Recent Reviews
Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
I had watched Where the Crawdads Sing stay steady on the New York Times bestseller list and I had heard the chorus of compliments from my friends and colleagues. So when my book club chose to read this debut novel by Delia Owens, my expectations were high. Owens did not disappoint. I read Where the Crawdads Sing in one weekend and felt transported to the lush marshes of the North Carolina coast.
The novel touches on many engaging themes, but fundamentally, the story is about a young girl’s resilience in the face of abandonment and loneliness. When Catherine Danielle Clark “Kya” is six years old, her Ma walks down the “sandy lane in high heels, her only going out pair.” Ma never returns to the family’s shack hidden in the marsh. One by one Kya’s siblings leave. They too want to escape dire poverty and their violent alcoholic father. Finally, when Kya is ten, her father goes fishing and does not return. Realizing that she is alone, she experiences shock and depression. Yet she perseveres. (Yes, this strains credulity. Didn’t Kya’s mom or siblings think to take her with them? And could Kya really live by herself? But keep going!)
Kya is smart and resourceful. She avoids the authorities and survives by cooking grits, catching fish and paying close attention to the rhythms of the marsh. A kind African-American man named Jumpin’ and his wife Mabel help Kya whenever she docks her boat at their bait and gas shop. From their own encounters with discrimination, they know the Barkley Cove locals either ignore or ostracize those who are different. The residents call Kya “swamp trash”.
The marsh serves as both the setting and a character in the novel. Kya watches eagles soar, herons fish, butterflies glide and fish spawn. She comes to view the seagulls as her friends and the marsh as a surrogate mother. She studies the tides, the stars and the animal and plant life that surround her. “Nature seemed the only stone that would not slip midstream.”
In her late teens, Kya comes to love Tate Walker, a gentle young man who was friends with her brother Jodie. With tenderness, he teaches Kya to read and listens to her feelings. “For the first time since Ma and Jodie left, she breathed without pain.” Yet Tate leaves for college and once again Kya is left alone. Seeking solace, she spends time with a vulnerable, yet unreliable young man named Chase Andrews. Kya wonders, “How much do you trade to defeat loneliness?”When Chase is found dead, the townspeople suspect Kya. A major strand of the novel follows the investigation into Chase’s death.
Owens’ novel captivates because she shows the evolution of Kya’s inner life. We see Kya’s intellect grow and her emotions expand. She finds solace in poetry, art and books. As I turned the pages, I found myself rooting for Kya and hoping that she might experience some peace and even a little happiness.
With lyricism and reverence, Owens’love of the natural world enriches every page. She creates a spiritual atmosphere with her rich descriptions of the moon, tides, sky, lagoons, sand and mosses of the marsh. Kya’s development is shaped by the trauma of her youth and softened by the rhythms of the marsh. Despite her loneliness and isolation, Kya perseveres. Owen’ insight and sensitivity allow us to witness the subtle and not so subtle adaptations to Kya’s personality and emotional life.
Where The Crawdads Singtouched my heart despite my mind’s doubts. Maybe the novel has resonated with millions of readers (including me) because it illuminates that we are all shaped by the children we once were.
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on June 4, 2019
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/disappearing-earth-reveals-life-in-russias-remote-east/
Few Americans have traveled to Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East. A nine-hour flight from Moscow, this volcanic peninsula juts out into the Pacific Ocean. In 2011, Julia Phillips journeyed there to study at Kamchatka State University as a Fulbright scholar. Clearly, the people and place inspired her. The result is ‘Disappearing Earth’, her intense, evocative and haunting debut novel. It is a captivating book that conveys the unique ethos of this remote region.
As the story begins, two sisters Alyona and Sophia Golosovskaya, 11 and 8, are walking on the beach near their home in the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Their mother writes for a Russian newspaper and is away at work. When the girls accept a ride from a seemingly friendly young man, they are kidnapped instead. The police search, posters appear, but the girls are not found.
The plot then shifts. Each subsequent chapter explores the ripple effects of the girls’ disappearance on the Kamchatka community. Clues appear about the identity of the kidnapper and the fate of the girls, but the outcome is not revealed until the final pages. The bigger mystery here is Kamchatka and the character of its people.
The peninsula itself has a distinct presence in the story. Phillips writes, “Air and sea were the sole options for leaving. Though Kamchatka was no longer a closed territory by law, the region was cut off from the rest of the world by geography. To the south, east and west was only ocean. To the north, walling off the Russian mainland, were hundreds of kilometers of mountains and tundra.” Though the residents appreciate the natural beauty, living on this peninsula requires resilience and fortitude.
Into this terrain, Phillips introduces a rich mosaic of interconnected characters whose lives are touched by the kidnapping. The Kamchatkan people we meet all have their own struggles.
Valentina Nikolaevna is an administrator at the girls’ school with a health crisis and strong opinions: “This never could have taken place in Soviet times. You girls can’t imagine how safe it used to be. No foreigners. No outsiders. Opening the peninsula was the biggest mistake our authorities ever made.”
We learn about Oksana, a researcher at the volcanological institute. She is the only person who witnessed the girls getting into the car. Her attempt to help the investigation only compounds her sense of isolation. Her unfaithful husband has left and her beloved dog has vanished.
We meet Alla Innokentevna, the head of a cultural center in the northern village of Esso. She is not Russian, but Native. Four years earlier her daughter Lilia had disappeared. The police investigation was perfunctory and the police assumed that Lilia ran away.
Finally, we encounter Marina Alexandrovna, the mother of Alyona and Sophia. Her life consists of constant grief and persistent panic attacks. “She pled and sobbed on the evening news in an attempt to bring a breakthrough in the case. She was a fish ripped open for the reporting. Her wet gut spilled out.” Both Alla and Marina’s lives have been turned upside down by the loss of their daughters. Their earths have disappeared.
Phillips gives voice to the struggles of women navigating their daily lives in Kamchatka, lives that become more challenging after the kidnappings. Women seek love and loyalty from their boyfriends and husbands, but often experience disappointment or abandonment. Some fantasize about leaving the peninsula and establishing a new life in mainland Russia or Europe. Yet the bonds of family ultimately keep them in Kamchatka.
The relationships among the characters become clearer as the plot advances and the tension accumulates. We do learn the fate of all three girls in the story’s stunning conclusion. However, the novel’s power derives from the slow unveiling of these characters. They are isolated yet connected, like Kamchatka itself. Phillips’ great achievement in ‘Disappearing Earth’ is that she convincingly transports us into their world.
Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Jennifer Cody Epstein’s recently released pre-WWII novel Wunderland startles with its power and intimacy. This gripping story helps us understand on a human level how the horrors of WWII happened. Epstein shines a light on the friendship of two German girls and their responses to the Nazi party’s obsessive focus on blood purity and Anti-Semitic fervor. Rather than offer economic, political or military analysis of the rise of Nazism, Epstein’s novel offers us a perch to observe the reactions of Ilse Von Fischer and Renate Bauer to the increasing influence of the Nazis and the escalating brutality toward the Jewish population. One young woman joins the Nazi youth movement and the other is denied. The demise of their friendship serves as a metaphor for the devolution of the once positive relationship between diverse peoples living in Germany.
The novel opens in New York in 1989. Ava Fischer has received a package from her estranged mother’s attorney. The parcel contains her mother’s ashes and a series of letters that Ilse had written, but never sent, to her best friend Renate. Through these letters, Ava learns about her mother’s nefarious wartime activities and gains clarity about her complicated paternity.
After the devastation of the First World War and the resulting depression, Germans feel beaten down and seek both saviors and scapegoats. Ilse and Renate each respond to the chaos and lawlessness differently. When Jewish kids are mocked, denigrated and expelled from schools, Renate and Ilse don’t like the sadistic cruelty, but it doesn’t affect their lives.
In 1933, the year of Hitler’s election, Ilse and Renate are in their early teens living in Bremen, Germany. They are best friends. They wear friendship rings, walk home from school and support each other. By 1938, when random violence and smoldering hatred emerges in their town, they become young women who must choose how they will meet the moment
Ilse is soon seduced by peer pressure and a desire to find a bigger meaning in her life. She joins the NDF, a Hitler youth organization and encourages Renate, to join them as well. In a vivid scene, the German official tells Renate she is ineligible because the German authorities discovered her father’s deceased parents were Jewish. Ilse is already brainwashed, “You can’t join because you’re not a part of the new Germany. You can’t be. I know that’s not your fault, but it’s the truth. We can’t just pretend that it’s not.” Ilse could have expressed outrage, empathy and solidarity with Renate, but she does not. She embraces Hitler’s vision for a new Germany and betrays Renate’s family because of her narcissism, lack of empathy and a growing appetite for cruelty.
Epstein’s shows us through the lives of these young women how contemptuous comments directed at Jews before the war escalated into the horrors of Jewish extermination during the war. She captures the betrayal by the German people of their Jewish neighbors by writing of Ilse’s betrayal of her once dear friend Renate.
Because the novel begins and ends in 1989, there is a sense of hope for Ana. She better understands her mother’s distant personality and her grievous actions as a Nazi propagandist. Though the novel is painful, Epstein has added another dimension to our understanding of how civilized people descended into madness. Ana will eventually make peace with her mother’s past and stop the patterns in the next generation. Given the current invective in our national politics, Wunderland serves as a warning that silence in the face of denigrating and derisive language toward minority groups can lead to violence and tragedy.
