Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver: A review

 

Barbara Kingsolver's latest is essentially her retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield set in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. The main character of her opus was named Damon by his teenage mother but, of course, that was easily turned into "Demon" by the other kids. 

Demon was born to a single mother in a single-wide trailer. His mother was a troubled adolescent who had not the first clue about caring for a baby. Demon inherited his good looks from his father who had died before he was born. Part of those looks was his distinctive copper-colored hair.

Demon soon became a ward of the state's foster care system. As such, he experienced an often traumatic existence, but from somewhere - either genes or some of his caregivers along the way - he developed a strong instinct for survival. In school, it was discovered that he had some athletic talent and that helped to smooth his way through the system.

Kingsolver tells her story through Demon's voice. The narrative is unsparing in its recitation of all the perils that he faced. Some of his foster parents forced him into child labor. The schools that he attended could be most kindly described as derelict.

After he was injured playing sports for his high school, he became addicted to painkillers. He had a long battle to overcome that addiction. He had some disastrous romantic entanglements and crushing personal losses. But that instinct for survival kicked in and he was able to overcome his challenges and setbacks.

This is quite a lengthy book of more than 600 pages and a LOT happens in it, all of which makes it a bit difficult to adequately sum up, but Barbara Kingsolver is such a terrific writer that the book never seems long. She keeps the action moving. 

In all that action, she takes us to some dark and depressing places but there is so much beauty in her telling of it that one never feels overwhelmed, never feels frustrated, or wants to hurl the book against the wall. What writing talent it takes to achieve that and to make the reader feel empathy for these characters, some of whom are not that attractive. 

I've already noticed that this book has a spot on most of the "best of 2022" lists that appear at this time of year. It would appear on my "best of" list as well. Another winner from Barbara Kingsolver.   

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson: A review

 

In her latest book, Kate Atkinson gives us 1920s London. It was a fraught time and place with a multilayered society full of drugs, the sex trade, mob wars, and the posh clubs that were the center of it all. Overseeing all that was Nellie Coker, Ma Coker.

Nellie was the shrewd owner of a string of nightclubs. When we first meet her, she has just been released from a stay in prison. Even so, though she exists in a dangerous world and has enemies all around, she is the queen of all she surveys. 

Nellie was indeed Ma to six duplicitous children who, in addition to all of her business interests, kept her on her toes. We see many of the events through the eyes of the eldest child, Niven.  He is a rather enigmatic character, home from his recent service in World War I. His character was essentially forged by his experiences in that war, especially his time in the Somme.

In addition to Nellie and Niven, there are a multitude of other characters, almost too many to keep track of, but Atkinson is a pro and she gives each of them a unique voice which helps the reader to make connections and keep them all straight. 

Although it is eight years after the end of the Great War, England is still recovering and the frenetic nightlife of Nellie's clubs helps the patrons to forget, at least for a little while. There are hostile forces all around, many of whom would take Nellie's empire from her if they could, so in order to protect the empire and continue to provide for her children, with no husband there to help her, she must be on constant alert.  

There is so much here, it is really difficult to summarize it all in a brief review. Atkinson has obviously done much research on this period and she paints a vivid and memorable picture of post-war London. It is a compelling storyline that completely absorbed me from beginning to end. In fact, my initial rating on the book was four stars, but on reflection, I really can't think of any good reason to take away a star. Five stars it is!   

Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark: A review

Fellowship Point refers both to the place name of a community in Maine and to the actual lifelong "fellowship" or friendship between two women, now in their eighties. The women are Agnes and Polly. They were both born to affluent Philadelphia Quaker families.

Agnes is a successful author of children's books featuring a ten-year-old girl named Nan. She has never married and has no children of her own. 

Polly is a traditional wife and mother of a son named James. James is keen to see Fellowship Point developed. Agnes and Polly are determined to see the place protected from such "progress."

The storyline of the novel involves a young editor named Maud from the publishing house that handles Agnes' books. Maud is a single mother to a daughter. She is very interested in Agnes' life story and approaches her about writing a memoir. Agnes is absorbed in her own health issues and in making sure that Fellowship Point is protected; she has little energy left over to think about writing a memoir.

A secondary character who plays an important role in the plot is a man named Robert who was unjustly, erroneously accused of robbery and assault and as a result, spent years in prison. All of these characters are deeply involved in the decision that is to be made about what will become of Fellowship Point.

Back in the late 1800s, Agnes' great-grandfather had purchased 145 acres on the Maine coast and named the place Fellowship Point. He built five houses for family and friends and also a sixth house for servants who would work for the families. Most of the land eventually was controlled by an association with specific rules about membership and dissolution. In the twenty-first century, the land came to the attention of a local developer who recognized possibilities for its commercial exploitation.  

Alice Elliott Dark develops her story very slowly over almost six hundred pages of fiction. Honestly, there were moments when that story seemed a bit too slow and my interest would begin to flag, but then the writer would pull me right back in and I would keep turning those pages because I just had to see what was going to happen next to Agnes and Polly and Maud and Robert. I was completely invested in all of those characters and wanted to see how their stories would turn out, hoping all the while for the best for them.

This is only my second 5-star read for this year. (The first was Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.) I can't say that this is necessarily the best-written book or the most original that I've read, but it was a book that I connected with from its first pages, and that connection stayed with me all the way to the end. What a pleasure it was to encounter it and spend time with its characters!

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt: A review

 

Marcellus McSquiddles - a name to reckon with. And it belongs to a creature to reckon with, a giant Pacific octopus who is one of the main characters and the narrator in Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures. What a pleasure it was to get to know Marcellus and what a pleasure this book was to read.

Marcellus is a captive in the Puget Sound Sowell Bay Aquarium and he may be a genius among octopuses. (Or maybe he's just average; who knows?) He is clever enough to squeeze out of his tank in the aquarium and go roaming for a late-night snack. He is also sensitive enough to maintain a kind of relationship with the 70-year-old woman who cleans the space at night. Tova Sullivan is recently widowed and has volunteered as a cleaner at the aquarium. As she goes about her duties, she carries on a "conversation" with Marcellus who is her favorite. 

Tova likes things to be just so, a place for everything and everything in its place. She is an assiduous cleaner. Her life has not been an altogether happy one. In addition to the recent death of her husband, thirty years before she had suffered the death of her 18-year-old son, Erik. Erik's body had been found at the bottom of a lake and his death was ruled a suicide but Tova has never believed that verdict.

A second line of the narrative follows a thirty-year-old garage rocker and odd jobber named Cameron. His mother had left him with her sister in a California trailer park when he was nine years old. She left him there and never returned. His life since has been one failure after another. In the hope of turning things around, he decides to search for his father in Sowell Bay and try to get money from him. 

Cameron's story is compelling in its way. He finds a job at the aquarium where he meets Tova, and at this point in the story I began to suspect how it might end, but it didn't hinder my enjoyment of it.

More compelling for me though was Tova's story. She is one determined woman. She has decided that it is time to check herself into a nursing home and she proceeds with getting rid of her belongings and selling her house, the house that her father built. She has no children or grandchildren and, although she has devoted friends, she knows she must make decisions about her future herself. She is resolved that she will not allow herself to be a burden to others. She has an ally in Marcellus who it turns out may be able to help her resolve one of the mysteries of her life.

I have nothing negative to say about this book. I found the narrative thoroughly engaging as Van Pelt crisply moved her story along with no wasted asides. In fact, when I first finished reading the book, I had rated it as a 4-star read. But that was several days ago and on reflection, I believe it is worthy of a 5-star rating, my first one of 2022. And of all the characters I have met in books this year, Marcellus and Tova are definitely my favorite couple!  

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout: A review

 

This was Elizabeth Strout's debut novel, published in 1998. In it, she explores the fraught relationship between a single mother and her teenage daughter in the mill town of Shirley Falls. Isabelle, the mother, works in the office of the mill, as secretary to the boss, Avery Clark. Clark is married but Isabelle harbors some forlorn hope of establishing a romantic relationship with him. It's been many years since she had such a relationship. The other employees in the office see Isabelle as aloof and not "one of the girls."

Isabelle's relationship with her daughter, Amy, has always been a good one until Amy hits her teenage years. Then she begins to be critical and disdainful of her mother. When she is sixteen, her math teacher has a health crisis and is replaced by a substitute, Mr. Robertson. Robertson often singles Amy out in class and because of her beautiful golden hair tells her that she looks like a poet. Amy is entranced and develops a huge crush on the man. He is not unaware of her feelings and takes advantage of them to begin grooming her for a relationship. He starts driving her home from school and soon progresses to kissing her goodbye.

The Amy and Robertson relationship takes its expected course and one day while they are parked in a car on an out of the way lane, they are discovered by Isabelle's boss. He reports this to Isabelle with a great deal of embarrassment and she confronts Robertson and threatens to report him to the police since her daughter is underage. When she returns home, she cuts off Amy's glorious hair in a fit of rage. The rift between them seems complete.

During the summer, while one of the women at Isabelle's office is on medical leave, her boss agrees to hire Amy as a replacement for the summer. They have to at least pretend to get along to keep up appearances at the office, but all of the events of the past months take their toll and Isabelle begins to reflect on the circumstances of Amy's birth. We learn that she, as a teenager, was also groomed by a man who had been a friend of her deceased father and she became pregnant by him which derailed her plans for college and, in fact, all her plans for her life. Now, in her loneliness, she begins to reach out to her fellow employees and to develop bonds with them.

I think anyone who has ever been a daughter or a mother of daughters can identify with some of the stresses of Isabelle's relationship with her teenage daughter. It is seldom easy even under the best of circumstances and being a single mother with no family and few friends to support her hardly qualifies as the best of circumstances.

In this her first novel, the qualities that have made Elizabeth Strout such a successful writer are on full display. Her writing shows a wisdom about and an empathy for the human condition. She seems to have a deep affection for all of her characters and to take pleasure in making them known to us. She writes about ordinary people in their everyday lives and makes us empathize with them and hope that they will somehow find that sought for happily ever after future. This was a sterling beginning to her career as a published writer of fiction and nothing that she has published since has tarnished that sterling promise.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars      

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro: A review

 

How is it I had never read this book? Just one of many oversights in my reading life, I guess. I'm glad to finally rectify my failure.

I had seen the movie based on the book long ago. It was made memorable by the performances of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in the two main roles and as I read the book, those were the faces that I saw in the characters of the butler James Stevens and the housekeeper Miss Kenton. 

Stevens and Kenton had both served in the pre-World War II household of Lord Darlington at Darlington Hall, a stately home near Oxford. We learn that Lord Darlington was a Nazi sympathizer, a fact which Stevens is slow to admit. After the war and after the death of Lord Darlington, Darlington Hall is bought by a wealthy American, Mr. Farraday. The house has a seriously reduced staff by this time. Miss Kenton is long gone, having married and moved to Cornwall. She is now Mrs. Benn. She and Stevens had remained in touch in the years after she left service and when Mr. Farraday is going to be absent from Darlington Hall for a while and urges Stevens to borrow his car and go for a road trip vacation he decides to visit Mrs. Benn. He has some hopes of persuading her to return as housekeeper since it seems that her marriage is now on the rocks. The book details Stevens' first-person narration of his road trip and his reminiscences of the events of the 1920s and 1930s.

What becomes clear early on in the narration is that Stevens is unshakeably loyal to Lord Darlington and never questioned his hosting of lavish meetings between German sympathizers and English aristocrats in the years leading up to World War II in an effort to influence international affairs. What is also clear is that the guiding principle in Stevens' life is his reverence for dignity. That and his understanding of what it means to be a "great butler" are the most important concepts for him. They are even more important than his unacknowledged love for Miss Kenton. For he was in love with her and perhaps she was in love with him, but it would have gone against the "dignity" of his position to act on it and so it was tucked away in the most hidden corner of his heart. Their relationship never strayed from that of a professional friendship, even though it seems, based on his reminiscences, that Miss Kenton might have tried to draw closer to him. 

As Stevens narrates his story for us, he seems to come to a realization, maybe for the first time, that Lord Darlington truly was a Nazi and was perhaps unworthy of his loyalty. He even seems to regret his lost opportunities with Miss Kenton. As he ponders "the remains of the day" and the remains of his life, he concludes that the evening is the best part of day and that it is best to enjoy the present of one's life rather than dwelling on the past.

This narrative was simply mesmerizing. The book received the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989 and its author received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, both richly deserved. In the announcement of his Nobel Prize, the committee stated that in Ishiguro's "novels of great emotional force, he has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." That seems the perfect description of The Remains of the Day and there is nothing more relevant that I could say about it.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars 

The Maid by Nita Prose: A review

 

"I love cleaning. I love my maid's trolley, and I love my uniform," so speaks Molly the maid in Nita Prose's debut novel, The Maid. Molly is the first-person narrator of the novel and what a wonderful narrator she is. We are able to fully enter her world as a maid at the Regency Grand five-star boutique hotel where she cleans twenty-plus rooms every day. "I like things simple and neat," says Molly. "Never in my life did I think I'd hold such a lofty position in a grand hotel."

From these quotes, you might gather that Molly has a rather simplistic view of the world and that is accurate. She is devoted to her work and was devoted to her grandmother who raised her and who was also a maid. But when we meet Molly, her grandmother had died nine months before, leaving her alone in the world. She no longer has anyone to interpret the meaning of social interactions for her and Molly badly needs that. She is very "different," possibly on the Autism spectrum although that is never stated. She admits to us at one point that she has trouble in social situations because "it's as though everyone is playing an elaborate game with complex rules they all know, but I'm playing for the first time." Perhaps we've all been in situations at one time or another in our lives where we felt like that. In other words, though Molly sees the world through her own different and simplistic lens, she is a very relatable character.

Molly's life continues on its well-established course of going to work every day. Work is her respite from a confusing world. She is not totally without friends. Mr. Preston, the doorman at the hotel, actually knew her grandmother and he tries to look out for Molly and help her negotiate the sometimes confusing demands of the world. His friendship will become especially important when Molly finds the body of a guest, Mr. Black, dead on his bed when she went to clean his room. And it was not a death from natural causes; Mr. Black was murdered. 

When Molly had first gone to clean the room, Mrs. Black was in the shower and so her cleaning and her discovery of the body were delayed. Since she is unable to interpret social interactions, she never makes any connection between those two facts. She also seriously misinterprets the actions of the hotel's head bartender, Rodney Stiles, on whom she has a crush. When she does discover the body and reports it, once again she is unable to understand what is required of her or why the police would find it strange that she is so eager to get back to her cleaning. Her behavior is seen as suspicious and soon she finds herself as the prime suspect in the murder. That's when Mr. Preston and his daughter, Charlotte, who is a lawyer, come to Molly's rescue.

Of course, we know that Molly didn't kill anybody and we may be able to suss out pretty quickly who did, but Molly doesn't because she doesn't pick up on cues and this novel is really about her and not so much the mystery of the murder. Molly always takes things at face value. She isn't able to interpret, but taking things at face value actually turns out to be one of her strengths and it ultimately allows her to assist the police in their inquiries and to catch a killer.

Nita Prose never indicates where the Regency Grand is located, but the novel - especially the portrayal of the grandmother - has quite a British flavor and since she lives in Toronto, it seems likely that is the location of her hotel. It never really makes a difference as far as the action is concerned, I guess, but I just like to be able to assign a location. This story that starts out as a murder mystery is actually a delicate character study of a unique personality and the personal growth of that person when faced with difficult circumstances. Molly the maid is a wonderful character and a credit to her creator. I have no idea if the writer has any plans to write further adventures for her, but I would certainly read any book that featured her.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata: A review

 

I was so disturbed by the last book of Sayaka Murata's that I read, Earthlings, that it put me off reading this one. Consequently, this little gem had languished in my TBR stack for almost a year. But this is a new year and, determined to clear out my backlog of books to be read, I picked it up and began to read. Now I'm wondering why it took me so long.

Eighteen-year-old Keiko Furukura has never fit in anywhere, not in her family and not in school, because she has never been able to comprehend the rules of social interaction. She comes to understand that "The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of. So that's why I need to be cured. Unless I'm cured, normal people will expurgate me." She thinks of herself as that "foreign object" that needs to be "cured." She apprehends that in order to survive she needs to be able to mimic the social exchanges of those "normal" people. 

Her salvation comes when she finds a job at the local branch of the Smile Mart convenience store. At the store, she has a manual to guide her behavior. That manual lays out step by step, line by line, how she is supposed to behave with people. For the first time in her life, she becomes one of the team and finds purpose and contentment. 

She is so contented that she stays in that job for eighteen years. At age thirty-six though, her family as well as her coworkers at the store are expecting her to find a husband, settle down, and raise a family. And once again Keiko is facing the dilemma of trying to meet society's expectations.

Around this time, the store hires another one of society's misfits, a man who admits that he only took the job because his family is pressuring him to get married and he needs to search for a wife. He hates the store and is lackadaisical about the duties assigned to him with the predictable result that he is soon dismissed. Keiko who loves and identifies with the store cannot understand his attitude. But she needs a boyfriend in order to get her family off her back and so she and the man come to a mutually beneficial, if platonic, arrangement. So, how does it all work out? You'll have to read the book.

That won't take long because it is a short book, less than 200 pages. Quirky doesn't even begin to describe it! It really is a sweet story of the struggle of a person with a different psyche to understand what it is that society wants and expects from her. It's a sentiment that I think a lot of us can probably identify with. Haven't we all felt like misfits from time to time? The tone of the book is satirical and wry and as well as being a personal story, it seems to be a commentary on class and gender inequity in Japan and the problems that that engenders. Society values conformity and, as Keiko observed, it doesn't tolerate "foreign objects."

An interesting side note is that the author wrote this book while she herself was working in a convenience store, and, apparently, she still works there part-time. Since the work helped to inspire this wonderful little book, I'd say it is time well-spent.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars