Some of My Best Patients Were Animals

August is southern author month for Books & Beer Club. Last month, one of our members suggested that we read a new book by a local author, K.C. Nayfield. Nayfield is a local veterinarian who had put together a collection of stories about his over 30 years as a veterinarian. Our member seemed pretty confident that the author would be happy to attend our August meeting.

I've only had one pet, a cat, and he only had one veterinarian in all the years he was part of our family. So my experience with veterinarians is pretty limited. The book is a collection of articles that had been in our local paper over the years. Some were adapted for the book. Others went in the book as they'd been in the paper. Nayfield called the book "fact-tion" as all the stories were based on truth, but some of them were embellished much more than others.

I didn't know that while I was reading the book. While I was reading I had clear preferences for the stories about Nayfield becoming a veterinarian and the stories that were about the personalities of the pets - or their owners. It was full of local culture. I wasn't really interested in the technical medical stuff. But now that I understand how the book was put together, it makes sense that some of that medical stuff was included. There were also stories about his time volunteering his services in both the Bahamas and in Cuba which I found fascinating and inspiring.

It was a pleasure meeting with the author last night. It gave a much better insight into the book, into his experiences. 

Milk Fed

I do my own sort of doom-scrolling probably about once a day and while I'm scanning the headlines for (mostly bad) news, I often come across literary reviews and articles with book recommendations. Milk Fed by Melissa Broder came up on several of those lists in the spring and early summer. I requested it from the library and it became available shortly after I got home from vacation. Judging from the blurb on goodreads, it didn't sound like a perfect fit for me, but I was intrigued. 

Here's the blurb:

A scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex, and god from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today.

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting—until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.

Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam—by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family—and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche—both sacred and profane.

 

There were parts of the book that I found interesting (like when discussing the Palestinian issue with Miriam's family). There were other parts where I wanted to scream to Miriam and tell her what to do - or what to not do. Many issues were resolved within the novel but with no explanation at all of how they were resolved. That's what I found most lacking.

It was a quick easy read. I enjoyed Broder's writing style. 

Next...

The Plot

 

Somehow in the preparation for vacation and subsequent return, The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz got lost in the shuffle. It's really not a book to be overlooked.

The Plot is a mystery novel about a novel. The main character is Jacob Finch Bonner, an author who was more or less a one-hit wonder. (He adopted the name Finch because of his love of To Kill A Mockingbird.) After his mostly ignored second book, he goes on to teach writing at a writing workshop. Because, well, if you can't write, you can always teach writing. He meets a student, a really cocky guy who has a way with words and a great idea for a novel.

A few years later, working at another writing retreat, he meets another arrogant writer which makes him thinkin about the first cocky guy. Thinking about the plot of that guy's novel, he's surprised he'd never heard of it. he googles the writer only to learn that he died shortly after they'd met.

Bonner takes the plot idea and writes his own novel, stealing the plot that simply couldn't fail. It becomes a best seller. THE novel of the season.

I don't want to give anything else away. I will say that the ending of the novel left me a little flat. However, what a fun book to read. It was really interesting to see how Korelitz gets from here to there in her plot line. Not great literature. Not something I'd normally read. But I would recommend this one.

Vacation Read 3: The Things We Cannot Say

Last month, upon completion of The Warsaw Orphan by Kelly Rimmer, I realized that I'd never read her first Holocaust novel, The Things We Cannot Say. The two are somehow connected although for the life of me right now, I can't remember what the connection is. 

I can, however, tell you that I liked The Warsaw Orphan and I really liked The Things We Cannot Say.

The Things We Cannot Say has two main storylines. One is Alina's story set in Nazi-occupied Poland. The second story is set in the present. Alice is struggling in her married life, is overwhelmed parenting two exceptional children, and her grandmother Hannah is dying.

Hannah has just had another stroke and is most likely at the end of her life. She has lost the ability to speak. Alice's son, Edison, is a non-verbal boy on the austism spectrum who communicates with Alice via an app on his iPad. Alice realizes that she might be able to communicate with her grandmother using the same app. Once she does, Hannah has a request. She wants Alice to go to take a trip to Poland for her. She  wants photographs of her home, but the rest of her requests are lost in translation.

Usually when I'm reading a novel that has dual timelines and stories, I find one more engaging than the other. In this case, I was equally captivated by the raw emotions of both. I'm pretty sure I cried reading both narratives. This is a novel about relationships, about love, about commitment. I would highly recommend The Things We Cannot Say.

I do have one minor "complaint" though. Rimmer is an Australian author. Alice and her family live in Winter Park, Florida. Some of the words used in Alice's story were Australian and not American English. Like bench for kitchen counter and lounge for couch. It didn't detract from my enjoyment of the novel at all.
 

Vacation Read 2: The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany

 

The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany was recommended as a great vacation read. And why not? Lori Nelson Spielman's novel is about an Italian family that's been cursed over the generations. The second-born daughter in each family is cursed in that she will never find love.

Emilia, a second-born daughter, is pretty content working as a baker at her grandfather's Brooklyn deli. (Yes, I loved that she lived and worked in Brooklyn.) Her younger cousin, Lucy, also a second-born daughter, is hungry for love. Lucy (and her mother) are sure that the curse is real.

Their great aunt, Poppy, also a second-born daughter, wants Emilia and Lucy to accompany her on a trip to Italy. She insists that she's going to meet the love of her life on the steps of the Ravello Cathedral on her eightieth birthday. In doing so, the curse will be broken. Her goal is to prove to Emilia and Lucy that it is possible to find love.

I had thought that The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany was going to similar to Our Italian Summer. I read that one in March. That novel which had me feeling no sense of Italy was about the relationships between a mother, a daughter, and a granddaughter. I thought  The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany was going to be more about the relationships between the great aunt and her two nieces than a romance. (I mean really... YIKES! Two romance novels in a row!) They weren't similar at all. And unlike Our Italian Summer, The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany gave me a much better feel for Italy. 

This novel had more depth than what I think of as a typical romance. I liked the characters (except for the grandmother... she reminded me of a witch from the start) and I was rooting for the Poppy, Emilia, and Lucy.

I probably enjoyed reading this one on vacation more than I might have enjoyed it reading it at home. But isn't that often the case?

Vacation Read 1: People We Meet on Vacation

Doesn't People We Meet on Vacation sound like a great book to read on vacation? It was, even if Emily Henry's newest novel, People We Meet on Vacation, wasn't as much as the people that you meet on vacation. More about  the people you go on vacation with.

Poppy and Alex meet on the first day of college. They're coincidentally from the same small town. The two of them couldn't have been more opposite. Then... on the last day of freshman year, the driver that Poppy was sharing a ride home with was none other than Alex. They connected on the ride home and spent time over the summer vacation together.

Poppy has never felt at home in their small town which probably contributed to her strong sense of wanderlust. She convinces Alex to go on vacation with her. And that starts a new tradition. Every summer after, the two of them go on vacation together. They travel on the cheap until Poppy gets her dream job as a travel writer. She actually gets paid to "go on vacation." Then she's able to treat Alex to a great trip on her job. For a few more years. Until things get weird between the two of them and the summer vacations end.

She's got her dream job, living in her dream city, but she's just not happy. Her best friend, Rachel, asks her what she felt was missing in her life that used to make her happy. She realizes that without the possibility of a summer vacation with Alex, that's what she is lacking. Out of the blue, she texts him and asks him if he's free to go away for a few days. I'll spare you the rest of the story.

I loved reading about some of the adventures that Poppy and Alex had on their trips. There's a loose reference to the title when Poppy is able to be whomever she wants to be while on vacation. Almost like a character. And as much as she loves seeing new places, she loves the interactions that she has with people while she's traveling. I'm not much of a romance novel reader so this whole creating a new persona to interact with people you're going to meet was my favorite part of the novel.

I read Henry's novel, Beach Read, in October. Of the two, I preferred People We Meet on Vacation.
 

A Gentleman in Moscow

 

A friend gave me her copy of the Amor Towles historical fiction, A Gentleman in Moscow, a little over 4 years ago. I started it almost immediately. I was flying up to New York and now I had something to read on the plane. I was thoroughly engrossed for the 2 hours on the plane. I didn't pick it up while I was away, then my flight home was delayed until the overnight hours and I decided I'd rather sleep than read on that flight. Imagine that! Once home, I struggled with it, put it down, picked it up, and about a year later, I dropped it. For some reason,  I held on to her book.

Fast forward to a few months ago and one of my book clubs selected A Gentleman in Moscow to discuss in September. Hey, look at that. I still had a copy of the book. I decided I would try again. It did not take me too long to remember exactly what it was about it that I didn't like. I mostly read for a few minutes before bed every night. A Gentleman in Moscow is the type of novel that needs to be read in big solid chunks of time. I remembered that if I read a little bit, when I next picked up the novel, I'd have to go back pages and pages to pick up the train of thought. Once I remembered that this time, I decided that at a minimum I'd read a full chapter each time I picked up the book. And if I couldn't, I'd need to be prepared to backtrack the next time I picked it up.

It was never about the story - or the characters - or the history - that made me give up on it three years ago. It was that it required a certain kind of time commitment to reading that I haven't had in years.

I liked the story. It takes place over about 30 years in Russia, post-revolution. Alexander, former "Count" has been placed on house arrest at the Metropole, the elite hotel in Moscow before and after the revolution. He'd become one of the "former people," an aristocrat from tsarist times who was now a has-been. Always a gentleman, he is determined to make the best of his circumstances while restricted to life in a (formerly) luxurious hotel.

I loved the characters. Yes, I even loved to hate the bad guy characters. The characters were so incredibly well-developed as were the relationships amongst the characters. The Count developed meaningful relationships with people he probably would not have had he not been restricted to the hotel. For me, that was the beauty of this novel and that's what kept me reading (and re-reading). 

There's so much to discuss about this book. I'd highly recommend A Gentleman in Moscow for book clubs. I could see discussing the ending for hours and hours! But there's so much more to discuss than just that.