fiction – Finding My Wings

RELEASE DAY REVIEW: If You Want to Make God Laugh

If You Want to Make God Laugh by Bianca Marais (Putnam) July 16, 2019
In 40 words or less: At the start of Mandela’s presidency, South Africa’s changes are seen through the lives of estranged white sisters and a black teenager. Living in a community wrestling with conflicts of old and new, the women confront secrets that define them.
Genre: Fiction
Locale: South Africa
Time: 1994
In her second novel, Bianca Marais once again uses a defining moment in South Africa’s history as the backdrop for her story.

If You Want to Make God Laugh is told in three voices – Ruth, a fading socialite; Delilah, Ruth’s sister who returns from decades as a nurse in the wild; and Zodwa, a teenage girl with dreams of educating herself to be a part of the New South Africa.

After the breakup of her marriage, Ruth returns to the family home to lick her wounds and figure her next move. Out of the blue her sister, Delilah, appears, having received a letter that a gunshot has left someone dear to her in very critical condition. Zodwa fails in ending an unexpected pregnancy, endangering her prospects for an education, and dashing the hopes of her mother who is herself facing serious health challenges.

Laugh is a novel of three women each taking charge of her own life within the realities of the “new” South Africa. In this novel, politics are less a player than the periodic conflicts the women face in dealing with those seeking to wrest back the power and prestige of the Apartheid days. This is also the period when AIDS became rampant in South Africa, with misinformation, superstition, and prejudices. Bigotry, denial, and a profound lack of medical resources and support for patients and families created a far larger crisis for a country undergoing political and social upheaval.

Bianca Marais is a wonderful storyteller, clearly distinguishing her characters and their voices. To help frame her stories, she paints a full picture of the setting so the reader can visualize the space or location without any sense of being bogged down with details.

As an early reader of both of Bianca Marais’s novels, I’ve had the opportunity to take them in, unencumbered by the opinions of others. Hum If You Don’t Know the Words (review here) sent me searching for more on the Soweto uprising. Even those generally well-informed, had little access at the time to on the ground reporting. “Seeing” the events through the eyes of the characters gives a different perspective on history.

For me, Laugh is a more universal story, colored by the historic changes in South Africa. It is a novel of finding oneself, creating family, and forgiveness. The issues Ruth, Delilah, and Zodwz face are also very contemporary – sexual abuse, militant white nationalism, the AIDS crisis, and women needing to reclaim their lives from trauma. In both books, Bianca’s love of the country of her birth shines through.

While each stands on its own, Hum definitely begat Laugh, with connections from one to the other. It is reassuring to see beloved characters return, if briefly, and know in fiction, as in life, there is influence from one generation to the next.

Escape to ‘Manhattan Beach’

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan (Scribner) 2017
In 40 words or less: Eddie Kerrigan could do no wrong in his daughter Anna’s eyes. After he disappears, she helps support her family during WWII at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, pushing the limits of “women’s work.” Anna never stops wondering what happened to her father.
Genre: Literary fiction
Locale: New York
Time: 1930’s and 40’s
Jennifer Egan has a new twist on the Rosie the Riveter story, set in a working-class neighborhood in New York. From page one, Anna is smart and strong-willed, equally devoted to her family and her personal success.

The Depression has seen a reversal in the Kerrigan family fortunes. While Eddie loves his wife and both daughters, his wife Agnes has to devote almost all her attention to Lydia, disabled from birth and homebound. Agnes left a dancing career to raise her family, only retaining her exquisite costuming skills to help in its support. In Anna, Eddie sees a buddy, ready to accompany him on his rounds, and keep his secrets when needed. Financial pressures and the stresses of living in close quarters draw Eddie away from home, often with little explanation. One day he just doesn’t return.

Almost a decade later Anna secures a technical job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, ensuring that precision parts meet specifications. Her off-hours are focused on her mother and her sister, whose physical needs are becoming more taxing. Anna makes the acquaintance of another worker who draws her into a life of nightclubs and men who are living on the edges of legality. Anna meets the nightclub owner, a man she met as a child on a visit with her father and gives him a false name, one of several secrets in her new life.

The tedium and low pay of the jobs reserved for women send Anna in search of alternatives at the Navy Yard. The most difficult position is that of a diver, working on the hulls of ships and performing repairs in total darkness underwater wearing hundreds of pounds of equipment. Against many odds, Anna is given a chance to compete for a spot.

Jennifer Egan has the knack for storytelling and enriching it with the little details that take a novel to the next level. For lovers of New York, there is the flavor of New York life, it’s neighborhoods and social fabric. If the role of women in the war effort is your thing, it’s there in spades. And then there is organized crime, the black market, and its prominent place in the entertainment business of the era. If told on its own, the family story of the Kerrigans would be compelling. Egan doesn’t play it for pathos, rather as cards the family has been dealt. This novel has all the attributes that the individual reader or book club seeks out – conflict, fully developed characters, and a setting that supports the plot in all its details. Manhattan Beach is consistent with the high-level writing people expect from Jennifer Egan.

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The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs (Simon & Schuster) March 2018
In 40 words or less: An accident or murder? When a world-renowned mathematician dies his final project is nowhere to be found. Hazel, his adopted granddaughter is the only family member Isaac trusted with the clues to his legacy. More secrets and more death follow.
Genre: Literary fiction/mystery
Locale: California
Time: The present
Jacobs’ debut novel blurs the lines of mystery and standard fiction. While no understanding of mathematics is necessary to enjoy this novel, it is critical to the story.

Hazel Severy and her brother Gregory are outsiders in a large family of mathematicians and academics. Adopted by Isaac Severy’s imprisoned and mentally ill son, they were taken in by Isaac and his wife. Eschewing the family business, Hazel runs a (now-failing) bookstore and Gregory is in children’s protective services, seeking to keep others from the tumultuous childhood he and Hazel endured.

When Isaac is found dead by the pool under somewhat suspicious circumstances, fissures within all the branches of the family quickly appear. Isaac’s children either live in or battle his shadow, not quite living up to his professional or personal successes. Estranged family members return for the funeral, and to search for his writings that may provide someone with that one big break or possible financial success. For years, Isaac had spoken of a model that could predict traffic patterns thereby reducing congestion and accidents. In their home city of Los Angeles this could be the pot of gold – reducing pollution, saving lives, giving people more time in their day – and some shadowy organizations seemed interested in acquiring the rights to the results.

With these family and professional animosities, Isaac sent Hazel a letter suggesting there were people out to get his project and that no one could be trusted, not the police and not family. Understanding her fundamental ties to books, coded clues were hidden to send her in search of the truth. Jacobs strings the story along through all the family members and the halls of academia. She seems to hold little respect for those in academic life, always searching for the next grant and journal article, often acting inappropriately towards students. Infidelity, professional sabotage, and all manners of family dysfunction abound.

So why read this? Despite the darkness in the Severy family, The Last Equation is an entertaining read. For book people, having a bookstore owner as a main character is a great plot hook. Beyond that, the brother and sister combo of Hazel and Gregory provides a measure of humanity missing in the rest of the family. Jacobs is good about dropping breadcrumbs of clues, along with misdirections, throughout. As a mystery, there are more surprises than one might expect. While many of the characters are far from likable, Jacobs has created some people who are deserving of better. Overall, this is a strong change of pace novel, regardless of your preferred genre, and worth taking with you wherever the summer may take you.

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‘Memento Park’, a novel of lost and found

Memento Park by Mark Sarvas (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) March 2018
In 40 words or less: Matt Santos, a B-list actor, plays parts on screen and in his own life. A phone call suggesting he’s the rightful owner of a painting seized by the Nazis in 1944 raises questions about his identity, his family, and the choices he’s made.
Genre: Literary fiction
Locale: United States and Hungary
Time: Contemporary

Matt Santos seems to be living the Los Angeles dream. A regular role in a series. Living with his girlfriend Tracy, a model and activist working to free a death row inmate she believes wrongly convicted. Things are rarely what they seem. Matt isn’t really into the show and Tracy is spending a lot of time with a lawyer on the case. Out of the blue, a phone call from a New York law firm upends the delicate balance of their lives.

The lawyer insists that Matt may be the rightful owner of a painting wrongly transferred during WWII and now in the restitution process. Matt argues he knows nothing about it and is told his father has declined any claims in Matt’s favor. Matt has had a fractious relationship with his father and wants nothing to do with the painting or his father. Tracy has been the go-between for father and son, and a weekend visit cross country by Gabor does little to assuage the ill feelings.

With this as the background, Matt begins the search for the truth about the painting, its ownership, and the history of his family in Hungary during the war. The attorney provided Matt for this process is Rachel, a young woman from a traditional Jewish family, whose relationship with her father is in stark contrast to Matt’s. The richness of Rachel’s family life, despite their modest means, awakens a mix of curiosity and envy towards Judaism. The discovery the other possible owner of the painting is a woman rabbi further adds to the complexity.

In Memento Park Mark Sarvas has written several stories swirling around one another. The story of Matt the actor touches on the emptiness of a life built on good looks and mediocre acting skills. Matt’s research into the life of the (fictitious) artist provides his first look into the struggles of the years between the wars and the toll it took on individuals and Jews, in particular.

Throughout the novel, Matt’s ongoing yearning for his father’s approval/love and his conditioned response when disappointed is the real grabber. It is only through the larger quest surrounding the painting that Matt learns of the experiences that shaped his father’s childhood and made him such a difficult man. Coming to terms with it all is key to Matt reclaiming his life.

While the Holocaust and the infamous history behind the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial are critical to the novel, I wouldn’t characterize it as a part of that genre. This is a story of family and the secrets that color every aspect of life. Achieving this balance requires a delicate touch and Mark Sarvas has carried it off. The success of Memento Park is weaving together all the elements into cohesive work without straining credulity. The result is a novel with interesting plot twists that will provide book groups with ample material for discussion.

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Nature, nurture or fate? ‘The Immortalists’

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) January 2018; Penguin Audio, Maggie Hoffman – Narrator
In 40 words or less: Four young siblings, ages 9 – 13, seek out a fortune teller who predicts the date of each one’s death, unknown to the others. One by one, Benjamin reveals their lives, times, and choices, always with death at hand.
Genre: Literary fiction
Locale: Various, USA
Time: 1969 – 2010
Chloe Benjamin adeptly mixes iconic American locales with carefully selected elements of history and popular culture to tell a family story and ask the recurring question, “How would you live your life if you knew the number of your days?”

The Immortalists has haunted me for months. So appropriate for a novel created on the premise that knowledge, kept secret, may dictate the choices of one’s entire life.

Varya, Daniel, Klara, and Simon Gold are the children of Saul, a tailor, and Gertie, living on the Lower East Side in 1969. The children are second generation Jewish Americans, living in a community and world markedly different from their elders. Having heard rumors of a psychic, the four seek her out, and each is told the date of his/her death and that they must not share that information with anyone, ever.

One by one, Chloe Benjamin reveals each child’s path to adulthood. Though never discussed, this one afternoon is a burden that the four carry throughout their lives. In many ways, it is the secrets more than the information itself that color the relationships within the family and with those they touch.

It takes particular skill to craft a novel that balances the isolation and connection of a family from childhood. Chloe Benjamin uses carefully chose locales and time periods to reveal each personality and reflect the defining and oppressive nature of each person’s countdown clock.

In the news and in individual conversations, the devasting cost of keeping secrets is a common topic. As I turn over my continuing reaction to The Immortalists, I wonder how many choices in life are responses to secrets, overriding nature and nurture with fear.

This book is worthy of all the accolades it has received. I listened to the audiobook, and while I had small issues with the narrator’s voice choice for the mother, I was completely caught up from the first moment. It is the mark of a beautifully crafted novel when the reader wants to intervene in the lives of the characters. When the characters stay long after the final page, that’s a book that must be shared.

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