The Wind Knows My Name

After hearing Isabel Allende interviewed on TV about The Wind Knows My Name, I knew this was a novel that I wanted to read.

In this novel, Allende connects the plight of Jewish youth on the Kindertransport for England during WWII with the current family separation crisis at our southern border.

The story starts out pretty disjointed and as a result, I had a very hard time getting absorbed in the novel. We first meet Samuel in Vienna. After his father disappears on Kristalnacht, her mother is convinced that the best bet for Samuel is to put him on a Kindertransport with a small suitcase, some large clothes (for him to grow into), his violin, a photo of his parents, and a bravery medal from his neighbor.

Next we meet Leticia who comes to the United States in the 1980s with her father after the town they lived in in El Salvador was massacred and they had nothing else left.

Finally, we meet Anita who also flees from El Salvador after her mother feels like their lives are in danger. The trip to the north is a difficult one and they arrive in Nogales at the time when the family separation policy was being enforced. Anita and her mother are separated.

We get a glimpse of each of these characters' stories, but it wasn't until the stories got connected that I found the book absorbing to the point that I couldn't put it down. This is a novel that I will be thinking about long after reading the last page.

Going Bicoastal

I read about Going Bicoastal by Dahlia Adler on a Jewish book website. It was a young adult romance with the main character being queer. I guess that's exactly what it is. But to me, it was a quirky little speculative fiction which two different "what ifs" played out in alternating chapters. It even had a "choose your own ending" option.

Natalya is a queer girl living in New York City with her father while maintaining a really distant relationship with her mother who lives clear across the country in Los Angeles. After not seeing her mom much since her move several years earlier, the mom wants Natalya to spend the summer with her, working as an intern at the company where she works. Her dad seems fine with it. But Natalya doesn't want to leave her dad behind. She doesn't like change. She likes playing it safe.

What if Natalya stays in New York City? Will she form a relationship with the red-headed girl she's been crushing on all year? Will she be able to improve the long-distance relationship with her mother?

But what if she goes to Los Angeles? Will her dad be okay without her? Will she be able to improve her relationship with her mother? Will she be able to deal with being out of her routine and out of her comfortable place?

I loved the Judaism of the novel and that's what kept me going. I enjoyed reading this but not sure I could recommend it to most of my reader friends.
 

Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family

After reading and discussing  Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult, my community book club decided to read a real life story about a transgender girl and what it has meant to her family. I'm not sure how our book club member had heard about Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family.

I guess I wasn't paying attention so I was expecting a memoir. It was a biography so not quite as intimate but still quite satisfactorily. I was especially interested in the different ways the mom and the dad reacted to identical twin to Jonas transition to Nicole and what it meant to Jonas to have his identical twin become Nicole.

If more people would be reading books like this, perhaps there would be more tolerance for people that are misunderstood by so many. I'm glad that I read this biography and look forward to discussing it with my book club next month.
 

The Postcard

The Postcard by Anne Berest came highly recommended by a friend who knows a lot about me. She didn't steer me wrong. What a book. It's a fictionalized version of the author's family history.

In 2003, Anne's mother receives an anonymous postcard, an old postcard, with the names of her relatives that had been killed during the Holocaust. This set Anne's mother, Lelia, on a quest to learn more about the history of her family. Years later, in 2018, Anne, herself becomes obsessed with the postcard. Who were these people? Who might have sent the postcard and why?

The autobiographical novel is told as Anne's mother shares some of the stories with her daughter and then some of the research that Anne is doing on her own. There's a bit of antisemitism in Anne's daughter's classroom which Lelia believes Anne needs to take care of immediately.

The Rabinovitch family went from Moscow to Latvia to Palestine and eventually thought they'd found the perfect home in Paris when the world gears up for World War II. Anne - and her mother - feel very disconnected from their family history.

I'm disappointed with myself that I didn't highlight the passage that brought the most meaning of the book to me.I hope this won't be considered a spoiler. Anne never really feels quite Jewish and eventually she realizes that day in and day out, she's a descendant of survivors. I think I've mentioned that I was married to the child of Holocaust survivors so reading about Anne's lightbulb moment and questions I often wondered about my former husband's connection to Judaism, things clicked for me, too, in a very impactful way.

I've recommended this to others and so far, those who have read it were glad they had.

Remarkably Bright Creatures

I loved Remarkably Bright Creatures. Some consider the main character to be Marcellus, the giant Pacific octopus in an aquarium in Washington state. He was an important character, but not the main character. And while I did learn a good amount about giant Pacific octopuses, this was not a book about them.

Tova has been working as a cleaner at the aquarium for years. Keeping busy after the mysterious death of her son has always been important. She has her Knit Wit friends but otherwise keeps to herself. Somehow, she develops a relationship with Marcellus. And perhaps he holds the key to figuring out what happened to Tova's son.

Cameron is a young man dealing with one crappy thing after another and he's going to use his time of unemployment to find out a little more about his past. He believes that he might be able to learn more about his mother and find his father if he travels to Washington where her mother went to high school and where he believes he was conceived. 

The audiobook is narrated alternatively by Tova, Marcellus and Cameron. The voices of each were just perfect. The pace of the novel was wonderful. I enjoyed every minute. 

And then... I was mesmerized when I went to the Florida Aquarium a week or so after finishing the novel and spent a good amount of my time staring at their giant Pacific octopus. If only I could have gotten a better photograph of her. The reflections, the light (or lack of light), the water, the glass all contributed to making this a very hard photograph to capture. Watching her gave me such pleasure and made me think of Marcellus. How did she wind up in the aquarium? Did she long to be out of the aquarium and in the wild?

La Vie, According to Rose

When I started reading La Vie, According to Rose, an Amazon Prime First Read selection by Lauren Parvizi, I thought, hey, didn't I just read this book? The plot of this one was remarkably similar to Italian for Beginners which I'd just finished. Both stories were about older sisters watching their younger sisters getting married. Both were raised by single parents. Both had jobs that had disappointed them. They had been disappointed by relationships with men. They needed a break. Biggest difference was in Italian for Beginners, Cat runs to Rome. And in La Vie, According to Rose, Rose heads to Paris. Both women end up staying in apartments with women who help them discover themselves.

And, as I mentioned in my review of Italian for Beginners, "Holiday in Rome" is an important part of each story. Partway thru La Vie, According to Rose, I watched the movie for the first time. Definitely gave me a better appreciation of both books.

Romance isn't my thing, and you'd think after reading a book so similar to this one - that was set in Rome, which this one was not, that I wouldn't have been able to finish this one. But it was a sweet book, had a nice message, and was a pleasurable read.

The Bird Hotel

Joyce Maynard's The Bird Hotel for me was a feel good story. Main character, Irene, had a rough start at life, a rough spell of love and had just about given up. The Bird Hotel is her story about healing and rediscovery.

This story spans many decades and while Irene is the main character, there's a whole ensemble that we get to know and watch grow.

After suffering one more unimaginable tragedy, Irene gets on a bus, not really caring where it's going. She just knows she needs to leave where she's been. She ends up in Central America. She's "selected" by a little boy for him to bring her to a place to stay. It's a run down hotel that rarely seems to have any guests. But it s a place for healing for Irene.

This novel made me wish that during times when I was feeling broken, I wish I could have discovered a hotel similar to the hotel where Irene ends up.

This novel has gotten mixed reviews but I really enjoyed it and would highly recommend. Maybe you had to have felt broken at some point to fully appreciate this one.

Italian for Beginners

 Until now, I'd only read historical fiction from Kristin Harmel. Italian for Beginners was quite a bit different as it was a romance novel. But it was set in Rome. And well, you know, I'm getting excited about my trip. Harmel did an excellent job of evoking Rome. I can't wait to get there!

Funny thing... after finishing Italian for Beginners, I started a book I'd downloaded from Amazon Prime First Reads for free called La Vie, According to Rose by Lauren Parvizi. And the stories are so similar. And both books reference the classic movie "Roman Holiday" so that's what I watched last night. Great movie.

How are the two novels similar? In both novels, the protagonist gets overlooked for an anticipated promotion at a job that doesn't seem to make her happy. In Italian for Beginners, Cat's younger sister has just gotten married. In La Vie, According to Rose, Rose's younger sister is in final countdown to get married. Both Rose and Cat lost one of her parents at a young age and was raised by a single parent who was overbearing and in some ways not up to the task of single parenthood. Both Rose and Cat take on the responsibility for making everyone happy. And both love watching the movie "Roman Holiday." Although not originally. Cat hadn't watched the Audrey Hepburn movie for her own personal reasons until she's already in Rome. Rose has always loved the movie. I'll add in more of a comparison once I finish La Vie, According to Rose.

Cat's life isn't going the way she'd ever envisioned. Her grandmother embarrasses her at her younger sister's wedding. The promotion that she expected to get at work goes to her boyfriend, the brother of her roommate/best friend. After taking a break from said boyfriend, she goes on a date with the owner of the restaurant where her sister got married. A perfect date. Until she learns something about the guy. She realizes that even though she thinks that her father and her sister can't get along with out her, she needs to get away. A co-worker helped her come to this realization. In totally non-Cat behavior, she's doing something spontaneous. The co-worker reaches out as Cat to a guy that Cat had a relationship with when she was an exchange student in Rome 12 years earlier. He turns out to not be the guy she thought he was.

Things go from bad to worse. But from the bad, many wonderful things start to happen. Cat makes some great new friends and begins to come to terms with things that happened to her earlier in her life. Cat learns to take care of herself, not just everyone else. It was really a lovely story.

Romance is not really my thing. But in this novel, Cat was a hobbyist photographer. Her photo outings have gotten me so excited for my upcoming trip. And hey, it takes place in Rome.

Child of God

 

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy is not a book for everyone. And it wasn't a book for me. I was just glad it was very short, otherwise there is no way I would have finished it. It's a book club book (Books & Beer) so I wanted to finish it. It's also good that I listened to it and that I had the time in 2 short days to finish the book while listening in the car.

This is the story of Lester Ballard who is a voyeur and a pervert and has a violent streak. Some of the descriptions of acts he'd performed was a bit much for me.