The Need by Helen Phillips

Wednesday, June 30, 2021--San Antonio

The Need by Helen Phillips is requires a lot of thinking for trying to understand it.  In the book, Phillips seems to be trying to express what is going on in a woman's mind as she handles the burden of juggling a career, a marriage to a husband who travels, raising two young children, and keeping a household running (meals, laundry, cleaning, etc.). In many of the reviews of it, references are made to it being a horror story.  The book was long-listed for The National Book Award and was listed among the best novels of 2019 by a number of publications and organizations.  Ratings by readers cover the whole range of possibilities.  The book was easy to read, but hard to understand (to make sense of).  I gave the book 3 stars out of 5.

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Tuesday, June 22, 2021--San Antonio

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne was not a book I had on my list of books to consider reading, but I saw it among a list of books TIME magazine was recommended.  It's actually a book that was published back in 2017 which was named Book of the Year by Book of the Month Club and was picked by readers of the New York Times as one of the best books of the year.  

As I started reading the book, I found myself really enjoying the story while also thinking there were too many coincidences occurring in it for it to be considered seriously as a good book.  As I got further, I laughed a lot.  Then I reacted emotionally to events that were occurring.  I became invested in the stories of the various characters and didn't want to put the book down.  The central character's (Cyril's) life is covered from birth to near death.  It takes place mainly in Ireland and greatly deals with the injustices within the country due to the influence of the Catholic church and its priests.  Cyril is born to a teenage mother who is shamed, physically abused, and run out of town by the local priest when it becomes known that she is pregnant.  When he is born, he is given up for adoption and ends up in an upper-class home of a man and a woman who tend to mostly ignore him and are always quick to remind him that they are his "adoptive parents" and that he will never be a REAL Avery (their last name).  Cyril is eventually sent off to a private boarding school.  As he matures, he realizes he is gay, but in the Ireland of the times, he never admits it to anyone.  He has a few quick sexual encounters in parks and other places--none of them satisfying.  He dates a couple of women (since that is what everyone pushes him to do and is what all gay men tended to do in Ireland at that time to hide their sexual orientation).  Eventually, there is an event that results in everyone knowing he is gay and his running away from Ireland leaving a tangled mess of emotions behind.  As time passes, he experiences danger, love, crises, etc., before finally returning to Ireland where he tries to make up for lost time through family reconciliations and new connections.   It's a book that can bring the reader to highs of joy and lows of sorrow more than once.  And it can leave the reader laughing aloud so many times.  

By the time I finished the book, I was willing to mostly overlook the too many examples of coincidences.  The story was just so compelling, the characters so interesting, and the pleasure of reading it so wonderful that I eventually gave the book 4 stars out of 5. 

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

Tuesday, June 15, 2021--San Antonio

I became aware of the book The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright because of an NPR story.  It's a unique publishing situation.  The book was written in the early 1940's, but was not published until this year.  The author is a Black man who had two very successful novels published (one before and one after this book) plus other publications.  This book was not published at the time, because the publishing company thought the readers would not be comfortable with the first quarter of it which deals with a young Black man being picked up by 3 policemen as he walks home from his job working for a wealthy family next door to another family where an intruder, unknown to him, has killed the residents that day.  In an attempt to quickly solve the crime, the policemen dismiss everything he tells them and torture him through the night.  Finally, they tell him they can send him home to his pregnant wife if he signs a paper (which he is now too disoriented to read and includes a confession to having committed the murders. 

It was difficult for me to read those pages, just as the original publishers had expected it to be then.  I had to stop and wait for another day to continue.  But I forced myself to go back to it because I wanted to know about the underground life he had lived and how he had managed to escape from the police to live it.  The book has gotten very good reviews, and it was quite interesting.  It includes another short piece that the author wrote that explains his (the author's) background story of having been raised by a stern 7th Day Adventist grandmother and how that affected his writing of this short book.  Overall, I enjoyed the book and I appreciated the added feature that explained so much of it.  I gave the book 3 stars out of 5.