Love, by Toni Morrison

Faithful readers, you may have noticed it's been a month since my last post.  Must be the start of a new school year!  And this year, I have a new job, though at the same school.  What new job could it be, you ask?   I am a (wait for it...) READING COACH!  That's right, I get to spend my days helping teachers plan the best reading instruction to inspire new generations of readers-and I get to read children's and young adult books and get paid for it!  So, after a short blogging hiatus I am ready to get back to writing.

For some reason, I though that the beginning of a new school year would be a great time to start a Toni Morrison book.  Don't get me wrong I love everything about her and her work.  She is on the list of people whose warm, brilliant glow I would like to bask in as they share all of their wisdom about life.  My greatest dream would be to sit at the feet of Ms. Morrison and Maya Angelou and listen to them discuss the human experience as they understand it.  However, I'm not entirely sure I had enough cognitive power left over from learning a new job and working my tail off to fully appreciate the lyrical power that is Toni Morrison's story-telling when I started reading Love.

Love is the story of two women, bonded first by friendship and then by hatred, tied together by one man.  Heed Johnson and Christine Cosey are childhood friends.  Christine, the granddaughter of a wealthy black hotel owner, and Heed, the daughter of a poor, disreputable family, become fast friends, despite Christine's mother's disapproval at her daughter's fondness for the impoverished Heed.  All is well until Bill Cosey, Christine's grandfather, decides to take an 11-year-old Heed as his new wife.  While Heed celebrates her "good" fortune, Christine and her mother begin to see her as a threat.  Thus begins a feud that outlasts Bill Cosey, the hotel he owned, and most of the late 20th century.  In the end, the two women are left with nothing but a decaying house and their hatred towards each other.

Of course, I say in the end, but in actuality Morrison begins the novel when the women are old.  The narrative flows back and forth through time effortlessly.  This non-linear storytelling is a hallmark of most of Morrison's writing.  She also returns to one of her strongest themes for this novel, that of the relationships between women and how they are affected by race and class and sexism.  Heed and Christine are surrounded by a cast of characters each with a specific purpose.  Bill Cosey represents the "new" class of coloreds that rose up in the 1940s, when his upscale hotel drew black performers and celebrities alike.  He also represents the oppression that still existed for black women within their communities, even as some of their men began to gain wealth and power.  Of course, Bill Cosey also represents the idea of "separate but equal", as his goal was never to create an integrated resort, and indeed the white town leaders with whom he became so chummy would not have stood for it if he had.  Christine's mother May represented the fear and anxiety that struck the black community in the wake of the Civil Rights movement.  Convinced that the sweeping social changes taking place in the country were going to make the whites come and run them out, she took to hiding important papers, food, and supplies all over the small Florida community where they lived.  Celestial, Bill Cosey's mistress, represented both the myth of the oversexed woman, as well as the idea of freedom and licence.  The fact was that the other women in the community judged her harshly for her sexual freedom, and she just didn't care.  And there was Junior, a recently released ex-con from a juvenile detention center, convicted of killing her warden when she was 11 when he tried to sexually assault her.  Junior comes into the tense standoff between Heed and Christine and immediately tries to find ways to take advantage of their long-standing feud, picking both sides in the battle to inherit Bill Cosey's home so whatever happens, she'll be on the winning side.

This is a short novel, but it is rich in beauty and meaning.  Anyone familiar with Toni Morrison's work will immediately recognize everything that makes her writing so superlative-excellent characters, lyrical prose, and the ability to call attention to the subtle ways in which people are affected by repression and oppression. 

Blackberry Winter, by Sarah Jio

Sarah Jio's new book, Blackberry Winter (release date Sept. 25, 2012), follows The Violets of March and The Bungalow.  Jio has quickly made a name for herself writing high quality women's fiction-fiction that focuses on relationships familial and romantic, and the common experiences that bond women into strong friendships.  Blackberry Winter is a satisfying  blend of mystery and love story.

In Blackberry Winter, a title taken from a cold weather phenomenon that happens in mid to late spring, we have two main characters separated by several decades.  First, we have Vera Ray, a poor single mother during the first years of the Depression.  One night, she tucks her three-year old son Daniel into bed and leaves to go to work at a nearby hotel.  When she returns, Daniel is missing.  The only clue she can find is his teddy bear lying in the snow that fell in a freakish late spring storm, erasing the tracks of the kidnapper.  Despite the obvious fact that three-year olds don't run away, the police refuse to help her.  Fast forward to the present, and you find Claire Aldridge, a reporter at a daily in Seattle.  When an unexpected late spring snow storm blankets the area, Claire is tasked with writing a feature on the event.  She discovers the story of Vera and Daniel, and becomes determines to find out what happened to the boy.  Little did she know how closely she and Vera Ray would be connected.

This book has the benefit of being more than one thing.  On one level, it is a mystery, and a pretty decent one. It kept me guessing, which is fairly hard to do given the number of mysteries and thrillers I read.  Even when I thought I had something figured out it ended up being slightly different than I thought.  On another level, it is the story of one woman and her journey from grief to healing, from betrayal and guilt to acceptance.  While Vera's experiences are the driver for most of the action in the story, the emotional impact comes not just from her grief and anxiety at the loss of Daniel, but from Claire's painful journey through her own tragedy.  The way her relationship with her husband changes from the beginning to the end of the story mirrors what I know happens to many couples who experience the loss of a child, even a miscarriage.

My only (tiny) criticism was the character of Charles, Vera's love and father of Daniel.  He was fairly one-dimensional to me, and frankly a little too good to be true.  Maybe it's just the cynic in me, but I had trouble believing his transformation from son of wealth and privilege to crusader for the poor, and I didn't find it very likely that he would honestly believe that he could introduce his poor servant girlfriend to his family and expect them to embrace her.  But, as I said, that is a teeny, tiny criticism.  Overall, I think that this is another solid performance for Ms. Jio!

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

In this rather quirky novel, Krauss tells the story of love, loneliness, and loss as experienced by two very different people.  Leo Gursky is an octogenarian living in a crowded apartment in New York.  Growing up in Poland in the 1930s, he fell deeply in love with a girl from his village.  When she emigrated to American just before World War II, Leo lost touch with her.  After the war, when he was forced to hide or be sent to the concentration camps with the other Jews, he made his way to New York.  But nothing turned out as he'd thought.  In the present day, Leo feels invisible, and when he goes out he purposely does things to attract attention in order to prove to himself that he still exists.

Alma Singer is a young girl dealing with the loss of her father.  Her mother Charlotte is fading away, spending hours in her room translating old books and remembering her beloved husband.  Convinced that her mother needs to fall in love again to survive, Alma tries to find men for her mother to date.  When a mysterious man writes to Charlotte asking her to translate her father's favorite book, Alma tries to discover his identity, hopeful that he can help her mother re-enter the world.

What connects these two characters is a book, The History of Love.  The book, the main character of which Alma was named after, becomes central to the lives of both characters.  To Leo it represents his past, his love, and the son he never knew.  To Alma it represents her father, her mother's grief, and a possible future for her family.  As their connection to each other is slowly revealed through the course of the novel, we understand the triumph of the human spirit over fear, loneliness, and doubt.

Krauss' use of language in this novel is lyrical and moving.  Her treatment of her two rather eccentric characters is warm and kind, especially Leo's character.  He is a cantankerous old man, which would make him rather unlikeable if the main target of his frequent sarcasm wasn't himself.  Alma's character is very relateable, if a little less realistic.  She often reads older than her supposed age in the story, but it works well enough.  The story goes back and forth between Leo and Alma as narrators, which I some people find challenging to keep straight, but I did not find it distracting or off-putting in this book.   The story is heartbreaking-it highlights the way that forces outside of our control can cause our life to go in directions that we never expected.  The bottom line is that life is not fair-it certainly wasn't fair to either Alma or Leo.  But despite that, there are opportunities for love, tenderness, and redemption.

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

Like many young girls, I was given a copy of Little Women as a gift.  Lousia May Alcott's perfect roman a clef about growing up in genteel poverty during the Civil War has been universally adored by generations of young readers, and despite the drastic social changes that have taken place in the intervening years, Jo March's struggle for independence and freedom from the conventions of society still resonates with many young women struggling to find their way in a complex and often confusing world.

So it was with great excitement that I picked up a copy of The Lost Summer of Lousia May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees at a local discount store.  I had read glowing reviews of the book on many of the blogs that I follow, and I anticipated feeling just as taken with the fictionalized account of one youthful summer as all of those bloggers had been. While many authors over the years have used primary historical documents to write fictionalized accounts of the lives of real people, this book seemed to promise some kind of new insight into a hidden chapter of Miss Alcott's life.

The Lost Summer recounts the events of one summer when Louisa was 20.  She and her family go to stay in the house of a friend of their father's in Walpole, Massachusetts.  Her father Bronson Alcott, was a philosopher who was friends with many of the important intellectuals of the mid 1800s-Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Thoreau, and others.  Unfortunately for his family, he believed that working for money would sully his mind, and as a result the Alcott family lived off of the generosity of their friends and family, as well as whatever money the girls could bring in doing piecework or working as tutors and companions.  Louisa meets Joseph Singer, a young man trying to manage his father's shop during the older man's long illness.  There is an instant attraction between Joseph and Louisa, but he is already pledged to another girl, and she longs for the independence to write.  Despite never wanting to marry, Louisa feels herself falling in love with Singer, bonding as they do over Walt Whitman's recently released Leaves of Grass.

Reading the author's note, it becomes obvious that there is actually no historical evidence that Louisa had a love affair as a young girl the year her family lived in Walpole.  The entire affair is completely from the imagination of  McNees.  Which would have been fine, if the story of their love had been as gripping and tragic as some of those rhapsodizing bloggers seemed to find it.  My problem with it was that it didn't seem realistic at all.  They meet, make eyes at each other, read a few poems, and are suddenly consumed with an unquenchable love for each other.  Maybe it's a function of my age, but I just didn't buy the "love at first sight" thing.  Infatuation, yes.  Physical desire, sure.  But full-on, can't-live-without-you love?  Sorry, I just didn't get it.  As a result, while the book is very well written and I enjoyed McNees' descriptions of New England life in the 1850s, I can only say, "meh".

The Violets of March, Sarah Jio

One of the recurring themes in literature is the way that the past can come back to haunt us.  Things that happened long ago can reverberate through our lives and our families until they touch us, without us even knowing.  Secrets long held can be devastating when revealed-or they can lead to redemption, closure, and the ability to move forward in life.  All of these ideas are explored in The Violets of March, a novel by Sarah Jio coming out in April.

Emily Watson thought she had it all.  A best selling book, a handsome husband, a glamorous life in New York.  Then the writer's block set in, her husband had an affair, and her fabulous social life dwindled as her fame fell.  Ten years later, on the day her divorce becomes final, she accepts an invitation from her Aunt Bee to visit her on Bainbridge Island, where Emily spent many happy summers as a child.  There, Emily reconnects with an old boyfriend, Greg, and meets Jack, who her aunt warns her away from.  She also find a red velvet diary, and gets drawn into a tragic mystery that happened fifty years earlier.  She soon comes to believe that the diary is connected to her in some way, and that she was fated to find it and bring her family's secrets out into the light at last.

I love books about islands.  I have always wanted to live on an island-to be that close to the sea, to be a part of a close knit community just seems idyllic to me.  I was immediately drawn by Jio's description of the island, and the way that the sea matched what was happening in the story at the time.  I was also immediately drawn in by the mystery.  Whose diary had Emily found?  Why was her aunt so tight-lipped about it?  And why was she supposed to stay away from the gorgeous and interesting Jack?  Emily finds that she cannot complete her own healing process, or move forward in her own life, until she uncovers the mystery around the women in her family.  She also finds that she cannot go back to her old life in New York with thoughts of Jack in her head.  The Violets of March is an imminently readable, thoroughly enjoyable book about love, family, and moving foward.

(Thank you to Penguin Group USA for the  free review copy)

Wild Ginger, by Anchee Min

WELCOME HOPPERS!  

If you got here through Crazy-for-Books, I'm glad you decided to stop by.  That crazy Jennifer hosts the Book Blogger Hop each Friday. 

This week's question/topic comes from: Anne @ My Head Is Full of Books

Post a link to a favorite post or book review that you have written in the past three months.

 

Which is how you ended up here!  I hope you enjoy my review of Anchee Min's Wild Ginger.

I've always been baffled by religious, cultural, or political philosophies that seem to fly in the face of the very things that make us human.  Love, sex, the need to celebrate-rather through biological imperative or the need to feel a sense of belonging, humans have always found ways to express these and other emotions through our cultural and societal institutions.  This is one reason that, while I consider myself religiously tolerant, I don't really get Jehovah's Witnesses.  It feels against human nature somehow to deny a community the right to celebrate together.  Say what you will about the Catholic Church, but when they wanted to convert the heathens they were smart enough to co-opt their holidays and ceremonies.  I don't really get the prohibition against sexual behavior in most religious doctrines, either.  We are all sexual beings, and having healthy sexual relationships can only make us as a people stronger.

I experienced that familiar sensation of bafflement when reading Wild Ginger, by Anchee Min.  Wild Ginger tells the story of two teenagers living in China during the Cultural Revolution.  Maple is the daughter of a former teacher of Chinese history who has been sent to a labor camp for being a reactionary.  Every day at school Maple is taunted and beaten by Hot Pepper, the head of the Red Guard at their school.  Every day, that is, until Wild Ginger joins the school.  Wild Ginger, the daughter of a French-Chinese man and a Chinese mother, is viewed with suspicion because of her European roots.  Having nothing to lose, Wild Ginger stands up to Hot Pepper, and Maple and Wild Ginger begin a deep and abiding friendship.  Together with a boy named Evergreen, Maple and Wild Ginger begin preparing to sacrifice their personal lives in pursuit of Mao's vision for China-until a love triangle forms that threatens all of them.

The story of Wild Ginger is a familiar one-love triangles are not exactly new in the world of literature.  What makes this novel feel new and different is the setting.  China during the Cultural Revolution was a place turned on its head.  Mao, a communist, used the country's poor economy, uneducated populace, and history of exploitation at the hands of the West, and marched his Red Army right into power.  Everyone and everything that could have threatened the absolute control he had over the country was rendered suspect.  Teachers, prosperous business owners, artists, foreigners-all had to be turned to the purposes of Mao or expelled from China.  Anyone considered an intellectual was also an automatic reactionary.  The schoolchildren were only taught Mao's Little Red Book-a book of the famous sayings and speeches of Mao.  They were expected to memorize the entire book, and regurgitate it on command.  Any hint of questioning the Maoists could get you arrested, jailed, sent to a labor camp, or executed.  It was a time of wide-spread fear, as anyone who felt wronged by you could turn you in as a reactionary with very little evidence.

Maple and Wild Ginger both lived on the edge-Maple, because as a teacher of Chinese history her father was suspect, and Wild Ginger because of her mixed heritage.  But while Maple was more conflicted about being a Maoist, Wild Ginger threw herself into it wholeheartedly.  By pushing away her unsatisfactory parentage, she hoped to make herself a model of what a young Maoist should be.  Despite her family's persecution, Wild Ginger takes on the very characteristics of the people who have rejected her.  As she began to gain power within the movement, the pressure on her to be the perfect Maoist in every way grew and grew, until she was consumed with it.  Evergreen, who at first appears as zealous in his Maoism as Wild Ginger, begins to realize that his desire to recite Mao's teaching every night has less to do with Mao and more to do with his feelings for Wild Ginger.  Despite her own feelings, Wild Ginger cannot give up her quest to ultimately be respected by the very people who appeared to despise her and her family when she was a child.

And this is what I mean about doctrines-religious or political-that deny basic human needs.  Mao was indeed treated like a god by his most ardent followers, and his theology, if you will, included no recognition of the need for physical or affectionate love.  In order to be an ideal Maoist, you were supposed to not just deny yourself love and sex, but denounce the very idea of love as Western and bourgeois.  Never mind the folk songs no longer sung, or the Buddhist rituals driven underground-the very emotion that created the joyous reasons for songs and celebrations was forbidden.  Ultimately, I suppose that's one reason Maoism was doomed to failure (that and the fact that it brought down the entire economy of China!).  People will only submit to being stripped of their humanity for so long.

The Weight of Silence

In her examination of love, friendship, and family, Heather Gudenkauf provides the reading with a decent mystery, some suspense, and a lot of strong characters.  The Weight of Silence is a mystery wrapped in a family story, with a side of unrequited love thrown in.

While there are many characters, each given their own chapters, the story starts with Calli, a seven year old elective mute.  Her alcoholic father drags her into the woods early one morning, saying he is taking her to her "real" father's house.  Her mother, Antonia, asleep in the house, has no idea that she is gone.  Enter Martin, father of Calli's  best friend Petra, who is also missing.  They soon contact Deputy Sheriff Louis, an old flame of Antonia's and the man that her husband Griff believes is Calli's "real" father.  As the frantic search for the girls begins, the story of these adults and how their lives intersect unfolds.

As mysteries go this one is OK-I figured out who took Petra pretty early on.  There were just too many references to a seemingly tangential character for it to be coincidence.  But what kept me hooked was the backstory of the adults.  Gudenkauf revealed just enough in each of her chapters, each told from a different point of view, to keep you wanting to know more.  While Calli's elective mutism doesn't seem entirely believable, it does provide the story with some suspense, as you wait to see if and when she will speak.  All in all this was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of days.