Tag: family

Saving Ellen

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Casey, Maura. Saving Ellen: a Memoir. Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2025

Reason read: I am a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing. From time to time I get the chance to review interesting books. This is one of them.

On the surface, Saving Ellen is an intimate and intense dive into kidney disease. As an adolescent, Maura’s sister Ellen lost function of her kidneys. What follows in Saving Ellen is a series of medical appointments, hospital stays, prescriptions and side effects, a transplant, the hope of recovery by a large and chaotic Irish family that never gave up hope. At the heart of Saving Ellen is Casey’s relationship with life and everything good and bad that came with it. All the heartbreaks and triumphs of childhood. From coming of age and dealing with relentless bullying to watching an alcoholic parent poison his entire family with infidelity and addiction, Casey’s story is one of addiction survival, family forgiveness, grief acceptance, and ultimate love.
Set in New York’s city of Buffalo, I saw Saving Ellen as also a memoir of place. Buffalo in the late 1960s and early 1970s is like another impoverished character; struggling to live and breathe and grow up.

Confessional: I wish Casey had opened her memoir with the 5th and 6ths sentences as the very first sentences to Saving Ellen. They really pack a punch.

Author fact: even though Casey has written a few other books, I am not reading any of them.

Book trivia: Saving Ellen has a really cool cover.

Setlist: “One Fine Day”, “What a Frozen Little Hand”, Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers, Bach, Jean Sibelius, “We shall Overcome”, the Beatles, The Coors, the Monkees, the Mamas and the Papas, Mozart, Beethoven, Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring”, Rachmaninoff, Barry Manilow, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, and “A Parting Glass”.

Confessional: If I hadn’t discovered Dermot Kennedy’s music I would not have found “A Parting Glass” when I did. It is a beautiful song.

Caspian Rain

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Nahai, Gina B. Caspian Rain. McAdams, 2007.

Reason read: the Iran hostage crisis ended on January 20th, 1981. Caspian Rain takes place in Iran. Read to celebrate a moment in history.

Twelve year old Yaas tells the sad tale of her mother Bahar’s marriage to her father, Omid. Bahar had come from a poor family full of shame. Her mother was a seamstress who cannot sew and her father was a cantor who could not carry a tune. Why Omid would want to marry beneath him is anyone’s guess. Baha left school to get married during her eleventh grade year and not even a year into her marriage she was desperate to return to school. Iranian custom did not allow her to continue her education as a married woman. Like a child who keeps running away from home, Bahar kept trying to stretch her independence, only to be dragged back to the life of a housewife. One has to feel sorry for Bahar. The old adage is true: you do not know what you do not know. Bahar was so poor she didn’t recognize a poor gift as a snub or insult. Iranian culture states that a divorced woman is a shame upon the family. She who separates from her husband has no rights, no family, no home, no money; nothing to call her own. So when Omid starts a public affair with another woman, Bahar can do nothing but suffer the disgrace in silence. Nahai gracefully details the gender and religious expectations of life in Iran.
I think Americans have a difficult time with the characters of Caspian Rain because of the cultural divide. We cannot relate to a woman who suffers so much abuse. I know I had a difficult time with the sister who was repeatedly beaten and locked in a shed with pigeons. To escape cruelty she made the only logical decision available to her.

The best line in the whole book, “For every sin, a virtue; every cruelty, a measure of mercy” (p 229). So beautiful.

Author fact: Nahai also wrote Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith. I will be reading it in the month of June a few years from now.

Playlist: Nahai rarely mentions specific songs in Caspian Rain although there is plenty of opportunity. There is a character called the Opera Singer who tries to sing. There is a Tango Dancer who never names the songs she dances to by name. Of the music Nahai does mention: “On This Moonlit Evening”, Ringo Starr, and Doris Day.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the obvious chapter called “Iran” (p 109).

Twice the Family

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McGue, Julie Ryan. Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood. She Writes Press, 2024.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I get to read really interesting books. This is one I couldn’t put down.

Twice the Family is a narrative nonfiction about what it is like to grow up enduring circumstances, both unique and challenging. McGue tackles the emotional and psychological toll of what it means to be adopted in the 1950s. In those days, adoptions had their pros and cons. One good practice was keeping siblings together as much as possible. One mediocre practice was the well meaning but naïve practice of insisting adoptive parents match the orphan’s race and religion to eliminate too many questions later in life. One bad practice was to seal adoption records. A closed adoption meant people like McGue would never know the names of their birth parents or the circumstances surrounding their abandonment, for better or worse. In keeping with these practices, McGue was placed with a family with similar heritage, coloring, and religion. Her sister would go with her to this family but the twins couldn’t know anything about their birth parents. [In this day and age, with the progression of science and genealogy using DNA, McGue could probably get answers to her adoption questions, if she hasn’t already.]
McGue also delves into the mysteriously deep connection of twins, starting with what it must have been like to experience their birth. From their first breath together, McGue and her sister, Jenny, were inseparable. However, McGue doesn’t delve too deeply into the emotional repercussions of detaching herself from her twin despite their intrinsic bond. They even went to the same college and lived on the same dorm floor for a while. Only after they pledged different sororities did the twins begin to live unique lives.
While I thought Twice the Family was a highly entertaining story, I was distracted by McGue’s writing tic of ending chapters with ominous cliffhangers. After a while they reminded me of season finales of daytime television dramas. I know it is a play to keep the pages turning, but I was invested in her story without the dramatic teasers.

Author fact: McGue is also a columnist for the Beacher Newspapers.

Setlist: “All Are Welcome All Belong”, Neil Diamond’s “September Morn”, Pachelbel’s Canon, “Ave Maria”, “Happy Birthday”, “Frankie Valli’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”” and “You Are My Sunshine”.

Carringtons of Helston

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MacDonald, Malcolm. The Carringtons of Helston. St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Reason read: so…this is a weird one, so hang on. I am reading The Carringtons of Helston because it takes place in Cornwall. Every December 23rd the townspeople of Mousehole, Cornwall, celebrate a festival called Tom Bawcock’s Eve. Bawcock was a 16th century fisherman who was rumored to have saved the town of Mousehole from starvation by going fishing during a storm. His boat was small but his courage was mighty and he caught more than enough fish to save the entire village. There you have it.

This takes place right before World War I in Cornwall, England. To give you an idea – tomatoes have just been deemed nonpoisonous. It is a society where people dance around topics in a valiant effort to not say what they really mean to say – all for the sake of politics, politeness, or both. The cat and mouse games people play are humorous during this era especially when each party takes a turn being the cat. But, don’t be fooled by the prim and proper society of Helston, Cornwall! MacDonald makes sure to include very real human desires and jealousies of all his main characters. Leah, the Carrington daughter, is a young woman with modern thoughts. Old enough to be a spinster, she wants friends with benefits. She doesn’t want the marriage, just the intimacy with a good man. A good dose of humor is peppered throughout the story. Housemaids are saucy. Gentlemen are not above acting the fool on occasion. Characters are so well drawn I could see this being a PBS or BBC show (something a little spicier than Downton Abbey).

Lines I liked, “Of course, any old building must have been a silent witness to the whole gambit of human activities and emotions” (p 35).

Author fact: The Carringtons of Helston is the only MacDonald book I am reading for the challenge. He wrote many others.

Book trivia: The language and mannerisms of The Carringtons of Helston characters is so modern I kept forgetting what era the story took place.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Cornwall’s Charms” (p 71)

Caught in the Web of Words

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Murray, Katherine Maud Elisabeth. Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Yale University Press, 2001.

Reason read: November is National Writing Month. It makes sense to include a book about words since words make sentences that eventually (hopefully) turn into books.

Elisabeth Murray wrote a biography of her grandfather. While it is a straightforward birth to death biography, I was hoping for a more personal memoir filled with stories of James Murray, the family man instead of just focusing on the fact he was one of the greatest lexicographers of all time. Katherine Murray reveals that her grandfather had wanted to write down “a narrative of his life and memories” (prologue). Maybe that is why I expected more. Anecdotes of Murray’s personal life were no more than a few sentences here and there and a smattering of black and white photographs of James (mostly at work in the Scriptorium). However, James was a religious family man and proud father of eleven children with a sly sense of humor.
Having said that, the most annoying pebble in my shoe: I couldn’t help but notice the number of times Murray put her grandfather on an extremely high pedestal: James had a higher standard of accuracy than with anyone else he worked alongside; James was too meticulous; James worked harder than anyone else and worked longer hours than anyone else. To be fair, James Murray did dedicate over thirty-five years of his life to editing the Oxford English Dictionary. He worked under trying conditions – never had enough time, space, or money for the endeavor. Every day was a constant struggle. He employed his own children when the project started to fall behind. Even though he died before the project was finished, Murray was without a doubt, the godfather of etymology.

Author fact: according to the back cover of Caught in the Web of Words Murray was Principal of Bishop Otter College of Education in Chichester, England.

Book trivia: there is a typo in the copyright statement of my version of Caught in the Web of Words. Mine is missing the word ‘not.’ It literally says “This book may be reproduced in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form…without written permission from the publishers.” Woops.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter obvious called “Words to the Wise” (p 249) and again, in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 400s” (p 68).

Sense and Sensibility

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Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Everyman’s Library, 1992.

Reason read: Read in honor of Sense and Sensibility being published in October.

Marianne, rejected by John Willoughby, is impetuous and needs sense. Her sister, Elinor, is the sensible one who will not let on that she is crushed when Edward Ferras plans to marry another. Sense and Sensibility tells the story of two very different romances. Although both are rejected they deal with it in different ways. To utter the words extinction of the individuality is to imply that the price of marriage is a loss of one’s sense of self. Threaded through the story of romance is another, more societal, theme of male dominated lineage. Austen was extremely observant about the world around her. She chose to write abut the country gentry because they stayed in her head, sometimes for years. Like other women authors of her time, Austen published Sense and Sensibility anonymously.
As an aside, I have read a lot of critical reviews of Sense and Sensibility and I have to wonder if Jane’s ghost laughs at the critics who took their task too seriously. Is Jane a psychiatric radical? She is a philosophical conservative? How deep can one delve into the ideology of sense and sensibility? Did she fashion Fanny after the Shakespearean character of Iago?

Author fact: Jane Austen had Elinor and Marianne on her mind when she was twenty years old. She was thirty-six when Sense and Sensibility was finally published. That is a long time for characters to be floating around one’s head.

Book trivia: My version of Sense and Sensibility (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992) has an introduction by Peter Conrad.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “An Anglophile’s Literary Pilgrimage” (p 20).

Jungle

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Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Robert Bentley Inc., 1946.

Reason read: Sinclair celebrated a birthday in September. Read in his honor. I also needed a book set in the Midwest for the Portland Public Library’s 2024 Reading Challenge.

In my version of The Jungle (Robert Bentley, Inc., 1946), Sinclair provides an introduction and in that introduction he describes how he came to Chicago at twenty-six years old and started visiting the meat packing district. The living and working conditions of the mostly immigrant workers prompted him to interview them at home, where conversations inevitably turn confessional. Sinclair even crashed a Lithuanian wedding and used the experience in the opening scene of The Jungle.
I will not lie. Reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was painful. Jurgis, with his haunting mantra, “I will work hard. I will work faster. I will work longer” was heartbreaking. The desperation for employment – children lying about their ages to get work, women giving out their bodies to find work and bringing bribes of their bodies to stay employed. Look up misery in the dictionary and you should find Sinclair’s The Jungle.
As an aside, pay attention to the words used in the socialist sermon. Monster. Exhaustion. Beaten. Starvation. Horror. Darkness. Obstacles. Threatening. Hostile. Destroy. Fury. Prison. Oppression. Grim. Toiling. Agony. Suffering. Difficulties. Trapped. Hideous. Pain. Wretched. Curse. Misery.
In the end, Jurgis fades into the background as the sermon on socialism, morality, the word of God, and the future of Chicago takes over.

Book trivia: Jack London endorsed The Jungle saying it will run away with you. He was right.

Quote to quote, “They trick you and then they eat you alive” (p 69).

Confessional: I would like to think everyone has read this best selling classic. However, until now I was not one of those people. I never had to read it in grade school, high school, college, or graduate school. It was not on any supplemental list supplied by my teachers.

Natalie connection: 10,000 Maniacs performs a song called “My Sister Rose” which depicts a family wedding. Natalie sings about “dollar dances with the bride” much like the dancing described in the early pages of The Jungle. Music can take you back to your homeland.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “One Hundred Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1900s” (p 175).

Well of Loneliness

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Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness. Anchor Books, 1928.

Reason read: Hall’s birth month is in August. Read in her honor.

When her parents were disappointed that their newborn had not been the boy they expected, they went ahead with the name they had picked out pre-birth: Stephen. For 1928 that was pretty progressive, especially since no one in their society circles really questioned it, not even Stephen herself. Her full name was Stephen Mary Olivia Gertrude Gordon. It was a name that seemed to overshadow her true identity and caused her some confusion as she navigated her way through childhood. Living in an environment where societal norms and expectations were rigid, Stephen often found herself clashing with the traditional gender roles.
Hall uses all the clichés to make obvious Stephen’s sexual orientation even as a young child: Stephen developed a strong romantic attachment to her nanny, she wanted to hunt, climb trees, and ride horses like a boy. She instinctively needed to change her appearance by cutting her hair and building her muscles and wearing pants and ties. She thought dresses were ridiculous, girlish emotions even more so. These feelings and desires were contrary to what was expected of a girl in her society, leading to a sense of internal conflict and confusion as she tried to understand and accept herself. She knew she was different but could not articulate why. As a teenager, Stephen was thrilled to make the acquaintance of a boy with whom she seemed to have so much in common. Here was a person with whom she could be her true self…until he admitted he was falling in love with her. Of course she could not love him back in the same way, as her own feelings did not align with his blossoming romantic affection. All through her formative years, Stephen’s father could not tell her the truth about her “strangeness” and yet he knew. As a result, he was overprotective and sheltering. There is a naivete to Stephen throughout The Well of Loneliness. Even when she found reciprocated love with Mary, a young woman she met during the war, she was never secure in her feelings, often plagued by a persistent fear of rejection and misunderstanding.

Quotes to quote, “My God, child, you’ll have worse things than this to face later – life’s not all beer and skittles, I do assure you” (p 113) and “This will happen sometimes, we instinctively feel in sympathy with certain dwellings” (p 249).

Book trivia: Well of Loneliness includes a note from the author which assures the reader that even though a motor ambulance unit of British women existed in World War II, the particular unit Hall wrote about only existed in her head.

Author fact: Hall led the life described in Well of Loneliness. It is thought that many of Stephen’s experiences were actually Hall’s memories.

Music: “Ole Sole Mio”.

Nancy said: Pearl pointed out that Well of Loneliness could be the first novel to address homophobia.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 94).

Burning Marguerite

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Inness-Brown, Elizabeth. Burning Marguerite: a Novel. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Reason read: part of Burning Marguerite takes place in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in the month of August.

Marguerite Ann Bernadette-Marie Deo, otherwise known as Tante, has passed away. Burning Marguerite starts with James Jack’s third person perspective, and at first, you think it’s going to be his story. However, Marguerite, in her own voice, tells the genesis of her nearly one hundred years and how the orphan James Jack came into her life. The reader gets to know Tante more James, which, in my opinion, is a missed opportunity. James Jack is a character ripe for exploration. As it stands, he is a thirty-plus-year-old man who has never strayed too far from his sheltered island home somewhere in Vermont. He rarely has romantic relationships. The reader does not hear of friendships. His only mission is to take care of Tante. She is all he has ever known since his parents died in a tragic accident when he was just a baby. Meanwhile, Marguerite has lived a colorful life, experiencing great loves and losses from turn-of-the-century Vermont to 1920s New Orleans and back to the island of her childhood to live out the rest of her days as a hermit. A word of caution: Marguerite’s history is harsh. The more I read, the more I wept for her. A third character is the island as it lives and breathes, influencing the townspeople as if it had a personality of its own. Its harsh winters and small-town gossip do well to feed a sense of unease.

Confessional: I had a little trouble with chronology. I’ve tried to make sense of it a few times. Because Inness-Brown moves the timeline around I am not sure of the order of events after Marguerite’s death. She and James Jack argue about a married woman, Faith, on a Sunday night. Faith is leaving the island Monday morning and Tante wants James to go to her. Because of Faith’s marriage James refuses and out of anger sleeps in a secondary cabin, away from Tante. In the morning he finds Tante dead. At first James Jack feels the need to report the death and goes to the sheriff’s office. He changes his mind after he’s sitting across from the sheriff. Tante would not want the law involved with her remains. Meanwhile, Faith had a flight to catch sometime on Monday but she would have to go the mainland first. So when does James Jack catch up to her and ask her for help with Tante?

Line I loved, “I wanted to interpret your look, to read that gaze, but I had not yet learned the language in which your eyes wrote their message” (p 41). Stunning.

Author fact: According to the back flap of Burning Marguerite Inness-Brown lives on an island in Lake Champlain, Vermont. I have to wonder if Grain Island is modeled after South Hero.

Book trivia: Burning Marguerite is Inness-Brown’s first novel.

Setlist: “It Was Just One of Those Things”, and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “First Novels” (p 88) and again in the chapter called “New Orleans” (p 168).

Charms for the Easy Life

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Gibbons, Kaye. Charms for the Easy Life. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993.

Reason read: Mary Lee Settle celebrates a birthday in the month of July. Nancy Pearl suggested Charms for the Easy Life be read with Settle’s memoir, Addie.

Three generations of southern women. The relationships between mother (Charlie Kate), daughter (Sophia), and granddaughter (Margaret) are tangled and complicated. Like all relationships, they are rich in drama, tough-love, grace, and unspoken courage. Complicated by pride and fierce independence. Only these are no ordinary women. Granddaughter Margaret is no exception. She assists her grandmother with unconventional medical practices on military patients and encourages her mother’s second-time-around love life. The three generations can read the same book and discuss and argue like best friends and yet, they can also carry dark secrets strategically kept from one another, hold on to old grudges like a mean snapping turtle, and parse out the silent treatment to one another like professionals. Strong without menfolk to provide for them, the Birch women support each other through everything. This is an age when grandmothers could orchestrate the love lives of their granddaughters. Wise beyond her years, Margaret listens to her grandmother’s advice. As an aside, my favorite was when Charlie Kate gave Margaret her easy-life charm, telling Margaret that it worked…depending on the definition of easy.
Confessional: I couldn’t help but be reminded of Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris.

As an aside, the method of quilling a pregnancy was a new one for me.

Favorite line, “She had said all that she needed to say, and so there were no secret longings, no secret wishes and desires that had never been spoken” (p 254).

Author fact: Gibbons wrote her first novel when she was in her twenties.

Book trivia: Charms for the Easy Life is Kaye Gibbons’ fourth book and other editions include “Christina’s World”, a painting by Andrew Wyeth, as the cover art.

Playlist: Benny Good man, Nelson Eddy’s “Sweet Mystery of Life”, Johnny Mercer’s “Deep in the Heart of Texas”, Hazel Scott’s “Minute Waltz”, Frank Sinatra, “White Christmas”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “You Made Me Love You”, Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols”, Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, Grieg’s E Minor Piano Sonata, Bach’s Minuet in G, Ravel’s Le Tom beau de Couperin, and Sarah Bernhardt.

Nancy said: Pearl was generously vague when describing why Charms for the Easy Life was paired with Addie. The multitude of complimentary themes was a joy to discover on my own.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 62) and again in the chapter called “Mothers and Daughters” (p 159), and a third time in the chapter called “Southern Fiction” (p 222).

Addie

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Settle, Mary Lee. Addie: a Memoir. University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

Reason read: Mary Lee Settle was born in July. Read in her honor.

There is something to be said for honoring one’s past. The oral histories of yesteryear are the cornerstones to who we are as people today. When Mary Lee Settle decided to write about her grandmother, Addie Settle, she chose to recognize not only a blood relative, but historical events: World War I, the Great Depression and mining strikes with Mother Jones leading the way. Settle honors her own personal tapestry of life by remembering family holidays from her childhood, coming of age, and the natural beauty of Kentucky and the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia. My favorite section was the poignant moment when Settle went back to Pineville, Kentucky. Sixty-five years after leaving the area as a six year old little girl, sharp memories rushed to meet her at every turn.
As an aside: when Mary Lee Settle was nine or ten years old she wrote a poem. When that poem was published someone had changed a word in the finished copy. In childish indignation she vowed never to write again. I just love that self righteous ardor for the integrity of her craft at ten years old!

An another aside: was it a typo to call it Wail Street instead of Wall Street?

Line I liked, “When your childhood has been spent on the river, the river will, wherever you are, flow through your dreams forever” (p 177). This quote reminded me of Natalie Merchant’s song, “Where I Go” – a song about finding solace on the banks of a river.
And this: “We had learned to watch for signs of that happiness as you watch the weather” (p 125). Confessional: my sister and I ask each other about the weather when we are really asking about our mother’s mood. Like weather in New England, it can change in a heartbeat.
Here is another one: “Since my mother never forgave anybody, she refused to go to the funeral when her friend died at ninety” (p 185). Does this kind of obstinate stubbornness come with old age? I see this in my own mother.

Author fact: Settle is in the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Book trivia: I am reading ten different books by Mary Lee Settle. This is my first one off the Challenge list.

Music: “Little Corey”, Guy Lombardo, “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi”, “We shall Overcome”, “It was Sad When the Great Ship Went Down”, “In the shade of the Apple Tree”, “Down on the Farm”, Mozart, Nellie Lutcher, Flagstad & Melcior’s “Liebestod”, Hal Kemp, “If I Had the Wings of an Angel”, Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto, and “the Valley of Kentucky”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 62) to be read with Charms for the Easy Life because they are both about the south.

Thing About My Uncle

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Stavros, Peter J. The Thing About My Uncle. BHC Press, 2024.

Reason read: Occasionally I am asked to review books for LibraryThing’s very cool Early Review program. This is one such book.

I don’t know as if I believe the fourteen year old narrator. What kid uses the words forthwith or flummoxed or nary? Sometimes Rhett is an adult looking back and sometimes he is a teenager in the here and now. In the beginning I was put off by the tired-seeming plot: teenage kid always in trouble (but secretly a good, albeit misunderstood, kid). You know the kind who desperately need straightening out, but really don’t. Mom is at her wits end so sends said kid (Rhett) to a gruff, tattooed, loner family member who has mysteries of his own. He lives disconnected from society with barely any internet or television to entertain a teenager. Only there is no mystery to Uncle Theo. What you see is what you get. Three nights in a row he serves up wild “game” his hunting buddies gave him in exchange for “produce” from his extensive garden. Don’t go into the garden; do not go into the garden Uncle Theo tells Rhett. Gee, I wonder what Theo is growing? As a book for young adults, I suspect the plot will be just as transparent for them as well. You know that Theo’s secrets are going to be revealed in a dramatic way. You know Rhett is going to love being in the country. What you don’t know is how they will get from point A to point B. Well worth the read.

My only complaint: Rhett goes on and on about his mom’s famous tuna melt dinner. When Rhett wants to surprise his uncle with this meal a whole drama unfolds but Rhett still manages to make the dish…and in the end nothing is said about it. Yes, the events leading up to the tuna melt overshadow the actual meal. I get that. Realistically, Rhett could have skipped making the tuna melt after all that drama.

Book trivia: the cover of The Thing About My Uncle is beautiful.

War and Remembrance

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Wouk, Herman. War and Remembrance: Vol. 1. Little, Brown and Company, 1978.

Reason read: to continue the series started in honor of Memorial Day in May.

War and Remembrance: Vol 1 covers the Americans at war from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and even though it picks up where Winds of War left off, Wouk assures his reader that War and Remembrance can be read independently of Winds of War. I disagree to a certain degree. In Winds of War we have gotten to know the Henry family very well. You can’t help but get tangled in their lives. There is something about this passionate family! We have followed their adventures in love and war. Torrid affairs and wild ambitions have led each family member through various trials and tribulations. We rejoin Victor as he struggles to understand his feelings for the young and beautiful Pamela while traveling across the globe from the Soviet Union to Manila and Hawaii. His time on the Northampton set my teeth on edge. Natalie and Byron still haven’t rendezvoused on American soil. Natalie is still trapped in Italy with the young son Byron has never seen. Warren and Janice have welcomed a baby into their family, too, but Warren is always away, piloting top secret missions. Rhoda can’t decide between an absent husband and a totally different man, one more than willing to be there in the flesh. Like Winds of War, Wouk will take his reader to intimate places most are unlikely to go, like the belly of a thin-skinned submarine.
Military politics can be a fine line to balance upon. It can have career-ending ramifications to reject a vice admiral’s invitation to tea, for example. Wouk recreates military conversations that are fraught with tension and innuendo. His characters vibrate with drama. War and Remembrance is every bit as exciting as Winds of War.

Confessional: by now you know that I sometimes get hung up on the details. Here is one: Warren and Byron are sitting on the lawn, drinking beer straight from cans. Dad comes out and Warren produces a “frosty glass” for him. To create a “frosty glass” one has to chill the glass, most likely in a freezer. Why would they have such a glass out on the lawn while they are drinking straight from the can?
Second confessional: I knew something was going to happen when Warren’s mission does not go as rehearsed; when they alter the plan from what they practiced. That sense of foreboding was pungent.

Line I liked, “This isn’t the war we trained for, but its sure as hell the war we’ve got” (p 45).

Author fact: Wouk lived to be 103 years old.

Book trivia: War and Remembrance was dedicated to Abraham Isaac Wouk who didn’t make it to his sixth birthday.

Playlist: Bing Crosby, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Boogie Woogie Washer Woman”, “Der Fuchrer’s Face”, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Hut-Sut Song”, “Lili Marlene”, “Reactionary Rag”, “Rozhunkes mit Mandlen”, “Three O’Clock in the Morning”, “Yah Ribon”

Nancy said: Pearl called War and Remembrance good fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Fiction” (p 252).

Cement Garden

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McEwan, Ian. The Cement Garden. Simon and Schuster, 1978.

Reason read: McEwan celebrates a birthday in the month of June. Read in his honor.

Put your mind right before you read The Cement Garden. If you think of it like Lord of the Flies by William Golding, only Lord of the Flies family-style, you will be fine. Cement Garden is dark. Really dark. It deals with really difficult subjects. A family of four children, the youngest being six and the oldest, fifteen, are left alone for the summer. The do not have neighbors, teachers, parents, relatives, town officials, anyone to look after them. No one knows these four are alone. They don’t have many friends, either. Left to their own devices a quiet chaos within the house ensues. Told through the fourteen year old character of Jack, McEwan’s psychological exploration of naivety and stunted societal growth is captured in the themes of death, sexuality, and relationships as the children do not know how to deal these things. The death of their mother, coming of age impulses, and interactions with the outside world confound them and they react inappropriately. Beyond death, sex, and interpersonal relationships, the subtle emotional themes of grief, jealousy, and love are also probed. It’s a blessing that is mercifully short.

Pet peeve: I can sometimes get obsessed with details. The siblings are in Julie’s room when they pull down Sue’s pants. So when Jack wanted her to get dressed, why did he throw her skirt at her? Why wasn’t it a skirt of Julie’s? Why wasn’t it the pants they originally removed from Sue?

Author fact: So far I have read Atonement, Cement Garden, Amsterdam, and Comfort of Strangers. I have five other novels on my challenge list.

Book trivia: The Cement Garden is McEwan’s first novel.

Playlist: “Happy Birthday”, “Greensleeves”, and “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” by the King Cole Trio.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about The Cement Garden.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Ian McEwan: Too Good To Miss” (p 149).

Giants in the Earth

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Rolvaag, O.E. Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie. Translated by Lincoln Colcord. Harper & Brothers, 1927.

Reason read: a celebration of spring and Minnesota became a state in May.

Volume One of Giants in the Earth was published in Norway in 1924. The second volume was published a year later. Vern Lewis Parrington (editor) wrote an introduction. Rolvaag wrote the foreword. Forty-six pages later we begin the story…Per Hansa is moving his family from Minnesota to the the Great Plains of the Dakota Territory in the hopes of putting down roots.
A lot of comments have been made about Beret and her mental illness. Her uncontrolled fear of the Midwest was justified. She was in a strange land without the comfort of true community. There was an underlying fear of Indians – fear and fascination in equal measure. I am reminded of the 10,000 Maniacs’ song, “Gold Rush Brides” written by Natalie Merchant. The lines, “The land was free and the prices was right”, and “Who were the homestead wives? Who were the gold rush brides? Does anybody know?…Accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness, and grief” are particularly poignant. When Beret uncovers an evil secret wrongdoing her husband committed she starts to question their entire relationship. She fears that evil everywhere and her husband seems oblivious to her growing concerns. No one in the community notices her distress until it is beyond breaking. They even make fun of her nonsense. Were they distracted by opportunity? Were they preoccupied with adversities such as the strain of long, harsh winters and plagues of locusts in the summers? Did they want to slough off their old world identities identities in the new world by choosing new names? The question becomes how does one honor traditions of Norway while forging a new existence in America?

Quote to quote, “But it was easier to warm his body than thaw his soul” (p 277).

Author fact: Rolvaag was born in 1876 on the island of Donna almost in the Arctic Circle.

Book trivia: The title comes from a Bible quote.

Nancy said: Pearl said Giants of the Earth is one of the earliest sagas written about the immigrant experience (More Book Lust p 123).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123).