Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: February 6, 2018
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity—and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution…
Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba’s high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country’s growing political unrest—until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary…
Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa’s last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth.
Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba’s tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she’ll need the lessons of her grandmother’s past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.
Marisol Ferrera’s grandmother Elisa’s final wish was for her ashes to be scattered in Cuba, where she grew up until her family was forced to flee to America. Next Year in Havana alternates between the present day, in which Marisol travels to Cuba with her grandmother’s ashes and when her grandmother was a young woman in Cuba. It’s two love stories for the price of one. Elisa’s forbidden love is Pablo. Once in Cuba, Marisol falls for Luis, the grandson of her mother’s childhood best friend.
I learned a lot about Cuba’s history from this book as Elisa’s story takes place during Fidel Castro’s rise to power and I enjoyed Elisa’s storyline. However, I felt like Marisol and Luis’s relationship was contrived. I didn’t feel like there was any chemistry between them. And the speed at which their relationship progressed seemed unrealistic, even for a romance novel. There are three more books in this series but Next Year in Havana didn’t grab me enough to make me want to read further.
March 22nd, 2021 in
Books |
1 Comment
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Publisher: Hogarth
Publication Date: April 16, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.
Normal People starts when Connell and Marianne are in high school in a small town in Ireland. Although Connell poor (his mother cleans Marianne’s mother’s home), he is athletic and popular in school. Even though Marianne comes from a wealthy family, she’s kind of a weirdo and doesn’t have any friends. She and Connell strike up a friends with benefits type situation but Connell insists they keep their relationship a secret, worried that if it gets out he’s sleeping with Marianne, it will lower his social status.
They both head to Trinity College, an elite private school in Dublin. There the tables are turned. Marianne fits in with the other wealthy students, while Connell feels like an outsider. My favorite line in the book is Connell’s observation of the other students at a party:
“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterward feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
Throughout college, Marianne and Connell break-up and get back together a few times, dating other people in-between. Their break-ups are usually precipitated by some sort of misunderstanding. The kind that makes you want to jump in the book and shake them. Just communicate with each other for goodness sake!
Some of the reviews I read after reading Normal People indicate that its theme is class. While that didn’t jump out at me as the theme while I was reading it, looking back on it now, I can see that it is about class to some extent. Marianne and Connell are definitely of different classes and it does have an effect on the way they each see the world and relate to one another.
Normal People has also been called the first great millennial novel. Speaking as a Gen Xer, I can see why it’s been called that but I think that anyone can appreciate it, although maybe not as much as a millennial might. My book club that is made up of mostly baby boomers were lukewarm on it overall. I enjoyed it enough that I plan to read Rooney’s first novel, Conversations with Friends, which is supposed to be fairly similar and just as good, if not better. Normal People has been made into a limited series on Hulu which I also plan to check out. I’ll keep you posted on what it’s like.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication Date: April 7, 2020
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease.
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins–aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony–and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?
What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.
Hidden Valley Road is the story of Don and Mimi Galvin and their twelve children – ten boys and two girls. Six of their boys end up being diagnosed as schizophrenic. The diagnoses started rolling in the 1960s, when not much was known about the cause of the disease or how to treat it. It was originally thought to be brought on by being raised by an overbearing mother. Eventually, some scientists wanted to know if there could be a genetic component to the disease and that’s where the Galvin family could help, being such a large family with such a high incidence of the disease.
Robert Kolker goes back and forth between chapters on the Galvin family and chapters about theories and research related to schizophrenia. He spent hours interviewing members of the family and their friends and reading journals that various family members kept over the years. The family struggled so much. Any parent would have been overwhelmed but Mimi’s preoccupation with making sure her family looked perfect from the outside certainly didn’t help. Her two daughters were the two youngest children and had to endure horrible abuse from some of their older brothers. The family was perpetually in chaos.
The book profiles the Galvins from when Don and Mimi first started dating, right up through the present day. The work scientists are doing in the field is also followed up through today. It was interesting to see how all of the Galvin children ended up. Of course, even the healthy siblings were profoundly affected growing up in a household with so many mentally ill people. At times, I wished for a little more details about some of the siblings but I know the author could only include so much without making the book cumbersome.
Hidden Valley Road has a very readable narrative, even with all of the scientific information that’s included. Kolker’s treatment of the mentally ill brothers never seems exploitive, only informative. Recommended.
March 15th, 2021 in
Books |
1 Comment
The Other Mother by Matthew Dicks
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: January 12, 2021
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Thirteen-year-old Michael Parsons is dealing with a lot. His father’s sudden death; his mother’s new husband, Glen, who he loathes; his two younger siblings, who he looks after more and more now that his mother works extra shifts.
And then one day, Michael wakes up and his mother is gone. In her place is an exact, duplicate mother. The ‘other mother’. No one else seems to notice the real version is missing. His brother, his sister, and even Glen act as if everything’s normal. But Michael knows in his heart that this mother is not his. And he begins to panic.
What follows is a big-hearted coming-of-age story of a boy struggling with an unusual disorder that poses unparalleled challenges―but also, as he discovers, offers him unique opportunities.
Thirteen-year-old Michael Parsons is under a lot of stress. He cares for his younger brother and sister while his mother works double shifts to make up for the fact that his scheming, deadbeat step-dad contributes almost nothing financially to the household. Michael has anger problems that have gotten worse since his father died. It seems likes he’s always in trouble at school. Then, one day he wakes up to discover that his mother is missing. She has been replaced with an exact replica. No one else seems to notice that this woman is not his mother. Michael needs to find out what this other mother has done with his real mother. He can’t tell anyone because he knows they’ll think he’s crazy.
Michael clearly has some sort of behavior disorder, although a specific diagnosis is never given in the book. He meets with the school counselor daily to help develop coping mechanisms for his anger. Because he has outbursts at school, he doesn’t have any friends. His inner thoughts reveal some of the causes of his behavior but it confuses him almost as much as it confuses the people around him. Matthew Dicks has a real insight into the minds of troubled people and Michael’s inner thoughts are authentic and revealing. I felt such empathy for him, my heart hurt while reading this book.
There are bright spots for Michael. Sarah, the prettiest girl in school, happens to live next door. When Michael’s little sister invites her to go fishing with them, Sarah and Michael hit it off and become fast friends. She’s only the second friend Michael has ever had. Michael also meets a woman on his paper route who knew his dad when they were kids. He enjoys hearing stories about when his dad, who he misses terribly, was younger. Michael has to decide if he trusts either Sarah or the woman enough to tell them that his mother is missing.
Dicks wrote Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, which is one of my all-time favorite books. I’m happy to say that The Other Mother is in league with that book. Highly recommended.
Other books I’ve reviewed by Matthew Dicks:
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs
(I received a complimentary copy of The Other Mother for review.)
March 11th, 2021 in
Books |
1 Comment
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo
Publisher: Seal Press
Publication Date: December 1, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color, instead of by actual accomplishments?
Through the last 150 years of American history — from the post-reconstruction South and the mythic stories of cowboys in the West, to the present-day controversy over NFL protests and the backlash against the rise of women in politics — Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color, and white men themselves. Mediocre investigates the real costs of this phenomenon in order to imagine a new white male identity, one free from racism and sexism.
As provocative as it is essential, this book will upend everything you thought you knew about American identity and offers a bold new vision of American greatness.
Mediocre should be required reading for everyone, especially white males. Of course, I knew that white males are the most privileged group in our society and that they have been scared of losing their power forever. They go to great lengths to keep from relinquishing even one iota of it. However, I didn’t realize just how pervasive and ingrained the myth of white male superiority is in our country. This book is well-researched and Oluo lays it all out in a way that left me wondering how I hadn’t put all of the pieces together before now. It’s truly amazing how much we capitulate to the white males of the world.
She starts all the way back with Buffalo Bill and ends up in the present day. She’s equal opportunity – it’s not just white male conservatives enjoying their status – she takes Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to task as well. I especially appreciated what I learned about how women CEOs have been typically been treated. The section on the history of racism in the NFL was also enlightening – I wish that everyone against the players kneeling for the national anthem would read it.
Oluo has been doxed, swatted and received multiple death threats and yet she keeps on speaking and writing the truth. Just like her first book, So You Want to Talk about Race, (find my review of it here) Mediocre is written in her accessible style with some dry humor sprinkled in. I hope that everyone reads it.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
March 8th, 2021 in
Books |
1 Comment
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: September 22, 2015
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:
“I’ve often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people’ also might never understand. And that’s what Furiously Happy is all about.”
Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. Furiously Happy appeals to Jenny’s core fan base but also transcends it. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family―and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message (via a taxidermied roadkill raccoon). Let’s Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it’s about joy―and who doesn’t want a bit more of that?
Jenny Lawson has done it again. Furiously Happy is just as hilarious as Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. (My review of that is here.) Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was mostly stories about Jenny’s childhood and family while Furiously Happy is more recent stories from her life. Some of the stories have a serious tone because the focus of this book is Jenny’s experience with her mental illness, which includes depression and severe anxiety. True to form, she sees the humor in almost every situation, including in her struggles with her mental illness. As she says in the book the Furiously Happy movement is about people with depression,
“taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing because those moments are what make us who we are, and they’re the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence.”
Jenny definitely makes the most of everyday moments and makes them hilarious. The very best story is about her trying to figure out how a Japanese toilet works. When I read it the first time, I laughed so hard I had tears. Even now, I still chuckle when I think about it. I liked that this book alternated between truly hysterical stories like the Japanese toilet saga with the more introspective chapters so that it never got too heavy. I think people with depression will appreciate how unflinchingly honest she is about her struggles and find a kindred spirit in her. Highly, highly recommended.
March 4th, 2021 in
Books |
No Comments
The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger.
Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook find it impossible to ignore their differences. The Island of Sea Women takes place over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.
The Island of Sea Women is historical fiction about the women divers, or haenyeo, who live and work on the Korean Island of Jeju. It spans from the Japanese occupation in 1938 up through 2008. Mi-ja and Young-sook are baby divers and best friends. However, they have very different backgrounds. After they each marry, their relationship is tested in the ultimate way.
I enjoyed learning about the haenyeo (you watch can videos of them in action on YouTube) and the matriarchal society they live in. Because women’s bodies are better suited for diving, they are the breadwinners and the men are the main caregivers to the children. Everyone seems happy with this arrangement, which was refreshing.
That being said, this book is gut-wrenching. There is brutal violence in it that was hard to read. It’s one of those books where it feels weird to say I enjoyed it because so many terrible things happen in it. But I did like this book. I especially liked that it was full of strong women characters and I liked the historical aspect of it. Recommended.
March 1st, 2021 in
Books |
1 Comment
Dear Child by Romy Hausmann
Translated from German by Jamie Bulloch
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: October 6, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
A windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare.
She says her name is Lena. Lena, who disappeared without a trace 14 years prior? She fits the profile. She has the distinctive scar. But her family swears that she isn’t their Lena.
The little girl who escaped the woods with her knows things she isn’t sharing, and Lena’s devastated father is trying to piece together details that don’t quite fit. Lena is desperate to begin again, but something tells her that her tormentor still wants to get back what belongs to him…and that she may not be able to truly escape until the whole truth about what happened in the woods finally emerges.
A woman is hit by a car trying to escape her captor and taken to the hospital. She says her name is Lena, who is a girl who has been missing for 14 years. She even has a scar on her forehead, just like Lena did. But when Lena’s parents come to the hospital, they say that this Lena is not their daughter. A little girl was with Lena when she has hit and went with her in the ambulance to the hospital. She knows what Lena was running from but she won’t say. She says the woman is her mama and that she has a brother who stayed behind in the cabin to “clean up the stains on the floor.” She calmly recounts her life with her family in the cabin – boarded up windows and doors locked up so that no one except Papa can go outside. But still questions remain: If the woman in the hospital is not Lena, then who is she? And where is Lena?
Wow, is all I can say about this book. Okay, I’ll say more. The blurb on the front cover says that it’s Room meets Gone Girl, which I’d say is pretty accurate. But it’s definitely not an imitation of either. There have been so many thrillers with unreliable narrators since Gone Girl that it’s usually easy to spot the twist a mile away. Not so in Dear Child. And Dear Child has twist upon twist upon twist. There’s no way I could have guessed how it all turned out, and yet the ending actually made sense. That’s all you’re going to get out of me because I don’t want to spoil a single surprise. Highly recommended.
February 22nd, 2021 in
Books |
No Comments
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication Date: October 10, 2017
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there’s a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family.
But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways.
When I heard that Naomi Alderman’s mentor is the queen of speculative fiction Margaret Atwood, I knew The Power was a book I had to read. The Power is written as a book within a book. It starts with a letter from an author named Neil Adam Armon (an anagram of Naomi Alderman) to another author named Naomi. Neil has written a historical fiction novel set 5000 years ago (which would make it set in the present day) about what happened when teenage girls suddenly developed the power to shoot powerful volts of electricity out of their hands. The balance of power in the world shifts when women are suddenly able to overpower men whenever they want.
It turns out that power corrupts women just as much as it corrupts men and a female-dominated society isn’t the benevolent matriarchy one might imagine. It’s an interesting thought experiment that Alderman engages in. She does so with nuance and a touch of dark humor. Once I finished, I immediately wanted to read it again because I know I’ll get even more out of it when I know where the story is headed. We read this book for one of my book clubs and there was a lot to talk about – it makes for a great discussion. My book club is all-female – I’d be really interested in what male readers think of it. I’m guessing most would find it pretty eye-opening. Highly recommended.
P.S. Production on a 10-episode series for Amazon Prime was delayed due to the pandemic but should be starting up soon. I can’t wait to watch it!
February 18th, 2021 in
Books |
1 Comment
A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost
Publisher: Crown
Publication Date: July 14, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
If there’s one trait that makes someone well suited to comedy, it’s being able to take a punch—metaphorically and, occasionally, physically.
From growing up in a family of firefighters on Staten Island to commuting three hours a day to high school and “seeing the sights” (like watching a Russian woman throw a stroller off the back of a ferry), to attending Harvard while Facebook was created, Jost shares how he has navigated the world like a slightly smarter Forrest Gump.
You’ll also discover things about Jost that will surprise and confuse you, like how Jimmy Buffett saved his life, how Czech teenagers attacked him with potato salad, how an insect laid eggs inside his legs, and how he competed in a twenty-five-man match at WrestleMania (and almost won). You’ll go behind the scenes at SNL and Weekend Update (where he’s written some of the most memorable sketches and jokes of the past fifteen years). And you’ll experience the life of a touring stand-up comedian—from performing in rural college cafeterias at noon to opening for Dave Chappelle at Radio City Music Hall.
For every accomplishment (hosting the Emmys), there is a setback (hosting the Emmys). And for every absurd moment (watching paramedics give CPR to a raccoon), there is an honest, emotional one (recounting his mother’s experience on the scene of the Twin Towers’ collapse on 9/11). Told with a healthy dose of self-deprecation, A Very Punchable Face reveals the brilliant mind behind some of the dumbest sketches on television, and lays bare the heart and humor of a hardworking guy—with a face you can’t help but want to punch.
If you’re a Saturday Night Live fan, you know that Colin Jost is one of the head writers and co-host of Weekend Update. We all know that I love celebrity memoirs and I originally picked this one up hoping for details on his relationship with his now wife, Scarlett Johansson. I’ll just tell you right up front – there is almost nothing about Johansson in here. But there’s so much other good stuff and it’s so freaking funny that I didn’t even care! A lot of memoirs written by comedians aren’t really that funny unless you listen to them reading it. It’s their delivery that makes it funny. Not so in Jost’s case. I read the print version of this book and was laughing out loud. I read passages out loud to my husband and kids and they laughed out loud too.
One of the funniest chapters is about all the times in his life that he’s pooped his pants. Like, as an adult. And while the way he tells it, it’s hilarious, as someone with Crohn’s disease, I kind of want to have a little chat with him. Pooping your pants once or twice a year is not normal!
Surprisingly, this book also made me teary. Jost’s mother is a physician and was the chief medical officer for the New York Fire Department on 9/11. Reading his account of that day was emotional. And he loves his mom so much, it’s sweet. (She’s still alive but she lost many friends that day.)
Even though he’s only 38, he has a lot of interesting stories to tell. For instance, he almost died surfing with Jimmy Buffet and he was at Harvard at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg and rowed crew with the Winklevoss twins. While there isn’t much about ScarJo included, he does dish on some of the past SNL hosts, which I appreciated. Highly recommended, especially right now when something to laugh about is needed more than ever!
February 16th, 2021 in
Books |
No Comments
