The Nature of Fragile Things

The Nature of Fragile Things is the third Susan Meissner novel that I've read in a little over a year. At the start of the pandemic, curious about life during the time of the Spanish flu, I read As Bright As Heaven. Then this past September, I picked up A Fall of Marigolds which dealt with the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire and September 11th. The Nature of Fragile Things is by far my favorite.

I didn't read the blurb carefully enough to know that this really wasn't about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. That was merely the backdrop. (I guess that was the case with the previous two novels that I read.) The Nature of Fragile Things is about Sophie, mail order bride to Martin Hocking. Sophie had emigrated from Ireland to New York City. She answered Martin's newspaper ad for a wife and a mother for his daughter, Kat. Sophie takes the train across the country. Martin picks her up at the train station and they quickly head off to get married. Sophie's life in San Francisco is more comfortable than she ever imagined and while she never develops a real affection for Martin - who is quite odd - her affection for silent Kat grows and grows, as does her concern over why Kat so rarely speaks.

A stranger had come knocking at the door of Sophie and Martin's house on the eve of the great earthquake which answers some of Sophie's questions but unravels a few more. It has Sophie leaving San Francisco to get some of her questions answered, especially those regarding Kat.

The Nature of Fragile Things is a novel about what it means to be a mother, a wife and a friend. It demonstrates how strong women's friendships can be.

This wasn't great literature, but it was a pleasure to read.

George

One of my book clubs decided to select a banned book to read for our October meeting which falls right after Banned Book Week. George by Alex Gino showed up on so many of the lists of most banned books. We decided to go with this novel, a middle grade reader, so that we can really delve into why books are banned, why was this particular book was banned, and how we feel about all of it.

George is the story of a transgender fourth-grade girl who is getting ready to let those in her life who are important to her know that she is a girl. Reading this novel really made me think about parts of the coming out process for transgender youth that I hadn't thought about before. As I read, I kept wondering about how I would have discussed this novel as a teacher with one of my students. There is so much to discuss here, for both adults and children. `  

Know My Name

Chanel Miller's memoir, Know My Name, is one of the most powerful memoirs that I've read in a long time, if ever. You may not know Chanel Miller's name because after she was sexually assaulted by Stanford University student, Brock Turner, she was known as "Emily Doe." Besides being a story of strength told by a very gifted writer, it's a story of a criminal justice system that doesn't work for victims of sexual assault. 

I don't want to go into much of the story. It was in the news for over a year, a young man of privilege who seemed to get away with an on-campus attack, even though the case was pretty cut and dry, and he was convicted on three charges. "Emily Doe's" victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed where it went viral.

This memoir deals with the journey of the victim as she takes back her own name and tries to reclaim her own identity. There was much talk at the time about what Brock Turner had lost. But what about Chanel Miller? What did she lose? What were the long-term ramifications on her life? What is it like to be the victim? And what is it like to be a survivor?

Additionally, what did Chanel Miller want from the criminal justice system, from Brock Turner, and from Stanford University?

I highly encourage everyone one to read this.

Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

 

What a fun read Elyssa Friedland's Last Summer at the Golden Hotel was! I enjoyed it so much more than I expected to. It was a nice change from the heavier books that I normally read. (Even though I feel like I've been taking more breaks now than I normally do.)

The Golden Hotel is one of the last remaining hotels of the famed Borscht Belt, the Catskill Mountains where mostly Jews from the NY area would head to each summer. Think Dirty Dancing. The story takes place in 2018, about 60 years after Amos Weingold and Benny Goldman built the Golden Hotel from the ground up. Benny has recently died, the Catskills are no longer drawing the crowd that it once did, and an offer to buy the hotel has been made by a casino developer. Should the families sell the hotel? Try to keep it?

Three generations of the families gather together at the hotel to make their decision. In the process, stories of days gone by are shared, family secrets are brought to the forefront, and family relationships are tested. I really enjoyed the differences between the generations - and between the various characters within a single generation.

As I was reading, I thought back upon my two trips to the Catskills. Once was in the early 1960s. My dad was chaperoning a college trip and he got to bring the family along. I remember that the college kids loved having my younger brother and me around. The hotel we stayed at closed in 1967 so that  hotel must have been reaching its tipping point. I went back with my (then) husband and some friends in the early 1980s. We stayed at the Concord, one of the hotels that managed to hold on the longest. I remember sitting in the dining room and basically ordering everything on the menu - simply because that's what you could do! I don't remember activities or entertainment, what the Borscht Belt hotels were most famous for. Well, that and the obscene quantity of food served nearly all day long!

If you're old enough to remember when summer vacations were something completely different from what they are today, you will probably enjoy this easy to read novel, too.

The Lost Manuscript

When I checked for what genre was suggested for Cathy Bonidan's The Lost Manuscript, I was kind of surprised to not see  'mystery' listed as one of the choices. Some listed chick lit, a genre that I would not personally consider for this novel. Maybe romance... but chick lit? I went with contemporary fiction instead. Probably epistolary is  the better choice since The Lost Manuscript is a novel told through letters and the infrequent email.

I've probably mentioned before that I love epistolary fiction. I love receiving letters. I love letter writing. And I love reading letters. Which made this a good fit for me.

Anne-lise discovers a manuscript in the nightstand of a small hotel in Brittany, France while on a family getaway from Paris. She reads the manuscript and is intrigued. The novel resonates with her. She notices the style difference between the first half of the novel and the second half. She also discovers an address on a scrap of paper towards the middle of the novel. She assumes that the author lost the manuscript, possibly years ago because it was typewritten, and must be looking for it. So, after making a copy of the manuscript for herself, she sends the original off to the address that she came across, along with a letter.

The manuscript actually finds its way to the original writer and a correspondence begins between Anne-lise and the author. He lets her know that he lost the manuscript while on a trip from France to Montreal. He also confirms that he didn't write the second half of the novel. In the interim, someone else finished it for him. Anne-lise is now determined to discover who completed the novel. By tracking back to see who left the manuscript in the nightstand, and who had it before that, and who had it before that... 30 years back... she attempts to solve the mystery.

In the process, the correspondence between Anne-Lise and the author grows. Relationships are developed between Anne-Lise and the people she tracks the manuscript back to as well as amongst  the group that she is assembling. The story evolves as the relationships and correspondence grows. It was a true pleasure to read this novel. And yes, at  the end, you do find out who penned the second half of the manuscript. And why.

I only gave this 4-stars for two reasons. At times the language became a bit too flowery which I guess is because I read it in translation. And because I was unfamiliar with the different parts of France, until I took out a map and marked all the locations in the story, I had trouble placing where some of the "action" took place. Both are faults of mine and not the authors.