Ms Demeanor

Elinor Lipman is on my list of favorite authors.   I have read all her books.  She has a funny, sarcastic, and realistic writing style.  You can laugh out loud at the antics she puts her characters through. They are the over top exaggeration of things many of us think about but never do or at least not to the level here characters go to.

This time we meet Jane, a up and coming lawyer, who meets with a fellow law clerk on the roof of her apartment building in New York City one evening for drinks.  When they are discovered on the roof in stages of undress, Jane is given a leave of absence from the law firm and sentenced to house arrest.

What looks like the end of her career and a very unpleasant six months ahead of her, becomes much more interesting when she meets a fellow convict in the building.  The antics only grow from there. 

Creating extreme escapades and taking silly behavior to the upmost limit, Lipman builds a very entertaining life for two people who cannot leave the building. Finding ways to entertain themselves within their two apartments and build their relationship is the center of the novel.  Adding in a twin sister who is there for support and the tattletale neighbor who, Jane has not heard the last of after she accuses her of indecent exposure, becomes the comedic plot that this novel revolves around.

Elinor Lipman has done it again.  A novel you become absorbed in and do want to put down until the end.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman

 Portrait of an Unknown Woman is the twenty second book int he Daniel Silva series of books with Gabriel Allon as the protagonist.  He is a spy and art restorer who in the past has worked for the Israeli intelligence.

In this book he has retired and has decided to live quietly with his family in Venice.  His wife, Chiara is working for a art restoration company and they have two young children who have been enrolled in a neighborhood elementary school.  Gabriel is planning to spend his days wandering the streets and canals disassociating himself from his past demons and finding peace.  

This of course does not last long and once again Allon finds himself in the middle of intrigue and the unlawful resale of a centuries old painting.  As he tries to find out the artist who painted this clever fake of a masterpiece, he gets caught up in a journey to the dark underworld of art market.  Working with wealthy investors who are willing to pay large amounts of money without questions to unscrupulous dealers who also ask no questions.  Those dealers sell recently uncovered unique artwork to those unknowing investors who are buying them like any other commodity to show their wealth.

Allon steps in as a art forger to follow the path of the art to the dealer to the collectors home.    Uncovering a plot and once again showing there is no one who can out smart Gabriel Allon.

The Kunstlers in Paradise

 

Cathleen Schine takes the Covid pandemic head on in her new book, Kunstlers in Paradise.

A trip down memory lane for many of us who during the early days of the Covid pandemic either spent time with family we don’t usually get to live with or possibly ended up spending time somewhere we had not expected to be for longer than was the original plan.

That is how Julian Kunstler, the twenty something grandson ends up living with his grandmother Salomea Kunstler known to family as Mamie.  Julian has suffered a severe blow when his girlfriend breaks up with him, his best friend and roommate decides to go to law school and leaves their shared apartment and the bookstore he has been working in closes its doors.

He is lost.  His parents do not want him moving back in with them. He has no career ambition or direction.

When his grandmother Mamie breaks her wrist and needs a little assistance, Julian travels from New York City to Los Angeles to help out.  He moves into Mamie’s guest house at her Venice beach bungalow.  Thinking this is a stop over while he tries to find himself, Covid changes everything.  Now he is stuck living with his 93 year old grandmother and Agatha her live-in assistant.  Though it is a wonderful way to be isolated during the pandemic, Julian feels guilty that he is not suffering as much as his parents and friends in New York. 

To pass the time Mamie starts to share stories of her life.  She reminisces about leaving what the Kunstler family will remember as paradise, their home in Vienna, until 1939, Hitler marched into the city.  The family came to America and settled in Los Angeles.  Mamie was a youngster and traveled with her mother, father and grandfather.  

The book tries to compare the horrific trauma of Mamie and her family leaving Europe and settling in America, being exiled to being unmoored during Covid.  Leaving your home and not being able to return. Feeling guilty when you survive and others do not. Mamie quotes Christopher Isherwood: “I am bitterly ashamed that I am here in safety.”

Later Julian will also quote Isherwood when he meets Sophie, a fellow dog walker who lives across the street, as he walks his grandmother’s dog. They meet daily to walk the dogs on opposite sides of the street shouting to each other to converse.  As they become friendlier, they meet on Sophie’s lawn with masks and Julian shares the stories his grandmother is telling him.

As the story develops we hear how Mamie and her family escaped Vienna and came to Venice CA. How her mother found work in Hollywood, her father a composer was not as successful and found this new country difficult to navigate. Her grandfather was her closest friend when Mamie was a child, they strolled the beach together and talked to people they met. She talks about the movie stars they knew. Julian writes it all down and thinks he may write a play based on Mamie’s story. He starts to enjoy hearing her remembrances about famous people like Greta Garbo and famous composer, Arnold Schoenberg.  Mamie goes onto to become a violinist.

In this crazy tapestry of family life, we see how a family left a life they thought was paradise until it was no longer a place of beauty, to a place that tries hard to be paradise.  We see how people can make a place a paradise when they need to find happiness during a difficult time fInding themselves and creating a happy life during hardship.

The Talk

 The Talk by Darrin Bell is one of the best graphic novels I have read.

Along with fascinating storyline, a memoir about his life and thoughts on racism and being a minority in this country, his artwork is engaging to look at and his lettering is easy to read.  His page layout also keeps the story flowing and is never difficult to follow.

Darrin Bell grows up the child of a white Jewish mother and a Black father. His mother is always super aware that she needs to protect her son from the world around them.  He is growing up in Los Angeles, Ca in the 1980s.  The Rodney King riots will not even happen until 1992, but his mother is aware of the dangers of a young black boy on the streets, being mistaken by the police.  He is never aloud to own a realistic looking water gun.  She also defends in school when teachers do  not understand him or try to stereotype him.  Though as he grows up he is hyper aware of the trouble that can befall him for no reason other than his appearance, he learns to stand up for himself.  There are examples of being pulled over by the police when he is driving a rental car and of a teacher accusing him of plagiarizing when he writes a really good paper. 

Darrin becomes a talented cartoonist and draws for the school newspaper. then becomes a editorial cartoonist and eventually wins a Pulitzer prize for his artwork.  He chronicles all the historic moments of his life from the "Black Lives Matter "movement, the deaths of so many young black men at the hands of the police to the "Twin Towers" coming down. He writes about having children of his own and how he has to decided how and when to have "The Talk" with his own young son. 

Lets hope that soon it will not be necessary for these kinds of discussions between parents and their children and that we will all find a way to live in harmony and equality here in the United States.