The Weight of a Piano is written by Chris Cander. This is a simple tale of a piano that leaves Russia in 1961 and is found residing in Bakersfield, CA in 2012.
We meet Katya, a young girl growing up in Soviet Russia. her father is a piano tuner by trade and takes his eight year old daughter along while he tunes an old man's piano. When the man dies he leaves the piano to Katya. She learns to play and becomes a concert pianist. Playing the piano is her greatest joy and helps her survive growing up in Soviet ruled Russia. When she marries Mikhail and has a young son, the family decides, during the refusnik period, to leave Russia and emigrate to the United States for a better life. In the effort to leave the country the piano is sold with a promise of its return someday in the United States. Katya is devastated without her piano. Life is not as easy in America as Mikhail assumed it would be.
The author interperses Clara Lundy's 2012 life story into the piano's journey. Clara is an unhappy twenty something, working for her uncle in a garage maintaining automobiles. Her father gave a piano when she was twelve to take lessons on. Soon after receiving the gift her parents die. She has never learned to play but she has dragged the piano with her during many moves as the only memory of her parents. Now after a recent break up with the current boyfriend and another apartment change, she breaks her arm while moving the piano and decides to list it on Ebay for sale. Though she immediately regrets her decision and tries to take down the ad, the person who is interested in buying the piano is relentless and will not take no for an answer.
Greg is a photographer who wants to photograph the piano in Death Valley and other locations around Las Vegas. They agree on a loan of the piano and it turns out, of course, that they will both follow the piano through the desert.
The "weight" of the piano has so many meanings. The actual physical weight of a piano. The emotional weight of a gift from a parent, especially one is no longer with us. The weight of a gift that you never feel you have lived up to. The weight of love you feel unworthy of . The weight of trying to make sense of different relationships. This piano represents so many different issues and the balance of the piano's weight on the precipice is what keeps each of these characters caught in their complicated emotional lives.
Cander uses the music and photography to show creative passion and illustrate how an object can become the focal point of a lifelong struggle. The Weight of a Piano is ultimately about how we reconcile the present with the past, and in doing so we must sometimes let go of our idealized sense of both.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Kaddish.com
Yeah! Nathan Englander has done it again. Hit one out of the park! His latest novel, Kaddish.com is being added to my list of all time favorite books.
Though this may be an uncomfortable topic for some people to read and possibly laugh about, I think that there are so many different issues that are presented that this is a great thought provoking plot, done in a perfect "tongue in cheek", sarcastic style.
One of the hardest things each of us has to confront in life is death. The death of someone close to you is beyond sad. The loss of a parent is tragic. In the Jewish religion, a child is supposed to say the Kaddish prayer for a parent for eleven months, everyday. Depending of the level of observance, that "sacred obligation" can be done either once a day or up to three times a day. It is one of the 613 mitzvot and though purported to assist the dead through to Olam Haba, the afterlife, it is also for the living. Because, even at our lowest moment, when we are so sad and possibly angry at G-d, we are reminded how important life and religion are. In words and through practice, Kaddish insists that the mourner turn away from death and choose life.
So enter Larry, an estranged Orthodox man, who has returned to his sister's house to sit Shiva when his father dies. In this religious family, the son must say Kaddish for the father, but Larry is hesitant. He clashes with his sister and the Orthodox community when he cannot promise to fulfill this mitzvah (commandment). “I’m asking about the torch you must carry for this family — our family — for the next eleven months. Tell me you get that the Kaddish is on you,” she insists. “You know you can’t miss. Not once. Not a single service.”
The Rabbi offers him a solution, he can find someone to say Kaddish for him, a proxy. Larry grabs that solution at first, signing onto kaddish.com and paying someone to say the prayer for his father in his stead. Over time Larry starts to have second thoughts. He starts to feel remorse over his choice and his life takes some incredible and unforeseen changes and twists.
As Larry struggles with his decisions the reader is pulled into the absurdity of the situation that is unfolding. This plot gives a person different perspectives of a real issue and the different ways people think about Judaism, life and death. Englander gives the modern technology age a place to intersect and collide with traditional Judaism. He is writing about Jewish American assimilation and how we are working through our uneasiness with giving up traditions that have been apart of our families for generations. Or maybe he is offering us comfortable ways to come back to our religious convictions accepting them and making them apart of our current lives. It is all done in both an incredibly moving and enjoyably humorous way.
Though this may be an uncomfortable topic for some people to read and possibly laugh about, I think that there are so many different issues that are presented that this is a great thought provoking plot, done in a perfect "tongue in cheek", sarcastic style.
One of the hardest things each of us has to confront in life is death. The death of someone close to you is beyond sad. The loss of a parent is tragic. In the Jewish religion, a child is supposed to say the Kaddish prayer for a parent for eleven months, everyday. Depending of the level of observance, that "sacred obligation" can be done either once a day or up to three times a day. It is one of the 613 mitzvot and though purported to assist the dead through to Olam Haba, the afterlife, it is also for the living. Because, even at our lowest moment, when we are so sad and possibly angry at G-d, we are reminded how important life and religion are. In words and through practice, Kaddish insists that the mourner turn away from death and choose life.
So enter Larry, an estranged Orthodox man, who has returned to his sister's house to sit Shiva when his father dies. In this religious family, the son must say Kaddish for the father, but Larry is hesitant. He clashes with his sister and the Orthodox community when he cannot promise to fulfill this mitzvah (commandment). “I’m asking about the torch you must carry for this family — our family — for the next eleven months. Tell me you get that the Kaddish is on you,” she insists. “You know you can’t miss. Not once. Not a single service.”
The Rabbi offers him a solution, he can find someone to say Kaddish for him, a proxy. Larry grabs that solution at first, signing onto kaddish.com and paying someone to say the prayer for his father in his stead. Over time Larry starts to have second thoughts. He starts to feel remorse over his choice and his life takes some incredible and unforeseen changes and twists.
As Larry struggles with his decisions the reader is pulled into the absurdity of the situation that is unfolding. This plot gives a person different perspectives of a real issue and the different ways people think about Judaism, life and death. Englander gives the modern technology age a place to intersect and collide with traditional Judaism. He is writing about Jewish American assimilation and how we are working through our uneasiness with giving up traditions that have been apart of our families for generations. Or maybe he is offering us comfortable ways to come back to our religious convictions accepting them and making them apart of our current lives. It is all done in both an incredibly moving and enjoyably humorous way.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Odessa, Odessa
Written by Barbara Artson, Odessa, Odessa is a family story. Interesting story of two brothers who lose track of each other after leaving a small shtetl near Odessa in western Russia. As the sons of rabbis and cantors, the two brothers have different ideas about how to live with the terror of Cossack pogroms. Anti-Semitism drives one brother to fight back and join the socialist underground to fight. The other brother brings his family to America.
Following the family through generations of life in America, some keeping old world traditions and others shedding their old world ideas and becoming more American. In the end there are some ties that are so tight that you are connected even through loss.
Artson has written a novel that is based on her family history. This could possibly be almost any Jewish American family’s story. The immigration story of relatives coming to New York CIty’s Lower Eastside before and during WWII. Escaping pogroms and danger in their hometowns, coming to a new country, where the customs are different and the language is difficult. Staying together in small living conditions in NY, until the next generation feeling more American and assimilated moves out to the suburbs, in this case, NJ. Leaving behind the customs of the old country and religious observances.
In this book we follow two sisters as they grow up and move on, until the death of their mother brings them back together and as they empty the house and reminisce about their family history. Now they are interested in finding the brother who did not come to America, but they find him and his family in Israel. The sisters travel to Israel and meet the relatives they never knew they had.
Interesting story and listening to the author, Barbara Artson in an interview made the novel more interesting.
Following the family through generations of life in America, some keeping old world traditions and others shedding their old world ideas and becoming more American. In the end there are some ties that are so tight that you are connected even through loss.
Artson has written a novel that is based on her family history. This could possibly be almost any Jewish American family’s story. The immigration story of relatives coming to New York CIty’s Lower Eastside before and during WWII. Escaping pogroms and danger in their hometowns, coming to a new country, where the customs are different and the language is difficult. Staying together in small living conditions in NY, until the next generation feeling more American and assimilated moves out to the suburbs, in this case, NJ. Leaving behind the customs of the old country and religious observances.
In this book we follow two sisters as they grow up and move on, until the death of their mother brings them back together and as they empty the house and reminisce about their family history. Now they are interested in finding the brother who did not come to America, but they find him and his family in Israel. The sisters travel to Israel and meet the relatives they never knew they had.
Interesting story and listening to the author, Barbara Artson in an interview made the novel more interesting.
The Wartime Sisters
As we follow the relationship between two sisters, who have grown up in Brooklyn, NY we are educated about the the war years in Springfield, MA. It is interesting to learn that there was a very active Amory and busy munitions plant. This is a great story of two sisters, the older one serious and studious, the younger, pretty and social. The secrets they have kept from each other make interactions tense when, now, years later they move in together in Springfield and build lives during the Great War.
Again author, Lynda Cohen Loigman, has found a little known piece of history from World War II and used that as the backdrop for a fascinating novel. She has found a way to share a part of the United States history of what was happening in Springfield, MA to help the war effort and weave a story of complicated, entangled family dynamics into the history lesson.
Ruth and her younger sister, Millie are the daughters of Jewish parents living in Brooklyn, NY. Their mother has from Ruth’s perspective played favorites as a parent and Millie was the favored daughter, young pretty and social. Ruth was the bookish, studious older sister and has always resented her sister. As adults they have become estranged until the war brings them back together. Ruth is living in SPringfield with her husband and two daughters, in officer housing. Millie has lead a very different existence and she shows up needing help for herself and her young son. Her husband is gone. As the sisters work through the burdens of sibling rivalry they have carried all their lives, they are also trying to bring up their families and live during war times.
This author is also not afraid to bring out the many different dynamics that affect every family and maybe more pronounced in families living in close conditions and with the added pressures of the Army. Loigman writes about wife batterers, drinking problems and promiscuity. She shows how families, both wealthy and struggling, seemly happy and successful to the outside world can be wrestling with problems they keep hidden.
Beautifully written and emotionally engaging.
Again author, Lynda Cohen Loigman, has found a little known piece of history from World War II and used that as the backdrop for a fascinating novel. She has found a way to share a part of the United States history of what was happening in Springfield, MA to help the war effort and weave a story of complicated, entangled family dynamics into the history lesson.
Ruth and her younger sister, Millie are the daughters of Jewish parents living in Brooklyn, NY. Their mother has from Ruth’s perspective played favorites as a parent and Millie was the favored daughter, young pretty and social. Ruth was the bookish, studious older sister and has always resented her sister. As adults they have become estranged until the war brings them back together. Ruth is living in SPringfield with her husband and two daughters, in officer housing. Millie has lead a very different existence and she shows up needing help for herself and her young son. Her husband is gone. As the sisters work through the burdens of sibling rivalry they have carried all their lives, they are also trying to bring up their families and live during war times.
This author is also not afraid to bring out the many different dynamics that affect every family and maybe more pronounced in families living in close conditions and with the added pressures of the Army. Loigman writes about wife batterers, drinking problems and promiscuity. She shows how families, both wealthy and struggling, seemly happy and successful to the outside world can be wrestling with problems they keep hidden.
Beautifully written and emotionally engaging.
Deadhead and Buried ; English Cottage Garden Mystery
Deadhead and Buried; A English Cottage Garden Mystery . This is H.Y. Hanna’s newest mystery series. This is book one. I guess I can day I am a little jealous. I have always wanted to write a mystery novel and I have not been able to get started and I cannot imagine writing all the dialog. Now here is Hanna writing not one but three different series. Maybe they are a bit formula, but I have to give her credit for working on three different entertaining mystery series at one time.
In one series the protagonist is a young woman unhappy with her career and where she is living so she comes home to a small English village and opens a breakfast, scone and coffee shop. She and her friends who join her in the business help her solve crimes and make award winning scones. She is back in her home town and her parents are nearby so she can visit them for Sunday dinners. Of course after a few books an old boyfriend, now a detective inspector comes back to town also.
In her next series, she approaches witchcraft and magical principles, when her young woman protagonist is left without a family and goes in search of her lost extended family. She moves in with someone who she finds out is her grandmother in a chocolate shop and of course is secretly in love with the baron who lives in the village. Her best friend comes to visit every tine there is a murder and they solve them while savoring delicious chocolates decribed to make your mouth water.
Now she has taken the young woman protagonist, again without any family that she knows of, and sets her in London. She is living with a sweet older woman who has taken her under her wing and offers support, both with advice and warm food and a bed when she needs it. This time our protagonist finds out that her estranged grandmother has passed away and left her home and business to Poppy, an appropriate name for the future owner of a florist business. Poppy is reluctant at first but she has now gone to look at the business and see if she can sell it to get some needed money to travel. Of course a dead body and a break-in change her path and she is in the middle of solving the crimes. She wants to find out about her past and the maybe fix up the cottage and clean up the gardens. There is also that handsome mystery writer who lives in the neighboring cottage that could be a future assistant and romantic relationship.
Hanna’s novels are fairly predictable but she does keep you thinking and guessing until the end of each mystery and they are entertaining to read. So I will keep reading all of her different amateur detectives. SO much fun!!!!
In one series the protagonist is a young woman unhappy with her career and where she is living so she comes home to a small English village and opens a breakfast, scone and coffee shop. She and her friends who join her in the business help her solve crimes and make award winning scones. She is back in her home town and her parents are nearby so she can visit them for Sunday dinners. Of course after a few books an old boyfriend, now a detective inspector comes back to town also.
In her next series, she approaches witchcraft and magical principles, when her young woman protagonist is left without a family and goes in search of her lost extended family. She moves in with someone who she finds out is her grandmother in a chocolate shop and of course is secretly in love with the baron who lives in the village. Her best friend comes to visit every tine there is a murder and they solve them while savoring delicious chocolates decribed to make your mouth water.
Now she has taken the young woman protagonist, again without any family that she knows of, and sets her in London. She is living with a sweet older woman who has taken her under her wing and offers support, both with advice and warm food and a bed when she needs it. This time our protagonist finds out that her estranged grandmother has passed away and left her home and business to Poppy, an appropriate name for the future owner of a florist business. Poppy is reluctant at first but she has now gone to look at the business and see if she can sell it to get some needed money to travel. Of course a dead body and a break-in change her path and she is in the middle of solving the crimes. She wants to find out about her past and the maybe fix up the cottage and clean up the gardens. There is also that handsome mystery writer who lives in the neighboring cottage that could be a future assistant and romantic relationship.
Hanna’s novels are fairly predictable but she does keep you thinking and guessing until the end of each mystery and they are entertaining to read. So I will keep reading all of her different amateur detectives. SO much fun!!!!
Saturday, March 2, 2019
An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good
Helene Tursten writes two mystery series in her Swedish home town of Gothenburg. When she was asked to write a short story for a Christmas anthology she decided not to write about someone on the right side of the law, she created Maud, an 88 year old spinster, who has outlived her mother and sister and remains in the house she grew up in. She may look like other sweet grannies, but she is quite different. She is a criminal and she has the perfect disguise, even a for a murderer.
So what started as one short story has turned into five stories of an elderly lady getting away with murder because she can act the part of a sweet, little old lady, who cannot hear well and needs a cane to shuffle along. Yet, when she is alone she can hear perfectly and she is much stronger and agile than you would think.
This is a very clever cute premise for a collections of stories. An enjoyable read.
So what started as one short story has turned into five stories of an elderly lady getting away with murder because she can act the part of a sweet, little old lady, who cannot hear well and needs a cane to shuffle along. Yet, when she is alone she can hear perfectly and she is much stronger and agile than you would think.
This is a very clever cute premise for a collections of stories. An enjoyable read.
Educated
An amazing, incredible story. This was a book I was going to quickly read through because I kept hearing about it. But was it really something I wanted to read? I could not put this book down. It is still frustrating to me that Tara Westover was so tied into her family that she could not pull away even when it was detrimental to her well being.
Looking in form the outside and reading what Tara writes, it is easy to say leave, don't go back, what are you thinking?!?! But, I guess being on the inside, growing up with a crazy, abusive family, without the benefit of seeing other examples of a better family life, you think this is how you have to live. Even though later on Westover does see how she is being mistreated, it takes her so long to really make a final separation with her family.
What an incredible family story she tells, of living secluded from other families and even most of her won extended relatives. Her father always preparing for the end of the world. Working dangerous jobs and putting his own children in harms way with the tasks he expected them to do. Their mother not challenging the father and learning natural medicinal remedies to heal her children and her husband when they were extremely injured. Using her healing skills to earn some money to help the family. But they were all living in incredible poverty and deplorable conditions.
This is a story of how inherent intelligence can help you escape your surroundings. With very little education Tara and a few of her brothers were able to study to pass a high school equivalency test and get accepted to good colleges. they were able to get assistance from teachers who wanted to help them and they were able to escape their turbulent childhoods. It is a frustrating, but at the same time, heartwarming story of success.
Looking in form the outside and reading what Tara writes, it is easy to say leave, don't go back, what are you thinking?!?! But, I guess being on the inside, growing up with a crazy, abusive family, without the benefit of seeing other examples of a better family life, you think this is how you have to live. Even though later on Westover does see how she is being mistreated, it takes her so long to really make a final separation with her family.
What an incredible family story she tells, of living secluded from other families and even most of her won extended relatives. Her father always preparing for the end of the world. Working dangerous jobs and putting his own children in harms way with the tasks he expected them to do. Their mother not challenging the father and learning natural medicinal remedies to heal her children and her husband when they were extremely injured. Using her healing skills to earn some money to help the family. But they were all living in incredible poverty and deplorable conditions.
This is a story of how inherent intelligence can help you escape your surroundings. With very little education Tara and a few of her brothers were able to study to pass a high school equivalency test and get accepted to good colleges. they were able to get assistance from teachers who wanted to help them and they were able to escape their turbulent childhoods. It is a frustrating, but at the same time, heartwarming story of success.
Inheritance
Dani Shapiro has written multiple memoirs. She has bared her soul and shared her personal life with readers for years. Imagine finding out that who you think you are, your family history and ancestry turn out to be completely different than the story you have lived for over fifty years. Shapiro's latest memoir now shares that story, how she found out and how its has changed her life.
Though she has changed names of people in the book to protect their identities, it is an incredible and personal story. Shapiro does not seem to shy away from bearing her own soul for the public to see.
I have, like others contemplated for awhile the idea of spitting in a test tube and sending it off to find out my DNA. Also I have thought that I would, like the TV shows, research my ancestors and find out who I am related to going back generations. Always int he back of my mind is that I will find out that I am related to someone famous or that some surprise will be uncovered in my family history. But, I have always assumed it would be an exciting revelation. Dani Shapiro has a very unexpected surprise when she opens the results of her DNA test.
These results start her on a journey to discover both what her parents knew or did not know and why they never shared the information with her. She is also on a journey to find out who her biological father is and how he came to donate sperm to her existence.
This book is a both a personal story of Shapiro's life and how she comes to grips with who she really is. It is also a look at the cultural and social norms of the development of treating infertility. How researchers, doctors and scientists looked at infertility, how families approached infertility and how young men in the 1960s may have not given too much thought to the results of sharing their sperm.
It is fascinating to see how the actions of one generation impact the next generation in ways that hadn't been thought possible. Science has been moving forward so fast that people are finding out results of tests that were not thought possible a few decades ago.
I will think very carefully before I move forward to test my DNA and look into my family history.
Though she has changed names of people in the book to protect their identities, it is an incredible and personal story. Shapiro does not seem to shy away from bearing her own soul for the public to see.
I have, like others contemplated for awhile the idea of spitting in a test tube and sending it off to find out my DNA. Also I have thought that I would, like the TV shows, research my ancestors and find out who I am related to going back generations. Always int he back of my mind is that I will find out that I am related to someone famous or that some surprise will be uncovered in my family history. But, I have always assumed it would be an exciting revelation. Dani Shapiro has a very unexpected surprise when she opens the results of her DNA test.
These results start her on a journey to discover both what her parents knew or did not know and why they never shared the information with her. She is also on a journey to find out who her biological father is and how he came to donate sperm to her existence.
This book is a both a personal story of Shapiro's life and how she comes to grips with who she really is. It is also a look at the cultural and social norms of the development of treating infertility. How researchers, doctors and scientists looked at infertility, how families approached infertility and how young men in the 1960s may have not given too much thought to the results of sharing their sperm.
It is fascinating to see how the actions of one generation impact the next generation in ways that hadn't been thought possible. Science has been moving forward so fast that people are finding out results of tests that were not thought possible a few decades ago.
I will think very carefully before I move forward to test my DNA and look into my family history.
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