The Lioness

Right off the bat, I'm  going to say that I would not recommend The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian to any of my reader friends. I've really enjoyed every Chris Bohjalian novel that I've read in the past and really suffered through this one that I read for my community book club. My guess is that we all selected this one based on having read other Bohjalian novels before.

The story is set in Tanzania in 1964. A famous actress invites 7 loved ones to join her and her new husband on their Serengeti safari honeymoon. They expect what everyone expects from a luxury safari - then and now- to be catered to in the wilds while being awed by the wildlife surrounding them. What happens is a kidnapping that we get to hear about from the perspective of each of the participants.

There is a famous "white" hunter, African guides and Russian mercenaries. The kidnapping goes terribly wrong and Bohjalian describes tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.

I'm still trying to figure out what  the point of the novel is. At one point I thought it was going to lead me to a thoughtful reflection upon race in Africa in the 1960s. He barely scratched the surface of that. There were political implications but not enough background information for me to feel as though I've learned a lot while reading the story.

The writing was good... but...

I'm hoping that our book club discussion will focus on what the author's purpose was as I continue to try to figure that out.

 

A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea

Books & Beer Club will meet tomorrow night and I'm really surprised that this particular book club selected this particular non-fiction to read for our non-fiction choice this year. I have a feeling that many of us feel differently from each other regarding migrants and I hope that this discussion can be civil. Fingers crossed.

A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea is the story of Doaa, a Syrian young woman, and her fiance, Bassem. We learn about Doaa's early happy life in Dara,Syria and her family's fleeing for safety and a better life in Egypt after the start of the war in Syria. Life in Egypt was fine until there was regime change. And that's when the life of Syrian refugees became increasingly hard.

Doaa met Bassam during their time in Egypt. He had been a former Free Syrian Army fighter. It takes time for Bassam to win Doaa's love. And the more time for him to convince her that their happiness lies outside of Egypt. That they need to start a new life in Europe.

This story, written at a pretty basic reading level, is heartbreaking and it really brings to light the thought process of how migrants make the decision to leave home - or leave where they are - to search for a new life somewhere with more hope. In Doaa and Bassem's case, it was Sweden. But I would imagine that the migrants that are coming to our Southern border on a daily basis have gone through much of the same decision making. In a nutshell, no one will take the risks of becoming a migrant if they weren't running away from something pretty terrible. (I think I made a similar observation when I read the novel American Dirt in 2021.)

I didn't realize until I went to add this book to my reading log that it was published in 2017. I read an article the other day about the sinking of a migrant ship off the coast of Greece that took place last week that was rarely in the news. I wish I had bookmarked the article that I read. It compared that tragedy to the tragedy of the imploding Titan submarine that ended the lives of 5 billionaires. That story got nonstop coverage for days over the weekend. Nonstop! The particular article that I read gave little bios of some of the migrants who were lost on this sinking ship. Their stories are so similar to Doaa's. In all these years, nothing has changed. The immigrant situation around the world needs to change. Or the inequalities and horrible situations that so many people find themselves in need to change. Our global society is a mess. This biographical book put  those issues into the front of my mind.

 P.S. Part of the book club discussion got a little  heated as it veered from the plight of Syrian migrants to immigration in general. But as a group we remained civil and walked away from the book club still speaking and looking forward to next month.

Spare

I started listening to Prince Henry reading his memoir Spare back in April. It's a long audiobook, nearly 16 hours, and a popular one, and I wasn't able to finish listening within the 3-week loan period from the library. As luck would have it, the day after I finished listening to Eternal, this one popped back up as being available and I nabbed it. I was about halfway in and I wasn't sure if this one would grab my husband as much as Eternal did. But I figured it would be perfect to save for the return drive of our road trip.

Both of us found Prince Harry's story compelling and pretty tragic although it wasn't like Eternal where we couldn't wait to listen to after each break.
 

I can't say that I'm one of those people who is intrigued by everything and anything related to the British royals. I'm not that person. Obviously Queen Elizabeth was the queen of England when I was a child, but she was just there, not anything I ever paid attention to. I do recall, though, when I was in college in the 1970s that Prince Charles came to the United States, the tour having something to do with the fact that he was getting on in years and it was time for him to marry. That's probably the first time I ever paid attention to anything royal. And who wasn't taken by Diana Spencer. I remember watching that royal wedding and definitely paid a little more attention to the royal family once she joined it. 

Ironically, Lady Di and Prince Charles got married months before I got married and their divorce was final just a few months before my divorce from my first husband was finalized. Wow, we had so much in common!

Fast forward to May 2018. I was in New York visiting family. Diana's younger son, Prince Harry, was marrying American TV star Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle. The family we were with wanted to watch the wedding so we watched the wedding and hours of additional coverage about the royal family, about Meghan Markle. You name it, we watched it.

A person would have to be living in a cave to not hear at least some of the dirt about Prince Harry and Meghan. And when I say dirt, I mean dirt! Yes, they're public figures so what should they expect? But really, doesn't anyone need to be dragged through the mud the way that they have? They had to have some pretty good reasons for "quitting" as royals and moving to the United States.

Spare is Prince Harry's opportunity to tell their story. We get Harry's recollections of happy times with his mother. We get insight into the relationship that Harry has with his father, King Charles, and how that has evolved over time. We get to hear about the deterioration of Harry's relationship with his brother, William. And we get to hear about him falling in love with Meghan and the start of their life together.

Harry's story is tragic. When I said that to my daughter, she said she could have no sympathy for them. They're rich and as much as they do for society in the way of charities, they should be doing more. No one should have that much money and why does England even need royals? Okay, I get that. But that doesn't diminish in my eyes that no one should have to live the life that Prince Harry had lived. I bet he would have traded anything, any material object, to have his mother around, to not having the feeling like he was the "unnecessary" son, the "spare," and to have the freedom that my children had to make the choices they have made, whether good or bad.

I can give this a conditional recommendation. If you're at all interested in Harry and Meghan's story, I would suggest you listen to Spare read by the author.

 

Our Missing Hearts

After a friend of mine finished Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, she strongly recommended that I should read it. "You live in Florida, those crazy book bans. You will really appreciate this." I respect this friend as a reader and we tend to enjoy similar books. Her comments lead me to go into reading Our Missing Hearts thinking that it was going to be about book bans.

Our Missing Hearts is about so much more than book bans, although most books were banned and libraries were not the same as what we think of when we think of libraries. I really can't decide if the story of Our Missing Hearts was any more or any less frightening than what we're living thru right now.

Bird, the child of a Chinese American poet and an American father who works  as a linguist, had a happy early childhood. At some point, his mother disappears. He is now living with his father who now has a job shelving books at a university (Harvard?) library. The goal of the society they are living in is to preserve "American culture." Children of those who are against these policies, especially those of Asian origin whom are targeted directly by most of the laws, are removed from their parents and re-placed.

The novel starts with 12-year  old bird receiving a drawing from his missing mother. He doesn't really know why his mother disappeared or where she might be. But the drawing that he receives he believes is a clue for him to be able to find her. Such begins his quest.

I can't say that I enjoyed the book, because it really is a horrifying story. But it will make a wonderful book club novel and I'm sure at some point my community book club will select this one.
 

Eternal

After struggling with Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline, I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy Eternal. I loved Eternal. Reading Loyalty, I probably learned more about Sicily and the Mafia than I learned about Rome during WWII, which is mostly what Eternal is about. 

My first inclination would be that it helped that I was listening to Eternal and I could really enjoy the dialog (the actors that read the novel were wonderful). But the dialogue in Eternal was so much richer than the dialogue in Loyalty. The characters were better developed. I really can't say enough good things about it. 

It most definitely did help that my husband was on board to listen to this 19 hour audiobook while on a recent 1,300-mile road trip. He might have enjoyed this one as much as I did, which isn't often the case. Listening to this story was the perfect preparation for our upcoming trip to Italy.

The first stop on our trip will be to Rome. When we were last in Rome, in 2010, we were at the Trevi Fountain. Sort of. We couldn't get near the Trevi Fountain. I said, "That's okay. I don't care if I'm not close enough to toss a coin in. I don't plan to come back to Rome anyway." Here it is, 13 years later, and we're heading back to Rome. The focus of the Rome stay is on Jewish Rome. We're staying just across the river from Trastevere where much of the action takes place. We're going on a walking tour of the Jewish ghetto where a lot of Eternal took place. We're also going on a Jewish tour of the Vatican (assuming I can actually get tickets to the Vatican - who knew that would be so difficult!) and a small but important part of Eternal took place at the Vatican. Now I can't wait to see all that we listened about.

I'm just going to copy the synopsis of the novel directly from Goodreads.

Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro grow up as the best of friends despite their differences. Elisabetta is a feisty beauty who dreams of becoming a novelist; Marco the brash and athletic son in a family of professional cyclists; and Sandro a Jewish mathematics prodigy, kind-hearted and thoughtful, the son of a lawyer and a doctor. Their friendship blossoms to love, with both Sandro and Marco hoping to win Elisabetta's heart. But in the autumn of 1937, all of that begins to change as Mussolini asserts his power, aligning Italy's Fascists with Hitler's Nazis and altering the very laws that govern Rome. In time, everything that the three hold dear--their families, their homes, and their connection to one another--is tested in ways they never could have imagined.

As anti-Semitism takes legal root and World War II erupts, the threesome realizes that Mussolini was only the beginning. The Nazis invade Rome, and with their occupation come new atrocities against the city's Jews, culminating in a final, horrific betrayal. Against this backdrop, the intertwined fates of Elisabetta, Marco, Sandro, and their families will be decided, in a heartbreaking story of both the best and the worst that the world has to offer.

Unfolding over decades, Eternal is a tale of loyalty and loss, family and food, love and war--all set in one of the world's most beautiful cities at its darkest moment.

I really can't say enough good things about this novel. If you're interested about Rome during WWII and the life of Jews in Rome in the years leading up to and during WWII, I strongly recommend this.

The Lost Shtetl

The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross is the book my Jewish book selected as our July book. As we were discussing options, the question was repeated, "Are. we sure this isn't a Holocaust novel?" We don't want to be a Holocaust book club, limiting a Holocaust novel to just once per year, in April, in conjunction with our observance of Yom Ha'Shoah. "No," we were told, "this mentions the Holocaust but it's not a Holocaust novel at all." And it isn't.

I guess you'd call this speculative fiction. What if. What if Hitler missed a small village in Poland as he was plundering all the Jewish villages and eliminating all the Jews? And then what if, 70 years later, through an odd set of circumstances, Poland discovers this village still exists? And then what if, 70 years later, through an odd set of circumstances, these villagers learn that the there was a second World War, that life went on without them, and there's a whole big modern world that they can't even imagine out there. What if? What could this mean for the shtetl of Kreskol?

Max Gross writes in a style that is both humorous and biting. He tells the tale of Yankel who is thrust out into the modern world after Pesha, and the husband she just asked for a divorce, go missing. The village elders suspect foul play and want this potential crime reported to the Polish authorities. Yankel is someone that no one will miss if he goes missing. But rather than going missing, he brings the 21st century back to Kreskol.

The plot reminds me of the 1999 movie, "Blast From the Past" where a kid goes into a nuclear fallout shelter and emerges decades later into modern Los Angeles. But with a totally Jewish bend.

I recommend it if you're looking for some really different Judaic fiction. There's lots of Yiddish sprinkled in, some which I know from my many months of studying on Duolingo, some which are common knowledge, and several that I had to check the very extensive glossary to see exactly what they meant.

The book was probably a little bit longer than I would have preferred. But the story did keep me going.

Maus I and II

I'd decided that this was going to be the year of banned books for the book gifts that I normally give to our granddaughters for their birthdays. The 15-year old got Fahrenheit 451 for her birthday. I mean, what better than a banned book about book bans! I was really undecided about what to purchase for the 13-year old. Talking with a friend and her adult daughter last week, they mentioned Maus by Art Spiegelman and what an important book they both thought it was. I recalled that I'd looked into getting it from the library when Maus was big in the news a year or two ago, when it was first widely banned, and the waitlist was months long. Not only that, the book had been sold out from several sources online. I decided I'd buy the book and would read it for myself and then decide if it was appropriate for this instance.

When I went to order, I saw that there was Maus I and Maus II. I opted to purchase both. As of today, June 8, 2023, I have only read the first book but will definitely finish reading the second book prior to the birthday which isn't until the 16th.

First impression was why is this book being banned? It's such an important story to be shared. Having a book like this in graphic format makes the story accessible to a wide swath of readers who wouldn't read it any other way. (I'm not much of a fan of graphic novels and it took me several tries, starting over from the beginning each time, to get into the format and style of the writing, to be able to follow the story.) Why is it being banned? Because people in power don't want our youth to be informed. They don't want them to learn from history so they can learn from our (collective) past mistakes. THAT is the real tragedy today.

Was it banned because it used the word "shit" a few times? Really? I still struggle to figure out why it's banned, even when reading articles about why it is banned. The modified swastika on the cover? The story is about the rise of the Nazis and Nazism. It's not like a swastika is being proudly displayed. Is that a reason to ban a book?

In Maus I, Spiegelman relays his father's story of what it was like to live in Poland in the 1930s as the Nazis are invading the country.  Spiegelman's mother father and mother have just met and married. Life for them changes drastically. The book includes Spiegelman asking his father about his experiences during that time, starting with questions about his mother who had killed herself several years before. It includes interactions Spiegelman has with his father's new wife which would be funny if they weren't so sad.

June 9, 2023 update

I finished  Maus II yesterday. Spiegelman's descriptions of life with in the concentration camps and in the days as the war ended and just after it was over gave small details that I've never read about in any other Holocaust book. I really appreciated that Spiegelman repeatedly had his character, Artie, struggle with understanding the realities of the Holocaust. He'd heard about it all his life, but acknowledged that unless you were there, you cannot ever put yourself in the place of someone who experienced it.

Another thing that I really valued in this second was volume was Artie's story, the personal story of the relationship with his father and what it was like for him to be a child of survivors. If you read my review of A Life Inherited that I read a few weeks ago, you know I was looking to better understand the psyche of a child of survivors. Spiegelman gave me more of what I was looking for in that regard than Rena Lipiner Katz did in her memoir. Much of what Artie expressed reminded me of words I'd heard my ex-husband, child of survivors, utter or behaviors I saw him exhibit. I never met my former husband's parents but I imagine that the relationship he had with his parents was so similar to the one in Maus II. In my former husband's case, his father passed away several years before his mother which made my former husband's story different. But had his mother gone first, the struggles between the father and son would have been almost identical. I wonder what Spiegelman's life is like now. Is he happily married? Are his kids well-adjusted?

I'm still confounded as to why anyone would think it was a good idea to ban these books. If you've got young people in your life who enjoy graphic novels, I suggest making sure they have these books to read.
 

I'm Glad My Mom Died

I am not sure how I'm Glad My Mom Died ended up my "to be read" list or why I thought I might enjoy it. I had no idea who Jennette McCurdy is or why I'd want to read her memoir. But seeing the great reviews and all the recommendations on Renee's Reading Club, I requested the audiobook from the library and waited. At this point, I have a true preference for memoirs on audio read by the author.

I was quickly able to realize that Jennette McCurdy was a child star on Nickelodeon probably at a time when my kids might have just stopped watching Nickelodeon, but I had definitely heard of  iCarly, even if I'd never watched it.

Jennette McCurdy's mother wanted to be an actress but her parents forbade it. Instead, when Jennette is 6-years old, the mother puts literally all her energy into getting Jennette into acting. If she can't be a star, she wants her daughter to be a star. Talk about a stage mom!

And that's what this memoir is about. Jennette's difficult relationship with her mother. You know things are bad when at the very start of the memoir, the mother is on her deathbed and Jennette thinks she'll be able to spark some reaction from her mom when she tells her that she's at her mom's goal weight for her, 89 pounds. As an adult. Yikes!

I don't know that I would have had the patience to read this memoir, but it was captivating to listen to the author tell her story. The love she had for her mother is obvious, but the abuse piled upon her by this same mother is quite evident. Readers get it immediately. It took McCurdy a little bit longer to come to the realization herself.

I'd recommend this one conditionally. I would suggest, though, that if you're going to read it, listen to it instead.