The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

 Sunday, Mar. 21, 2021--San Antonio

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom is a book gifted to me by friends who had read it.  It takes place on a plantation in Virginia in the late 1700s/early 1800s.  Unlike other plantation novels that emphasize the relationships between the white owners and the black slaves, this one brings in a major character who leaves Ireland on a ship with her family which is contracted to be indentured servants in America.  When her parents both die during the passage, the captain, who uses his ship to financially support his family plantation, brings the girl to live out her indentured servitude at the plantation.  Female slaves there fall into two main categories--house slaves and field slaves.  The girl is assigned to live in the kitchen house, an outbuilding where the cooking takes place, and to assist there with cooking plus having chores assigned to her in the big house.  Unlike other whites on the plantation, she lives with the slaves who become like family to her.  This sets up a contrast in outlook and reaction for her vs. the white family members and the white overseer.  The story covers approximately 40 years.  So many of the turns in the story are based on a persons making wrong assumptions and persons not speaking up to clarify the situation that has caused the wrong assumption.  Almost everything that goes wrong in the story is due to this.  Eventually, I found myself wanting to yell at some of the characters for the poor decisions they were making.  They story is easy to read and moves at a fast enough pace, but I lost respect for it as the poor decisions piled up toward the end.  I rated it 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells

 Sunday, Mar. 7, 2021--San Antonio

The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells is a book originally written in German and translated into English.  It won the European Prize for Literature in 2016, is listed among the 100 German must-read books, and was on the best seller list in Germany for almost two years.  It took all of Europe and eventually much of the world by storm due to its translation into many languages.  The book is essentially the story of a family concentrating on the lives of the three children after the sudden death of their parents,  the friends and relationships they have, and especially on the life of one of those children.  The story flows easily for the reader, and the characters are all interesting.  The book, although well reviewed and a prize winner, is often referenced as a tearjerker.  I enjoyed it and read it rather quickly.  I gave the book a rating of 5 stars out of 5.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Tuesday, Mar. 2, 2021--San Antonio

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker Prize in 2008.  It is a delightful novel--funny, interesting, and far more entertaining than the film version which was recently released on Netflix.  As a person who has traveled independently to India 6 times and has observed the relationships that exist there in small communities and big cities between those who have money and those who are the working poor, I found the descriptions of life and of interactions between people of different "stations" in life to be so authentic.  Balram, the main character, is poor and from a small village.  What makes the novel so much fun to read is the way that he expresses himself at times--both the structure of his sentences and the observations he has made of life.  I often found myself laughing aloud.  The book as a whole, however, is also about far more than this man's life; it is about the problems faced by everyone in just getting by in India due to dysfunctional government agencies, corruption, moral contradictions, the perpetuation of the caste restrictions in informal ways (since they formally are banned by law), etc.  If you read this novel, you will get a vivid picture of what life is like in India and what people of all standings in the country face in trying just to live their lives.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.