The Stuff of Legends Delivered with Grace

Title: Sharks in the Time of Saviors

Author: Kawai Strong Washburn

 

Summer was waning, COVID was waxing, and it seemed a perfect time to sit outside and discuss this magical book. But the combo of aggressively falling leaves, bird droppings and a work crew next door sawing through concrete drove us inside almost immediately. Ours is a hearty group of diehard book-discussers and we'll talk anywhere, so next stop -- the living room. 

 

Our book club rules are strict. First, general exchange of news, not to exceed 30 minutes. Then get down to the serious business of critique and opinion exchange. No one is allowed to state whether or not they liked the book until the end of the discussion although there are some regular sinners who will launch the conversation with "I know I'm not supposed to say whether I like it, but I loved/hated this book." We spent our first 30 minutes talking about The Loft, which is how we all came to know each other in the first place. Then we sequed into who died of COVID, which is how all conversations turn at this moment.

 

About the Book

From the publisher:

"In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends.

Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods—a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family’s legacy."

 

Insights and Opinions

+ Linda found the book compelling and thought-provoking. Although she found parts of the book gritty and sad, each character is fascinating, including the character of Hawaii itself. To quote a passage: "The kingdom of Hawaii had long been broken -- the breathing rainforests and singing green reefs crushed under the haole fists of beach resorts and skyscrapers." She agreed with the critic who described the book as "a hula of modern prose, like the gods have chosen Washburn as a vessel to cram all the glory and sadness of these islands into the story of one family." 

 

+ Overall, our group had mixed reactions to the book. We were uniformly awed by the quality of the writing, but some expressed confusion about what they saw as the unresolved message and ending. Several of those who felt this way recommended watching interviews with the author, such as this one, which is available on Facebook. (This will open in a new window, just so you know).

 

+ While Margy felt there was no real resolution, she found the changing perspectives of the four main voices to be strong and involving. All three children were extraordinary. She found herself pulling for each of them to live up to their potential, but that doesn't happen for anyone in this book.

 

+ Steve, on the other hand, expressed some discomfort with the "turbulence and disorientation of skipping from person to person. I kept thinking, this is a great novel, and then, or is it?" In many ways, Steve felt the book is a closer look at the American dream, which we have all been examining recently, and some of the fallacies surrounding that concept. He felt educated by the book.

 

+ Because of the strong opening revolving around Noa's rescue by the sharks, Liz expected this to be Noa's story. But when he disappears midway through the book, she was left wondering and kept waiting for him to come back somehow in a powerful way at the end.

 

+ Others felt differently. That Noa was personifying Hawaii itself (Lois) or that the book is more about the eco-system of the family rather than Noa as an individual (Jocey).  

+ Bottom line: This is a book well worth reading if you haven't for everything it has to offer and for introducing you to the pain and cultural uprooting of the indigenous people of Hawaii.

A Look Out of Doors

We didn't take pictures at this event due to our initial flurry of relocating, so here is a random picture of what the garden was doing at the time we met.

Marigolds, salvia and rosemary

 

 

 

 

The Journey to Getting Back to Where You Started

 

Title: Turbulence

Author: David Szalay

For scene-setting, let's start with the promotional blurb touting this novel: "From the acclaimed Man Booker Prize-short-listed author of All That Man Is, a stunning, virtuosic novel about twelve people, mostly strangers, and the surprising ripple effect each one has on the life of the next as they cross paths while in transit around the world."

At just 160 pages, our choice of book-club reads was a suitable pick, especially for those of us suffering from COVID-19 cognitive and emotional fatigue. We also stuck with the transportation theme, piling into car-pooling clusters and then driving back and forth randomly until we were able to find Lois' house. After touring her beautiful garden, loading our plates, and loosely discussing the topic of "who is meaner -- writers or academics?" we got down to the business at hand.

Insights and Opinions

+ Core to this novel is its structure. Each chapter opens with the letter codes of the departure and arrival airports relevant to the character in the chapter. And each character is linked with a character in the next chapter. The reader is invited into the mind of each character along the journey and, as Lois noted, becomes privy to the internal assumptions they make about each other.

+ Szalay writes with profound empathy for his characters. Jocey was struck by how these interior conversations reveal their hardships and heartaches, which aren't visible to their fellow passengers. Szalay's hand at writing the human condition is deft. For example, Steve noted that, when seen from his wife's point of view, Shamgar is clearly an angry, abusive spouse. Yet Shamgar's chapter shows us a softer side and gives the reader a window into his pain. In many ways, he is a reprehensible character who also has a softer side -- not entirely rare in the world.

+ We were all struck by the way the stories circle the world. Some, like Linda, felt it was a fun game -- like being on a train platform and catching snippets of conversation. Linda expressed a note of personal pride at having figured out the system. Liz, on the other hand, felt that this structure was merely a gimmick. She had been drawn into and was fully engaged with each set of characters and felt cheated when the set-up amounted to nothing in particular. Margy, on the other hand, disagreed, stating that "it was so skillful, it took you by surprise in a delightful way."

Margy explains the geography of the novel to Liz.

 

+ In Margy's opinion, this line, which appears in the chapter about a baby being born blind, is the theme that holds the book together: "...was one of those events that makes us what we are, for ourselves and for other people. They just seem to happen, and then forever, and slowly we understand that we're stuck with them, that nothing will ever be the same again."

+ Shirley pointed out this Kennedy quote from the last chapter as her take on the true meaning of the book: "For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

+ Ultimately, Steve was mesmerized and entertained by not fully satisfied. "I enjoyed it as an exercise, but don't we expect more of a center to a book?" As Linda pointed out, "everybody is traveling and no one is really home."

Back to Where We Were Before

+ Maybe it was because Turbulence is so short or maybe it was because the group is still so in love with last months' book, but at least half of our time was spent talking about After Francesco by Brian Malloy -- last months' read. Everyone committed to recommending this book to friends. And the big question: why hasn't it been reviewed?

+ Other things people have been reading and recommend we do the same include Deacon King Kong, The Great Circle,  and The Good Lord Bird.

Next Months' Read

Our next session will be at Liz's house and we will read Sharks In the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn.

"Be curious first, judgmental a distant second."

Title: After Francesco 

Author: Brian Malloy

The Set-up

 “From acclaimed author Brian Malloy comes a stunning novel of love, friendship, and surviving the deepest loss, set in New York City and Minneapolis in 1988, at the peak of the AIDS crisis.” 

More than a decade ago, the organizing principle of our book club was to create a way for us, all former Board Members, to continue gathering on the third Monday of the month to share our mutual love of literature and The Loft.  So, when Linda suggested we read Brian Malloy’s fourth novel, After Francesco, it was an easy, unanimous decision.  

Brian had served as both Director of Development and, later, Director of Education at the Loft before he embarked on a successful writing career. We all remember him fondly, as Steve put it, as “just a fundamentally nice guy and good person, as well as a talented writer.”  With the promise of a “mystery guest,” we were a big, boisterous group including Blanche and Faith, who we’ve been missing, and Chris, who flew in from New York. Liz, Gail, and Joanne unfortunately couldn’t attend and Steve joined by phone to spare us from his bad summer cold.  

From the moment Brian walked into the room to our spontaneous applause, our discussion was off to a raucous start. For a conversation about a novel dealing with grief, guilt, heartbreak, and anger, we still managed to laugh. A lot! 

 

Insights and Opinions

+ Never shy, we dove right into the debate over cultural appropriation in literature. We asked Brian his thoughts about Rebecca Makkai’s novel, Great Believers.  Born in 1978, Makkai is a straight woman who was still a child at the peak of the AIDS crisis. Yet her book on the topic received a $1M advance and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Brian explained that, in his opinion, anyone can write outside their personal experience if they’re writing fiction. At the same time, he thinks it’s fair game to skewer authors who opportunistically write their “emotional truth” in fabricated memoirs like the fictitious bestseller by Francesco’s “sister-in-love.”

 

+ Linda expressed her appreciation for the “gallows humor” that balances the sadness that could have rendered the story unbearable. She read the final paragraph of Brian’s author’s note asking him to elaborate on its final sentence: “Neither man has the self-pitying look of the bitter.”  Brian told us that he realized that he is still angry 40 years later about the cruel mismanagement of the AIDS crisis.  Writing this book helped him come to terms with that anger because, as he said, he doesn’t want to be a “bitter old man”:  “Bitterness is judgmental and narcissistic. It means you’ve given up on other people.”  

 

+ When Brian gave Francesco the memorable line “Be curious first, judgmental a distant second,” he didn’t realize he was channeling Walt Whitman.

 

+ Steve admired how all the characters in the book are fully developed – a skill Brian shares with Faith. It enabled him to care not only about the main characters, Kevin and Francesco, but all the secondary characters because they are so clearly and cleanly delineated. Faith agreed and acknowledged what hard work it is to create such memorable minor characters. When she finishes a novel, she said, she feels like she’s “had a long, long session with a psychologist.”

 

+ A good example of this was our affection for Kevin’s loyal friend Tommy. Brian explained that he was based on a real life-long friend from high school. Brian specifically wanted to include a sympathetic straight character in the book to counter the current demonization of straight, white males. “We’re so into identity politics these days, it’s preventing us from thinking and seeing others.” 

Author Brian Malloy amid the booksters

+ We also all loved Kevin’s eccentric Irish Catholic Aunt Nora. Her continuing outrage at the British government’s involvement in the Irish potato famine created a unique parallel to lingering anger over the US government’s political mishandling of AIDS.

+ Margy found the way in which the details of Kevin’s involvement in Francesco’s death were gradually revealed throughout the book was a powerful way to explain his debilitating and self-destructive behavior.

 

+ Lois commented that Brian has managed to capture the details of everyday life in the 1980s so authentically that it brought the emotional era back to life for her. And, Jocey appreciated his ability to write natural dialogue that “just flows.” 

+ While Kevin Doyle isn’t an autobiographical character, Brian feels he’s done his best writing about him and isn’t ready to let him go. Also a character in his first book, The Year of Ice, Brian is currently planning a third novel tentatively titled Minneapolis is Burning, that will pick up when Kevin is in his 60s (Brian’s current age). Having all loved After Francesco, we can’t wait to return to Kevin’s story and to resume our conversation with Brian as soon as it’s published.

Next Up

Our next meeting is set for Monday, August 16, at 12:30 pm to discuss Turbulence by David Szalay. The author of five books, Szalay was short-listed for the Man Booker in 2016 for his novel All That Man Is. At just 145 pages, Turbulence is “a stunning novel about twelve people and the ripple effect each one has on the life of the next as they cross paths in their journeys around the world." Happy travels!

 

And finally

Many thanks to Margy for writing this post and supplying the pix. And, many apologies to the booksters for the delay in posting because, you know, COVID.

 

Fresh Water to Bring Us Back to Life

Title: Fresh Water for Flowers 

Author: Valerie Perrin

 

Placing Us in Time and Circumstance

So, it's June, 2021, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and we are just emerging from a year and a half of hiding in the basement. (A bit like the cicadas, although their tenure underground was quite a bit longer than ours). As we stumble out, blinking in the sun and hobbling in actual shoes that feel foreign, we find that we can actually meet IN PERSON for book club.

For some of us, reading during this time of trauma was a balm. For others, it was impossible, concentration being just out of reach. But, our first reunion demonstrated that our readers are back in business. So, let's get started.

The Set-up

Translated from the French, this story is told from the perspective of Violette Toussaint, the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. From the publisher: "Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of the hilarious and touching confidences of random visitors and her colleagues -- three gravediggers, three groundskeepers, and a priest.

Violette's routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of police chief Julien Seul wishing to deposit his mother's ashes on the gravesite of a complete stranger. Julien is not the only one to guard a painful secret: his mother's story of clandestine love breaks through Violette's carefully constructed defenses to reveal the ...." and I'm just going to stop there as this next bit is a spoiler. Plus, the above description is really not very good or even accurate.

Insights and Opinions

+ Chris, who was unable to complete any book during quarantine, couldn’t put this one down, perhaps because of its three-page chapters, or perhaps because her own childhood friend’s father was a cemetery keeper. “It resonated with me by reminding me what a happy place a cemetery can be,” she said.

+ Steve noted that there is so much love in this book, but much of it is frustrated. The writer does a masterful job of writing human characters, each interesting in their own oddities and eccentricities and, as a result, you feel real affection for each character. None of them are there as plot devices and they all play an important role.

+ Liz appreciated the quiet pace of the book – Violette’s knowledge of every grave, her journal in which she keeps a careful record of services and gatherings, the chats in her “public” room where she listens, the creepy dolls on her staircase. On the other hand, she felt that the book’s conclusion was out of keeping with the rest of the writing. No more can be said about that, though, as it would be a spoiler if you haven’t read the book.

+ Margy pointed out that this book is about love and redemption, but that no one seems to be in love with the person they are with. Instead, they are all having affairs with someone else. There followed some discussion about whether this is a “French thing” and that we just don’t get it as Americans. Or maybe we’re just prudes.

+ The many references to French culture and events left Linda a bit in the dark, so she just moved on. “Maybe I’m just not the ideal reader for this book,” she said. Liz Googled a few things along the way, which helped. But the story still stands without a complete understanding of these elements.

+ Lois was moved by the scenes in a cemetery room where Violette meets with the gravediggers, the men from the funeral home, the priest, and the mourners. These scenes brought her into each of these characters and demonstrated Violette’s wisdom and quiet but wise spirit.

+ One of our favorite exercises is reading aloud favorite passages. Linda points to these: “There is too much ‘just in case’ in my luggage.” And “It is the words they didn’t say that make the dead so heavy in their coffins.” 

 

Oddments and Telling Details

Our hostess, plus aftermath

+ In person, we were able to count Linda, Jocey, Liz, Steve, Shirley, Lois, and Margy, which was pretty amazing given current circumstances. Chris joined us via Zoom due to being skunked in her effort to get on a plane, the aviation industry being in the same muddle as everything else right now.

+ Jocey was semi-bleary-eyed, having just flown in from a “last-minute” camping trip to Iceland (who does that?). 

 

+ Margy’s John stayed downstairs guarding the door and keeping the creeps and weirdos out, and for that we are grateful.

 

+ Steve brought out an old book from days of yore and impressed us with his fluent French, which made us all feel insecure.

 

Where Has This Blog Been?

Also emerging from the basement is this blog, which has been dormant since 2017 for many reasons, but mostly the laziness of the writer.