The Cue Card

Happy holidays. How is your month going so far?  Getting hectic?  We are counting down the days now and have about one more week here before flying down south to join up with family in California. I usually do all my gift shopping once I get there since it’s usually easier and cheaper to do it that way. And if you leave it till Dec. 24 like me, then you really are living on the edge …. but don’t worry, it can (and will) be done.  Meanwhile, it’s been quite mild here this past month and there’s no snow in the forecast for the foreseeable future.  How unusual it’s been. Could it be a green Christmas this far north?!  We have a couple inches on the ground now but it’s melting away thanks to a bit of wind. Who knows what the second half of winter will bring. For now I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately. 

There was quite a bit I liked about this novel of two sisters growing up on opposite sides of the world. One sister (Inja) grows up in war-torn Korea with her grandparents and Uncle/Aunt, while the other sister (Miran) grows up in the prosperous American suburbs with her parents. The parents left the child behind in 1948 thinking they would return soon for her but then the Korean War breaks out and they are unable to return for the child who ends up living with her extended family for more than a decade before she can be reunited. Yikes. It’s a story that highlights how difficult this decision is on all of them and also how hard returning one sister is as well — after she’s grown up in one country with family to be taken from them and placed in another country with her birth parents later in life. 

Apparently it’s based on the author’s own family story, which she talks about in a note at the end of the novel. One sister of hers was left behind in Korea then joined them later in life.  It’s an interesting premise —  family separated by war — and one that comes alive as the novel is told in alternating chapters by the two young sisters in different countries. I liked learning about the Korean side of things — the geography, history and the war and how it tore families apart. The cultural differences too are interesting. There is one main secret within the family — and perhaps a few other small ones — that come to light as the girls grow older.  

Why for instance was one sister left behind?  It is eventually revealed in the story but I’m not sure I could fully grasp it. The separation and reunification seem to cause so many hardships to the sisters and family that surely it seemed a grave mistake … but obviously the parents didn’t think war would break out when it did. Neither of the sisters has it easy:  the sister in America is sort of overlooked by her parents who are so worried about their daughter in war-torn Korea; and the daughter in Korea is being raised in rough conditions by those who are not her parents.  

Towards the end I thought maybe the novel made it out to be too much about “secrets” in the story when the hardest part to me seemed  to be one’s identity and being torn asunder from one’s family and culture. I also thought parts of the storytelling were a bit uneven:  some parts such as at the beginning when the Korean family is fleeing the invasion are active and dynamic, yet later parts in the story felt a bit soupy with emotion or less dynamic, when things are being told but not shown. It’s definitely a story with a lot of unhappiness and grief in it. The parents in the U.S. work very hard but can’t make right their previous decisions about coming to America like they did. Still I’m glad I read “The Kinship of Secrets.” It gave me some perspective on Korea and families caught in the mix of war and keeping together. 

Next up I loved the audiobook of Esi Edugyan’s award-winning novel “Washington Black,” which is performed so well by actor Dion Graham. It’s one of those novels you can easily fall into … the narration is linear and it’s told by one person throughout it as if a memoir.  The boy (nicknamed Wash) who’s born into slavery on a sugar plantation in Barbados in the 1830s luckily avoids life under his sadistic master’s hands when the master’s (nicer) Englishman brother (Titch) comes to visit and Wash becomes his assistant to his scientific experiments. Eventually Titch and Wash escape the plantation in a hot air balloon and later — with a bounty hunter on their tail — travel up the coast to Norfolk, eventually reaching the Arctic to find Titch’s father, then get separated and Wash goes on to England, Amsterdam, and Morocco in search of whether Titch is still alive. 

I loved the 19th-century science along the way that Wash gets involved with: the hot air balloon, the Arctic exploration, scuba diving, and the aquarium of the sea creatures. Wow it’s wonderful storytelling of Wash’s adventures and his coming to grips with his own identity (as a slight black man with a burned face) and what he is to the white man Titch who changed his life. Wash and Titch have an uneasy alliance with one another … that undergoes a reckoning throughout the book.

I thought “Washington Black” beautifully written and well-researched and likely my favorite novel of the year. I repeat:  it might be my Pick of the Year.  Just the mix of the great storytelling, the science and the reckoning of the boy’s life and what he’s able to do and become … was enough for me to say: Wow this is a great ride … that’s easily and perceptively told. Apparently the author based the story on a historical incident she read about but then it took off in another direction so it ended up being her made-up creation. Kudos to Esi and Dion Graham, too, who read it for the audio. It’s unlike various other slavery tales I’ve read before … so don’t let the number of stories in that genre stop you from this one. 

Lastly I just wanted to mention:  that I was able to see three good movies over the past week — wow just my luck. First off, “The Wife” starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, which is based on the novel by Meg Wolitzer, is quite an intense little foray into the marriage of a couple who meet in the 1950s and whose life comes into question decades later on their travels to Stockholm, where the husband is scheduled to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Uh-oh, this movie simmers … until a secret is revealed about the couple’s lives …that explodes over the brim.  Some critics think Close will win her first Oscar for the role … she’s been nominated six times before … but will she?  Perhaps she very well could this time. It’s nearly impossible to forget how well she played the character in “Fatal Attraction” and what she did to that poor bunny…. 

Next up, we saw director Steve McQueen’s movie “Widows,” which is about three wives who decide to take matters into their own hands after their criminal husbands are killed trying to pull off a large heist in Chicago. Wow I didn’t know too much about this one going in, which is probably best not to. I had no idea it would be this intense and violent but with (“Gone Girl”) Gillian Flynn as the co-screenplay writer — adapted from the novel by Lynda La Plante — what did I expect? I should have known.

I liked the cast and thought Viola Davis and Elizabeth Debicki were especially strong. All said and done, it’s quite a powerful movie that makes you think about a number things along the way: such as how women under such tough circumstances are able to get by in their lives to earn a living. Kudos too to the little Westie dog in the movie named Olivia, who’s owned by Viola Davis’s character. She was the only nice cuddly soft thing about the story. Olivia must have been there as a juxtaposition or for comic relief. Either way, she stole quite a few scenes and was awesome. Now I’m thinking I might need an Olivia dog too, though my Lab Stella might object. 

Last up,  we rented the sailboat movie “The Mercy,” starring Colin Firth as Donald Crowhurst and Rachel Weisz as his wife.  We had been looking for this movie to come to the big screen all year long (since we had both read  books about Crowhurst), but all of a sudden it just appeared on rental and we grabbed it.  It’s based on a true story about the first solo, round the world sailboat race, which took place in 1968. Nine started the race but only one finished. This is the story of one of the racers and what tragically happened to him. 

For whatever the reason, it’s a bit of a slow start for this movie. Crowhurst — played by Firth — is quite out of his league for taking on this huge dangerous sail but gets hooked by the idea of the race and tries to get investors to help pay for the making of a boat to do it. But from the get-go all is not looking too good, the building of the boat goes over budget and over schedule … and the boat is delayed till late in the season, well after the other sailors have left. Still Crowhurst seems a wonderful father to his kids and husband to his wife … and theirs appears to be quite a love story. Despite second thoughts he eventually sets off on the epic voyage, which turns difficult from early on as the boat doesn’t seem well-equipped or made for such a momentous undertaking. (Unfortunately not many knew the risks of sailing through the dangerous Southern Ocean at the time — let alone doing it solo — and the area was avoided as the epic storms there could capsize or de-mast boats; the wood construction and early fiberglass technology of the day not being what it is today.) 

The movie, which picks up a bit as it goes, shows Crowhurst’s realities at sea trying to overcome the conditions and problems with the boat — as well as his family back home who tries to keep in touch with him by radio phone along with his whereabouts on maps. It’s a bit of a quiet movie that takes on a forbidding feel to it. I will refrain from saying too much more about what happens but it’s quite a wrenching story. The movie of it turns out to be okay … but it’s not as captivating as we had hoped it’d be — judging by various books about Crowhurst and the race. Still we are glad we saw it. Kudos to Firth and Weisz who took on the roles. 

What about you — have you read either of these books or seen any of these movies and if so, what did you think?

Ahh November, what a fickle month. Some days we get fall here, other days we get winter. The snow doesn’t know whether to melt or to stick around. I’d like to send some to California to douse the fires there, which have been so awful and tragic too from what’s been on the news. I can’t believe it. Sympathies to all those affected. 

To a happier topic: in book news this week I want to congratulate Sigrid Nunez for just winning the National Book Award for her novel “The Friend,” which I read and reviewed in April. Wow. It’s a pretty different kind of narrative but interesting too. The win surprised me, though probably in a good way.

Also Michelle Obama’s new memoir “Becoming” is making quite the wave this week. Apparently, it sold more preorders than any other adult book since Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” in 2015.  And now officially it’s out and selling more, making it one of the biggest books of the season.  I’m a bit curious about it too and currently I’m #159 on the library’s wait list for the 12 copies on hand — and that’s just in Western Canada. Your library is likely to have more of a demand. While I wait for that and various other books, I’ll leave you with some reviews of what I finished lately. 

A.J. Pearce’s debut novel “Dear Mrs. Bird” is something I read on a whim after it was a July Book of the Month pick on Amazon. It’s about a 22-year-old girl named Emmy Lake in London during the Blitz of World War II, who dreams of becoming a war correspondent but instead finds herself a junior secretary to a magazine advice columnist named Mrs. Bird. The archaic Mrs. Bird has many rules and won’t respond to letter writers who ask her advice on an array of sticky or unpleasant matters concerning the war or people’s private lives. But Emmy feels for the women writers whose lives are stressed by the bombings and have husbands away and she starts to secretly respond and answer their questions using Mrs. Bird’s name. Uh-oh.

It’s not a big story but gets into the shoes of Emmy and her roommate Bunty as they go about working and trying to do as much as they can for the war effort, while also managing their love lives with their boyfriends and avoiding the bombs. I found the novel at first to be a pretty lightish story of wartime Britain and a bit repetitive too about Emmy’s conflicted feelings at the magazine. Luckily the story picks up near the end — a few darker incidents happen to the girls — and I warmed to the story a bit more.  

In the end I liked how it turned out for Emmy and Bunty and how the novel delved into their friendship and what it was like for women on the British home front during WWII and the Blitz. The magazine and its reader feedbacks (where Emmy worked) conjured up an interesting facet of life back then and what women were going through during those dark times. Many were remarkable with all they did, holding families together amid the human tragedies and working for the war effort in various capacities. This story brings that out quite well … as well as the 1940s lingo, fashion, and magazine/news craze back then. On the one hand it’s a bit light-ish fare, but on the other, the storyline underlies the grimness of what was happening back then. 

Next up I listened to the audiobook of British author Sarah Winman’s 2018 novel “Tin Man,” which starts out with Ellis, a 45-year-old widower working the night shift at a local car factory — whose career his father made him pursue decades earlier instead of his artistic ambitions. A lonely man, Ellis hasn’t recovered from his wife’s death but in looking back on his life, the story follows how it was shaped by his artsy mother’s early death and the comfort he found in his youth with his best friend Michael, whose relationship with him evolved into something much deeper. Fast-forward years later and Ellis is married to Annie and Michael has moved away and is no longer in touch. What happened in the years in between unfolds little by little in the novel’s second half. 

Oh my, this novel though slim, packs a powerful punch and the writing is often beautiful. I didn’t know what it was about going in — but essentially it’s a story about a close friendship between two boys — that grows into something deeper and is set in the early AIDS era. First Ellis narrates his story — and then in the second half Michael narrates his. There’s a lot of grief in the novel: death and heartache and loneliness. But my, how Winman can write circles around the experience. My only caveat with it was that it jumps around in time quite a bit and I got lost a few times and had to revisit parts. Still I liked the swirl of memories it conjures up about the characters’ lives. The author reads it for the audiobook and gives a terrific narration. 

I also finished the audiobook of Anne Lamott’s 1994 nonfiction book “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life,” which I found informative, funny, and entertaining too. In addition to being a fiction and nonfiction author, Anne Lamott taught writing classes for years (and may be still at it), which is where this book originates from. I didn’t realize it was written long ago — perhaps my library just got a hold of the audio — though the book didn’t seem dated. I hadn’t read this author before but I found her quite engaging. I’m not a writer per se, but even if you’re not a fiction writer but just like writing or are considering doing some in the future — this book offers various helpful hints and advice. It might even help you become a better reader. 

What I liked too is her saying that writing doesn’t have to be for publication purposes only but is also rewarding for the journey of the process … the joy and therapy of it. Publication likely won’t make you wealthy or a star she says so it’s better not do it solely for that reason. She peppers the book with many anecdotes from her life, which are interesting and also funny. I laughed at various times listening to the book. I also appreciated Lamott’s positive life-affirming attitude. She seems to be a hopeful and humorous person, which I found endearing.  I plan to check out more of her nonfiction books and might even buy a copy of this one after it’s returned to the library. 

As for movies recently, my husband talked me into seeing the submarine action movie “Hunter Killer,” starring Gary Oldman and Gerard Butler, which turned out to be an enjoyable suspense flick. Apparently it’s been made clear that we have to see all sub movies whenever they come out — as my husband was caught up as a kid with subs during the Cold War when his uncle worked on them. And this movie is about an American submarine crew that teams with Navy Seals on a mission to rescue the Russian president, who’s been kidnapped by a rogue general. What more do you want? 

Much of it is under the sea and is intriguingly shot in the sub — as well as there’s a land invasion component to it too. It’s definitely Hollywood hype, but I don’t know how members of the military do it. I would be freaked to be in such a confined underwater tube, but they manage it quite well. Don’t expect the movie to be as good as “The Hunt for Red October,” but it was entertaining if not completely plausible. 

Lastly we also saw Season 1 of the TV series “Jack Ryan,” which is available on Amazon Video, starring John Krasinski as a CIA analyst who is thrust into a dangerous field mission after he uncovers communication of a terrorist threat. It’s a pretty entertaining spy series based on Tom Clancy’s fiction and character, and is not too unlike the TV series “Homeland,” which we also follow. Krasinski is an interesting choice to play Jack Ryan and we’ve wondered at times if he’s miscast in this action role (after all he did play goofy Jim on “The Office”). He makes a smart, clean-cut Jack Ryan, but he’s also a bit awkward at times amid the action scenes. Granted, the TV series is much different than the “Jack Ryan” movies, which are totally action packed. The TV series builds more, with more character and plot development and has less action. So I guess John Krasinski it is. Apparently the series has been renewed for a second season, which I’ll probably continue to watch once it comes out.  

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these authors or seen any of these on the screen — and if so, what did you think? 

Greetings. It feels like I have been away for a long while. I went to Southern California a couple weeks ago to visit my folks and I haven’t posted on the blog since. Things just got away from me this month, but I’m glad to be back and share some of my photos (at left and below) of my time there. California was really lovely, both the desert and the beach. And it must have rubbed off here too because we’ve had great weather in Canada the past couple of weeks, which makes me happy. Fall can be such a gorgeous time of year, and Halloween is supposed to be clear and nice so we will gear up for the trick-or-treaters. 

Meanwhile in recent book news I see that Northern Irish author Anna Burns won the 2018 Man Booker Prize for her novel “Milkman,” which isn’t even available in North America till Dec. 11. Hmm, it seems obscure, but it beat out Richard Powers’s novel “The Overstory” and Rachel Kushner’s “The Mars Room” as well as Esi Edugyan’s novel “Washington Black,” which all made the shortlist among a couple others. That isn’t too shabby competition. Hail to Graywolf Press for its plans to put out the book, which was inspired by the author’s own experience growing up in Northern Ireland. Apparently it’s a dark, experimental novel about a “bookish 18-year-old girl harassed by a paramilitary figure called the milkman during the Troubles in Northern Ireland,” according to The Post’s Ron Charles. What makes the book memorable apparently is the funny, alienated voice of this girl who “refuses to join in the madness,” so writes The Sunday Times. She sounds like a cool character so I’m game to check it out.  Meanwhile I will leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. 

My latest reads were both big sagas — historical fiction that took my mind far away.  First, Kate Quinn’s 2017 novel “The Alice Network,” was my choice for the plane flight to California, which didn’t disappoint as the pages fell easily by the wayside. The book is still amazingly popular as currently there’s 260 holds on 49 copies at my library. But I almost didn’t pick it up because of one critical blog review, but I’m glad Judy’s review at the blog Keep the Wisdom and my sister steered me to do so. It’s an entertaining, sweeping yarn of a story and otherwise I would never have known about this real life spy network that operated during World War I. 

“The Alice Network” is a novel that alternates chapters between two time periods — from 1915 as Eve is recruited to be a spy in France during World War I — and then in 1947 when 19-year-old Charlotte (or Charlie) goes searching for her cousin Rose after WWII. Both stories come together in a fairly swift-paced saga — as a pregnant, yet single Charlie teams up with the curmudgeonly Eve (and Eve’s ex-convict chauffeur Finn), who she thinks might know where her cousin is. Eve though has some baggage and scores of her own to settle, so the journey turns out to be quite a goose chase. And while the link and bad guy between the two timelines was a bit of a stretch for me, I went with it. 

What interested me most was the exploits of the Alice Network, which was based on a real spy operation during World War I and the woman who ran it: French secret agent Louise de Bettignies (also known under the pseudonym as Alice Dubois). Carefully weaved together in the story are a few characters who are based on the real spies and the events that happened to them while others are fictitious. I hadn’t known much about WWI spies or how Resistance fighters were able to intercept German information, so this story intrigued me in that aspect. The courageous feats these women spies pulled off to acquire and pass information along about German military maneuvers — at grave danger to themselves (even to the point of sleeping with the enemy, yikes) — kept me on my toes.

“The Alice Network” is not a dense read nor a powder puff read.  There are some light-ish, romance parts  to it — as well as violent deaths too. It reminded me a bit of Jojo Moyes’s novel “The Girl You Left Behind” and Kristen Hannah’s “The Nightingale” — the same kind of reading perhaps. If you enjoyed those yarns, you’d probably like this. I thought the author did a thorough job of research — as well as having a keen interest and enthusiasm for the history behind it, which she writes about in some notes at the back of the book. For a plane flight and vacation read, it was just the right thing.

Next up, I finished the audiobook of Tatjana Soli’s 2010 debut novel “The Lotus Eaters,” which I was curious about after reading her recent historical novel about George and Libby Custer called “The Removes.”  “The Lotus Eaters” is quite a bit different from that but is also inspired by real people — in this case female war photographers such as Dickey Chapelle and Catherine Leroy who spent time working in Vietnam during the war.  This story is about a female war photographer named Helen Adams who comes to Vietnam in 1965 in the hopes of documenting the war that took her brother’s life. There she gets involved with Sam Darrow, a prize-winning photographer who shows her the ropes. Helen, Sam, and his Vietnamese assistant Linh turn out as the main protagonists of the story, which follows their lives as they become deeper entangled in Vietnam, each other, and their jobs during the war.

Oh my, it’s quite an involved saga. It hit me as being like a “Dr. Zhivago” of the Vietnam War — in that it’s epic and includes a bit of a love triangle. It’s chock-full of the war experience from 1963 to 1975 — from the streets of Saigon, to the missions into the interior, the scorching of villages, the soldiers’ fatalities, to ultimately the final days of the American evacuation and even into the Cambodian killing fields. Most of it is explored through Helen’s eyes and how she becomes taken with the country and the violence and risks that come along with being a war photographer.  The character of Linh too is intriguing, as he’s lost his family and must weigh conflicted loyalties between his heart and his homeland. 

The stories’ themes are plentiful: about war and destruction and its affects on people; the beauty and culture of Vietnam; the adrenaline of photojournalism; trying to find humanity despite the horrors; and about making sense of what happened there. I found quite a bit of the novel’s writing beautiful and a few parts of the action riveting. It wasn’t an easy or light book as it goes off in various tangents and is lengthy — a true saga about Helen’s career and loves and of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam — but I liked much of its truths about the country and the human condition. The author really got under the skin of these characters and I felt by the end they were quite real; they had all gone through so much! Kudos to the author who apparently spent 10 years writing the book, which showed in her depiction of its vivid details. This was my second novel of hers and I’ll be interested to read what she puts out next.

Lastly, I saw the movie “First Man” a few weeks back about the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong and his mission to the moon in 1969. It stars Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy as the Armstrongs. Wow it’s quite a somber and serious movie, which I guess I wasn’t totally expecting. For those who aren’t totally into NASA or space films, you might not find it completely entertaining … though it’s quite interesting but not exactly a light, happy film. This isn’t a Disney version. Both Gosling and Foy are good and seem to play down their star status for the roles. 

It’s a movie with relatively not a lot of dialogue but the cinematography makes it seem quite real.  A few scenes of shaky, spinning aircraft and propulsion, which go on for what feels like too long, might make you feel sick. I certainly was ready for those parts to end, yet I’m glad to have seen the movie. It made me feel how the odds were stacked against the astronauts’ endeavor and yet the moon landing was miraculously persevered and accomplished … despite the old technology back then and all the other hardships they faced. It was enough to make you realize their momentous feat in history. 

That’s all for now.  What about you have you read either of these authors or seen this movie and if so, what did you think? 

Well this weekend we get to escape our northern climate to visit my parents in Southern California, so that should be a nice warm break. So excited, woohoo, feel like we paid our dues. There’s a bit of snow here on the ground, which makes it seem like we went from summer directly into winter, though leaves are still on the trees or falling to the ground, mixing with the snow, which is confusing. But apparently fall and milder temps are forecasted to make an appearance next week, so hold on to your hat. 

Meanwhile the book festival is going on here — sadly I’m going to miss most of it — but I was able to meet Canadian author Esi Edugyan this week, who spoke about her new novel “Washington Black.” She signed a copy for me and I’m stoked to read it. The novel sounds like it begins as a historical, slave narrative and turns into a tale of adventure and scientific exploration. Wow, it’s receiving some high praise and has made the shortlist for both the Man Booker Prize and Canada’s Giller Prize. I can’t help but think it’s going to win the Giller, which will be announced in mid-November.  So I hope to read it before then.  Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately. 

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens / 384 pages / Putnam / 2018

For the most part I enjoyed and admired much of this debut novel about a young abandoned girl (named Kya) surviving on her own in a shack at the edge of the coastal marsh in North Carolina. Her mom skips town, then her siblings trail off and eventually her drunk, abusive dad. To locals, she’s known as the Marsh Girl, for living amid the wild landscape. Much of the story is about her isolation and how it influences her behavior over the decades. 

To me, something about the story had a sort of “To Kill a Mockingbird” feel to it — perhaps because it’s set in a rural Southern landscape and is a coming of age tale of a young girl in the 1950s and ’60s that also has a murder mystery and a court case to it. Her lawyer Tom reminded me a bit too of an Atticus /Gregory Peck-like figure in “To Kill a Mockingbird”  — as the girl becomes the prime suspect in the death of the town’s star quarterback after he is found deceased in the marsh.  

“Where the Crawdads Sing” is an easy, quick read, which follows Kya’s romantic relationships with two boys over the years and her friendship with an African American couple that sells her gas for her little boat and befriends her. The story is often beautiful in its renderings of its coastal marsh setting and Kya’s life. The author, who was previously known for her nature writings about Africa, grew up in Georgia and North Carolina, which obviously runs in her blood, judging from her vivid descriptions of the plant and wildlife in the novel.    

Although some parts of the story seemed a bit of a stretch in believability — of a 6-year-old (at the beginning) surviving in the wilds without much food… not going to school etc., I went with it. Though by the very end I sort of thought the story went a bit too far — too nicely tied up or sweet or too much about poor Kya’s aloneness, but still I liked much of the world it created and I fell into its storytelling easily and quickly. All in all, it was a debut that swept me up pretty willingly. 

Varina by Charles Frazier / 368 pages / Ecco / 2018

This historical novel pleasantly surprised me in consuming me with its story about the real life of Varina Howell Davis, the First Lady of the Confederacy. Little did I know that her story would be such a tale, especially in the hands of author Charles Frazier, who returns to the subject of the American Civil War some 20 years after writing his prize-winning book “Cold Mountain.”  Wow I should have known it would be good. 

Apparently in marrying a Mississippi landowner and widower twice her age, Varina Howell thought she would be living a quiet, secure life on a cotton plantation having children. But when her husband Jefferson Davis, a war hero from the Mexico War, ends up pursuing politics, her life takes a much different turn …. eventually putting her in the center of one of the darkest moments in American history when he becomes president of the Confederacy and the nation splits in two. Uh-oh.

The story unfolds as Varina is looking back on her life in 1906 and recounting it in episodes to a freed slave who she once rescued from the streets of Richmond to live with their family.  Unlike her husband, Varina had mixed feelings about slavery and the War, and even projected its failure, though looking back, she acknowledges her guilt and complicity, believing that “being on the wrong side of history carries consequences.” 

The novel jumps back and forth in time amid her life but what particularly riveted me was Varina’s flight out of Richmond with her six children and a few aides in tow as the South is about to collapse. They escape by railway and then in an ambulance wagon and on horses heading south as fugitives trying to make it to Florida and then escape to Cuba. Danger seems to lurk everywhere as they journey for weeks with a bounty on their heads. They run into a few survivors paranoid after the Union’s scorched-earth tactics and with people resorting to barbarism. It’s a dicey time (slightly reminiscent of Inman’s journey home in “Cold Mountain”) and you know their prospects aren’t going to turn out well from history, but you’ll want to stay tuned to Varina’s life in the aftermath of the war. 

It surprised me her strength and longevity and what she ultimately learns over the course of her 80 years — among other things: that the right side of the War won. Varina stood by her husband after he was arrested but also spent little more than half of their 45 year marriage with him. Their marriage was a challenging one, and five of their six children died before Varina passed away in 1906. Oh it was hard and there was a lot to mourn, grieve, and feel guilty about. Late in life, after her husband’s death, she earned her living writing for publications in her adopted hometown of New York City, where she was friends with General Grant’s wife, Julia, and knew such figures as Oscar Wilde and Booker T. Washington.

Varina’s was a tragic and complex life that seemingly came a long ways. Apparently she was quite educated and well read, could read Greek, though she grew up in Mississippi where her husband’s family owned slaves. Many of them seemed like close family to her, but she never in the book absolves herself from the complicity of being on the side of the Southern states during the War. 

I found Varina fascinating — flawed but sympathetic too. In the retellings of her life story, the novel reflects on the institution of slavery and her marriage to a man who comes off — as one reviewer put it — as a “delusional egotist whose skewed sense of honor cost countless lives.” It’s a book that’s well done, thoughtful, and in various ways beautifully written. Although it’s not a quick read and shifts around a bit unevenly, I think it’ll be one of my favorites of the year … as it enlightened me and piqued my interest to a great extent. I first listened to the audiobook of it, which is excellent, and then when it expired too soon, I read the novel from the beginning. I guess that’s when you know a book is excellent. 

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn / audiobook / pub date 2006

Yes I finally got to this debut crime novel by the author of “Gone Girl,” which was turned into a eight-part TV miniseries this past July starring Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson among others.  I listened to the novel as an audiobook, which worked well and kept my interest for most of the novel. You probably know the story is about a reporter named Camille Preaker who returns to her small town in Missouri to cover the brutal murders of two young girls. Along the way she must unravel secrets about her own past — and those of her family’s — to get to the bottom of the story and survive her homecoming. 

What started out to me as a fairly interesting crime mystery with a flawed protagonist — sort of dissolved into an improbable soupy mess by the very end. I’m not sure I believed all of the whodunit, or that the extra plot twist made much sense to me. It was over the top, but then again that was the craziness of “Gone Girl” too.  I watched one episode of the miniseries, but I’m not sure I want to continue to fathom actress Patricia Clarkson as the creepy Mother.  After all, she was the nice lady in the 2003 movie “The Station Agent.”

Last but not least, I can report that I saw the movie “A Star Is Born” over the weekend. And for sure, it’s got some entertaining and powerful musical performances in it. Lady Gaga as a singer named Ally puts her voice to the test in impressive fashion, and Bradley Cooper, as an aging musician, is none too shabby either. One could probably lose track of time just looking into his eyes and shaggy face.  

Yet despite all that — my husband and I found the script a bit waning or weak and dated: and perhaps the paternalistic story a bit ill-timed. Maybe because of all the hype and critical praise, I was expecting the movie to be Unreal fantastic (movie of the year kind of stuff), and when it was just okay enjoyable, it seemed a bit less. For those who had similar reactions, you might like some of what reporter Libby Hill had to say in her Los Angeles Times article “A Star Is Born Dims in the Shadow of Kavanaugh Confirmation,” which I thought made some good points.  

Still “A Star Is Born” is an entertaining movie (though a bit dark too), but maybe just temper your expectations. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you seen this movie or read any of these novels — and if so, what did you think?