Super good reads: 5 stars!

25. Lily White, by Susan Isaacs

28. The General’s Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

31. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

32. Laughing Boy, by Oliver la Farge

35. Back When We Were Grownups, by Anne Tyler

36. Too Late the Phalarope, by Alan Paton

44. Pudd’nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain

46. Killing Floor, by Lee Child

Loved these books, too: 4 stars

27. Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn

30. Memories of the Ford Administration, by John Updike

33. How to Make an American Quilt, by Whitney Otto

40. When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro

45. Breath, Eyes, Memories, by Edwidge Danticat

47. The Third Man / Fallen Idol, by Graham Greene

 

Thoughts about some of the books I read Second Quarter 2020

28. The General’s Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

I give it a reluctant 5 stars. It’s called a novel, but it doesn’t read like one. Not a page turner by any means. It reads like biography, and in this case the biography of the last days in the life of Simón Bolivar, El Liberator. Márquez narrates a story of Bolivar’s 7-month journey down the great river Magdalena from Bogota to Cartagena on the sea. The book ignited an interest in Bolivar that I may pursue. I did not realize that he’d spent considerable time in Europe (witnessing the coronation of Napoleon) and that he even visited cities on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. His wars of liberation occurred early in the 19th century, between 1810 and 1830 and his vision was that of a united “America,” the largest country in the world. It was a dream that was realized and unrealized. Bolivar was a man of passion, dreams, ferocity and drive. Marquez is masterful in the portraiture he provides of a tormented, driven and, in the end, wavering, man who wanders in a labyrinth of conflicting passions and ideas, especially at the end. He died before he reached 50—but he looked 70, so emaciated was his body. His dream of American unification (what we call South America today) is similar to the dream of Mao Tse Dung who was able to pull off what no tribal leaders or emperors had been able to do before him. And today, China—well enough said. Even Lenin, Stalin, et al., could not hold together a Soviet Union of republics and it collapsed in the late 1980s. Today, only China and the United States are countries in which tribal, regional and religious difference are joined under one ruling system. But Bolivar’s successes were significant and historic: He drove every Spaniard back to Spain. El Liberator. Like many liberators, he did not, especially at the end, enjoy the respect he deserved. Washington was wise to retire after two terms and go back to farming. Churchill likewise should have retired and written books.

30. Memories of the Ford Administration, by John Updike

Memories of the Ford Administration is less about Ford than it is about Buchanan, the fifteenth president of the United States, and the only bachelor president. An interesting format, and it works well until Buchanan takes office in 1856, and then Updike rushes and it’s like reading from the Congressional Digest … not his best stuff, and the narrator, a college professor working on his Buchanan biography and inserting notes to the editor, is a typical Updikian misanthrope hung up on sex and going through a failed marriage. I did enjoy what memories of the Ford administration that he had … but it was a very brief time.

31. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

This book gets a much more enthusiastic 5-star rating than the five stars I gave to Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s book, The General in His Labyrinth. He wrote it as a political novel. He clearly has an agenda, and that is to promote Socialism. He does this by writing a novel and following the fortunes, or misfortunes, of a young man and his bride and various extended relatives who arrive in Chicago from Lithuania. They come to America because it is a land of promise! But instead they become economic slaves in a city, that of all the cities in the U.S. at the time was the most corrupt. Even in 1960, Richard Daley and cronies gave Cook County and the state to Kennedy. Sinclair is a muckraking journalist when muckraking was a noble enterprise. He raked up the muck, the graft and corruption that was at the core of every form of commerce in the city, and every form of public service as well. He went undercover to a number of the meatpacking factor-ies in Chicago, a mission sponsored by the Socialist paper, “Appeal to Reason.” He then published his novel, featuring Jorghis the tragic hero, in serial form in 1905 and in 1906 Doubleday published it in novel form. It was an immediate sensation. But it’s publication did little to turn the country to Socialism. Instead, it brought about changes in meat inspection practices and better food production methods. Sinclair had wanted to reach people’s minds, but as he said, he reaches their stomachs in-stead. Various new laws and agencies were set up including what later came to be known as the Food and Drug Administration. Not a feel-good novel, for sure. But very interesting reading. And it recalled a tour I made of a Hormel packing plant when I was a teen living in Fremont, Nebraska. The plant was in Fremont. I watched workers sticking the cattle as they traveled up a ramp—blood pouring from their throats like water from a faucet. It was a memorable scene. I doubt that kids are given tours like that anymore through packing houses.

Sinclair went on to write several other muckraking novels, like one on banking, religion, etc. But I really don’t have much interest in them. This might not be his greatest novel (he was awarded a Pulitzer in 1943 for another work), but it certainly was his most influential. He lived to be 90 and died in 1968, about 60 years after the publication of The Jungle. He ran for office a few times on the Socialist ticket, including the governorship of California. Never won.

 32. Laughing Boy, by Oliver la Farge

Another 5-star rating, but I’d give Sinclair’s a Plus, while this one is even, and Márquez’s book a Minus, much like the Letter Grade system. In other words, A+, A and A-. Perhaps I should switch to this system. Laughing Boy is a sad, but poignant novel of the Navajo ways. It was interesting to me in part because of the time I spent in New Mexico when Father was with the mission in Gallup, and his time in Albuquerque. The book was awarded the Pulitzer in 1930. Laughing Boy, a craftsman in jewelry meets Slim Girl, an independent gal who was educated in missionary schools, and who worked occasionally for a nice American woman. Mysterious, provocative and a gal with a plan to get out of her life and live as a wealthy woman, respected and admired. But she has a past—and a present—and it all catches up with her. Laughing Boy and Slim Girl do marry and struggle to advance in their life together, but her secrets become their undoing.

33. How to Make an American Quilt, by Whitney Otto

I liked Otto’s novel. She uses numbered instructions for chapters, which are separated by character and story batting that is more interesting than the instructions themselves. She introduces the members of the quilting club, and then begins to tell the story of each of the quilters. They’re good stories. I was more interested in the stories than in the instructions. I cannot imagine this book having much appeal to a male audience. I enjoy reading and appreciate good writ-ing. So it had a certain appeal for me. But this is a girl book. This book is for a woman who can take her place with the other quilters and gab about her neighbor’s facelift, or the wayward child or how the preacher is spending too much time with the widow Morgan.

35. Back When We Were Grownups, by Anne Tyler

Another novel about a frumpy neurotic middle-aged woman at a crossroads. My enjoyment with the book grew as I got about halfway into it. As with most of Tyler’s character-driven novels, it was difficult for me to care. Still, Tyler is a talented writer, gifted with metaphor and simile and character development. She brings in details without being intrusive about it. And, as usual, her protagonist is a woman full of self-doubts, or is morosely unhappy, or questioning the meaning of life or in caught in a miserable marriage. One reviewer of Redhead by the Side of the Road wrote: “Tyler’s women are mostly vivacious and chatty, with flyaway hair and a zest for life. Her men are mostly oddball misfits, a little out of step with the world.” Really? Vivacious and chatty? The reviewer, a woman, has a viewpoint polar opposite of mine. Perhaps it is a gender thing. Who is she talking about? Willa Drake in Clock Dance? Delia Grinstead in Ladder of Years? Maggie Moran in Breathing Lessons? And now, Rebecca Dravitch? Truth is, all of Tyler’s characters are misfits — every last one of them, male or female. And the themes of her enormous body of work are essentially the same: Marriage and family, meaning of life. “Milk and cookies,” as one reviewer put it. You have to be something of a voyeur at heart to think of Tyler’s novels as entertaining. The reader is crouched beneath the window pane, peering through a glass darkly, watching totally ordinary people stumbling through their sad, absurd and meaningless lives. But I enjoyed the book — for many reasons, not the least of which she always makes me feel better about my own life. So, five stars from me. But I’ll need about a year before picking Tyler up again to avoid thinking about the meaning of life.

36. Too Late the Phalarope, by Alan Paton

Five stars for this book. Interesting structure and themes (self-destruction, the divided self, guilt, racism, power of lust/love, etc.). The story takes place in South Africa, and the protagonist is a Lieu-tenant in the police force. He was raised by a rather stern and cold father. Pieter van Vlaanderen is married with two children. But he harbors a secret attraction for a black girl Stephanie, a relationship which destroys the family as the narrator Sophia makes clear from the beginning. Sophia is the father’s sister; Pieter is therefore her nephew whom she dearly loves. The novel plotline puts Pieter in conflict with the 1927 Immorality Act in which sexual relations be-tween whites and blacks was strictly forbidden—punished by long prison terms. The law was later expanded to include relations be-tween whites and any other race. Racial narcissism, as it were. Sophia narrates the story, but includes italicized passages from Pieter’s ac-count of the fall which he wrote after the fact—as a description and explanation for his wife and children. So the reader understands the device whereby she is able to tell the story—because this book or confession was given to her and she read it before giving it to the wife. Some critics compare the novel to a Greek tragedy for which some praise Paton and others condemn him. But most critics I’ve read believe that this novel, his second, is superior to the novel for which he’s most famous: Cry, the Beloved Country.

40. When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Not Ishiguro’s best work. But Ishiguro (Nobel Prize for Literature 2017 I think) crafts a fine tale. Told in first person by Christopher Banks, we follow him through a web of memories that begin in Shanghai and extend for a while to England. We learn that his family lived in the International Settlement (at the time the French, British and Americans were there) and we follow him (his parents and Uncle Philip called him “Puffin) and his Japanese friend Akira in some of their childhood adventures. When his parents were kidnapped, his world changed forever. In England, and orphan, he is sent to the best schools, all the time nursing a desire to be a detective and to solve his parents’ case. He does solve many important cases and be-comes something of a society figure, running into a certain Sarah who’s a young, bright gold-digger aware of her beauty and wealth, but who is essentially a lonely gal with pretensions, an actor playing a role that fits her. She and Christopher do form something of a fragile friendship and at one point are prepared to run away to Macao together, but fate intervenes. The book ends in a unsurprising but satisfactory manner. I enjoyed the book for a variety of reasons, not the least of which the setting in Shanghai made me nostalgic for the city, from which I have only recently repatriated after living there for 13 years.

Pudd’nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain

44. I finished it. Good story. A slave girl who is only 1/32 negro and therefore looks white has a baby boy who is barely a negro himself, but of course considered one, and works for a wealthy widower who also has a son of same age who, of course, is white. She switches the babies when she realizes she might be sold down the river (where the treatment of slaves is much harsher). Meanwhile, Wilson has a hobby of collecting “finger marks” — a nice science which Twain was very interested in in the 1890s, and the novel becomes, especially at the end, a whodunit. A psychological study, too. Roxy’s son as a privileged white kid grows up to be a profligate worthless lad, and Chambers, a white kid growing up negro develops into a decent kid speaking the negro dialect, and so on. Many pithy sayings along the way.

45. Breath, Eyes, Memories, by Edwidge Danticat

Finished Breath, Eyes, Memories by Edwidge Danticat. I can understand the title only because I imagine Danticat and her editors couldn’t decide agree on a title, because none of them could agree on what this book was about. It’s highly autobiographical, and when an up-and-coming writer (so she was declared in the late 1990s) has a debut novel that pretty much mimics her life, he or she probably won’t write much else. I think Danticat has written perhaps two more novels, but I don’t think she sees herself as a novelist. This book is nevertheless an enjoyable read. I appreciated the way she drew me into Haitian culture and language. The reader enters a world of purity testing, gender discrimination and to a lesser extent racism. I got invested in Sophie’s life and hoped that there’d be a good outcome for her. So four stars for this book.