This is Not About Us

I just finished reading Allegra Goodman's newest book, This Is Not About Us.  

I am blown away.  It was an incredible collection of stories that tied together so well I forgot at times I was not reading a novel.   The book spoke to me in so many ways.  So many of the life experiences were so relevant to my life like sibling rivalries. So many overlaps of the places I have attended and am still involved with.  Camp Ramah Palmer, Emerson College, Brandeis University.  I closed the back cover and announced to the empty room, " I am in love with Allegra Goodman!"  

This is a collection of short stories that follow a family through many lifecycle events.  

Reading this book and learning the perspectives of the various characters is enthralling.  You are pulled into the family dynamics, agreeing with some and finding fault with others. It is like living with your own relatives. Meeting up at get togethers and holidays and seeing the interaction between siblings, cousins and the aunts and uncles.

We meet the three Rubenstein sisters who are the matriarchs of the family. Jeanne, the sister who held the family together, is dying from cancer leaving Helen and Sylvia to figure out their place in the puzzle that has lost a piece of the whole.  At the shiva Sylvia turns up with an apple cake. Helen says that was her recipe and sees a slight in Sylvia's behavior.  It is not really about the apple cake, it is the competition and fighting for attention that siblings experience that never leaves the relationship. The estrangement will last through all the family lifecycle events that follow.  

In each story we meet the children and the grandchildren of this family. Seeing lfe from their perspective as they negotiate the everyday experiences of family and life. The balancing of carpools and after school activities, preparing for Bar/Bat Mitzvah and getting home to make dinner.  Keeping a marriage together or figuring out the divorce with children.  

We meet their families and see how the different personalities all work in concert with each other.  It is an incredible book that I think touches on so many personal issues that all of us can relate to.  I really felt like the author knew me and was paralleling my world. Every family has drama and disagreements.  Every family member just wants to be seen and loved. How we all fall into the traps of birth order and the competition for approval.

The author captured the personalities and needs of people, blending them between the short stories seamlessly. The book reads like a novel, not a set of individual stories.

The Murderous Affair of Judith Potts

 The Murderous Affair of Judith Potts is the latest in the Robert Thorogood mystery series about Judith Potts and her friends in Marlow. 

We have watched Judith, Becks and Suzie solve many murders assisting the police of Marlow, led by their friend DI Malik, with their crime board and access to old newspapers piled in a spare room in Judith's exotic home. They also have the ability to interview and question people who will not speak to the police.  They have been dubbed citizen investigators by DI Malik, but this time their badges have been taken away and DI Malik is taken off the job, suspended.  

Now two celebrities have been murdered and it is up to our friendly trio to solve the mystery of the connection between the two seemingly unrelated cases.  First a professional soccer player and then a thriller author turn up dead.  Judith seems distracted and not paying attention to the clues that Becks and Suzie are sharing with her.  Without Judith will they be able to solve these murders?  Will her friends be able to find out what is bothering Judith and bring her back to their group in time?  this could finally be the disclosure of the nagging history that has been following Judith since she moved to Marlow... What was she trying to escape?

The Marlow Murder Club

 The Marlow Murder Club is the start of a new series of murder mystery novels. This time the amateur detectives are women of a certain age.  Written by Robert Thorogood, a British screen writer and novelist.  His latest excellent television series is Death In Paradise.

This is the start of a delightful relationship between between Judith Potts, a single woman who has recently inherited her wonderfully eclectic and messy home from an aunt, along with two women from the small English town of Marlow, Suzie, a professional dog walker and Becks, the vicar's wife.

In this first novel of the series the scene is set as we meet Judith for the first time.  She has run away from something which is never revealed.  She is living in this cluttered mansion, writing crossword puzzles and drinking whiskey and surprisingly swimming in the all together down the Thames.

One day while swimming she hears a gun shot from the shore near her neighbor's house. She calls out but there is no answer.  She swims home and calls the police. They take her concerns with a grain of salt, do an cursory investigation and find nothing. Judith is not convinced they are correct, so she investigates herself and finds clues to the death of her neighbor.  From there she meets her fellow detective friends and they solve the crime.  

So entertaining between the interesting characters and the small town of Marlow this is a setting for a wonderful series of mysteries for one to follow and try to solve.

Dreidels and Dead Ends

Memories of sitting under the hairdryer at the beauty salon with your head full of curlers and reading a magazine came back to me as I enjoyed reading this fun mystery novel. Maybe a more modern version is sitting reading this novel while waiting for the hair color to set.  Dreidels and Dead Ends by Nancy J Cohen is an entertaining mystery novel for reading at the hairdresser.

Cohen has created the perfect setting and real time job position for an amateur detective to have while trying to solve local crime in a small town.  Where would there be a better place to interview suspects than while they are having their hair styled.  Also the women that come in for a wash and cut are always ready to share the news they have heard.

This novel is the newest in this long running A Bad Hair Day Mystery series.  Hairstylist Marla Vail owns the Cut 'N Dye salon and is now married to Dalton, the newly retired police homicide detective.  She and Dalton have teamed up solving crimes in their small town in Florida.

When a diamond studded hairbrush is stolen from the local museum, Marla and Dalton are on the trail to get it back and save the museum from having to close down. Marla was asked by her friend Becky Forest, the curator for the local museum, to fill in last minute as a featured speaker for a fundraising event and Marla agrees.  That puts her and Dalton at the scene of the crime. The antique hairbrush, on loan, an heirloom with a family curse, is stolen during the opening night event and the injured security guard is sent to the hospital. When more unexplained accidents start occurring to people involved with the museum Marla is not convinced it is the curse. She is sure someone is behind the unpleasant problems.  Then another security guard turns up dead and the pressure increases to find out who stole the hairbrush and return it to its rightful owners.

An added characteristic to this mystery series is that Marla is Jewish and the author has added many Jewish references to her novels. In this novel the winter holidays are just around the corner and as she is interviewing suspects, Marla is also thinking about her holiday parties and her gift lists.  She has to pick out Chanukah and Christmas presents for her new extended family along with getting the latkes and donuts for their son, Ryder's, daycare class Chanukah party. 

 

The Half Life

 The Half Life is the newest novel by author, Rachel Beanland. She is the author of another excellent novel, Florence Adler Swims Forever.

Exploring historical themes in her novels, Beanland writes historical fiction that really is a history lesson in disguise.  in The Half Life, the reader enjoys a moving plot about two young people living in the southern United States during the Vietnam War years. Twenty three year old Eileen O’Malley meets the handsome naval officer, Paul Archer in a department store.  Their relationship develops quickly and when Paul gets his orders o ship out to the tiny Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, he proposes to Eileen.  She has never traveled away from her hometown.  Having lost her brother recently in the Vietnam War, Eileen is ready to leave her home and have an adventure, though she is concerned about leaving her parents.

In La Maddalena, Eileen joins the other navy wives and finds ways to learn about her new home.  She takes Italian language lessons from a local woman, who also teaches her to cook local foods.  She becomes involved with a group of Italian scientists and activists, who along with environmentalists are concerned about the American submarine base on their island. They are concerned that the nuclear powered submarines could be depositing nuclear contamination into the water.  

Eileen becomes aware that the United States government in an effort to make sure that Italy doesn't vote Communist in the next election is willing to do whatever it takes even though it could endanger the wildlife in the water off the island.  They members of the island are protesting and Eileen is starting to side with Italian citizens.  Her marriage is on rocky ground and she can see that the US thinks it is superior to the citizens of La Maddalena. 

Eileen needs to choose, her husband and her country or the new friends she has made and their best interests.  This is a story of love, loyalty and the awakening of a woman realizing she can make her own choices.

The Half Life takes an incredible story of American history that is not taught in school and shows the reader the horrific ways the United States has through history put its interests first with thoughts of exceptionalism.  We are still participating in this practice today. 

Are They Dead Yet?

 Ok I realize the title of this book could scare off some readers or make others question my reading interests, but Are They Dead Yet? written by Sam Roberts was actually an interesting and entertaining look at the history and importance of the newspaper obituary.

I have always been fascinated by the question who gets to have their obit mentioned in a major newspaper, especially the New York Times.  Obituaries are a part of a person's legacy. But which people are worth remembering? When you read the obituary of a famous person, you learn not only about how they died but also how lavishly they lived. 

Though it is the standard way to see if someone has passed, the obituary has become more than a death notice. It is a celebration of the person's life. It is a short biography of the person and their accomplishments during their lifetime, a way of memorializing a person. Looking at someone's life through ups and downs, with advantages or disadvantages, with opportunities or difficulties, and seeing how they applied those challenges to become their best selves. 

It has long been a joke that people would get up in the morning and read the obituaries first when reading the newspaper. This gallows humor is credited to Ben Franklin who is thought to have said, "I wake up every morning at nine and grab the morning paper.  Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up."  Franklin began publishing obituaries in the Pennsylvania Gazette, which he bought in 1729.  He was certain that a contemporary record of deaths would draw readers.

As a young Jewish boy growing up in Brownsville, New York, Roberts was six years old when he witnessed the hearse carrying Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's bodies from Sing Sing prison to the funeral home for their funeral. This event and the fact that his parents and many other adults in his neighborhood were survivors of the Holocaust had a major impact on the author and death haunted him throughout his childhood and even as an adult.

Over the decades, Roberts worked as a reporter, columnist, and editor at both the New York Daily News and the New York Times which has culminated in tenure now at the  New York Times working as an obituarist. In this book, Are They Dead Yet?, he gives examples of many obits written over the centuries.  Some are funny and some are surprising, but they are all fascinating. He also outlines the history around the world of the obituary. 

Roberts writes that people want to be remembered and the public is always curious about the lives well-known people have led. In small towns, local newspaper obituaries connect one generation to the next. They provide the biographical data of an individual. Obituaries provide the family connections linking generations, sharing the birthplace, a daughter's maiden name, and married name.  This will give researchers valuable tools for following family roots and genealogy.

Interestingly it is also supposed to be an honest accounting of their life. It should not sugarcoat their history or embellish any shortcomings. Though obituarists conform to the advice that "one can't defame the dead", Roberts reminds us of Volaire's saying, "to the living we owe respect, to the dead we owe the truth".

Roberts quotes Nigal Starck, author of Life After Death: The Life of the Obituary, who argues that obituaries provide a glue that bonds society not in grief but in aspirational reevaluation of our own lives. "There is nothing inherently gloomy about the newspaper obituary page", Starck writes. "Done well, it should capture life rather than wallow in death." 

The Last Mandarin

 The Last Mandarin is a collaboration between incredible mystery author Louise Penny and non fiction author and news correspondent, Mellissa Fung.

What a terrific combination that turns out to be.  Using the historical facts of the Titanium Square and the young people who were revolting against the new regime who were taking over China and changing the government. Starting with the iconic picture of the small thin boy, later named, Tank Man,  standing holding back the tanks at Titanium Square in 1989.  The protests ended in violence and a crackdown by the Peoples’ Liberation Army.  Many of the dissidents escaped through a program called Yellow Bird to Hong Kong and the US.  Many foreign intellect agencies were involved, including the CIA. 

Now imagine that 50 years later some of the teenagers involved in the original revolt have been secretly meeting underground all this time and planning their next uprising.  With all the new technology and innovations it is time to reveal themselves.  Using history and superstitions of Chinese emperors, Fung and Penny have created a fascinating storyline that brings the past to meet the present.  

It may even be a futuristic. In this scenerio all the countries are in conference trying to work together after a siren is sounded all around the world at the exact same moment.  Then days later another attack on the world happens that kills thousands.  Working hard to find out who is to blame and uncover the spies within the administration each world leader needs to figure out who they can trust and who they should fear.

Written with quick scene changes, between the government officials and switching to the group of citizens who with knowledge of the situation are racing to save the world before the next attack. 

The suspense is palpable, written so tightly that your heart rate is rising as you hope that the danger will not reach the worst case result.  You are running through tunnels with the hero's, and hoping the US President will understand the secret messages the Chinese Prime Minister is trying to convey and the  opposite way around also.