"Circling the Sun": Into Africa With a Fearless Heroine

We’re all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren’t your own person at all—are you? The real question is whether or not you will risk what it takes to be happy.

Beryl Markham's prophetic statement "I could come through nearly anything my world might throw at me" after being nearly mauled by a neighbor's pet lion, becomes her mantra for a life of adventurous tumult.

In Paula McClain's "Circling the Sun" McClain delves once again into a novelized memoir like her huge success "The Paris Wife," the fictionalized autobiography of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson.  Instead of focusing on expats behaving badly in New York during the 1920s, this time McClain sets her sites on expats behaving badly in a more wild and earthy backdrop, Kenya before it was Kenya.

"Circling the Sun" follows the unflappable Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo, east to west, across the Atlantic.  Her 1942 memoir "West with the Night" came to fame when Ernest Hemingway raved about it and the writing prowess of Markham.

McClain's account of Markham follows more of her upbringing - moving with her family from England when she was 2 years old to the untamed landscape of a 1,500 acre farm in Kenya.  Her father was a distracted farmer who was better at horse training and her mother was neglectful and unsuited to the African wilderness and subsequently leaves Beryl and her father.  Beryl's childhood is far from ordinary.  She learns to spear fight with the local tribe boys and runs free on her father's ranch.  She's fearless and headstrong.

Her life continues to throw obstacles in her path from poverty to a loveless marriage to a jealous and cruel drunk to being exiled and giving up a baby, and she navigates each with grace - each tragedy that could destroy an ordinary person only serves to strengthen Beryl's resolve to live life her own way. She becomes the youngest and only female race horse trainer in Kenya, and she also becomes a famous female pilot.

The novel focuses heavily on Beryl's love interest - the womanizing, poetry spouting, large game hunter, Denys Finch Hatton who Robert Redford played in "Out of Africa." Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) loved him much the way that Beryl did.  He was a commitment phobe who used women for his own purposes, but that didn't stop Beryl's infatuation and pursuit of Denys.

It is Hatton's love of flying that draws her to it, and leads to her to pursue it even after Denys dies in a tragic airplane crash.

The novel is easy to read with beautiful imagery of the untamed African wilderness throughout.  It's ambitious with a rowdy cast of secondary characters who are for the most part historically accurate in their depiction. I did get a little bit restless by the end of it feeling as if McClain was hurrying through the years too quickly or maybe trying to do too much and was running out of room to finish.

Overall, though, I was caught up in the romantic sun drenched Kenyan landscapes, and the unflinching life of a very strong woman whose mere presence felt magnetic.  If only all of us could use the tragedies of our lives to build us stronger than weaker.  And if we could learn to live our own lives vs. follow what everyone else deems appropriate for us.  Beryl Markham will remind you what it means to live your life out loud.

"A Monster Calls": Letting the truth loose

"Stories are wild creatures," the monster says.  "When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?"

Back in the summer of 2011, I attended a Summer Writing Institute at Millersville University.  The professor in charge of the whole institute recommended the book 'A Monster Calls' by Patrick Ness to all of us.  I paged through it when she passed it around for us to inspect; it looked dark, and creepy - a twisted childhood nightmare.

It's not that at all.

This book is one that I will be recommending to everyone, and one that I am so glad my daughter, Raina, and I chose for our 2nd mother / daughter book club selection.

I finished it in a day.  Raina (who is now in 5th grade) finished it in about 3 days.  We both loved it.

The premise of the book is that thirteen year old Conor is visited by a giant yew tree monster different from the monster in his reoccurring nightmares.  The visiting monster tells Conor that he only comes walking in matters of life and death.  Conor's mother has been very sick so Conor believes the monster is there to save her, but in reality what the monster wants more than anything is for Conor to tell the story of his truth.  When the clock strikes 12:07,  the monster comes walking and shares 3 separate stories with Conor that explore the complexity of human beings.

Big questions of evil and good, invisibility and loneliness, loss and pain, the power of holding on to our beliefs, betrayal, revenge, and telling the truth resonate through this beautifully crafted novel.

The story itself was inspired by Siobhan Dowd, who died from cancer before she was able to write it. Ness does her story incredible justice and 'A Monster Calls' won both the Carnegie Medal for literature and the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration (the illustrations by Jim Kay are haunting and absolutely perfect for this novel).

Raina and I decided to go out for sushi (which she discovered that she loves on our trip to Mexico ).  At first she was distracted by the activity or people pouring into our favorite local sushi place, Kumi.  But when we started uncovering the layers of the monster's 3 stories, she got her quizzical look on her face and asked important questions and gave insights into what she believes in situations where the truth is involved.  We discussed at length when it is important to lie to yourself and when it is important to tell the truth because the monster tells Conor "Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all." Most people in the book (with the exception of the monster) lie to Conor possibly to protect him, but it is only to his detriment.

I don't want to give the entire story of this book away, so I will stop gushing about it.  Know that it is short.  It isn't necessarily a happy book, but there are moments that the banter between the monster and Conor might make you smile.  You also might cry, but I don't think this book will give you nightmares of any sort.  It will stick with you after you finish it. And, it will make you think deeply about the complexities of the human spirit; we often have contradictory thoughts, but it is our actions that are most important of all.

"The Vacationers": A Book to Take On Vacation

I just returned from a fabulous vacation in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.  Living in Chicagoland means that weather through April is iffy at best.  One sunny day of 65 degrees can easily transgress into a snowy day of 39 degrees.  On Saturday (the day we returned from Mexico where the weather was 85 degrees and sunny every day), Mother Nature melted down with one huge 24 hour tantrum.  It rained, it snowed, the sun came out, and then we even had thundersnow before the winds started punishing us for being human.

Because I was lucky enough to rejuvenate in Mexico, the tantrum didn't bother me.  I stayed inside and snuggled up next to the fire with a big cup of coffee and finished the second book that I took with me to Mexico - Emma Straub's novel "The Vacationers."

I admit that I purchased the book because of the pretty cover with the people floating in a pool of aqua blue (my favorite color).  It's a shallow reason for purchasing a book, but it called to me on the table of recommended reading at Barnes and Noble.  I'm so glad it did, because from the first chapter I was addicted to the story of the Post family's two week vacation to Mallorca, Spain.

The Posts are a family in crisis.  Jim, the 60 year old Post patriarch, recently retired from his job as Editor at the magazine Gallant, and spends his days moping around the house.  His early and abrupt retirement stemmed from his affair with a 20 something intern named Madison.  She tempted him and he gave in to her youthful seduction and was "let go" by the board.  His wife, Franny who is a food journalist and loves to cook, vows to never forgive him his transgression.  Their daughter, Sylvia, a petulant college bound slacker is saddened by her parents, but even more disgusted by her gym rat brother, Bobby, who has become a Miami stereotype - a muscle clad, club hopper who hates his real estate job and is indifferent to his cougar girlfriend, Carmen.  No one in the family enjoys Carmen's company because her thoughts veer to physical fitness all the time and she shares no common interests with the cultured Posts.

Along with the four Posts and Carmen, a gay couple, Charles and Lawrence join the family for this two week getaway.  Charles is Franny's oldest friend and confident and his decade younger husband, Lawrence is set on adopting a baby.

Once they arrive in Mallorca, the tensions and truths start to come out.  All of the Posts and even Charles and Lawrence must deal with infidelity in some way throughout the 14 day stay (the book's chapters are divided by the days - 14 chapters for the 14 day vacation).  Sylvia is still reeling from her kinda sorta boyfriend's betrayal with her best friend, and Bobby gets into predicaments because he doesn't want a long term commitment to Carmen.  Even Charles and Lawrence must deal with infidelity.

The men in the book are a bit drab with the exception of Sylvia's Spanish Calvin Klein model tutor, Joan (pronounced Jo-ahhhn).  Jim's sullen sulkiness becomes redundant, and Bobby's adolescent behavior is boorish.  Charles and Lawrence are almost indistinguishable.  Sylvia, Franny and Carmen add some spice to the book, but oddly the ones that are supposedly unlikable become likable.  Franny bugged me more than Jim.  Sylvia was more annoying that Bobby in parts.  And Carmen, the one the family liked the least, was at times the most genuine and likable character in the book even if her whole life revolved around the next workout and protein shake.

Nonetheless, the setting in the mountains of Mallorca along with the conversations and thoughts of the characters and their dinners together (tense and delicious), were enough to sustain a great narrative revolving around growth.

How do you move on after failure and heartbreak? How do you start the next phase of your life? How do you know for certain when it's time to move on in a different direction? All of these questions are central to this story and Straub is able to equally capture the tension and the wit in delicate family situations.

Even with the too quick wrap up at the end of the novel which seemed less than real, the rest of the story pulses with the times in life where we are conflicted with who we are and what decisions we need to make to move forward.  And who doesn't love a vacation story that ends well (especially when reading a book about a vacation on a vacation)?

"The Snow Child": She comes from the land of ice and snow

I read seasonably.

In the summers, I enjoy romantic stories without heavy handed writing, books that I can get through quickly, but that still have substance.  In the winter, I enjoy the sad, hearty historical fiction books, books that are a challenge and can take me weeks to finish.  Because we took a break from our Chicagoland harsh winter and went south to Florida to feel some sunshine, I was torn on what to read.  Do I go with my more summery books, or should I stay with a heavy winter book? I opted to take one of each and see how much reading I could accomplish in the week I was away.  My wintery book, "The Snow Child" by Eowyn Ivey, made me feel warmer than the book I chose as my summer read (Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins).

Although I was reading about Jack and Mabel, a couple who moves from Pennsylvania to the Alaskan wilderness in the 1920s to begin a homestead after suffering the birth of a stillborn child, I felt warm due to the "Little House on the Prairie"-esque vibe of their lives.  It's quiet and a bit lonely inside of a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness.  They need to live off of moose meat - all winter long (talk about getting tired of leftovers) - in order to survive.  Mabel continues to suffer under the crushing weight of the Alaskan winter with it's darkness and hostile environment that leads her to thoughts of loneliness and lack.  For Jack to succeed in potato farming, he needs to do countless hours of back breaking physical labor that is both hard and dangerous on his aging body.  But the warmth of their love in their small, tidy cabin in the woods gives comfort and hope.  This book paid reverence to the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, but made no mistake about the dangers of this wintry world where ice can swallow people whole, and humans cannot survive without a struggle against loneliness, darkness and isolation.

As the story unfolds, the couple who have longed their whole lives together for a child but are now too old to have one, uncharacteristically become playful during a snowstorm.  They build a snow child, and Jack even carves a beautiful face for it.  Mabel puts a hat and gloves on it, and in the morning when they wake up, the snow child sculpture they created is gone.  Mabel soon witnesses a little girl who cautiously approaches their home (almost like a wild animal seeking shelter) wearing the hat and gloves that she placed on the snow creation.  Is this the child that they have always longed to have? Or are they imagining this girl because they are suffering from loneliness and they've always wished to have a child with them?

In Eowyn Ivey's debut novel, she shows amazing prowess as a magical realism writer.  She creates quiet ambiguity with her storyline, and she crafts characters who are believable and likable.  The characters and the readers know about the fairy tale that tells the story of an old couple who want a child and fashion one out of ice and snow.  The fairy tale never ends happily, though.  The child melts or leaves forever in the spring.  Mabel truly believes that she and Jack have created a child, just like in the fairy tale she remembers from her childhood.  The girl that comes into their world, who goes by the name of Faina and travels with a loyal red fox, seems magical enough - with her hair in tangles of the Alaskan wilderness and the smell of the herbs and nature. She leaves blizzards in her wake, holds single snowflakes in her palm, and most of all she can survive the harsh, unforgiving landscape of the Alaskan winter unscathed.  Ivey divulges nothing and even leads the reader to question Faina's existence by never using quotation marks when she talks to anyone.  Is she real? Is she imagined? Is she magical? It's hard to know even by the end what's real and what's imagined not just for the reader, but for the characters in the novel as well.  Mabel swears that Faina is magical and even warns against getting her too warm out of fear that she will melt just like in the fairytale.  "You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers." Jack, however, knows something about Faina's past that he promises never to tell anyone even if it's the right thing to do.

What is clear, though, is the magical charm of this simple story of a couple who longed to be parents and find themselves in the role asking themselves the same questions parents everywhere ask.  What decisions do you leave to your child? How do you allow your child freedom without losing them forever? How do you hold onto someone who only wants to be free? When do you push and when do you let go? What is done out of protective love and what is done out of the fear of loss? What role does fate play in our lives and do we have the power to change our fate or are we powerless in the face of it? Do you believe in miracles?

Many questions come up throughout this novel, but the mysterious world of Faina will keep the reader interested, regardless of the season that he or she chooses to read this book.  "The Snow Child" is an impressive debut novel that will allow you to love the winter a bit more and see the beauty in the snow and ice and harsh extremes.  It will show you how strong every individual is even when they believe they are weak, and it will make you question the notion of "good parenting" without lectures or research.  It's just good, magical storytelling in any season.

"The Book of Unknown Americans": Much needed empathy for the plight of Latino Immigrants

“We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we’re not that bad, maybe even that we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate then?” - Micho Alvarez

We moved from a predominately white, blue collar small town in Pennsylvania to a predominately white, white collar small town in Illinois.  Unlike our small town in Pa, here there is a high percentage of Latino Americans.  We heard reports before we moved about which local schools to avoid because of the influx of Latino immigrants ruining the education at those schools.  We heard that test scores for a few of the local elementary schools are abysmal because of all the non-native speakers, that teachers don't know what to do with all these ESL kids, that THEY are taking over schools that were once top ranked.  I don't know what I believed or thought I believed about Latino Americans, but after reading Cristina Henriquez's second novel 'The Book of Unknown Americans' I discovered empathy for the plight of the Latino immigrants who struggle with different kinds of "moving stress" than my family will ever need to encounter.  

Moving is hard. Regardless of who you are, where you are moving, or even how excited you are about it, the upheaval and strain of uprooting and leaving a home and moving to another takes its toll.  Imagine if you didn't speak the language, or didn't have access to the same kinds of food you were used to, or you were treated like a lesser human being by those around you.  The characters in Henriquez's novel all deal with the stereotypes of Latino American immigrants and all tell their tales of discrimination, hardships and the fight to assimilate for the hope of a better life than the ones they left behind. 

The main story revolves around Alma and Arturo Rivera who immigrate legally from Mexico with the hope to find help for their beautiful, 15 year old daughter, Mirabel who suffered a near fatal fall from a ladder that left her brain damaged.  They move to an apartment complex in Delaware close to the mushroom facility for Arturo's work visa employment and to Mirabel's special school.  The Toros from Panama live in the same apartment complex and their teenaged son, Mayor is immediately taken with Mirabel.  Their star crossed love story falls at the center of this novel.  Even with the chorus of voices (each given their own first person narration in chapters throughout the book), the real power in Henriquez's novel comes from the tentative and awkward moments that Mirabel and Mayor spend together.  She gives him faith that he is not the disappointment his father sees him as (because he doesn't play soccer like his brother, Enrique), and he helps to draw Mirabel out from her disability.

Although many critics argue that the other narrative perspectives sound the same - from Benny Quinto, the Nicaraguan who sold drugs to escape the "safe house" he encountered after crossing the border and ended up working at Burger King to Nelia Zafon from Puerto Rico whose dreams of being a Broadway star ended so she opened up her own theater. The critics also argue that they clutter the main storyline, but they add more "Unknown American" voices and give a broader perspective on the struggles of different Latino Americans.

The overall dismal gray and wintery landscape of the Delaware serves as a backdrop for the isolation and struggles each of the characters face - from job losses, to struggles communicating when they need help from the police, to standing up to creepy teenagers who loom around their daughter. Each character tries to find their own version of the American Dream even if it seems that America doesn't want them to dream here.

Although the ending tragedy is abrupt, I still cried and still found myself really rethinking any preconceived notions I hold about the "Unknown Americans" who reside all around me in my new community.  We're a lot more alike than different as we struggle through our own hopes and fears as we try to assimilate and make a new community feel like home even when it is miles away from where we grew up.  Henriquez succeeds in creating empathy for these Unknown Americans and making their plight more known.

Lost and Found: Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Unlike much of the adult fiction I selected over the past few months, I knew relatively nothing about Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple.  I read a John Green interview after I reread his book The Fault in Our Stars in which he named Semple's book his favorite of the year so far.  Semple wrote for Saturday Night Live and for Arrested Development, and Where'd You Go, Bernadette was touted as a one of the year's best books, with glittering praise for the comedic writing and spot on satire from every major news outlet from the New York Times to Vogue.

I chose this book for my Book Club because I needed a change of pace.  Where'd You Go, Bernadette certainly offered something different.  The story revolves around a family living in Seattle - Bernadette Fox, a brilliant architect from Los Angeles whose distaste for the Seattle inhabitants and lifestyle pushed her over the edge and made her a recluse in her run down home; Elgin Branch, Bernadette's genius Microsoft inventor husband who received national recognition for his top rated TedTalk on Samantha 2; and the narrator of the story, Bee, Bernadette and Elgin's gifted 15 year old daughter who attends Galer Street school and asks for a trip to Antarctica for receiving perfect grades.

The story unfolds in a series of letters, faxes, medical reports, interviews, and emails.  The biting satire about families, overzealous Suburban moms, creativity, and the artistic temperament highlight the mystery of what really happened to Bernadette, but brings up the broader question - what happens to all of us as we age, compromise our beliefs, raise our families, recover from illnesses and loss, and try to navigate the world and find out what we can really tolerate.

I loved Semple's style and found myself flying through the narrative.  I especially loved the character Audrey Griffin and her flawed rivalry with Bernadette.  Audrey's letters about blackberry bush removal, parent involvement at Galer Street School, and her unhinging at the Westin Hotel where she realizes how out of touch with her reality she really is parallels Bernadette's unhinging and circle to eventual restoration. The way the story unfolds made me appreciate Semple's brilliance - the truths keep coming in bursts of light through the various clues Bee recovers about her mother's disappearance.

I never laughed aloud as I read the way that I do when I read David Sedaris, but the fresh originality of the dysfunctional world of Bernadette, her husband, and her daughter showed human truths in a way that didn't feel awful and sad.  Yes, there are sad aspects to the book, but all the sadness is tempered with Semple's comedic edge, and the wit led me to smile rather than frown.
 

The Atrocities of Modern Warfare

In my quest for the perfect book to jumpstart my co-ed book club, I chose our local library's selection for The One Book, One Community "The Cellist of Sarajevo" by Steven Galloway.  Highly acclaimed by everyone from O Magazine to Yann Martel (author of "Life of Pi") as a moving novel about retaining humanity in the face of the inhumanities of war.

At first, I found it hard to connect to the monotone writing style of Steven Galloway, but I soon fell into the rhythmic wave of the mere quest for survival that each of the four main characters faces on a daily basis.  The monotone writing style showed how war strips every person of their personalities, how it rids cities of culture, art and libraries, how it makes people cower with fear.  I appreciated Galloway's strokes of genius throughout the novel as the four intersecting character's lives overlapped in a city destroyed by fear, shells, and snipers.  The loss of electricity, water, food, and safety of all those who decided to stay in their beloved Sarajevo either because they couldn't leave or didn't want to showed the devastation of war time.  How a once functional city could deteriorate.  How Dragan, who was a baker before the war started,  could risk his life to move the body of a stranger out of the street because the Sarajevo he loves would not allow for a man's dead body to be left in the middle of the street to be filmed by an opportunistic journalist.  But "every day the Sarajevo [Dragan] thinks he remembers slips away from him a little at a time, like water cupped in the palms of his hands, and when it's gone he wonders what will be left."

The new reality of Sarajevo during the siege (from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996, the longest city siege in modern warfare) is one where people who are starving are killed while waiting in line to buy bread, where people who are filling water containers to take home are attacked by mortar shells lose limbs and some are unlucky enough to lose their lives, where people need to fear for their lives while crossing the street because snipers wait for perfect shots in the hills that overlook the city playing target practice with innocent civilians, where some snipers have a heart and try to protect the innocent, where one man decides to pay homage to the 22 civilians who lost their lives while buying bread by playing his cello for 22 days in the town center defying the war torn land that is now their home.

"The Cellist of Sarajevo" focuses on the powerful struggle of humans to retain dignity in the face of war's atrocities, and how music can soothe the souls of a tormented city and offer hope for the future in the face of a bleak present.

I actually went back and reread the novel again (it's short enough to do that), and I immersed myself in the bleak world or war torn Sarajevo - the world of Arrow, Dragan, Kenan, the cellist, and the other faceless citizens that lived like rats scrounging to survive.  My biggest take away -  I am spoiled and lucky.  I have never faced hunger or deep loss, nor have I been in a constant state of fear for my life - that almost overrides my need for basic necessities.  I've always been able to provide for my daughters, and my life is rife with choices and an excess of fun.  The reality that Galloway paints in "The Cellist of Sarajevo" is a sobering view of modern war fare and the hopeful reminder of the power of the human spirit.