Books - Kate Degelau-Pierce

Sometimes you want to read something mindless

Where’d You Go Bernadette was a great satire of a particular class of liberal west-coast elites. Today Will Be Different, written by the same author, wants also to be that satire. Alas, it is not.

It’s a fine book that tells a fun story about a woman who suspects her husband of cheating on her, and who wishes her family life was different. But it isn’t art, and it’s not particularly insightful.

Which isn’t to say it’s bad. It’s not. It’s just kind of a mindless read. If that’s what you want? This is your book.

History-ish, not really science fiction

The Underground Railroad was, as we all learned in history class, the network of people who helped slaves escape the American South. In Whitehead’s book, the railroad is a real thing, with tracks and trains running at irregular intervals to which people away to the next station.

Cora is a third-generation slave who decides to use the railroad to escape once it becomes clear that rape is in her immediate future. She runs from Georgia to the Carolinas, to Tennessee, to Indiana to show all of the different ways to be enslaved: plantation labor, in the city (the work program she’s in turns out to be part of a larger eugenics plan), hiding in a small nook in a hot summer attic for weeks on end.

She’s pursued by Ridgeway, a slave catcher by nature. He’s evil and wears a necklace of human ears to show that he’s also somewhat deranged.

There’s death all over this book. Cora kills a young man who is part of a search party that temporarily catches up with her and her two fellow escapees. Ridgeway kills so many people as he hunts Cora. The town where she hides in the attic regularly lynches anyone even suspected of helping blacks.

Slavery and racism are ugly, violent, brutal things. The Underground Railroad makes that clear. It makes me, the white reader, feel guilty and uncomfortable. And it should. Slavery is one of the foundational sins of America, something we have never fully atoned for. Listening to its stories, bearing witness to something I’ve been taught to look away from is a start. But only a start.

Mystery-lite

I’ve read other books in the Maisie Dobbs series, but never the first one. So, it was a pleasure to get her backstory, to learn where she came from and what a truly extraordinary woman she is.

The Maisie Dobbs series takes place in London in the 1930s. She’s a private detective, well-read and thoughtful, who solves crimes, mostly murder, amongst a certain class of people. (They may not all be a certain class, but they are all filtered through that certain class’s lens.) Maisie has humble origins, but has worked hard to grow out of them.

In Maisie Dobbs, we learn that she went to work as a maid for a progressive wealthy woman who caught Maisie working her way through the library before her morning shift started. Instead of firing her, she found her a tutor and sent her to college; Maisie dropped out to go be a nurse during WWI. It’s a characterization that is at once intelligent and practical and will appeal to anyone who wants to put their world in order.

It’s a slim book, and the mystery takes up only about a third of the story. The rest is devoted to the backstory and setting up the relationships as they are now. It is a book designed to kick off a series. It’s done its job well.

Story as Therapy

Once upon a time, I read The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. I over-identified with the main character, Carrie, who was from Madison, like me. She went to the University of Wisconsin, like me. She had the same boyfriend through high school and college, like me. When we both left Madison, it was all tied up in feelings of loss and wondering who we really were. Leaving Madison helped both of us figure out who we were.

So, in the novel, when Carrie goes back to Madison for a visit and it becomes clear that she’s going to stay. I got angry. Very, very angry. I finished the book, put it down and did not pick it up again for almost 14 years.

It was with some trepidation that I picked it up off the shelf a couple of weeks ago. “I’ll just read until she leaves for New York. I’ll skim it, it’ll be fine.”

Much to my surprise, time from both the story and Madison gave me the distance I needed to appreciate what Ann Packer had to say about the city where I grew up, the patriarchy, stability, love, and friendship.

Don’t get me wrong: I put it down when she returned to Madison. I still can’t deal with her going back. It’s too… No. Carrie, you were on your way to happiness, a career in fashion (a thing you clearly love), a relationship that wasn’t based on you taking care of him. Just, NOPE. Stay gone. Stay yourself.

But that’s not the story. And that’s ok.

Civilization will out

After the US Presidential Election, I was a tad despondent. Picking up A Gentleman in Moscow was part of my personal self-care, along with listening to classical music and watching Pride and Prejudice. Why? Elegance makes me feel better. Civilization is still there, it’s just being overshadowed by something else right now.

But also because A Gentleman in Moscow takes place right after the Russian Revolution. The communists have just come into power, and the gentleman in question, Count Alexander Rostov, has been placed under house arrest in an the premier hotel in Moscow. The exploration of how to be civilized and stand for what you believe in during a regime that basically wants to forget you exist and repudiates what you stand for is a thread through the book that was helpful.

Which isn’t the overall point of the novel – it’s more about how to master your circumstances, rather than your circumstances mastering you. How do you stay sane when you’re not allowed to leave the hotel in which you live, having been relegated to a garret apartment? But because his exile is in the Metropol Hotel (again, the best in Moscow), he gets to meet a wide swath of people, including foreign journalists and ambassadors, not to mention see a number of the party congresses that need a place to meet.

It’s just as elegant and in favor of civilization as Rules of Civility was. Both books are highly recommended.

Clutch your pearls!

(The colors on the cover are not nearly that saturated. My image capturing process seems to need some help.)

Girls and Sex is largely about how high school and college aged girls form romantic and sexual relationships. What do girls get out of it? How about boys?* Should you, the parent, be clutching your pearls? Or worried?

Maybe? It explores how teenagers express their feelings, even if they don’t understand those feelings. It seems, to me anyway, that teenagers have a lot of ideas about what couples (or people who like each other) *should* do. Or maybe what they want to do without a lot of thought about the ramification of those actions.

My personal take as a parent is that my daughter should a) understand what she wants and be comfortable saying no, b) get the hell out if saying no doesn’t work, c) think, as much as she can, before she acts. Consent is hard, and drinking heavily isn’t responsible for a lot of reasons, but, in this case, consent gets complicated fast when one or the both of you isn’t making good decisions.

The book does end on a hopeful note, because it does talk about the fact that boys are often just as confused about girls about relationships. They’re given a different template of how to act, and that can cause its own problems.

Recommended if you have a teenaged child.

* Girls and Sex does have a chapter about same-sex romantic relationships and the further challenges of acceptance around those relationships as well. I don’t want to ignore that. But a lot of “how does he/she feel about me?” and “should I act on my feelings?” holds true no matter your partner’s gender.

Yes, she’s named for Ada Lovelace

The Unseen World was a lovely little book that I’m happy I read, but I never need to read again. There’s a girl, Ada. She’s being raised by her computer scientist father (a mother exists but she was a surrogate and has never been or wanted to be in the picture). They’re happy, but she is more than a bit of a nerd in the 1980s when it is definitely not cool to be a nerd. Her father, David, is starting to lose his mind, and she’s only in middle school.

That’s the premise anyway. The story ranges over decades as we explore David’s past and Ada’s future. It’s about families and friendships and how people live and work together.

It also presents what I consider to be an overly optimistic view of both VR and artificial intelligence that kept me from recommending it to my computer scientist husband. Nothing irritates him more than people who think either (but especially VR) is going to take over the world anytime soon.

That’s an aside. Generally, The Unseen World was enjoyable. Good for a plane flight or for some bedtime reading.

Darling, don’t take it seriously

Vile Bodies wants you to laugh (lovingly) at the London cultural elite of the 1910s. It’s a deeply unserious book about a deeply unserious culture, even down to the missionaries who are supposed to be serious. Waugh’s primary interests are snappy dialogue and silly situations. It’s fun, if not particularly thought-inducing.

How to make mistakes

Sweetbitter is about a girl who moves to New York City to become a high-end waitress. This is a behind-the-scenes book about what it’s like to work in that world, and if you’ve read anything by Anthony Bourdain, you’ll already know the milieu this takes place in.

But it’s fiction, and it’s about a girl growing up. She’s finished college, and this is her path in life. It’s about her figuring out, if not her place in the world, the place she doesn’t want to be. There are stupid decisions about men, stupid decisions about friends, and stupid decisions about ingesting certain illicit substances. But many – most? – of us have made similar dumb decisions. The guy who is a bad idea but so hot. The friend who seems so sophisticated, but is emotionally stuck in a weird place. And you’ve never had too much to drink? I don’t think so.

I personally enjoyed this story because it was sensual without being over-the-top. It’s important to be good at your job. Tess’ job is knowing about food and wine – which makes for maybe some overeating whilst reading.

I like cooking. I like eating. I like savoring things, and I sometimes forget that in my overly busy, trying to be efficient world. Sweetbitter reminded me that savoring is a Good Thing.

Recommended.

Elegant, historical candy

I was not a Downton Abbey fan. Let’s get that out of the way up front. I just didn’t see the point, really. Much like getting to the end of this book: it was a fun read, but I didn’t get it.

Belgravia is a ritzy neighborhood in London, developed in the 1830s. Belgravia, the book, follows a wealthy, but working, family who lost their daughter in illegitimate childbirth 20 years earlier. It turns out that the father was the son of a Duke, tragically killed in the battle of Waterloo. This particular story is about figuring out what’s happened to the baby now that he’s grown and the intrigue around who knows what about him. It’s very soap opera-y.

But that’s about it. The historical detail is interesting; and I always think manners and etiquette are interesting, despite often thinking they’re ridiculous. I mean, I get it, to a degree, but there are always cases I don’t understand.

Anyway. Belgravia is an elegant, enjoyable read, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of substance there.