It Can't Happen Here

Goodreads can sum up It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis far more succinctly than I could hope to.

"The only one of Sinclair Lewis's later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith, It Can't Happen Here is a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression when America was largely oblivious to Hitler's aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a President who becomes a dictator to "save the nation." Now finally back in print, It Can't Happen Here remains uniquely important, a shockingly prescient novel that's as fresh and contemporary as today's news."

I first spotted this novel in Barnes & Noble sometime prior to the 2016 election. It put a little shiver of fear in me at the time, but I didn't even want to go down that road so didn't even consider reading it. Now, feeling as though democracy is as frail as its ever been in my lifetime, I decided to take a second look.

I found It Can't Happen Here a little difficult to read. The sentences were long, I didn't understand some of the historical references and often had no clue if characters were from real life or totally imagined. Once I realized how I could skim without losing the drift of the story, that's what I did. Another thing that made this difficult for me to read is that it was overtype satirical. Like ridiculous. Like spread out the satire a little bit or something! But satire was piled on.

There were so many passages in the novel that I highlighted because they were so relevant to today. I won't bore you with all 30-something that I highlighted, but I will share two with you.

• He believed that dissent - even a cranky, erratic, eccentric, old-fashioned version of it - was not disloyalty but at the heart of an American democratic identity. 
  This is so counter to those who say, "If you don't like it here, leave." I don't believe that's in the spirit of democracy. If you don't like it here, but this is your country, voice your dissatisfaction and work towards improving things. Don't just walk away - and don't allow yourself to be chased away.
  
  
• ... most of them newspapermen, disliked the smell of him more than before they had met him... Even they, by the unusual spiritedness and color of their attacks upon him, kept his name alive in every column...
  If that's not descriptive of the trump era, than I'm not sure what is!

That's as political as I care to get here. If anything that I've written intrigues you, you might want to take a look at this classic novel. I expected to lose sleep with worry and finish up with a increased sense of dread. That didn't happen, although the book did give me some things to think about... and more things to throw about while conversing about politics with my husband or kids.

 

The Good Sister

Sally Hepworth's novel, The Good Sister, is billed as a psychological thriller. I don't know that I'd necessarily agree. There was plenty of psychological fodder, but to me thriller makes me feel like I'm going to sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for something terrible to happen. I just didn't feel that way reading The Good Sister.

I did, however, enjoy The Good Sister from the first page to the last. It was an easy to read novel. And while I thought it was somewhat predictable, I was really curious to see how Hepworth was taking the story from point A to point B. And I was also really curious about how it might conclude.

Rose and Fern are twin sisters in their early 30s. Their mother had "an accident" when the girls were teens and it doesn't seem as though their childhood was particularly good. Now, Rose is married and desperate to have a baby. Fern has sensory issues, is single, lives a very regimented life. But she gets the idea that perhaps she can have a baby and give it to Rose. Fern knows she'd never be capable of raising a child on her own. Only problem is, Fern doesn't date.

Rose is some sort of interior designer and Fern works in a library. Her life is very structured. She eats dinner with Rose three nights a week, does yoga every morning, visits their mother once a week. Until... homeless Wally walks into Fern's library. There's just something about Wally.

At the start, the reader is left to wonder who is the good sister and who is the evil sister. As I said, I figured that out pretty early on and my interest that kept me turning the page was trying to understand why she was the bad sister and how the story was going to move forward.

My book club selected this novel and I'm looking forward to discussing.

What's kind of funny is that I'd recently read The Reading List, a story that takes place in a library. And lots of this story takes place in the library where Fern works. I love a good library story!

Better to Trust

It's always fun to win something, right? There was a giveaway for an Advanced Reader Copy of Heather Frimmer's new  novel, Better to Trust. Imagine my delight when I was notified that I won one of two copies of the book being given away. Since I've been doing most of my reading on the Kindle - and this was a paperback - I waited to start until we headed to the beach in September. I was engaged from page one. It took me longer to finish than it should have because once home, I really had to find time to finish a paperback book. This weekend was that time!

Once trust is broken, how easy is it to get it back? Better to Trust is a family drama. Alison has a bleed on the brain, needs surgery, decides to go with her brother-in-law, a famed neurosurgeon, even though a few people suggested that it was a terrible idea for Grant to operate on a family member. Meanwhile, Grant had his own secrets which made him truly not a good choice for the one to perform the surgery.

While Grant and his wife, Cynthia, Alison's sister, are preoccupied worrying about Alison, their daughter Sadie feels rejected. She's also really missing her Aunt Alison. Sadie makes a new friend who is not the best influence. Lots of trust issues erupt once Sadie and Piper start spending more time together.

Meanwhile, after surgery a rift develops between Alison and Cynthia who had previously been very close. What will it take to repair their relationship?

Finally, there's the issue of trust between Alison and her husband, Michael. Alison has got a secret, but does she blow things up while Michael has been so attentive to her during her rehabilitation after surgery?

I got sucked into the story from the first page. A well-developed story with interesting characters. My favorite character of the whole novel was Nate, the elementary school-aged son of the caregiver Alison had after she got home from the hospital. He reminded me of how much I miss having kids in my life.

I do have one complaint about the book related to the structure. The story had two converging timelines, starting in March, when Alison first got sick, and then another timeline several months later. The two timelines weren't distinct enough and sometimes it got confusing about what time period I was reading about, even though each chapter heading was dated. I think it might have been easier to read if the story had been told chronologically. Small complaint.

I'd recommend this one.
 

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk

 

After the second person raved about The Girl Who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes within the course of a week, I figured this was a book to read. When I checked goodreads, I saw that I'd put it on my list of books to read in 2016, shortly after it was first published. As an older book, it was very easy to pick it up from the library immediately.

What a great book. It was very loosely based on the conditions for Chinese in the late 1800s, after the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a racist anti-Chinese immigration policy. I really had no idea of the horrific acts performed as a result of this act.

Mei Lein and her family are forced out of their home (and business) in Seattle. Somehow Mei Lein survives and starts a new life on Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands, currently just a ferry ride away from Seattle. Mei Lein's life as a Chinese woman in Washington in the 1880s is very difficult. After the birth of her son, she is determined that her son knows the story of his Chinese family and starts creating the story by embroidering on silk.

Fast forward over 100 years. Inara was left her aunt's estate on Orcas Island. Inara and her sister are exploring things around the estate as Inara is deciding whether or not she will give up a coveted job with Starbucks to fulfill her aunt's dream of turning the estate into a B&B. Her sister trips over a loose step and by digging further, Inara discovers a package hidden under the step containing a well-wrapped, well-preserved sleeve that appeared to come from a Chinese robe. Curious about the sleeve, Inara reaches out to a professor at the University of Washington who might help guide her research. Who created the sleeve? Why was there just a sleeve and not a whole robe? And why was it hidden there?

The stories alternate and eventually we learn the connection between Mei Lein's story and Inara's story. And it isn't pretty. But the novel is incredibly engaging and I tore through it very quickly. I would highly recommend.

The Reading List

After finishing The Weight of Ink, a very hefty read, I was glad that next in my "to be read" pile was The Reading List. It's a new novel by Sara Nisha Adams. I might have read about it in Renee's Reading Club on Facebook or it might have been part of a list of good summer reads. Wherever I picked up the idea to read it, I'm glad I did.

The Reading List is not a light and fluffy book, but it was easy to read. It was a novel about the power of books and the place of the library in the lives of a community. It's also about personal connections. It's also about grief.

A bunch of folks in Wembley found a list of books to read in random spots. Some of the people who found a copy of the list were readers, but many were not. It helped that I'd read all but one of the books on the list, but I don't know that it's necessary to have read them in order to enjoy this novel.

As I've shared before, I am a reader, but my husband is not. This quote from the book really screamed out to me.

"She was my wife, I should have paid attention to the books she liked. I liked  to watch her read, but never asked her what was happening in her books. I feel silly starting to read storybooks at my age." "It's never too late to read stories." "Stories feel so weird. Like seeing someone else's life that ou are not meant to. Being nosy!"

Over the past year, my kids and I have talked more and more about what we're reading. I was telling them about The Reading List when one of them asked me what my favorite book is. They might as well have asked me which one of them was my favorite child. There's no way to answer. Then my son said, "Well, you've read so much during the pandemic. What's one book that stands out to you that you've read over the past year and a half?" I did some thinking and eventually settled on Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. My comment when finishing that one was "Brings into focus what really matters." 

The conversation, though, has me thinking about what my favorite books might be. Like if I were to write up a list of books that I think others might find helpful, what books would I include? What books have helped me? I will probably keep thinking of this over the coming weeks and months.

The author shared what would be HER list of books she'd put on a book list which were quite different from the books her character selected for the list used in the novel. The books on her list are books that inspired her to want to be a reader and eventually a writer. I've copied down that list since unbelievably, while I've heard of several of the book, I haven't read a single one on her list!

1. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
2. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
3. Zadie Smith, White Teeth
4. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
5. Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation
6. Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
7. Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo
8. Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop
   
9. Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
10. Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column
11. Ali Smith, There But For The

There were a few other quotes that I highlighted, but strictly because of the text-to-self connections that I was able to make.

She loved this flat because her daughter had made it her own, and Naina had always prided herself on letting her daughters do what felt best for them, and making a space in the world for themselves. "Because if you don't, who will?" she used to say.

I don't often say that, but I always think that about my daughters and their choices.

He only wished that when Naina had gone, too, Naina had been there holding his hand. Leading him through his grief step by step.

This is another thought I often have. Like how would I have possibly made it through the deaths of my parents without having my cousin at my side. But then when my cousin died, who was there to help me make it through that grief?

He knew the world Priya was in right now. There was something magical in that - in sharing a world you have loved; allowing someone to see it through the same pair of spectacles you saw it through yourself.

Readers are never at a loss to find things to talk about with other readers. Ever. "Whatcha reading now?" Sharing books you've both loved. Sharing book recommendations.

And finally:

"I worried that you needed someone to take care of you after Mummy died, but I didn't give you the credit that you could take care of yourself, and when I tried to look after you, I forgot how to keep you company. I'm sorry." 

I'm sorry, Dad. After Mom died, you seemed so lost. I wanted to take care of you the way that you took care of me. In those first few weeks before we found out that you were sick, I should have more fully enjoyed spending time with you rather than worrying about how you were going to survive once I went home. Then, you were sick, and I really did need to, not necessarily take care of you but, advocate for you at the hospital and at the nursing home. I'm so glad, though, Dad, that during those 4 months, we really did get to keep each other company. And I think we did a good job of that.

I highly recommend this novel! This was Adams' debut novel, but she's got another one coming in the spring, The Shared Garden. I'm anxious to learn what that one is about. 

 

 

 

The Weight of Ink

 

I thought I'd written up a quick review about The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish after I finished reading. But I must have written the little blurb that went in our synagogue newsletter since this is the book we'll be discussing at our next book club meeting.

Set in London of the 1660s and the early 2000s, Kadish alternates between the stories of Ester Velasquez and Helen Watt. Ester is a Portuguese emigrant from Amsterdam and Helen is a university historian at the end of her career. The novel centers on the discovery of a cache of Jewish documents accidentally discovered by one of Helen’s former students as he and his wife prepare to start major home renovations. Helen takes on American assistant Aaron, and eventually they are in a race against another team of historians to get to the deeper story of the documents. Who was the author? Why were they hidden? What significance do they have today?

It’s quite an ambitious historical fiction novel (in other words fairly long) but it’s so full of very different subplots. One of my favorites was how Ester and her household navigated The Great Plague of London 1665. It was interesting to make comparisons from London life during The Plague to present life during Covid-19.

A major theme of the novel was the roles of women in both 2000 and the 1660s. I was able to understand Helen's choices but that's probably since I'm from the same era. Ester's choices were so much more limited and as such, the choices she does eventually make seemed so extreme.

There’s philosophy, romance, a connection to Israel. I would definitely not call this a "Jewish" book. There are references to Spinoza and Shakespeare. All in all, I found it an interesting read and I hope my fellow book club members agree. If you enjoyed People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, you'll enjoy The Weight of Ink.

I've promised my group that we'll select something more contemporary and a little less "weighty" (pun intended) for next time.