The Kingdom of Sand by Andrew Holleran

Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2022--San Antonio

The Kingdom of Sand by Andrew Holleran was named as one of the Top 20 Books of 2022 by the London Times and one of the Top 5 Books of 2022 by the Los Angeles Times.  It is different from most novels.  It is really just a description of a slice of life of an aging gay man in a small town in Florida.  He has a local friend who isn't close enough to rely on each other, but who occasionally calls to invite him to his home to watch a classic film or hear a recording of an opera.  He has returned to this town because of his parents were becoming incapacitated.  His father dies and his mother, after having to be in a wheel chair for several months, everntually goes to a nursing home in Gainesville.  He has a very limited sex life.   He stops sometimes at a gay cinema at a crossroads he passes returning from Gainesville.  He has a regular sex buddy who is the partner of a female physical therapist in the town.   Even though his parents have both died, he has remained in their home in the small town except for occasional trips to D.C. for 2-3 weeks due to a part-time job.  He uses those opportunities to interact with old friends there and returns to his rather lonely existence in the small town.  On evenings when not invited to his friend's home, he walks the town observing the changes that have taken place (such as the slow deterioration of certain homes and the residents that are new vs. the ones who lived there in the past, etc.), the sunsets, the life in the flat areas that were once part of a large lake, etc.  His friend eventually dies, and his life becomes even more restrictive and alone.  He focuses on who he finds attractive (from a distance), but he continues to be a loner and to accept and even prefer being alone.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Foster by Claire Keegan

Saturday, Dec. 17, 2022--San Antonio

Foster by Claire Keegan is a very short book (under 100 pages), but one that was short listed as a finalist for the Booker Prize in 2022 and noted by The Times as one of the 50 best novels of this century so far.  It is the story of a young girl in Ireland whose age is not given but is young enough to be placed on the lap or shoulders of a man and old enough to have developed some basic reading skills.  She comes from a poor family with a father who drinks and gambles, with far too much too many children, and a mother who is expecting another baby during the summer the story takes place.  An aunt and an uncle have offered to take the girl to live with them during the summer as her mother deals with your pregnancy while also trying to keep the farm running, since the latter burden has fallen on her for years due to her husband's behavior.  The summer proves to be an awakening for the girl.  She is taught manners, she improves her reading to the point that she can read books on her own, she observes how others' lives are lived, she learns of a secret related to the family who is fostering her, and she matures--all while falling in love with the new family.  She returns to her own family so changed by the end of the summer that it is obvious that life will be a disappointment to her and a hardship for her--that she has lived through maybe the best time of her entire life already at such a young age.  I gave the book 5 stars out of 5.

The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela

Friday, Dec. 16, 2022--San Antonio

The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela was shortlisted for the National Book Award and named on a number of lists of top books of 2022.  It's the story of a 37-year-old gay man, Andres, who is a university professor and has returned to from the West Coast to his suburban hometown on Long Island to assist his mother in taking care of his father during a time of illness.  The trip just happens to coincide with the 20th reunion of his Catholic school graduating class.  This gives him a chance to remember what it was like living in this suburban town as in one of the few minority migrant families and the relationships he built with their children.  He also reconnects with his best female friend whose parents are also professors and who happens to miss the reunion because she has been committed to a mental hospital after having gone off her medications for schizophrenia and also with his first love who is now married with children.  Although Andres has been married for some time to a medical doctor of Dominican descent, this trip coincides with his husband having traveled to Africa on a professional trip, so he is able to remain in Babylon for a few weeks.  The book covers many topics:  the need for minorities to be careful at all times and to always perform better than others, the problems minorities have with the police, maintaining fidelity in a marriage, the effects of jealousy between siblings, the question of whether and when to have children, the experience of "coming out," the difficulties of being a liberal within a mostly conservative community, etc.  The book includes the back stories of Andre's parents, his brother and his life, a classmate who was his nemesis and bragged about bashing a queer man in high school and is now an evangelical minister, his best friend Simone (in the mental hospital) and her family, and his first love and his family, so it is not just the life story of this one young man.  But when Andre is telling his own story in the first person, it is quite enjoyably humorous at times making the book come more alive.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Men in My Situation by Per Petterson

Friday, Dec. 9, 2022--San Antonio

Men in My Situation by Per Petterson is a novel by a Norwegian author which has been translated into English.  It was listed as a top book of 2022 by the New York Public Library.  I knew going into it that it would be "different" from what I had read about it.  It is a story of the thoughts and interactions with others of a depressed man over a period of about 6 months that follows a year that has been terrible for him--a year in which his parents and two of his remaining 3 siblings have perished in a ferry fire and then his wife, who was already unhappy in the marriage but has stayed with him for a year because of the first tragedy, finally leaves him taking their 3 daughters with her.  He thinks back through all that has happened as well as describing what is now happening in his life.  He is a successful and well-known author of 3 books who is writing his fourth, but he comes from a working class background and has little in common with the "beautiful people" who his wife has associated with more and more as time has passed.  They have never really become friends of his.  It becomes obvious to both him and the reader that his life has been going off the rails for some time and is continuing to do so during the current time of the story.  He has cut himself off from his lifelong best friend.  His wife, after only about 3 months since leaving him, cuts him off from seeing his children on a regular basis.  He drinks at bars and picks up anonymous women for a night of sex which is usually non-satisfactory.  Only one person, a married women who lives with her husband across the hall from his apartment, seems to show any concern for how he is doing as his life spirals downward.  Because he is an author, he has no work colleagues, so he spends hours traveling around places (both in Oslo and in the surrounding countryside as far as a town across the border in Sweden) he remembers from his past.  Beginning as a very slow read which almost made me quit the novel, patterns slowly develop as the random memories described begin to fit together.  The result is that I read more and more pages each day as I became emotionally invested in his life.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.