Thursday, September 28, 2017

Born a Crime

Trevor Noah has written an incredible book.  I listened to him read the story of his childhood on the audiobook and it just made his story even more amazing.  He talks about his childhood growing up in South Africa explaining the incredible segregation between not only black and white, but also the prejudice against "colored" people, who are born of mixed heritage. 

I love watching Trevor Noah on late night television.  His show is clever and he is such a cute young man. I also love listening to him at night and on the audible book, his voice has such a soft lilting cadence and wonderful accent to it. 

What a life story he has lived in such a short time.  He has become so successful, but that is not what the book is about at all.  the book takes us back to his childhood, growing up with a black mother and a white father, who is not really involved in his upbringing.  He describes all the members of his family, from his mother, to his aunts and uncles and cousins in such a colorful manner.  They are all interesting characters.  His mother is very religious, believing that her faith will carry her through any disaster or trouble in her life.  He has two half brothers , when his mother marries another black man.  This man is abusive to his mother and he spends his youth defending and protecting her. 
He runs with a rough group of boys for a while as a teenager.  he gets into trouble along the way, but always seems to land on his feet.  Some of the time it seems like he is just lucky.  Other times it could be his easy going personality helps him win people over. 

He has lived through things our children here in America will never have to experience.  He has amazingly come out of it all to be very successful.  He has experienced hatred, and bigotry, physical abuse and even a stint in jail.  But the man you see on television seems like such a sweet likeable person, it is hard to imagine the life he describes in this book.

A Tightly Ravelled Mind

OK this is probably the craziest book I have ever read.   When I looked back at reviews after finishing the book I saw that many people put it down without finishing it.  I did think about a few times, but I kept thinking that there would be a good twist at the end, so on I plunged.

I will say that it is not the worst book, it did keep me reading to the end.  It did have some clever plot points and funny, in a awkward way, scenarios.  I will be recommending this book to a friend of mine who is a psychologist.

But I will say that it is not a good mystery in the sense of a whonunit.  It does not really build suspense and there is not really any good character development, so that you are really basically just shocked with the ending, but the author has not done a good job developing any of the characters so that you feel sorry for anyone or that justice has been dealt.

This is the story or Nora Goodman, who is a Freudian therapist, separated from her husband, also a therapist, taking care of her two young children.  She has half a dozen clients and they are starting to die.  She becomes convinced they are being murdered.  She hires private detective, Mike Ruiz to find the killer.  

As Nora is working with her patients, trying to help them understand their neuroses, she is also still trying to work out her own psychological issues from her childhood.  Her first patient to die is Howard, which catches her by surprise.  Nora thinks,   "The media presented Howard's demise as accidental - a little chemistry experiment in his home workshop gone wrong. But Freud didn't believe in accident sand neither did I.  Deep down no one believe s in accidents. We all want meaning.  We prefer the illusion of control over what matters in our lives, no matter how irrational the explanation."

This is a story of a neurotic woman who has never resolved her harmful relationship with her father and mother, and is not really able to help her patients.  The people you, as a reader, are most concerned for in the end are her children.  Parents who never resolve their own problems can just pass the problems onto the next generation. 

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Young Jane Young

Have you ever wondered what your life would be like today if you had decided to go to a different college, chose a different career, marrying a different person?  Have you ever thought about what makes us go in one direction or another.  How we choose when we reach in a fork in the road?  Young Jane Young, is the newest novel to come out of the imagination of Gabrielle Zevin.  These are the very subjects explored in this novel.  More to the point, Zevin shows us how far reaching those actions are.  Because when we make pick an option, it has repercussions on many people around us.

Written from the the perspective of three different characters in this story we learn the story of young love with a married man from three different viewpoints.   Each character has a very distinctive voice.  First from Rachel Grossman, Jewish mother, has retired to Florida.   She is a widow now, always looking for a new relationship.  She and her best friend  go out to meet men, or on dates with the men they have met.  There is always something wrong with the men they are involved with.  With a few Yiddish words and phrases to pepper her New York Jewish dialog, Rachel tells the story of her daughter's disgrace.

As you read each interpretation of the events Zevin does a great job of making each voice unique and fitting to the character.  The story told from the perspective of Jane Young, now in her forties, living in a small town in Maine with her daughter.  She has remade herself into a event planner.  She creates the perfect wedding for new couples starting out in life.  Jane explains this way, "...To be clear, even if it's not what I thought I'd do, I like planning weddings. I like the ceremony.  And people invite you into their lives on what they believe to be the most important day.  It's a privilege."    That is her standard spiel for how she ended up in Maine as a wedding planner.  Her young daughter, Ruby goes to school and assists her mother in the afternoons.  They have become powerful and yet beloved fixtures in the town. 

Ruby writes the story from her point of view.  Her section of the book is written like a child writing letters to her pen pal.  Well written emails carry on the one sided conversation with a pen pal across the ocean.  She writes about school and working with her mom.  She writes about finding out her mother's secret and feeling she just cannot condone her behavior and sit by quietly.  She needs to speak out.

We hear the details of the embarrassing stigma of Jane's past.  She tells the story of Aviva Grossman, political intern.  The mistakes she made and how it has affected her entire life since.  this is the most cleverly written section of the book.  Written in the style of a choose your path stories.  At the end of each short chapter there is a choice, would you choose to stay or go?  Would you break up or stay involved?  Would you turn right or left?  With each choice you turn to a different page.  Each choice offers a different ending to your story.  It shows the uncertainty of life.  How each avenue we choose leads to the next crossroads.  How our decisions affect our life and the those whose lives we touch. 

Gabrielle Zevin has connected all the women in this novel around the congressman in a complex way.  Se has presented each woman's story in a personal viewpoint so that you can relate and feel supportive of each of them.  Life and love are complicated and the lines of right and wrong are blurred. 


Thursday, September 7, 2017

Truth and Consequences

This is the story of the Bernie Madoff crisis and scandal.  I know we all know this story and it is out of the news now but I ran across the book this week and sat down to see what it was.  I was pulled in and by the way Sandell writes the story.  It reads almost like you are friends with the family and you are talking to them about what happened.  This is the personal side of what happened to children and grandchildren who did not question their rise to the top.  Who believed in their father and his business abilities and were not prepared for their fall to the bottom.

Laurie Sandell the author of this non fiction book relates to the family she is writing about and believes their view of events.  She also found herself in a similar situation when she discovered her father also had been practicing a financial fraud.  So she brings across a feeling of believability to this book that makes you want to see it from that point of view.

It is interesting because the reader can feel you are a voyeur without fear of getting caught.  Like the paparazzi that followed the family to bring the public pictures of them we can read this story in safety and not feel guilty for peeking.

But in the end, I will say that, I do feel sorry for Madoff's sons and their families.  Each son has an ex-wife and children from those marriages that were still very much a part of their everyday lives. They also had a current relationship with a woman.  All the women cared very much and were not in these relationships for the money.  The grandchildren were affected just by sharing the last name.

Each son suffered in their own personal way and reacted to the situation differently.  Andrew seemed to have been able to try and get his life back on track and create a better atmosphere for his children and fiance Catherine.  Though he has passed away from cancer since this book was written.

Unfortunately, Mark reacted much more harshly to the discovery of his father's deceit, and could not recover emotionally.  It is no spoiler to say that he took his own life in 2010.  But you feel his pain when you read this book.