Recent Reviews
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
My son Sam discovered Britt Bennett’s 2016 debut novel The Mothers and gave it to me for the holidays. I am grateful he did. Written by a young woman with a fresh new voice, Bennett’s prose is precise and penetrating. With wisdom and empathy she captures the travails of three teenagers who are struggling to find their places in the world under the weight of grief, a secret, and poor decision making.
Set in San Diego County, these three black teens connect through their involvement with a church in their community called the Upper Room. The “mothers” of the church serve as the collective narrator for the novel and a loose emotional safety net for these kids. These “mothers” observe, critique, love, and serve their church community with graciousness, and pettiness too.
The novel’s three high school kids are naïve and well meaning yet confused teenagers. And for good reason. Nadia Turner’s mother recently committed suicide and Nadia’s father is in a fog. Aubrey Evan’s mother abandoned her and Aubrey now lives with her sister and her sister’s partner. And Luke Sheppard, the son of the Upper Room’s pastor, has dropped out of college due to an athletic injury and feels depressed that his best days are behind him.
Without their mothers, Nadia and Aubrey struggle with feelings of isolation and shame. They both feel inferior because their mothers chose to leave them. They don’t often discuss their missing mothers, but find comfort and connection with each other and become like sisters. The narrator says, “It was strange, learning the contours of another’s loneliness. You could never know it all at once; like stepping inside a dark cave, you felt along the walls, bumped into jagged edges.”
In high school Nadia dates Luke. Their relationship ends due to an unexpected circumstance and Nadia’s imminent enrollment at the University of Michigan. Aubrey takes classes at the local junior college and Luke waits tables at a local restaurant. Before long Aubrey and Luke are in a serious relationship. The years pass and neither Nadia nor Luke tells Aubrey about their high school romance. Their motivations are not malicious. Neither of them wants to hurt Aubrey. Seven years later, Nadia returns from the University of Chicago Law School to attend Luke and Aubrey’s wedding. When Aubrey becomes aware of Luke and Nadia’s prior relationship and their unfinished business, her pain is excruciating. The betrayals affect the entire Upper Room community.
It is hard to read about Nadia and Luke’s poor choices. Bennett makes you feel anger and empathy toward them at the same time. Nadia is more isolated than Aubrey and makes worse judgments. Despite her strong intellect and warm personality, her wounds are deep. Nadia seeks to sabotage her own happiness at every turn. Like a Shakespeare tragedy, she seems doomed to destroy not only herself but those who love her most. The "mothers" help these motherless girls, but there is only so much they can do. There are no grief counselors, social workers or psychologists in the story; just kids and adults doing the best they can with the lives they were given.
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
As this tumultuous year comes to an end, I decided to read Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop. After watching this book stay steady on the New York Times Bestseller List for over a year, I thought a book about books might bring me comfort. Though the novel seems to be two novellas competing for control of the plot, it is a worthwhile book to read if only to remind us that literature can be a powerful and healing force.
John Perdu’s bookstore is a floating barge tied to a dock on the Seine River in Paris. Perdu views his bookshop as a “literary apothecary.” After his first love leaves him, his heart is broken and he spends his days selecting books that will hopefully mend his customers’ broken souls (and at some level his own). With an almost psychic sense of what ails a customer, he zeroes in on which book might heal that person. The premise is a bit overdone, yet that experience resonates with anyone who has felt the comfort of a powerful book.
Here are my two favorite Perdu quotes about books:
“I sell books like medicine. There are books that are suitable for 1 million people, others for 100. There are even medicine – sorry, books – that were written for one person only.”
“I wanted to treat feelings that are not recognized as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors. All those little feelings and emotions no therapist is interested in, because they're apparently too minor and intangible. The feeling that washes over you when another summer nears its end. Or when you recognize that you haven't got your whole life left to find out where you belong. Or the slight sense of grief when a friendship doesn't develop as you thought, and you have to continue your search for a lifelong companion for those birthday morning blues. Nostalgia for the air of your childhood. Things like that.”
Of course, like most people, Perdu’s intuitive directives don’t apply to himself. When the married woman he loved left him twenty years ago, he retreated into his bookshop and didn’t open the letter she left him. His view of her is naïve and immature (and did I say she was married?). But Perdu's overwhelming grief and fear caused by her departure prohibits him from opening the letter (a form of literature) that would have brought him some solace.
In the second part of the novel, Perdu unties his bookshop barge and begins both a physical and emotional journey to confront his feelings about the ending of that relationship. As his new friend Catherine states, “Everybody has an inner room where demons lurk. Only when we open it and face up to it are we free.” And that is what Peru does. He faces his demons and is able to start another chapter of his life. On this adventure, he begins to understand more about himself and the way he copes with pain. He concludes that his parents’ divorce affected him more than he realized and that his acute sensitivity rendered him emotionally paralyzed.
The second half of the book is less charming and concludes too neatly. Yet being in the presence of John Purdu and his two traveling companions as they float down the Seine discussing the importance of love, the meaning of life, and books that matter, it is easy to be swept away with them.
Away From Her by Alice Munro
Alice Munro, the winner of the Nobel Prize in 2013 for her book Dear Life, is among the greatest of short story writers. In her scores of stories, she offers microscopic observations that reveal larger truths about her characters. While her writing is precise and observant, the motivations of her characters are imprecise and opaque. I recently reread one of my favorite Munro stories, The Bear Came Over the Mountain, which was made into a movie in 2007 titled Away From Her.
This heartbreaking story captures the slow painful effects of dementia on a long and complicated marriage. Fiona and Grant have been married for almost 50 years and Fiona, now at 70, is losing her memory. Munro’s narrator lays out the facts of Fiona’s decline without sentiment, “Over a year ago Grant had started noticing so many little yellow notes stuck up all over the house.” After Fiona wonders off at the supermarket, she says to Grant, “You know what you’re going to have to do with me, don’t you? You’re going to have to put me in that place. Shallowlake?” And Grant says, “Meadowlake. We’re not at that stage yet.”
But a paragraph later, on a cold January afternoon, Grant moves Fiona into Meadowlake. The transition is painful, as the rules prohibit Grant from visiting for a month to ease Fiona’s adjustment. Grant suffers. When he starts visiting Fiona, who acts as if she doesn’t know who he is or why he keeps coming to see her, Grant is perplexed. He asks the nurse if Fiona is “putting on an act.” During that month of acclimation, Fiona has become the constant companion to a man named Aubrey who is living at Meadowlake temporarily. The reader wonders if Fiona is retaliating for Grant’s past infidelities, or if Fiona is protecting Grant from her eventual demise.
When Aubrey returns to his home, Fiona is devastated. So Grant visits Aubrey’s wife, Marion, to ask her to let Aubrey visit Meadowlake for the sake of Fiona who has descended into depression. Grant’s primary motivation seems noble. He wants to ease his wife’s pain. That Grant loves Fiona is never in doubt. Grant has exhibited a version of loyalty in their long marriage, but he has not been loyal. So is he also atoning for his guilt? Is he proposing a relationship with Marion in exchange for Aubrey’s return to Meadowlake? When Marion calls Grant to ask him to attend a dance, is he acting on his pattern of infidelity or is he sacrificing himself for his wife? Munro describes their encounter but divulges nothing. Grant probably doesn’t entirely understand his motivations. And - spoiler alert - the reader simply learns that Grant has arranged for Aubrey to visit Fiona.
Munro’s captures the complexity of human emotion with her linguistic agility. Her writing is precise as a pinprick. She never becomes maudlin, nor does she pass judgment on her characters, even though this reader did!
Munro’s genius is that she writes engrossing stories and understands multiple motivations. With plenty of puzzle pieces provided, her readers can put the puzzle together in whatever way they choose. Each conclusion is plausible because there are so many complicated emotions percolating inside her characters. As Fiona says to Grant on the last page, “You could have driven away. Just driven away without a care in the world and forsook me, Forsooken me. Forsaken.” Is she speaking of Grant's past betrayals or her present living situation at Meadowlake? Probably both.
This is a tragic story about the effects of dementia on a marriage characterized by steadfast love and constant betrayal. Maybe Munro is saying love, in all its possible permutations, is still love. And due to her exquisite restraint, she leaves her readers reaching for their own conclusions.
