Theo of Golden: A Balm for the Masses

Title: Theo of Golden

Author: Allen Levi

 

Let's begin with a brief summary from the publisher:

 

"One spring morning, a stranger named Theo arrives in the small Southern city of Golden. He doesn’t explain much about where he came from or why he’s there—but when he visits the local coffeehouse, where pencil portraits of the people of Golden hang on the walls, he begins purchasing them, one at a time, and giving each portrait to the person depicted. In exchange, he asks only for the person’s story. And so portrait by portrait, person by person, secrets are revealed, regrets are shared, and ordinary lives are profoundly altered." 

Getting Organized 

Waiting for all parties to assemble gave us some extra, welcome minutes to catch up with each other and talk about things like memoir-writing, how everyone has been spending the summer, and how tickled we were that Lois brought each of us a Pearson's Nut Goodie to mark the fact of this venerable old company's demise.

 

Digging In -- Almost

Unlike our usual discussions, which focus entirely on the book and our analysis thereof, this one started with an exchange of facts about the author. Clearly, after reading the book (and in some cases, during reading), each of us went in search of answers to questions like: Who is this writer? Why is this book a breakout hit? Where are the reviews? A lengthy piece in The Washington Post tells us Levi is 70 years old, a first-time author who lives alone on 1,600 acres of family land in Georgia where he keeps bees and makes music, and that he has a limited social media presence. Inspired by portraits he'd seen in his favorite cafe, he wrote a manuscript with no intention of publishing it. A group of close friends, who meet every year to talk about old times and pray together, convinced him to publish it.

Self-published, the book was promoted by Levi and a friend by telling all of their friends, working their respective networks, and posting on Facebook. Somewhere along the line, sales took off. As of this writing, the book has sold 2.5 million copies.

  

Insights and Opinions

+ Blanche kicked off the discussion, finding the book "great reading for somebody post-surgery. I found it very accessible, mildly entertaining and with no deep insights. I wanted to come to book club just in case the group could point me to the deep insights."

 

+ Chris, who read it on two flights, "felt like I was reading the script for a Hallmark movie, so I didn't think too deeply about it."

+ As Theo meets with each person whose portrait he is presenting, he tells them what he sees in the face. This telling inspires each gift recipient to open up and tell him things about themselves they may not have disclosed to others. "He is making people ask their own questions about who they are, because they aren't willing to look at themselves," Lois said. Linda noted that Theo recognizes each person's hunger to be seen and how important that is. And Vicky pointed out that Theo himself was the most mysterious of all of the characters. He never discloses anything about himself.

 

+ Margy felt that Levi's wide circle of eccentric characters made for a colorful story. "That's one of his messages. You are made better by your exposure to a diverse group of people." She also cited the author's habit in an interview of turning the interviewer's questions back on the interviewer. "He is a kind of Theo, in a way." 

 

+ To Linda, all of the characters were interesting, although she deemed the golf ball scene that results in a lifetime case of post-traumatic stress disorder, unbelievable. "As I was reading the book, I just read the book. I felt like it was heartwarming and that the author did not write it to be a bestseller. He wrote it for himself." She also noted that "This should be a heads-up to New York publishers. This is what people want to read."

 

+ To Blanche "That was my problem with it. He is such a good writer and the characters are so interesting, and I kept waiting for the payoff or something important. But now I'm thinking a lot of people who don't read love this book, and that's a good thing." 

 

+ Steve asked if any of us were bothered by some of the writing that could be deemed proselytizing. "As long as it was the character and not the author speaking, I was okay with it," he said. "But at the end, there is a full-on sermon." Discussion on that point landed squarely in the middle. While the author states this is not a Christian book, the text is clearly informed by his belief system.

+ Having a hard time completing the book midway through reading, Liz searched for reviews. "I felt like it was manipulative and preachy so I wanted to see what the reviewers had to say," she said. She found no reviews by major publications, but many reviews by individual people on Reddit and Goodreads. These reviews were universally positive. Many of them used phrases like "just what I needed now" and "finally something uplifting to give me hope." She acknowledged that clearly, the story of Theo and his gift-recipients is filling a generally unmet need for comfort during a horrific time. Liz said she was grateful for this book club conversation "because the shrift I gave this book was very short."

 

+ Several of us felt that what had happened between Theo's early life and his time in Golden was a big missing piece. Margy said she thought she would find out he was atoning for something and Linda assumed the same. But that turns out not to be the point.

 

+ Both Linda and Steve felt the ultimate appearance of Willa and then, wham, the end, was problematic. "For such a well-developed plot, that was a real letdown," Steve said.

 

+ Is it a happy ending? Some say yes and some say no. Levi is now writing a sequel and the book has been optioned to become a feature film, so there's clearly much life left in Theo.

 

Next On Our List to Read

 

September

Title: Taiwan Travelogue by Shuang-zi Yang

Host: Chris

Special Guest: The author will join us via Zoom 

 

October

Title: The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

Host: Steve 

 

 

Some of the smart people.

 

Fun being had  

The Zoomers

 

The mushrooms at the door.

 

 

The Things We Never Say

Title: The Things We Never Say

Author: Elizabeth Strout 

 

A brief summary from the publisher:

 

"Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?

And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence."

 

Insights and Opinions

Perhaps the best way to launch into our discussion of this book is to borrow the quote cited by Strout on the epigraph page before the book begins:

 

"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible." 

-- Carl Jung 

+ The story unfolds quietly, in schoolroom scenes with Artie in front of his class, in Artie's meeting at a local bar with his old friend Flossie, at home with Artie and his wife Evie and the exchange of comments between them when Artie finds he must "let it go." Soon we learn that, despite all outward appearances, Artie is leading what Henry David Thoreau describes as a "life of quiet desperation."

+ To Jocey, this novel captures the secret despair people carry as they go about their lives and the loneliness that grows out of withholding the truth about this internal pain. By page 156, after Artie has learned the truth about his son but told no one and is meeting with his colleague Anne, we read "In a way, Artie was aware for the first time how much people lied to one another. Why had he not realized this before? Because he had not lied to people? He could not, in truth, remember now how much of his life he had been lying." 

+ And as Linda pointed out, on page 182: "Because to say anything real was to say things nobody wanted to know. Of if they wanted to know, they would not care in the right way. Or even understand. It was a private thing, to be alive." This passage brought Niall Williams to mind for Shirley and how Williams' characters personify what it means to be alive.

+  Both Faith and Steve noted the inherent power gap in Artie's relationship with his wife Evie and how it shifts before the close of the story. Early in their lives, Artie is happy for the small wedding and agrees with Evie's family's general view that Evie is "marrying down." But Evie also uses this as power over him, which leaks out in unpleasant ways later on, telling Artie in a moment of anger that Evie's father never liked him. Evie has a habit of shutting down conversations with Artie when he tries to bring up something he cares about. And there is a point, Lois noted, when Evie admits she likes Artie better when he's not soft. To Faith, the fact that Artie takes the secret he finally learns to the grave is his final exertion of power over Evie. He now knows something she has always known, but he withholds the fact that he knows.

+ To Steve, Strout's novel is an atypically magnanimous book toward men, who are often not treated kindly in modern literature. Artie's developing relationship with Ken Moynihan, the strong bond that develops between Artie and his son even and especially after they both learn the secret Evie has been keeping, Heather's father showing up at the funeral, Artie's mentoring relationship with his student Danny -- all of these events and story elements are treated gently and with an astute understanding of human need and behavior.

+ The male characters are gently able to extend grace to each other, Lois noted. Artie extends grace to Danny, a troubled student, and then the clothing store owner extends grace to Artie after his failed shoplifting attempt. 

+ Liz asked the group for their opinions on the references to the presidential election and whether they thought the references added or subtracted from the story flow. Margy felt that many of these references will be dated very quickly and will be less understood by future readers. Liz thought the references were intrusive and detracted from the flow, that the rest of the story felt like the characters talking to us and the election business felt like the author talking to us. Chris felt the references were unnecessary. Linda, Jocey, and Steve all disagreed. To Linda, the Ken Moynihan character would not have been important without this element, and his relationship with Artie is important. Jocey felt it was necessary because the results of the election have caused great pain. And per Steve: "I thought it was major. It shook me out of this growing false assumption of normalcy. It awakened me to the real danger."

+ Margy admired how Strout is able to cover vast territory with an economy of words. "She deals with class consciousness, suicide, secret love, loneliness, and death. But she manages to do it without being depressing," she said. 

+ Two elements in the book left us all a bit stymied. Artie's frequent memory of his sister eating sugar on the sneak and Artie's constant questioning about whether or not free will exists both appear frequently in the pages of this novel. Yet neither is ever expanded upon in a way we fully understood, although we did have our theories. Maybe Strout feels like her message is obvious, but as readers, we didn't quite get it. 

+ Linda reread the book and recommended we all do the same. Much of what is surprising at first read is actually revealed in hints and clues along the way, from the very beginning.

 + Margy asked the philosophical question at the heart of this book: Is it better to keep secrets or to share what you know? Chris had the right answer. "I don't think there is a universal answer to that." 

+ Challenge question for the group: Did we all say what we really thought? Or did we refrain due to "holding certain views which others find inadmissible?" 

 

Our Next Reads

We were wildly efficient at the close of our session, and locked in on both our titles and hosts for the next three months. 

August

Title: Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

Host: Liz

 

September

Title: Taiwan Travelogue by Shuang-zi Yang

Host: Chris

 

October

Title: The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

Host: Steve 

 

 

The usual suspects

 

 

What Survives in the Memory after the Death of a Brother?

Title: The Ghosts of Fourth Street: My Family, a Death, and the Hills of Duluth

Author:  Laurie Hertzel

 

A summary from the publisher:

 

"Every family has its stories and secrets. Laurie Hertzel’s family had more than its share. At an early age, Laurie, the seventh of the ten Hertzel children, took on the challenge of sorting them out. Not old enough to be one of the Big Kids, yet too old to be with the Three Little Kids, she spent most of her time alone, reading, wandering, and observing her family as they moved around her in their house in Duluth. Though her parents were not warm, there were moments of closeness in those years―gifts of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books and special trips to the dairy for a sundae―but everything shattered after the sudden death of Laurie’s oldest sibling, eighteen-year-old Bobby, when she was just nine years old.

"Moving back and forth in time, Laurie reflects on Bobby’s death and what happens to a family’s story when no one can talk about a tragedy and its toll. In Ghosts of Fourth Street, readers witness how the apparition of memories, the shadow of needs unmet, and the spirit of a family once whole all linger long after the death of a child and brother. As Laurie shares her experiences, we see the emergence of her fascination with story and truth as she teaches herself to read and finds solace and inspiration in books amid the tensions and competing agendas within her big, complicated family."

 

In Conversation with the Author

For this special session, we were lucky enough to host the author, who patiently answered our many questions. What follows is an in-expert compilation of shared observations, questions, and answers.

 

Faith: "Of all of the passages I could have flagged, the one that just got me was 'The Hertzels and the Monahans die especially well.' I loved that, but I loved so many things about this book. And I also related to a lot of it. The tender observations of growing up were just spot on."

 

Chris: "How did you decide to include in the introduction the fact that these are your own memories and not the memories of the people you were writing about?"

 

Laurie: "I thought it was very important to say. I've called it (memoir) a fraught genre because it's from your own memory. There's a lot you can't prove. It's just how you remember it. And others may remember it differently. For instance, the passage about when I got stuck in the tree, I remember that event so clearly. But when I talked to my brother, he remembers it as a fence, not a tree. I've also learned that other people's memories are no better than mine." 

 

Linda: "There is exquisite detail in this book. Nothing over the top. But just perfect. Are you a journal writer? How did the details come to you so clearly?"

 

Laurie: "People always ask me if the writing was therapeautic, but no. That's not why I wrote it. My whole life, I've felt really close to the child that I was at that time. I remember not just thoughts, but the feelings and the reactions and the confusion, and those questions stayed with me. It sounds so dumb, but this little girl has been right at my shoulder all my life. And then I published it, and I don't have to think about it now. The more you write the memories, the more you remember them. I was writing these stories about being a kid and how my dad liked to argue and my mother did not. She was holding up the newspaper between them while he ranted, and he reached over and ripped it down, and as a child, I was glad that he ripped the paper. That part of my life is very vivid."

 

Liz: How did you manage the family fall-out, writing about people some of whom are still alive?

 

Laurie: "Half of my family doesn't speak to me now. Long ago, I started a blog and wrote a lot of family stories. In the beginning, my mo thought it was great and would send me photos and small corrections. Over time, some of my siblings didn't like that I was doing it, that the stories were private. And then I published a journal story about my brother dying and that was the beginning of the rift. My mother stopped speaking to me and my younger brothers don't either." 

 

Steve: "You seemed like a child growing up in isolation, but then you have a sweet scene of cooking with Evan. Was that a scene that was important to you?"

 

Laurie: "Very important. He and I became very close after Bobby died and we turned to each other. He's one of the ones who no longer speaks to me. But it was a relationship that deteriorated over time, not suddenly."

 

Glenn: How have other family members dealt with Bobby's death? Managed the tragedy?

 

Laurie: "When I was trying to write this, it wasn't a book. It was just memories and scenes and that was the event that was most pivotal. I started talking to my siblings. One sister started crying immediately and said she couldn't talk, even after 50 years. Another brother seemed like he had come to terms with it. And the younger ones don't remember it at all." 

 

Chris: "The scene where your father takes you to Bridgeman's. It really says something about your father's relationship with children."

 

Laurie: "I first told that story to a friend when she had young children. and she had all of these things that she wanted her daughter to love, and likes that she wanted her child to share. When she heard the story, she laughed and said it was so funny. I tried to write it several times so that it was funny. And I couldn't. I finally just had to realize that it was sad for me as a child. I remember all of those feelings. It was a little tragedy in my life. I could only write it as a kid, and to that kid, it wasn't funny."

 

Laurie: "I am curious to know how you saw Guv. Did you see him as a monster?

 

The group: Some said no, that he was doing the best he could. Others said yes. That there were many chances for him to show his humanity and he didn't.

 

Laurie: "He was not a monster. But he was overwhelmed. Try to imagine being the sole breadwinner for 11 other people. My parents were completely overwhelmed. No money, many children, new to Duluth and didn't know anybody. I think my father's way of trying to control the family was rules and anger, and all of the kids rebelled in their own way. But we always got books for Christmas, and it was his doing. My mother was private almost to the point of being secretive. Also, she told stories that weren't true. But we took everything out of her. I think she just needed to keep some things to herself." 

 

Liz: "There are literal ghosts in this book. But the memories and the stories are also ghosts of a sort."

 

Laurie: "I wouldn't have put ghosts in the title if there weren't real ghosts, but the ghosts are also the memories, and the people who aren't there anymore." 

 

Blanche: "I also grew up in a very large family. And then suddenly, my father who paid very little attention to us showered the very last child with love. And I thought, what are the rest of us, chopped liver?"

 

Laurie: "After Bobby, my mother announced that she was starting over with the three littlest kids. I think that's another problem with the dynamics of the family." 

 

Linda: "What are you working on now?"

 

Laurie: "I never thought anyone would want to read this book. It's so personal. But that has not been the case. And there are more ghost stories. My family has a lot. I started a Substack a few months ago, and now with that and teaching, I hadn't been writing. But I've started again, writing about my dog Angus, who is really difficult. He's a reactive dog. And people with reactive dogs started reacting. Someone needs to write a book about how owning a reactive dog doesn't require you to be a millionaire. So maybe I'll write that."

 

 

Glenn, Jocey, and Laurie Hertzel

 

Our larger than normal crowd, excited about our guest.

What We Are Reading Next

Title: The Things We Never Say

 

Author: Elizabeth Strout

 

Host: Linda 

 

 

 

Seeing Nothing Anymore, and Then Seeing Everything

Title: Mona's Eyes

Author:  Thomas Schlesser

 

A brief overview, from the publisher:

 

"Ten-year-old Mona and her beloved grandfather have only fifty-two Wednesdays to visit fifty-two works of art and commit to memory “all that is beautiful in the world” before Mona loses her sight forever.

While the doctors can find no explanation for Mona’s brief episode of blindness, they agree that the threat of permanent vision loss cannot be ruled out. The girl’s grandfather, Henry, may not be able to stop his granddaughter from losing her sight, but he can fill the encroaching darkness with beauty. Every Wednesday for a year, the pair abscond together and visit a single masterpiece in one of Paris’s renowned museums. From Botticelli to Basquiat, Mona learns how each artist’s work shaped the world around them. In turn, the young girl’s world is changed forever by the power of their art. Under the kind and careful tutelage of her grandfather, Mona learns the true meaning of generosity, melancholy, love, loss, and revolution. Her perspective will never be the same—nor will the reader’s."

 

Insights and Opinions

 

Translated from the French, Mona's Eyes is actually two things -- an in-depth study of each of 52 pieces of art and a story about the relationship between a young girl and her beloved grandfather and their mutual fear of her possible future blindness. This double purpose was precisely the reason for a profound split in the reactions of our group to the work. 

 

The story opens with a brief episode of blindness for young Mona, which terrifies both the child and the parents. An emergency medical visit leads to no helpful answers. The temporary solution is to continue regular visits to Mona's physician and also to begin sessions with a child psychologist. Mona's grandfather offers to handle the psychiatry visits, provided he can choose the doctor and accompany Mona without interference. Everyone agrees, and the novel settles into its format, which looks roughly like this:

• Each chapter begins with a scene of a few pages -- Mona with her friends, or Mona at school, or Mona at her father's resale shop. In these scenes, we learn that Mona's mother is frazzled, Mona's father drinks too much, and there is a mystery surrounding a dead grandmother no one speaks about. 

• Next, Mona and her grandfather arrive at a museum (there are three art museums in all), and stop in front of a piece of art. The artwork is then described in lengthy detail. Mona is directed to look at the art as long as she is able. In some cases, she studies for as long as 20 minutes. The museum visits occur when Mona's parents believe she and her grandfather are at an appointment with a psychiatrist.

• Then, her grandfather asks her to tell him what she notices and they discuss the work. Typically, some sort of moral or nugget of wisdom about living life emerges from these discussions. Each of these "nuggets" forms part of the chapter title.

 

Our discussion made one thing clear from the outset -- there are two ways to read this book. 

• Method one: One can read the book word for word, chapter by chapter, lengthy artwork description by lengthy artwork description.  

• Method two: Or, one can skim over the lengthy artwork descriptions and just read it for the story of Mona and grandpa and school and mom and dad and the missing grandmother and whether Mona will ultimately lose her vision. 

 

Members of our group fell into two camps -- those who followed method one and those who (more or less) followed method two, perhaps starting with method one and then moving to method two for various reasons. 

 

+ For some, the lengthy artwork descriptions grew tedious, especially given the fact that there are 52 of them. As someone who spent 20 years leading tours in front of art, Margy felt that this particular ground is well covered elsewhere for any student of art. "I did think this was a clever device, though, the way he was able to advance the story by tying it to what they were looking it."

 

+ Vicky, on the other hand, saw the artwork descriptions as interpretations that added to her understanding. "It's not like your normal book. It's a conceit. You must let go of normal expectations and just let it be what it is." 

 

+ Steve said he learned more from this book than from a semester at Vanderbilt and plans to listen to it in French. 

 

+ Liz found it a slow read but worth the time spent. "I read it not as a novel but as a philosophy of life. Look at the message attached to each work of art. And I learned a lot. The writer is an art historian, and I was happy to learn from him. I know I couldn't look at a piece of art for 20 minutes in silence, and I certainly don't believe any 10-year-old could. But I didn't care if the reaction from a 10-year-old was believable." Vicky agreed. "A 10-year-old won't stand there, but I will. I'm interested. I agree it's not believable. The dialogue between them isn't realistic, but as a writer, you just get beyond that."

 

+ Jocey succumbed to tedium after awhile. "52 times," she said. Chris admitted to switching to the skimming method after about the sixth chapter. "I did make it through, but I skimmed a lot and used Chat GPt." Linda claimed annoyance with the first third, but then "I just got into it and let go." Margy said "I was with you guys and then realized I was running out of time and I thought I'd skim and just read the story. By doing that, it turns out I don't like or believe these people."

 

+ Per our group, the story portion of the novel falls short. Schlesser has a tendency to introduce characters and circumstances that seem like they will be important, and then dropping them altogether later. Mona's father's alcohol problem seems like it will lead somewhere, but it doesn't. Some felt the final resolution about Mona's eye condition was a bit out of left field and not believable.

 

+ Both Linda and Margy cited Debra Dean's novel The Madonnas of Leningrad as the clear winner over Mona's Eyes if one is looking for a novel with a strong story and a careful study of specific works of art. 

 

+ Chris noted that reviews of Mona's Eyes are mixed. "Reviewers either love it or they don't." Just like us.

 

Our Next Read

For June, this is what we will be doing:

 

Title: Ghosts of Fourth Street: My Family, a Death, and the Hills of Duluth

Author: Laurie Hertzel, who will attend

Host: Jocey 

Audience: Both book club members and mates are welcome (and other special friends) 

 

 

A pretty good crowd for this session.

 

 

S

Steve joined via Zoom.

  

 

Turns Out We Can't Really Know Anything

Title: What We Can Know

Author: Ian McEwan

 

First, a brief summary from the publisher:

 

"2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery.

"2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. 

 

"When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.

 

"What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost."

 

Insights and Opinions

 

(A caveat: The writer of this post had not read the book, so writing a description of the discussion is a bit like watching people through a window, trying to read their lips, and then stitching things together as sensibly as possible. Reminds me of trying to write a paper about something I didn't know anything about, relying on Cliff's Notes and hunches).

 

+ As voracious readers, our group is not new to McEwan's work, so the discussion opened with the inevitable comparison to his other novels. Chris opened by admitting this one was "torture" for her until the last fifty pages. Lois countered: "It is a bit of a slog. I love his books, but I always wait about 50 pages to get past the slog part. I love his writing, but he's always slow at getting you into the story." Linda had just finished Amsterdam and loved Atonement, finding similarities between What We Can Know and Atonement. "It is a bit like Atonement in that the story being told turns out not to be true." Steve found it slow going at first, but did take satisfaction at Blundy being taken down a peg for his grammatical choices. "I kept vacillating between feeling humbled to be in McEwan's company and being put off by it. But I did get into the characters and the mystery."

 

+ Shirley pointed out McEwan's unconventional use of grammar, his sometimes run-on sentences, and unusual use of capitalization. Steve feels McEwan has a foot in old, formal English, and that the diction is in perfect keeping with the type of language he uses to compare the two centuries.

 

+ At the core of the book is the lost corona poem, so the group needed to spend some time talking about if any of us had ever heard of that poem format (no) or read one (no, but Margy listened to one and promised to send a link later.) "I'd never heard of a corona. I'd never heard of this poet. It was really long. Not being able to read and having to listen to it instead put me into the minds of the people at the dinner party. You can't really focus. It's really long and you drift in and out. This was just one of the things about this book that captured my imagination." Chris pointed out that each person at the dinner had consumed a bottle and a half of wine. "I mean, what corona?"

 

+ To Margy, looking at the lost art form of corona poetry brought up the question: what is the importance of any art when the seas have inundated the land? What is the role of art in the future? What followed was a thoughtful discussion that was less about the book than it was about the future of the humanities and the importance thereof in preparing people to engage in creative problem-solving.

 

+ One of Linda's colleagues referred to this novel as a wonderful academic satire. Of course he was bribed by an oil company not to publish a poem. "I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful if a poem could be worth a million dollars? The critics I read claim this book is over-stuffed and could have been four novels. It cheered me to think of parts of it as academic satire."  She continued: "Some parts of it are quite wonderful, such as thoughts about memory as a sponge soaking up material over time and then leaking it all over things later."

 

+ Steve found it particularly satisfying that it wasn't the corona poem that would tell the story of Vivien's life, but Vivien's own, subsequent telling of her story. And that she decides to lie in her journal so if anyone finds the journal later, they will believe her telling is the truth.

 

+ Per Margy: "So, you come to the end, and what can we know? We can't really know anything. You can't trust the people, you can't trust the documents, and you can't believe the archives because they can be sabotaged." Wonderful and horrifying at the same time.

 

+ While reading, Linda realized she was spending a lot of time with people she didn't like. "But then getting into Vivien's portion and what we can know and what people in the future will think of or know of us provided much to think about." 

 

+ Chris saw Vivien not as a feminist, but as a self-interested character with no interest in women's rights. Her interest is selfish, in telling her story in her way. Lois pointed out that, for many feminists, it does come down to self-interest. 

 

What We Will Read Next

For April, we will focus on poetry. Here are the rules:

1. Shirley will choose for us one Shakespeare sonnet and let us all know ahead of time so we can read it. 
2. For the meeting, each of us will bring a favorite poem to read aloud as well as hard copies of this favored poem.
3. Chris will host. 

 

Shirley and Chris

The rest of us via Zoom due to heavy snow.

 

 

 

 

Picking Up the Pieces of One's Own Mistakes

Title: Buckeye

Author: Patrick Ryan

 

First, a brief description of this weighty novel from the publisher:

 

"In the jubilant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, shares a single, life-altering moment with Margaret Salt, a woman determined to outrun her past. Cal is married to Becky, whose spiritual gifts help the living speak to the dead, while Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving at sea, believed to be safe—until a telegram suggests otherwise.

What begins as a fleeting transgression becomes a complex secret that irrevocably binds all four of them in unexpected ways. As their small Ohio town remakes itself in the postwar boom, the Salt and Jenkins families remain in each other’s orbit, and the consequences of choices made long ago begin to emerge, reshaping their lives in ways that will forever impact the next generation.

Sweeping yet intimate, resplendent with moments of deep emotion and unforgettable characters, Buckeye is a transportive story of love, loyalty, sacrifice, and forgiveness."

 

Insights and Opinions

This is one of those novels that breaks through the clutter of modern life and is suddenly seen and talked about everywhere. A Read with Jenna book club pick touted as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, People, the Minnesota Star Tribune, and the Chicago Public Library, it quickly rose to a prime spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. And of course any author who can wrangle advance-praise blurbs for their book jacket from the likes of Alice McDermott, Richard Russo, Ann Napolitano, and Ann Patchett is twenty-six steps ahead of the game before the game has even begun.

 

Cal Jenkins is a man whose club foot keeps him from joining the armed forces during World War II, diminishing his sense of himself as a man. His wife Becky has a gift for communicating with the dead, a gift her husband Cal doesn't understand. Margaret Salt is blessed with great beauty and cursed by a childhood abandonment that leaves a deep, unhealed wound. Her husband Felix values his wife but craves the love of a man who dies too soon. Each of these couples has a son and these sons will find one another and form an unbreakable bond.

 

+ Still reeling from the grievous harm done to our community by the lawless tactics deployed by ICE and still underway, we were grateful to spend time in each other's company talking about something other than The Thing. What is it about this book that has swept the nation? What makes it special?

 

+ Lois, who grew up in a small town, related to the culture. "This novel takes you into the interior life of people you would never know or would never know about if you lived in a small town. It gives you a sense of 'otherness' that you would never see growing up in a small town. We never knew anyone who was gay. We didn't even know what that was. In a small town, one's inner life has to be guarded carefully because if one person knows, everybody knows." 

 

+ Margy loved the sweep of the novel and Linda agreed, saying "This is an old-fashioned American novel. Characters are developed. You follow a cast of characters through their entire lives -- birth, loves, marriage, death -- you see them and know them through the decades." Liz agreed. "This is not a constipated, interior novel like so many modern literary works are."

 

" To Lois, Ryan's work makes the reader feel as if you are living through it yourself. 

 

+ Liz pointed out that it's a novel of a particular time as well as place. At that time, a man like Felix could not afford to be gay. And the lives of husbands and wives were so much more separated than they are now. Cal is aware of Becky's clients coming and going, taking advantage of her services as a medium, but he doesn't get it. He allows it but doesn't support it. When a saddened Becky seeks comfort from her mother, her mother says "Oh, pumpkin. You'll find a squirrel who can sing 'Mairzy Doats' before you find a man who takes you seriously."

 

+ To Margy, it is Cal who centers the book. "He is the heart of the novel, both literally and metaphorically. Think about the name of the town. It's Bonhomie, which is French for "good man," and Cal is that good man."

 

+ The character of Margaret was tough to love. Per Liz: "She was such a hard person and you don't relate to her, even at the end." Margy, on the other hand, loved that Margaret was an artist. "She would buy paintings. She'd find a Norman Rockwell, and note how he always found a perfect moment, and then put it under a microscope to find only the cute parts."  

 

+ Jocey (who submitted this question ahead of time since she couldn't be with us) wondered if Margaret did the right thing in telling her son about his brother. Lois thinks yes. The author, most likely, thinks no. We leave that up to the reader to decide. 

 

+ In the final pages of the book, Cal ponders the wisdom that comes from age, needling him because "it brought the clarity of hindsight without the means to change anything.."   "This is why old people seem distant and distracted, he thought. We aren't living in the past. The past is living in us. And it's talking." This is what great writers do. They find the nugget of truth and present it to the reader in the perfect combination of words.

 

+ In many ways, this is an anti-war novel. The town is populated by people who've been traumatized by one war or another -- Cal's father by WWI and the rest of the town by WWII. People who've experienced war don't forget and are marked by it permanently. Chris pointed out that "I feel like we, too, have been invaded. Unless people experience that, they can't understand." This led us out of the book and into a closing conversation about Minneapolis under attack, where to find solid commentary, and how to keep calm and carry on.

 

Our Next Read

For March, we will be reading:

 

Title: What We Can Know

Author: Ian McEwan

Location: Shirley's place 

 

Lois and Linda

 

 

Margy from afar

 

 

Some of Liz's tiny protest art, shared with the group

 

 

Finding Friends in the Midst of Tyranny

 First, let us start with this.

 

 

The attack of the federal government on the citizens of Minnesota has made it impossible to concentrate on even the simplest of things. Taking out the garbage, cutting a tomato, brushing one's teeth -- all take an effort of steely will. Writing this summary of our book club discussion is no different. But as the lyric from The Minnesota Anthem (linked below) states:

 

We are the North Star blazing in the cold.  

We are the stories that the mountains told.  

From every tear we forge a flame.  

We call their names. We call their names.

Together we rise. 

Together we cry.

 

We gathered at Steve's to discuss Backman's book, but it was clear from the start that we would not be able to separate our analysis of the book from what we were experiencing in our community. When we met on January 19, circumstances were already dire. Masked gunmen were going door to door, without warrants, taking people into custody for the crime of not being white. We had no inkling of how much worse it would get. We shared with each other stories of what we knew personally, who we had talked to who seemed unaware, news coverage being sparse, and shifts in what we were seeing on social media, comments like "Usually, I'm not political, but..." and a sudden presence on LinkedIn, heretofore focused on business connections, of concern about federal over-reach.

 

So, apologies to Backman for what will be a less-than in-depth analysis of his book.

 

Getting Back to the Book

Title:  My Friends

Author: Fredrik Backman 

 

First, a brief description from the publisher:

 

"Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

"Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love. 

 

"Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art." 

 

Insights and Opinions

+ Steve brought us back to the book, which he characterized as a paean to art and to the poet, quoting this line from the text: "Art has the power to make you care about strangers."

 

+ Backman's main characters are rich and many-layered. "I cared about each of these people. Each of them is endearing in their own, odd way." Each of them is a misfit, which is a common theme in Backman's writing. Shirley pointed out, however, that the characterizations of "rich people" were thin caricatures, and Liz agreed, providing Backman some leeway here as these were Louisa's opinions.

 

+ The book cycles back and forth between the past and the present. The friendship formed by this group of thirteen-year-olds is unbreakable and relatable. Lois said: "Everybody feels odd at 13 and it's hard to find friends. If you connect with someone, that connection becomes really crucial to who you become."

 

+ Young Louisa, whose life has been a hard one, is expert at comic/sad awareness. On the train watching Ted try to laugh and fail, she thinks "When you get old, gravity pulls the corners of your mouth down. The road to a smile grows longer."

 

+ Backman's young characters survive their desperate lives because they have faith in each other. He writes "The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else's belief in them."

 

+ Linda pointed out the importance of the book's dedication. "To anyone who is young and wants to create something. Do it." What follows this dedication is a quote from Anton Ego: "The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends." Backman has stated that these two thoughts are the reason for this book. 

 

+ Linda was stopped along the way by "some terrible metaphors," such as "Ted blushes so hard that you could have cooked waffles in his wrinkles." Liz agreed, saying "he's great with metaphors, but he just uses too many. Most of them are hilarious." As Chris noted, even the best writers need a good editor.

 

+ A few of us felt the ending was a bit too neat. Per Margy: "To me, it felt like the ending had been changed to give a happy resolution to these kids. I thought it was preposterous, but heart-warming." 

 

+ Overall, our group gave a hearty thumbs up to this novel and feel like it's a worthy addition to the Backman canon. 

 

Our Next Digression

Unable to continue having a meaningful conversation about this book, we were each asked to answer this question: Between your volunteer work and activism, how are you taking care of yourself during this difficult time? Our answers:

 

Jocey: "Reading like crazy. Lying on the couch reading reading reading. Novels. And watching movies. Escapism. 

 

Shirley: Listening to Mexican music, especially Alejandro Fernandez.

 

Steve: Hanging out with friends, exercising a lot, Nordic skiing, news blackouts.

 

Linda: Reading for distraction and exercising. I decided yesterday to stop watching CNN and the evening news. My phone is in the other room so I'm not constantly checking the alerts.

 

Lois: Losing myself in book after book. I almost don't judge them. I just go down my stack.

 

Liz: Painting tiny paintings and writing. Trying for chunks of news blackouts, but failing. 

 

Chris: I wish I were doing better. I travel, spend time with friends, don't look at the phone right away in the morning. No news until night. 

 

Margy: The solace of nature. It's just wonderful to be out here (in California). I go out first thing in the morning in my sandals and look at the mountains, and bike riding.

 

What We Will Read Next

Our book club selection for February is:

 

Title: Buckeye

Author: Patrick Ryan

Location: TBD 

 

The Minnesota Anthem