Recent Reviews
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Alert: This review has spoilers.
In this transcendent novel, Mary Beth Keane’s talent for describing people’s inner lives appears on every page. Nuanced and insightful, the characters in Ask Again, Yes feel authentic and alive. The novel explores the emotional fallout of a tragedy that involves two families. Is forgiveness possible? What do we owe our families amid a calamity?
The year is 1973. Both Frankie Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are New York City rookie cops. When they each begin to start the families, they each move to the suburbs and coincidently land next door to each other. Francis and Lena soon have three daughters: the youngest named Kate. Anne and Brian Stanhope have one son whose name is Peter. The adults don’t interact with each other. Francis tells his daughter Kate to stay away from Peter’s mother, “Something’s not right.” When Peter and Kate enter school, they become close friends. Then a mental illness induced tragedy strikes when Kate and Peter are fourteen. Peter’s mother shoots Kate’s father. The repercussions from this shocking event will entangle the Gleasons and the Sandhopes in perpetuity.
Keane’s keen knowledge of the human condition allows the characters’ inner thoughts to propel the plot rather than external events. Yes, life moves on after the shooting. Everyone lives, though in a state of emotional and physical pain. There are graduations and job promotions, weddings and funerals, but Keane’s focus is on these characters’ internal reflections. Like a kaleidoscope, she shifts the narration, so readers learn the thoughts of Kate and Peter, Francis and Lena and Brian and Anne.
Kate and Peter’s love story dominates. The book’s cover made this plot seem sensational: the enigmatic title certainly added to that impression. Yet in Keane’s skilled hands, the notion that Kate and Peter would want to be with each other seems entirely believable. People who experience trauma together often gravitate toward one another. The fall out from the shooting dominates Kate and Peter’s inner lives. How could it not? They each experience grief, guilt and anguish for their parents and themselves. In the uproar and upheaval that follows, Peter moves to another town to live with an uncle. Kate’s father lingers in the hospital. As they move through their teens and into their twenties, Peter and Kate can think of nothing but each other. All four parents are living with pain and exhort Kate and Peter not to find each other. But they do - and all the family members must now navigate the complex maze of emotional dynamics and begin to understand the heartbreak of mental illness. As a psychiatrist tells Peter’s mother, “You repeat what you do not repair.”
Ask Again, Yes is a thoughtful rumination on how people navigate complicated feelings. She explores the passing of time, the randomness of life’s big choices, the need for understanding, the persistent ignorance around mental health issues, and the importance of forgiveness. The ending moved me in its simplicity and beauty. There is healing and mercy, compassion and empathy. Ask Again, Yes, is one of the most satisfying novels I have read this year. Thanks to the DJKKS Book Club.
The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on September 8, 2019
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/dutch-heroine-saves-jewish-children-in-last-train/
Recent bestsellers like ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ and ‘The Lilac Girls’ focus on the horrors of the Holocaust and the barbarity of the concentration camps. A new novel by Bay Area resident, Meg Waite Clayton, ‘The Last Train to London’ is a fictionalized account of how Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer personally saved a thousand Jewish children from those camps. Her excellent novel enriches the genre and brings to life this brave Dutch heroine.
The novel begins in 1936. Wijsmuller-Meijer, known as Tante Truus, with help from her husband Joop, has been rescuing small groups of children and transporting them out of Germany. Courageous and cunning, she bribes Nazis, endures jail and withstands Gestapo interrogations. Her training as a social worker, her Christian faith and perhaps the sadness of not being able to have children propel her to save innocent lives.
Two young people saved by Tante Truus are Stephan Neuman and Žofie-Helene Perger. In another time, Stephan and Žofie’s courtship might be carefree, but in this dangerous time, their friendship becomes a matter of life and death. Though not religious, Stephan’s family is Jewish. He lives with his mother, father and five-year-old brother Walter in a lavish house in Vienna adorned with paintings by Van Gogh, Klimt and Kokoschka. Žofie is not Jewish. But because her mother publishes scathing editorials about Hitler’s evil regime, Žofie and her family are not safe either. Initially, Stephan and Žofie ignore the Nazi thugs. But after the annexation of Austria by the Nazis in March of 1938, the Nazis intensify their sinister policies. All Jews are subject to escalating viciousness. Stephan is no longer allowed in school. The Nazis loot Stephan’s family’s apartment. They beat Stephan’s father and drag him into a truck headed for a camp.
True to the historical record, Tante Truus encounters Adolph Eichmann. Before the war, Eichmann has been working his way up the Nazi hierarchy. As head of Jewish Office in Vienna, he cynically studies the Viennese Jewish leaders and their culture. Eichmann has not yet written his diabolical “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, but his cruelty is already evident.
In November of 1938, after the ransacking and destruction of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, the British Parliament votes to expedite the rescue of Jewish children. This effort becomes known as the Kindertransport. The English refugee aid leaders believe Tante Truus might be able to persuade Eichmann to let some children leave. In a climactic scene, she meets with the creepy and controlling Eichmann. He makes a joke of her request and for unknown reasons allows six hundred Jewish children to depart Vienna. His caveat: they must go on the Sabbath, a day Orthodox Jews are prohibited from traveling. Thanks to Tante Truus, Žofie, Stephan, and Stephan’s brother, Walter, are three of the six hundred children who escape that day. Between 1938-1940, over ten thousand children find refuge in England.
Clayton’s book is clearly the product of prodigious historical research. It captures the wave of hate and intimidation directed at Vienna’s Jewish community even before WWII begins. While the anti-Semitism is vividly captured, I would have liked to hear more about the rich traditions of the Viennese Jewish community before the Nazis.
‘The Last Train to London’ serves as a reminder that even in dangerous times, each one of us can make a difference. Without resistance, extremist ideologies ferment into full-blown lawlessness. When asked about her boldness, Tante Truus said, “My father used to say courage isn’t the absence of fear, but rather going forward in the face of it.” What is vital about this novel is not that it helps us understand the inhumanity of the Nazis, but rather, it helps us imagine the inspiring humanity of those who opposed them. Thanks to Meg Waite Clayton for bringing Tante Truus to life at this moment when cruelty is once again on the march.
Prairie Fever by Michael Parker
What a remarkable book! I felt pulled into Michael Parker’s novel Prairie Fever after reading the first chapter. Parker’s literary capabilities stun in this compelling story about two sisters who are tested by the punishing life on the prairie and the complex emotions of their hearts.
At its most basic, this story is a love triangle. The Stewart sisters: Lorena 17 and Elise 15 who live in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma in 1917, both fall for the new school teacher. Gus McQueen, 18. Their father is a farmer who keeps his distance. Their mother is bereft after the death of their two brothers. Nonetheless, each morning she helps Lorena and Elise mount Sandy, their horse, for the 4-mile trek to school.
Parker’s writing is gorgeous and evocative. “Winter mornings, their mother kissed them both on the forehead, pinned the blanket around the two of them, and slapped the horse’s croup. Lorena held the reins. Elise wrapped her arms around her older sister’s waist and both girls shut their eyes against the icy wind of the prairie. Inside the blanket, they warmed themselves with words. Off they would go into the world, whispering things with and without words, protected from the cold by the heat of their bodies and the blanket of sky.”
Despite their different demeanors, Elise and Lorena have always completed each other. Lenore is precise, stubborn and severe, while Else is whimsical, impulsive and dreamy. The sisters’ connection is secure and their love for each other deep. But when the new teacher Gus McQueen arrives at their one-room schoolhouse, both Lenore and Elise eventually are attracted to him, causing friction in the sisters’ relationship. Their inner lives and external paths are changed forever.
Language, grammar and spelling delight all three characters. They understand the limitations of words to express the deepest of feelings. The narrator offers, “Thank goodness everyone was trying to tell you something else entirely, for if the world were made up only of what actually came out of people’s mouth, Elise would prefer the frozen eternity of heaven.” The book also addresses some existential issues. The sisters repeatedly ask each other, “ What do you think is the point of life” Lorena answers herself, “The point of life is to know your limitations.”
I won’t say which sister marries Gus, but two decades after the betrayal, some healing and forgiveness occurs between the sisters. Here is a quote from the end of the novel. “Dusk had come to her and Elise watched it and sang the buried songs to Lorena. Against the icy wind, Sandy struggled, but they were all safe and warm beneath the blanket of sky.”
If you are looking for a book with a lot of action, this is not the book for you. However, if you are interested in characters that struggle, think and change, you are in for a treat. Grace moves through this novel.
