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Book Reviews

Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver

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2018

Willa Knox has inherited her aunt’s house in Vineyard, New Jersey just when her husband has found a teaching job nearby, so she thinks her luck has changed for the better. She’d built a career in the magazine industry as a journalist but the magazines, like all print media, are going under. With her career ended she moves with her husband, his disabled father, and her daughter into the old house and begins repairs. But the contractor who shows up to give her an estimate has bad news, the house’s foundation can’t be fixed. With this bad news comes more, her son Zeke’s wife has taken her own life shortly after giving birth to a baby boy. Willa brings the baby back to her crumbling house and finds herself caring for a grumpy, elderly father-in-law and a new baby who has lost his mother. Quite a career change.

Over a hundred years ago, another family lived on the same corner, maybe even the same house. Thatcher Greenwood has taken a position as a teacher at the local school in the town of Vineyard. The house is falling down around him and his wife Rose, her younger sister Polly, and the girls’ mother. Thatcher is excited about teaching his science classes about the new theories of Charles Darwin. As it happens his neighbor, Mary Treat is in correspondence with Darwin regarding rare species of plants and animals she finds in the countryside nearby. Mary’s husband has deserted her and Thatcher finds in her a reasoning mind similar to his own, a vivid contrast between her and the females of his household. At this time, the city is ruled by a man named Landis, who built the town promising heaven on earth. He has control of most aspects of the city including the school where Thatcher teaches. The schoolmaster demands that Thatcher debate him in front of the community with Landis officiating. Thatcher does very well, having been coached by young Polly and Mary Treat, but there’s really no winning against a man like Landis, whose authority could be threatened by reasoning minds.

Meanwhile, in the current century Willa is trying to find out if Mary Treat lived in her house, hoping that if she did, she can get funding from a historical society to restore it. Mary has gone on to become a noted naturalist after Thatcher Greenwood leaves the area. Willa’s daughter begins to show a very mature interest in her nephew, and the boy’s father has moved to the big city to try to move on past the death of his beloved wife.

Unsheltered reminds us of the value of what we call home, how sometimes the roof over our heads is not where home is, that it may have more to do with the people we are with than any man made structure.

God Help the Child, by Toni Morrison

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Published 2015

Lula Ann’s mother is light-skinned, and so is her father. When she is born midnight black her mother can’t understand how it happened. Sweetness can’t convince her husband that she did not fool around with a black, very black man. He leaves after a few years. While Sweetness considers giving up the baby for adoption, or abandoning her, she can’t bring herself to do it. But she also can’t bring herself to love her child, the color of her skin turns her away. Lula Ann grows up without affection, her mother won’t touch her or even hold her hand in public, she is so ashamed of her black skin. Grown up now, changing her name to Bride, the young woman embraces her blackness and has succeeded in heading up a cosmetics firm. While financially successful, Bride has no close friends or a significant other until she meets Booker one night out dancing. For a while they are perfect until the day he tells her she is not the one for him and leaves without explanation. Thus begins Brides’ descent into despair.

Both Bride and Booker experienced childhood tragedies that they carry with them into their adult lives. Events they have never fully gotten over, which they keep trying to correct long after it is possible to do so. In some ways these events provide the impetus to push them forward along their career paths to success, especially Bride. Booker gets an education he can be proud of but wastes it looking for justice maybe, something he can never achieve. Morrison’s story is about the effects our actions can have on a child and is a cautionary tale.

The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie

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Published 2008

Having read this book I realize that I am not sophisticated, educated or intellectual enough to understand all of the things Mr. Rushdie is saying. He romps through history and religion with rapid grace. There’s magic and myth, stories interwoven and curving back on each other. It’s an entertaining book but not for the faint of heart. Also pretty much x-rated for sexual content and profanity. It takes place during the time of Machiavelli, in Florence but also in the Moghul empire where Akbar the Great is worried about the fate of his empire when it becomes time to hand over the reins to his sons. A foreigner, tall and golden-haired arrives at his court claiming kinship. Maybe this is the answer to his apprehensions about his sons’ suitability for the reins of power of a great kingdom, a kingdom he fights constantly to protect. A princess who chose to go with the conqueror back to Florence rather than to her own home and the protection of her brother was erased from the family history until the stranger begins his tale. It turns out there really was such a princess and the stranger’s story corroborates Akbar’s mother’s memory of the Lady Black Eyes who vanished so long ago.

The Illluminator, by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

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Published 2005

The story takes place in England in the late 14th century. John Wycliff is at Oxford but his ideas about bringing the gospel to the largely illiterate population soon oust him from his position as master of Balliol College. Wycliff believes, along with other prominent voices, that the Catholic church has become corrupt. Priests and even the Pope have mistresses and children, say prayers for payments from rich and poor alike. Finn the illuminator makes his living embellishing holy works but is also involved in doing the same for secret English translations. At at time when England is divided over loyalty to young King Richard and the church’s wealth and power are without rival, to be caught with these papers could mean death.

Lady Katherine is the widow of a man whom she does not mourn, but she does have two sons by him who are to inherit Blackingham Manor if she can keep it for them until they reach maturity. She gives a visiting priest her mother’s pearl necklace as tithe but struggles to come up with the king’s taxes. Beset on all sides by men who know she has little power she agrees to take in Finn and his daughter to appease the Bishop. This, she hopes, will bring her protection of a sort from a powerful ally. But almost immediately the priest who took the pearls is found murdered and Finn is accused and arrested.

If you ever despair of the state the world is in today, read this book and realize how very much worse it was a thousand years ago. Everyone was at the mercy of the church and royalty jousted for power with each other, betting their wealth and their lives on who could seize power.

Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult

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Published 2021

Interesting fairly recent book about a couple living in New York City just as the coronavirus pandemic breaks out. Diana and her fiance, Finn, are almost ready to leave on their vacation to the Galapagos Islands when the virus hits. Finn is a resident at the hospital, so at the last moment he can’t go, he is needed at work, but urges Diana to go without him, the trip is non-refundable. Diana has just been laid off from Sotheby’s, where she had almost secured the auction of a hugely famous work by Toulouse-Lautrec, which would’ve boosted her career by leaps and bounds, but the sale was put on hold due to the impending pandemic. Against her better judgement she goes ahead, and arrives at the island where they had planned to stay just as everything shuts down. the hotel is closed, there is no transportation, she can’t leave and even if she could, there are no flights back to New York. A woman who works at the hotel gives her a tiny apartment in back of her house to stay in. Her luggage was lost so she has only what she managed to bring with her on the plane. Over the next few weeks she meets a teenage girl and her father and spends time with them, hiking, swimming and exploring the island in an effort to salvage her vacation. Cell phone service is almost non-existent and the internet is only available in the hotel, which is closed. Diana is sending postcards back to Finn, and receiving some emails sporadically but is essentially cut off from civilization. Which is both a good thing and a bad one, since there is no virus on the island and with no traffic coming in or out, the chances of infection are minimal. One message that does come through is that her mother, from whom she is for the most part estranged, has died in the nursing home she is living in. Diana has never been close to her mom, she was a journalistic photographer traveling the globe to take her award winning photos instead of staying home with her family. Life goes on in this way for several weeks and then……Diana wakes up in the hospital back in New York, the same hospital where Finn works, and is on a ventilator. She has almost died from coronavirus, and unlike most of those who reach the stage of ventilation, she slowly recovers. But what she can’t seem to get over is the very real experience of her time on the Galapagos Islands. She begins to research what her shrink is calling a near death experience and finds many others who experience life-like realities just as she did. While she recovers back at their apartment, she learns that her mother has not died and she manages to visit with her on her little screened porch, Diana on the outside and her mother on the inside, since visitors are not allowed due to the risk of infection.

So it appears in this book that Diana has decided the experiences with the people in the Galapagos were real, in spite of what everyone else thinks about it. I can for the most part accept that, but what about her body? Even if it were true that she really did go to Galapagos and meet these people, how would they have been able to be aware of her? There is no denying that her body was inside a ventilator in the hospital in New York, I’m sure the staff would’ve noticed if weren’t there. That part I can’t quite figure out, maybe you can if you read the book. A good choice

Henry, Himself by Stewart O’nan

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Published 2019

I am glad to discover this writer of such a quiet little story, about the Maxwell family of Pittsburgh. Henry was named for his mother’s brother who was killed in the war before Henry was born. the name therefore seems in a way used to him and he would’ve preferred to be called Hank. But Henry he is and will be it seems.

Henry is retired now, and he and his wife Emily joke about when he is gone and she left by herself except for their dog, Rufus. Having read it I wonder who is going to do all of the little things around the house, not to mention the old cabin at Chataqua, when he is gone. Who will wash the dishes, a chore that Henry prides himself on every evening. Various ailments come and go, a fall becomes potentially dangerous, the kids and grandkids provide drama in their settled lives. Where to go for dinner is a bigger decision than you might think at this stage of life.

I loved how the little things have become the central focus which is described so clearly I felt I was part of the clan. Now I look forward to reading more of these novels and seeing what is happening with the family.