Tell The Wolves I'm Home

When asked, "How's next month's book?" at last month's book club, the woman who suggested it wouldn't commit to liking it or not. She only said, "It's different."

Yes, Tell The Wolve I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt was different. But I think that's partly because it was written in 2012 and partly because it's about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. I really enjoyed the story. It's a coming-of-age story, it's a story about families, and, as I've already said, it's about the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Finn, the uncle of June and Greta, is dying from AIDS. June is different from most other kids. When Finn dies, she is really forced to confront her feelings for him as well as the relationship with Greta that has been deteriorating over time. She also attempts to figure out her mother's relationship with Finn.

A stranger shows up at Finn's funeral who will help June get these unresolved issues as figured out as they can be when you're 14 years old.

It brought up memories of how AIDS impacted my family in the 1980s and 1990s, things I don't care to discuss here, partly because they should probably stay private and partly because they might be considered spoilers. However, bringing up these memories may be  why I liked this novel so much.

I'm looking to next month's book club discussion.

 

The Testaments

Was Margaret Atwood's The Testaments much easier to read than The Handmaid's Tale (of which it is a sequel) because The Handmaid's Tale told such a dire dystopian story which seems far too similar to what we're living in now and The Testaments seemed somehow more hopeful? The Testaments was more "entertaining" and less horrific on many different levels.

The Testaments takes place about 25 years after The Handmaid's Tale. It's told from 3 different perspectives: Aunt Lydia, one of the female elders of the community and from two teenage girls, one growing up in Gilead and the other growing up in Canada. In many ways, this is a typical coming-of-age story, even though the upbringings of the girls is anything but typical. It gives us a much better idea of the workings of Gilead.

I don't want to give too much away and I'm struggling to give you a better idea of the plot of the book without spoiling it for you. Of the two books, The Handmaid's Tale is the one with the larger message, the one that is more scary and the one that really makes you think.

 

The Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street

I don’t know where I first heard about The Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street (and why do I often see it written as The Crazyladies...), but it’s been on my radar for quite a long time. Probably since it first was published. I guess I had an interest in reading it because my husband spent part of his growing up time living on Pearl Street. I really had no idea what to expect about this Trevanian autobiographical novel. No idea when it was set or who the characters were. And Trevanian? A mononymous author? What was up with that?

Turns out that this novel is set on North Pearl Street, Albany, in the 1930s. The mostly Irish part of Pearl Street. My husband lived on the other end of Pearl Street, the Italian part of Pearl Street in the late 1950s or early 60s. I envisioned relaying anecdotes from the novel to my husband about the place where he had called home. That turned out not to be the case.

I’m not really sure where the word crazyladies comes in to play. Yes, there were some crazy ladies living on Pearl Street. But the story wasn’t about them. They were merely the supporting characters in the story of Jean-Luc’s time on North Pearl Street. Were his experiences unique to unique to Pearl Street? Or could this story have been set in any poor immigrant neighborhood in the time after the Depression until shortly after World War II?

I liked the snarkiness of the first person narrative, and I loved the use of language. Otherwise, the novel dragged on and I pushed myself to read it quickly… so I could be finished with it. It was good enough that I didn’t want to drop it, but it was keeping me away from books that I imagined I’d like a lot better.

In reading reviews, it seems that fans of other works by Travanian seem to appreciate this one a little bit more. But after slogging through this novel, I have no intention of slogging through another by him.

 

Born A Crime

I know Trevor Noah from The Daily Show. I know his humor, I appreciate his humor, I knew he wasn't born here but I couldn't quite figure out what his accent was. I had no idea that he was truly born a crime!

Trevor Noah was born to a black, Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father in South Africa at a time when such a partnership was considered illegal and punishable by imprisonment, with the resulting child placed into an orphanage. He was literally born a crime. His parents never married which brought with it its own set of challenges.

Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood is Noah's coming-of-age memoir. It was a fascinating book, at the same time a personal story as well as about a category of people, colored people, that I never was aware of at all. There were black people, there were white people. And colored people were basically the mixed race. Noah falls into that category.

Even though his mother was black, the two of them seemed to go amongst the different races pretty comfortably. During apartheid, Trevor, his mother and his father all kind of lived in the shadows. But after apartheid, they lived openly. His mother really was quite bold. As a result of all this, though, young Trevor always felt like an outsider. He didn't fit in with the whites, he didn't fit in with the blacks - although he identified as a black, and he didn't fit in as colored since the colored kids he came in contact with were the children of parents who themselves were mixed. It was legal for a mixed race person to mate with another mixed race person and give birth to colored children. Mind boggling!

Many of the stories are horrifying while others are heartwarming. But Noah's signature sense of humor is apparent throughout the book. It's probably what allowed him to survive. The only thing I felt was missing from the book was an epilogue. Now I'm curious as to how he got from where he was in South Africa to touring as a comedian throughout Europe to The Daily Show. This memoir does paint a picture of what life was like for a child coming of age in South Africa after the end of apartheid.

I want to end with my reflections on a quote from the book:

In Germany, no child finished high school without learning about the Holocaust. Not just the facts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it - what it means. As a result, Germans grow up appropriately aware and apologetic. British schools treat colonialism the same way, to an extent. Their children are taught the history of the Empire with a kind of disclaimer having over the whole thing. "Well, that was shameful, now wasn't it?"

In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren't taught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it's taught in America. In America, the history of racism is taught like this: "There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it's done." It was the same for us. "Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let's move on." Facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension. It was as if the teachers, many of whom were white, had been given a mandate. "Whatever you do, don't make the kids angry." 

This made me think about the way I taught about social justice - and injustice - while teaching fifth grade in New Jersey. I wanted the kids to feel the injustice. To know that it wasn't over. That it wasn't time to move on. Getting the kids angry was a way to get the kids to think.

I'd recommend this book.

 

Dear Edward

Sometimes I don't pay close enough attention to the recommendations coming from Renee's Reading Club. I see a title, I see a lot of "Oh, yes, that was great" and I request the title from the library. I requested the novel Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano months ago having no idea what it was about. I  started reading the e-book before looking at what would have been the flap of a printed book. (One disadvantage of e-books over traditional print books - no flap!) Okay, a book about a sole survivor of a plane crash. Was I really up for reading a book like that? Then again, all future air travel is totally up in the air so I know I won't be on a plane in awhile. Why not? And it had gotten so many rave reviews.

Dear Edward is about Eddie who becomes Edward after he becomes the sole survivor of a Newark to Los Angeles flight in 2013. Eddie's dad is a professor who didn't get tenure when Eddie's mom gets a good opportunity to rewrite a Hollywood movie script. Eddie, his parents and his brother, Jordan are on the cross country flight along with 188 other passengers and crew, some of whom we get to meet and become familiar with.

The story is told in alternating chapters. One chapter about the flight followed by a chapter about Edward trying to move forward, living with his aunt and uncle in New Jersey. Eddie had been homeschooled. Edward has to adjust to going to public school. A grateful Edward has his new next-door neighbor, Shay, and his therapist, Dr. Mike, to help him through.

I don't want to give away more of the book, including why the book is called Dead Edward. As long as you're okay reading a book about a plane crash (inspired by a true life story of a sole survivor), you would probably enjoy this book.

The Great Alone

I'm usually a big fan of Kristin Hannah's work, I'm actually surprised this is the first Kristin Hannah book that I've read since I started reviewing novels on this blog, but for some reason, I had very mixed feelings about The Great Alone. I mean, I loved it... but I didn't. It was gripping. It painted a stunning picture of the wildness of Alaska. It was often difficult to read.

The Great Alone is a coming of age story. But it's so much more. It's a story about America's last frontier. It's a story about the after effects of serving in Vietnam. It's a story about survival. It's a story about love. Love between a husband and wife, love between a mother and daughter, love between two friends.

Ernt and Cora, passionately in love, are in need of a fresh start with their teenage daughter, Leni. Ernt is bequeathed an Alaskan homestead by the soldier he couldn't save in Vietnam. They struggle to survive, and would not have survived had it not been for the community they moved to.

Ernt has many demons that are worsened by the long, dark days of Alaskan winters. Cora can't help him nor can she help herself. Leni finally feels like she's found a place where she belongs, but she's got so many secrets to contend with.

The story was compelling. The characters were believable. Sometimes, the author got too wordy. The descriptions got too long, the storyline got dragged out. There was quite a bit of what felt like repetitiveness. The violence and abuse was graphic, which wasn't really a problem, but it was often more dragged out than was really necessary to move the story forward.

I recommend this novel but with the caveat that it might be "too much" for some.

Summer of My German Soldier

Before I say anything about the book, it did feel good to be reading Young Adult Fiction again. Okay... now...

As soon as I finished Summer of My German Soldier, I thought, "Oh, I loved this." But now as I sit here pondering how I'm going to write my thoughts on the book, I'm having second thoughts.

It wasn't at all what I expected. I had no idea that the main character, Patty Bergen, was Jewish. I also always thought that "the girl" was closer in age to "the boy." That wasn't the case. Anton, the soldier, was 22 years old to Patty's 12 years. I also thought I was going to learn more about the German POWs. (After reading When We Meet Again, I want to learn more about the German POW situation in the US during WWII. This book didn't teach me anything. Nothing.) That was probably my biggest disappointment.

What I think the main idea of the story is supposed to be is that Patty, a young Jewish girl, helps a German "Nazi" prisoner of war escape from the POW camp in rural Arkansas. That was such a little part of the book. This book would not be a great book for students to learn anything about the imprisonment of Germans in the US during WWII.

What I think the main idea of the story really was coming of age, a girl coming to value herself. Patty is not valued by her very dysfunctional family. As the only Jewish family in the rural southern town, she's an outcast amongst her classmates. She just doesn't fit in and she places the blame for that squarely on her own shoulders. She's simply unlovable. Her only friend is her housekeeper/nanny, Ruth. Patty finally asserts herself by waiting on a German prisoner customer, Anton, in her parents' department store. She takes things into her own hands when she witnesses him trying to escape. This is the real value of the book.

In the e-book edition that I read, there was a preview of the sequel to Summer - Morning is A Long Time Coming. The second novel picks up when Patty is 18, graduating from high school. I may or may not read this sequel at a later date.

I think I need to do a little more research about Bette Greene, though. She admits in the forward that she is Patty and that Patty's parents are her parents. I wonder, was any of the POW part of the story true.