A Relationship, Mid-life Questions, and a Rental House

Title: Rental House

Author: Weike Wang 

 

We vanquished the doldrums of a Minnesota February by gathering at Shirley's new digs downtown, where the winter sun cheered us despite the fact that it was -7° F. outside. We were greeted by an uncharacteristically lavish spread provided by Shirley's daughter Celia and the lovely Elizabeth. After the requisite tours and general chitchat, we got down to the serious business at hand.

 

First, from the publisher, a short refresher on what this book is about:

 

From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations.

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences. Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.
 
Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?

 

Insights and Opinions

 

+ Overall, our reactions to this book were mixed. Some questioned the voice of Keru, the main character in the book, finding it flat and cold. Liz wondered why Keru and Nate were even together as they didn't seem to enjoy each other's company and most of their interactions were uncomfortable and strained. Others felt that Keru's insights into human motives, especially when seen through the eyes of immigrants or those who live in solidly conservative states in the U.S., were both profound and educational. Margy had read all three of Wang's novels, including Chemistry and Joan is Okay, and suggested we would all benefit from doing the same. "I wondered how we would react to this one after having read the other two," she said. "Keru is much harder and far less vulnerable in this one than she is in the others."

 

+ The central device used in this novel is the rental house, a place where Keru and Nate can go to vacation, to be together since they work in separate cities, and to spend time with each set of parents separately. In one section, Keru's parents visit. In another section, Nate's parents come to stay. Then, Nate and Keru attempt to vacation together but are invaded first by pushy neighbors who intrude in every possible way and then, unexpectedly, by Nate's ne'er-do-well brother looking for money. The cultural differences between the two sets of parents, along with their parental expectations of their children, are vast. Seeing our two protagonists in the company of their respective parents gives the reader tremendous insight into how each of these young adults have turned into the people that they are. Similarly, seeing Nate with his brother, who is clearly the family favorite despite his obvious shortcomings, is a window into Nate's viewpoint on life.

 

+ Lois pointed out what she saw as the turning point in the book -- the point close to the end of the story where Keru is finally able to explain to herself who her husband is and who she is and what each of them wants. 

+ One of Keru's odd habits is, when she is most uncomfortable, to throw things. This is how she and Nate first come together. When they first meet and are having their first interaction, she picks up objects close at hand and pitches them into the crowd. Later, on one of their vacations, she throws a rock at a woman who's upset that they're dog isn't leashed. Even later, at one of the rental houses, she throws a log. There's no explanation of this behavior and the reader is left to puzzle it out. Steve wondered what our reaction was to her "throwing things" habit. Liz felt it was an important fact that was abandoned partway through. Jocey found it troubling and wondered: was this rage? Discomfort? Uncertainty over what to do?

 

+ All parties found Nate's brother to be repellent and a con artist, but Steve admitted he admired his altruistic ideals and that he probably would have fallen for the con because of them. He found the relationship between the brothers interesting and caused him to ponder, now that he's older, if he would do things differently. "I think you can make amends," he said.

+ Steve wondered if the relationship between Keru and Nate was warmer at the beginning of the book as opposed to later in the text. Margy felt that everything in both of their lives was obligation, including their relationship. "I felt like she was committing to the marriage out of obligation because that's what you do."

 

And In Other News

+ Shirley shared with us excerpts from what she is currently reading: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson, recommending that we all do likewise.

 

+ Steve recommended Big Jim and the White Boy, a graphic novel he feels is an excellent companion to Huckleberry Finn and James. 

+ Jocey then bundled up in about 2,000 pounds of clothes to walk to her next destination. All we could see were her eyes.

 

Our Next Reads

First of all, there will be NO MEETING IN MARCH. Instead, we will read two books for our April meeting:

 

Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy

 

The Time of the Child by Niall Williams

Celia monitors Jocey's tech support activities

Time for discussion while Elizabeth toils in the kitchen.

 

 

Everything looks more beautiful with a lime.

 

Just some of our lovely repast.

 

The Struggle Betweem Hereness and Thereness

Title: The Ministry of Time

Author: Kaliane Bradley

 

We chose this book, at least in part, because it was listed as one of Barack Obama's favorite books of summer 2024 and also was dubbed "utterly winning" by the Washington Post. 

First, a brief summary from the publisher:

 

"In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

 

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper." 

 

Insights and Opinions

For a variety of reasons, including medical procedures and snowbird-ism, our meeting took place via Zoom. While we all missed snacks provided by someone other than ourselves, we were grateful to be able to gather anyway and share our analyses.

 

The novel is constructed of two stories. One follows the "bridge," whose role is to live with, teach, mentor, and safeguard Commander Graham Gore as he comes to grips with finding himself some 175 years into a wholly foreign future. This main narrative is interrupted by short chapters that focus on Gore as he and his fellow shipmates struggle to survive Sir John Franklin's 1847 Arctic expedition. In search of the Northwest Passage, they had reached as far as the Canadian Arctic when their ships were trapped in ice, a capture that lasted almost two years. None survived.

A secret time travel program of the British government extracts Commander Gore as he is about to die, and transports him to present day. In his review for The Washington Post, Ron Charles writes "Some of what you've just read is historical fact, some is archaeological speculation, and a bit is wacky fantasy."

Given the fact that some of our group is never up for "a bit of wacky fantasy," our discussion was unsurprising.

+ Chris, Jocey and Liz were all fully on board with the novel's creative play on the question "what would happen if...," appreciating Bradley's creativity and ability to spin an entirely new story. They marveled at her deft weaving together themes of dislocation, loss, corporate politics, first-generation immigrant pain, and British adventurism into an engaging tapestry that kept them reading.

+ In contrast, Margy and Lois found the novel to be confusing and were frequently lost. Chris also suffered some confusion, but solved it by rereading just the Graham Gore chapters after completing her first read.

+ Steve was silent throughout, so we were all pretty sure he was in the "I hated it" camp, although none of us ever say we hate or love anything, much preferring to state specifics rather than generalities. Graham's story was the piece that resonated with him. "I vacillated between being fascinated with her inventiveness and being annoyed." What he did appreciate were what, to him, were the three main themes: culture and society's role in shaping who we are, how we adapt to the future, and can we control the future and change the past.

+ All agreed that Graham Gore was both a fascinating character and the heart of the book --- his sense of honor, his love for adventure, his British stiff upper lip, his disinterest in television and his love for Spotify.

+The group was universally ambivalent about the romantic relationship between the main character and Gore. Lois found it odd that the Ministry would pair each bridge with a member of the opposite sex. Jocey felt that Graham never seemed like he really wanted it, but just fell into it. Steve found it adolescent and superficial.

+ Jocey pointed out that this is Bradley's first novel, which can account for some of her lapses. Liz was bothered by a host of what she characterized as "bizarre metaphors," pointing out that if we still had some of the great editors today that worked in the past, some of these would have been nipped in the bud. Examples: "...and we'd find her sitting at the top of a long table like a mannequin awaiting the gift of demonic possession," and "when Graham got online...and learned to peck at the keyboard with the elegance and speed of a badly burned amphibian," and "I must have looked like a demented bowling ball." These and more, Liz said, stop the reader and should have been made to disappear before publication. 

+ Nobody was entirely certain what happened at the end, but that's not the first time that's happened to us. Margy loved the optimism of the last paragraph: "Forgiveness, which takes you back to the person you were and lets you reset them. Hope, which exists in a future in which you are new. Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time travel."

+ For those who would like more details about the Franklin Expedition, this video offers an excellent summary.

 

Other Important Things

+ Much to our surprise and pleasure, our long lost Vickie Zoomed in mid-meeting. It was a real boost for us all during a crappy January.

 

Our Next Book

We will be reading Rental House by Weike Wang on February 17. Shirley will be our host.

The Zoomies

 

What Margy was drinking in secret