Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

Thursday, June 16, 2022--San Antonio

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee deals with topics that are not easy to read-child molestation, child depression, child suicide, consensual sex between an adult and a 17-year-old, etc.  It is difficult to read at times and heartwarming at others.  The author has woven into the story aspects of Korean folk beliefs, since a set of the characters or Korean immigrants.  He also seems to have collected lots of facts that he wanted to use in the story whether meaningful or not. (It's my impression that a number of authors fall into the trap of including extraneous information that isn't needed for the story, but let's the author show how intelligent he is.)  I enjoyed reading the parts of the book that carried the story of its main characters forward.  I gave the book a rating of 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

Saturday, June 11, 2022--San Antonio

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara is the best book I have read so far this year.  It's also the scariest--not due to being a horror tale but because of its prediction of the future of the U.S. based on events already happening; it all seems so realistic and possible (and even probable)!  The book begins in the late 1800s with an alternative history of how what we know as the United States actually consists then as the "Free States," the "Southern Colonies," and the "Western Colonies."  At another point in the novel, it is indicated that Texas has remained as a separate country.  That opening section introduces two families who are among the wealthiest in the Free States--the Bingham's and the Griffiths.  The book continues through separate time periods up to the 2090's.  At each stage, the same last names crop up.  It is implied that the characters are from continuing generations of those two original families, although jumps in the time periods leave out generations and therefore, do not tie them together; the reader never knows what has happened in the generations in-between which means we never know how the newest generations are actually tied to the previous characters we have met.  The intention of the author isn't to tell the stories of these families, but to tell the story of how a country changes as time passes and the factors that influence those changes--creation of wealth and the effects of it being redistributed and becoming diminished through generations, attempts to create a better life for the future, the effects of rebellious family members who are insistent on going their own way in terms of living life, the disconnect between branches of a family that develops in various locations as members have immigrated elsewhere, the way that varying laws affect different family members' lives  according to where they live, the affect that global warning has on the lives of the people and the government, the effects of new viruses developing every few years creating crises, the effect global traveling has on increasing the spread of such viruses, the effect that various crises can have on governments, the tendency for governments to become more autocratic when dealing with a population that is becoming more and more resistant to rules related to continuing crises, the ways that life changes for everyone due to the cumulative affects of all of these events, etc.  The Bingham and Griffith characters, rather than being what the story is about, are just a way to allow the reader to reflect on how the passage of time and circumstances has resulted life being so different for everyone as represented by the Binghams and Griffiths of different generations.  The book has caused me to reflect on how likely it is that the future of our country may NOT be very bright.  I gave the book a rating of 5 stars out of 5 although there are readers who have disliked it because they wanted it to be the story of the families rather than of a changing country or because they did not like the implication that our country is possibly facing a downhill slide in terms of quality of life.

All of You Every Single One by Beatrice Hitchman

 Monday, May 30, 2022--San Antonio

All of You Every Single One by Batrice Hitchman covers the period from 1911-1946. It starts in Sweden where a woman married to a playwright realizes she is unhappy and discontented after meeting a female tailor whose present provides a spark of excitement and interest.  The two women leave for Vienna where they plan to build a life of their own together.  They settle in a Bohemian area of the city and slowly find friends among other fringe members of society--a Jewish landlady, a gay neighbor, a child they raise as guardians, etc.; the result is that they become what is known today as "a chosen family" by those who find their lives do not fit within the conventional expectations of most members of society and sometimes find themselves rejected by their blood families.  The novel, however, is really about how their lives are much like everyone else's with the added factors of 1) always being alert for dangerous reactions from others who can be threatened by people who are different and do not follow the "rules" of society and 2) not being able to accomplish among themselves what cisgender people do--not able to marry, not able to have children when they wish they could, etc.  However, life continues through these various challenges with some quite shocking results and even without as much interference as might be expected.  Side relationships develop with members of high society, escapes are required to avoid the law and later the Nazis, hopes are raised and dashed, and secrets are exposed.  But life goes on.  The story has such scope and such interesting characters that I kept imagining that it could become a Masterpiece Theater production for BBC/PBS.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders

Thursday, May 26, 2022--San Antonio

Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders is on many lists of the best collections of short stories.  Saunders is best known for short stories and is considered to be among the best of American short story writers.  I found most of these stories to be delightfully entertaining and funny enough to have me laughing aloud.  Saunders has a knack for writing the things that go through a person's mind that are thought to be inappropriate to state aloud.  In writing these things, the reader gets a better understanding of the characters than one would ever have with a live acquaintance or even friend.  Since some parts of the book were not as good as others, I will rate the book as 4 stars out of 5.  

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

Wednesday, May 11, 2022--San Antonio

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia received very positive reviews, was listed as a novel of note by the Washington Post, and received the Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction Award last year.  It is an interesting book, but it was not quite as good as I expected it to be.  Several times throughout the book, the wording caused confusion for me and I had to reread either to determine for sure who was saying what or what was actually being said.  Plus the ending came too fast for me--a very quick passage tying up details regarding 4 different characters rather than a tidy close.  The stories were interesting though--all eight main characters being women who faced very trying times in their lives.  Among the difficulties were workplace discrimination, dangers and other difficulties related to the civil war in Cuba, racial discrimination among Cubans both at the time of the revolution and today, spousal abuse, child molestation, drug abuse, trauma from seeing a parent killed, trying to get by in Castro's Cuba, dangers of gangs in Central America, child migration without a parent, immigration raids, border retention centers for families, deportation, etc.  I can't highly recommend the book, but it was interesting and is worth 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Young Mungo by Douglass Stuart

Monday, May 2, 2022--San Antonio

Young Mungo by Douglass Stuart has gotten rave reviews this spring.  The same author wrote Shuggy Bain which also got rave reviews and won the Booker Prize a couple of years ago.  Both books deal with poor families in Glassgow.  And both books are told in the words of a young gay boy--the previous book by a boy who is a child and the latter by a boy who is an adolescent (14 going on 15, required to stay in school until he is 16, and faces the constant danger of being taken away from his siblings if the government learns their mother is not living in the home with them).  But there are differences.  The earlier book was about the hardships of being poor which are mostly caused by having a mother who makes bad choices in her attempts to try to improve their lives; the sexuality of the storyteller is background information.  There is still a mother making bad choices in Young Mungo, but she is mostly an absent mother who leaves her 3 children to fend for themselves, and the storyteller's gay sexuality is a major factor in this story as he "discovers" he is gay (in addition to being sweet and sensitive), as he maneuvers around the expectations of his older brother who runs a protestant gang and expects his brother to participate in their violent and illegal activities, and as he deals with his need to be mothered which is provided mostly by his slightly older sister (about to turn 16) who feels she must deal with all the problems caused by the absent alcoholic mother who feels she should not be stuck with children since she is still young and desires male companionship and freedom to live her own life.  Set in the 1980s following the closing of the shipbuilding yard and the mines during the Margaret Thatcher period, life is hard for everyone in the slums in the east end of town.  Plus, there are religious rivalries between the protestants and the Catholics like in Northern Ireland.  Added to that, being a "poofter" is socially unacceptable and is like having a target on one's back for anyone to abuse you at any time, so a young gay boy must hide his sexuality and try to live a straight life or face a miserable life of hiding from society and face being bullied and beaten regularly.  Mungo finds love and does not want to live a false life, and the decisions made by members of his family because of it put him in grave danger alone among strangers and later when discovered with his boyfriend.  The book is quite depressing, but not in a way that it is a turnoff for the reader, since there are joys, too, and hope. I gave the book 5 stars out of 5.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

 Saturday, Apr. 23, 2020--San Antonio

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo confused me at first.  There is no capitalization except for formal terms/names and no punctuation except for commas.  So a line would start with a lower-case letter, then after the last word of the sentence, there would be a big blank space before there would be more words with the first one starting with a lower-case letter.  My first thought was whether the Kindle version I was reading was corrupted with missing portions not downloaded.  But soon, I figured out the pattern--short indentations for starting a new paragraph or what would be quoted text (no quotation marks) by a different character.  Then reading it flowed easily.  The book, which won the Booker Prize in 2019, became a fascinating story which concentrates on telling the lives of many connected characters both in the present and over multiple generations.  Most of the characters are immigrants or children of immigrants of African descent from either Africa or the Caribbean who are now living or have lived in England, some in London and some in the Newcastle area.  Most of the main characters are women, and most of those are involved some how in the women's liberation movement.  Several of the women have married white men or are the children or light-skinned descendants of one or more interracial marriages.  The book is much like reading short stories of the lives of these various women, but the book as a whole eventually ties them all together in various ways.  As the reader, once I understood this aspect of the book, I started trying to figure out the relationship before it was revealed and if I couldn't, I became eager to get far enough for the relationship to be revealed so that the puzzle (of the connection[s] to others already introduced) would become clearer.  Even toward the end when I though I was reading the last chapter of the book where many of the presently living characters come together, there follows a short epilogue that ties several more of them together.  It's a good book, I gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.