreate the walk across England and Scotland attempted by Keats towards the end of the 19th Century. Ultimately neither Mandel or Keats could complete their planned trips and while their experiences varied widely, the telling of the attempt was very satisfying.

A History of China by Carolyn Ferrell - A young woman tells the story of her German mother and GI father who tried, and failed to make their love work under the cruel light of a pre-civil rights movement America and the other inherent challenges that come when your vision of something does not match the reality and your shame in failing to make the vision happens manifests itself in many ways. For the young narrator, her large family and all of their complicated relationships with her father bleed out into her own actions. 

The Girl Who Lied by Uche Okonkwo - A tale of young girls at a private boarding school. The wealthy, interesting Kemi tries everything to get back home and to be shown love and concern by her absentee parents. Meanwhile the narrator feels shame at her own family's humble means. A real grass is greener scenario with a little bit of self awareness to make the tale satisfying. 

Bones by Lisa Horiuchi - A retired white collar worker decides his life needs more excitement and so he travels to Belize to try to find the bones of "the missing link" in evolution. He's stymied by a language barrier, government uprisings, and porous national borders. He's not even sure why he's interested in the bones in the first place except that he wants to see them. 

The Critic by Timothy Parrish - This story felt just a little bit too long for me, but was a very interesting tale of a critic obsessed with Bob Dylan who he refers to as "the Twerp." The critic and the musician circle around each other for years as the 60s come and go and the critic feels like the best good times have passed. He's probably right, the music of the 60s is iconic and informs most of what we hear today. But would we feel that way if a critic hadn't been there to point it out? 

Girl of Few Seasons by Rachel Kondo - This sad tale of a poor Maui family centers on a brother and sister, Ebo and Momo, who raise pigeons together until Momo is injured and has to be moved to Honolulu for care at a state run facility. Her brother, desperate to see her after nine years apart, enlists in the US Army in order to have one visit with her. It's a take on island life I've thought little about and made me realize I know embarrassingly little of the demographics on the Hawaiian islands. 

and Finally Kaat by Edward Hamlin - A Flemish woman and her American lover live in Paris. The women are forging ahead in their relationship until a motorcycle accident calls into question the commitment of the American. Nothing is certain and decisions are made on conjecture. It's a bit melancholy actually. 

The entire set of stories were well written and interesting. I liked being transported for a time out of our current news cycles and into these mini-worlds filled with people still going about their experiences with eyes wide open.

4/5 Stars. 

The Nest - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

The Plumb family has a problem and it's not the problem that initially appears in the pages. The four siblings, Leo, Beatrice, Jack and Melody are all middle-aged and impatiently awaiting the birthday of Melody, the youngest sibling, as that will usher in payments from a trust their father set up many years ago to provide them with a small estate gift. (The Nest - as they all annoyingly refer to it). However, oldest sibling Leo is a selfish a-hole who nearly kills a waitress in a car accident necessitating the almost liquidation of the nest in order to reach a settlement with the family.

Leo, a charismatic, early success has become a used up former addict with none of the shine left on his apple. So as the siblings squabble with him and amongst themselves for their lack of funds, we are also shown the startlingly flawed characters of the other siblings, who have made serious financial mistakes.

D'Aprix does a fantastic job weaving together the various plot points. While some of the dialogue seems a bit too contrived, overall the story and the characters work well together to produce a readable and entertaining story with just a little bit of heart. In the end, the siblings become actual humans instead of caricatures of themselves and grow more likeable as the story develops.

3.75/5 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.