Reading – Page 3 – Finding My Wings

Family business, family drama – a holiday weekend two-fer

IN A NUTSHELL A HOLIDAY WEEKEND TWO-FER

As Close to Us as Breathing by Elizabeth Poliner (Lee Boudreaux Books, 2016)
In 40 words or less: Three sisters and their families traverse personal and societal minefields in post-WWII Connecticut. The family beach cottage holds their happiest memories but is also the site of a life-changing tragedy.
Genre: Fiction
Locale: Connecticut
Time: 1948 – 2000, with flashbacks
Read this for a complex family story that brings in the complexities of a changing society.

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The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman (St. Martin’s Press, 2016)
In 40 words or less: The business and personal lives of two very different brothers and their families are intricately woven together. Loigman’s family drama lays out the corrosive nature of family secrets and the price to be paid by all.
Genre: Fiction
Locale: New York
Time: 1947 – 1970
Read this for a family story that reinforces the old adage “be careful what you wish for!”

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Elizabeth Poliner’s and Lynda Cohen Loigman’s novels feature families that are close emotionally, physically and economically. Both books have as the historical setting the years following World War II. It’s no coincidence. It was a period of great transition with those family-owned businesses that survived the Depression and the war flourishing. Ethnic and religious prejudices are lessening a bit, although there remains the expectation that people will ultimately “stay with their own kind.” With new prosperity, families are leaving apartments in the city for new homes in the suburbs.

In As Close to Us as Breathing, three sisters spend their summer in their family cottage in a small shoreline Jewish enclave nicknamed Bagel Beach, as they did during their own childhoods. The telling of the story is shared by 12-year-old Molly, the middle child of the eldest sister, Ada, and an omniscient narrator. The novel begins with the announcement that Davy, Molly’s 8-year-old brother, will die that summer in an accident.

During the work week, the three sisters – Ada, Vivie and Bec- share close quarters with Ada’s three children – 18-year-old Howard, Molly and Davy – and Vivie’s daughter Nina. Friday afternoon Howard, Ada’s husband, and Vivie’s husband Leo, would drive out to spend the Sabbath with their families. Howard’s brother, Nelson, was left in Middletown to mind Leibritsky’s Department Store, the business built by the sisters’ parents. Each person plays a distinctive role within the family.

As within every family, there are grudges held and sacrifices made. Poliner shares their secrets carefully, only to further the story. In ways small and large, characters chafe against societal expectations. The importance of respect within the family is seen in how these choices are hidden from those closest to them.

As Close to Us as Breathing is a wonderful period piece and family novel. Poliner takes extraordinary care to describe the details that paint the picture of their lives. While accidents like the one that claims Davy’s life are fortunately rare, the complex relationships that affect the family’s reactions ring true. Key to the success of the storytelling is the pacing which naturally follows the story itself. This novel has an excellent balance between character and plot and is worthy of inclusion in your summer reading.

While the catalyzing incident in Poliner’s book occurs in the summer, a winter storm sets into motion all that follows in Lynda Cohen Loigman’s The Two-Family House. Abe and Mort are brothers who own a cardboard box company in New York. Together they also own a two-family brownstone where Abe lives upstairs with his wife Helen and their four sons. Downstairs are Mort, his wife Rose, and their three daughters. While the brothers couldn’t be more different in temperament, Rose and Helen are the glue that keeps everything going.

As Helen and Abe celebrate their eldest son becoming bar mitzvah, Helen sees her sons needing less and less of her and wishes she had a daughter with whom to share experiences. At the same time, it is clear Mort regrets not having a son to become bar mitzvah and does not really understand daughters. When both Rose and Helen find themselves pregnant once again, they hope that the missing piece for each family will be found.

Several weeks before the babies are due, both Mort and Abe must go to Philadelphia overnight for a business meeting that may determine the future of their company. A blizzard blows in and both women go into labor. Fortunately, a midwife is nearby and can attend to the births. When the men return, each is surprised and delighted to meet their children – a daughter for Abe, a son for Mort. From that day forward both family’s lives are changed forever.

At what should be a time of great joy, tensions within and between the families grow. Judith, Mort and Rose’s eldest daughter, seems to bear the brunt of it. Judith is a wonderful writer, acknowledged by awards from school, but her father dismisses her accomplishments and creates barriers for her. As her mother also becomes more distant, she seeks out her aunt for advice and comfort, further increasing the mother-daughter rift.

From the beginning, Natalie and Teddy, the babies, were raised together. As they grew, they insisted upon it, even having dinners in each others’ homes on a regular schedule. And the curiosity and innocence of the young uncovered long-held secrets. As a duo, they managed to soften the hard edges that their parents’ had developed.

As the years pass, the family business thrives though the family relationships are not as lucky. Eventually, both families leave the brownstone for the suburbs, lessening the day-to-day tensions between Helen and Rose but at the cost of increased isolation for all. A horrific accident further fractures the family rather than drawing it together. Bit by bit, some of the secrets are revealed.

People are fascinated by the possibility of children being switched at birth. Loigman has used this fascination to good effect by including the reader in from the very beginning. The characters make choices in revealing some of the secrets. In doing so it is emphasized that there can be healing or hurt in the telling.

Unlike in Poliner’s novel, only a limited number of the characters are fully drawn. Loigman’s focus hones in on the effect of the secrets on each. What we see in The Two-Family House are two families entwined by business loyalty, nurtured through marriages, and almost destroyed for not leaving well enough alone. Loigman seems to hold a soft spot in her heart even for some of her more imperfect characters. Choosing to end the novel decades after its start allows time and societal change to bring about some healing that the relationships between family members couldn’t.

What’s on your way back list?

As a child, one of the rituals of summer was heading to The Book Rack, the paperback bookstore at the corner of North Avenue and Eastchester Road, in New Rochelle. It was there, and at the library, that I spread my reading wings.

I’d have a budget of about $5 to spend on books to bring with me to “sleepaway” camp. In the mid to late 1960’s new paperbacks each cost 75 cents to $1.25 so careful decisions were required.

Seeing the children (and grandchildren) of friends leaving their phones and tablets behind as they board buses and planes to camp, I started thinking about those summer books that have stayed with me decades later. Here a few from my way back list.

I was very lucky. My mother encouraged me to choose books that I found intriguing, not necessarily those marketed as appropriate for what we now call tweens or young teens. An early choice was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith’s classic coming-of-age story of an Irish immigrant family at the turn of the 20^th century.

And there is nothing like reading mystery and horror stories by flashlight to scare you witless. I clearly recall reading Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby when it appeared in paperback. It is about this time I was introduced to Agatha Christie and I picked up Henry Miller’s The Turn of the Screw.

As a ravenous reader, my vocabulary outpaced my maturity at times. For example, I was probably 13 when I read Ann Fairbairn’s Five Smooth Stones, a groundbreaking novel in 1966 about the civil rights movement and an interracial love affair. Reading the newspaper morning and evening was a part of my life. There were local connections to Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, murdered in Mississippi in June 1964, and that further heightened my interest in civil rights.

The last title I remember to this day is Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. Tens of millions of readers have been swept away by this romantic, exotic and frightening novel.

Truth be told, if I were to pack a tote with these books, leave my electronics behind and find a comfy reading spot, I’d probably be a happy camper once again.

While some have you may have avoided reading anything beyond comic books over the summer, I suspect that as many caught the reading bug. So, what titles are engraved in your memories of summer? Do tell!

‘Everyone Brave is Forgiven’ deserves a place on your nightstand

IN A NUTSHELL Unknown - Version 2

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster, 2016)
In 40 words or less: Mary, a privileged Londoner, volunteers for the war effort. Cleave brings to life the personal effects of the Blitz and the war’s early campaigns on Mary and those closest to her. The imperfections of the characters bring depth to the story.
Genre: Historical Fiction
Locale: London, France, Malta, Algeria
Time: 1938-42
Read this for a glimpse at the early British involvement in WWII. Cleave takes on class distinctions, racism and the high personal toll on those on the home front as well as on the battlefield.

Before, life had been a tradition, a tendency to forgiveness, a regression to the mean… A child was lost as easily as a shilling. And once one had understood that, though one’s heart continued to beat, one was never entirely alive again. She knew, now, why her father had not spoken of the last war, nor Alistair of this. It was hardly fair on the living. (p.268)

Chris Cleave made his mark on US readers when Little Bee was published here in 2009. In his latest novel, Everyone Brave is Forgiven, class, racism and power again play major roles in the story. Mary North is a daughter of London’s elite but with a mind of her own. When war is declared she enlists, only to find herself assigned to help ferry children from London to the countryside to escape the expected bombardment. For some of the children, life in the country is not meant to be, and several end up as the only pupils in an urban school with Mary as their teacher.

Elsewhere in London, a school administrator and an art conservator share a garret apartment. Alistair, the conservator enlists and is sent to France; Tom is put in charge of Mary’s school. As the bombing of London begins the men’s letters tell the story of the great changes occurring in Europe. Mary is far from the classical teacher and reaches out to her small band of students, each of whom would stand out in a regular classroom. She takes particular interest in Zachary, a bright African-Amerian student who is unable to read and has a tendency to run at the least provocation. As Mary and Tom develop a personal relationship, Mary’s advocacy for Zachary is a point of contention.

When Alistair returns disheartened from France before being posted to Malta, Tom, Mary and Mary’s friend, Hilda, plan an evening out to raise his spirits. The evening ends in a shelter during a bombing, with Mary following him above ground to turn over his duffel before he rejoins his regiment. This brief, chaste encounter changes all their lives.

As the war continues, roles change as does the landscape of London. The foursome is wounded physically and emotionally. Bonds are broken. The weak show resiliency and the strong learn that no one is immune from the ravages of despair.

What differentiates Cleave’s story is his careful picking at society’s prejudices. Racism, the power of rank and class, friendship and familial allegiance are all intrinsically part of the narrative in this rich historical novel.

My to-be-read list is summer ready!

Ahhhh! Even if your student days are far in the rearview mirror, somehow summer has its own unique rhythm. Now’s the time to change your reading horizons in all sorts of ways. Grab a book and head to a park bench at lunchtime – your desk can manage without you. Try out an audiobook for that road trip. Negotiating a title with your fellow passengers may introduce you to an author or genre you’d never have selected on your own.

For me, summer is the time to queue up books that take me to another place and time. Last summer, two particular titles really fit the bill. The Truth According to Us, Annie Barrows’ novel of small-town West Virginia in the summer of 1938, just out in paperback, has an enticing combination of family drama, labor unrest and explication of the New Deal program that brought writers to small communities across the country to preserve their histories.

In The Oregon Trail, Rinker Buck brings the reader along as he and his brother follow the trail from Missouri to Oregon using equipment and tools of 150 years ago. Buck, a seasoned journalist in the midst of a personal crisis, decides this is just the change he needs. As a child, he and his siblings were taken on unusual journeys by their father, an accomplished, loving but difficult man. Needing another skilled horseman for the trip, Buck invited his brother who was dealing with physical and emotional problems of his own. Not particularly close since childhood, the extraordinary physical challenge of the undertaking tested and strengthened their relationship.

Page after page, the reader joins them on the trail, often within spitting distance of 18-wheelers. Along the way they take meals and spend the night with locals in small towns across the route; on farms, in dying communities set aside after an interstate usurped their role as staging point or provisioners. They meet old-fashioned craftspeople that keep their rig going when repairs are beyond their skill. Weather, rough terrain, exhaustion, and injuries leave them minutes from abandoning the quest. It was a joy to accompany them from the air-conditioned comfort of my home!

So what’s on the list for this summer? First up, Everyone Brave is Forgiven, Chris Cleave’s latest about Europe in 1939. Mary North takes on the task of teaching students that were not accepted in homes in the countryside as most children were sent for safety from London. Tom, charged with supervising the school, and Alistair, Tom’s best friend now serving as a military officer, both fall for Mary.

On a more serious note, Tribe, Sebastian Junger’s assessment of the damage we have brought on ourselves by loosening the communal bonds of society. He contends that combat veterans overcome their fears and insist on returning to their units after injuries because of the tribal ties they create. Junger suggests it is the breaking of these bonds that fuels PTSD.

Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, 2012 National Book Award winner, is one of the finest novels I have ever read. Her latest, La Rose, is another family-centered novel of contemporary Native American life with a storyline drawn from tragedy. Erdrich brings a unique perspective to the complexity of the tribal and state justice systems. Snagging a copy of La Rose at the library was a real coup!

Another Louise is near the top of my TBR pile. Louise Penny has created the magical hamlet of Three Pines in Quebec. With an assortment of quirky locals, poor internet and cell coverage, a cafe, bookstore, and a B and B, it is the perfect retreat except for the occasional murder. Chief Inspector Gamache is the warm, intuitive yet analytical detective who uncovers the culprits and the underlying stories. Through the course of the Three Pines series, his wife and his second (now his son-in-law as well) add a comfortable and familial tenor to the stories.

Now that I’ve shared the top of my pile, I hope you’ll do the same. Please go to the bottom of this post (on the website) and click on COMMENTS so that I (and others) can see what you are reading. I’ll keep sharing if you will!

‘The UnAmericans’ deserves your attention

IN A NUTSHELL Unknown - Version 2

The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol (W.W. Norton & Company, 2014)
In 40 words or less: In eight stories, Antopol crosses continents and decades bringing together politics, love, longing and the human condition.
Genre: Short stories
Locale: Various
Time: Various
Read this to experience the richness of an excellent collection of short stories.

I admit it. It took far too long for me to pick up Molly Antopol’s extraordinary collection of stories. From the opening sentences, each story in the UnAmericans drops the reader into a distinct location and time. Throughout the collection, Antopol brings in elements gleaned from her family’s Eastern European experience and their leftist leanings when they arrived in the U.S. Several stories in the collection take place in Israel, each depicting very different family situations. The precision with which she creates the wide range of settings is extraordinary in writings of this length.

The first story, The Old World, brings together a lonely dry cleaner and a woman longing for her life in Ukraine before Chernobyl. Antopol deftly weaves in each character’s backstory, bringing in the disapproving daughter and son-in-law to underscore the businessman’s vulnerability.

Both The Quietest Man and The Unknown Soldier are twists on the classic theme of divorced fathers seeking to elevate themselves in their child’s eyes. The Unknown Soldier is set as an actor-father leaves prison, having been jailed as a result of the McCarthy hearings. His celebratory road trip with his son does not go as planned, each wanting it to be the other’s trip of a lifetime. In The Quietest Man, a young woman has sold her first play. Long divorced, she has spent little time with her father over the years. Her parents were Czech activists and her father was a celebrated lecturer on their arrival in the U.S. While in the spotlight he neglected his family. Over the years, as new world crises arose, his fame declined. Now her father brings her for a visit seeking reassurance that his image isn’t tarnished in her writings.

With all the different timeframes and settings, there are recurring themes throughout the book. Family is key. Standing up for your beliefs should be lauded, fakery punished. Love isn’t always what it seems. It is how these themes are revealed that differentiates Molly Antopol from most other writers. Antopol was recognized by the National Book Foundation as “5 Under 35” author for this book. She won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and finalist for numerous other awards. The UnAmericans appeared on more than a dozen “Best of” lists in 2014. My only criticism is I enjoyed the stories so much that I rushed to read through them rather than taking more time to savor each one.

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