The Cue Card

We had a great time in Southern California visiting with my family over Christmas (see photo at left) and now we are back to the cold of Canada, which is a brisk re-introduction. But it isn’t all gloomy, we did go cross-country skiing yesterday with our dog, Stella, and that was fun. It helps to get out and about despite the winter temps here. I hope everyone had a lovely holiday and will ring in the New Year tonight with plenty of good cheer.

While on break I finished Brit Bennett’s debut novel “The Mothers,” which received a lot of hype before it came out in October. The author was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees, along with Yaa Gyasi, who wrote the novel “Homegoing.” And indeed Bennett is young, just 26 years old. Apparently she started writing the book while in high school in Oceanside, California, then finished it after going to Stanford, and getting an M.F.A. at the University of Michigan.

Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Bennett’s novel “The Mothers” is about an unwanted teen pregnancy that affects those involved — as well as others — and reverberates throughout their lives. Particularly it’s a coming of age tale of two teenage girls and a boy who become close and are all struggling to overcome hardships. The two girls bond over trying to come to grips with being abandoned by their mothers, and the boy, a star athlete, dates one of them while healing from a career-ending injury. It’s their relationship with each other — as well as the secrets surrounding the unwanted pregnancy — that form the gist of the novel, set against the backdrop of the tight-knit church and military community in which they live.

It’s a book that kept me reading to find out what would happen to the lives of these three entangled characters, though I didn’t end up totally liking any of them. They continued to make bad choices — one betrayal in particular — which sort of confounded me and I couldn’t really get over for my appraisal of the book. So while I thought the author had some good writing in it, and the book was a worthwhile read, I liked but didn’t overly love “The Mothers.” It was just some things that didn’t fully resonate or work for me that made me like it a bit less. Too bad, I had heard so much glowing praise about it. Still I will continue to watch for what the author writes next.

Meanwhile last week, I saw the movie “La La Land” with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. I rarely ever see musicals, but I was curious about it since it also received such positive hype. It’s about a jazz pianist who falls for an aspiring actress in Los Angeles. Surprisingly I found the movie quite entertaining. Gosling and Stone share an enticing charisma and chemistry, and I liked how — though set in contemporary times — the film pays homage to the heydays of Hollywood, harkening back to the movies of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, as well as “Rebel Without a Cause.” It’s neat too to see such landmarks in the film as the Griffith Observatory, the Rialto Theatre, and the movie star murals on the city’s streets. It includes some musical numbers, but the storyline becomes more spoken as it goes on — it’s not totally filled with singing and dancing numbers. With the themes in it, “La La Land” celebrates the artists and dreamers of the world — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

What about you, have you seen this movie, or read the novel “The Mothers,” and if so, what did you think?

P.S. Please stay tuned for my post later in the week previewing new January releases and my Best Of 2016 list. Thanks, and Happy New Year!

I hope everyone is staying warm. Argh, did your area get the dreaded “Arctic blast”? Well it was quite brutal here, but now it seems to be leaving, and this week we should see temps back in the 30s F (+3C), hooray. That’ll be easy and good for when we board our flight to California later this week. Christmas is almost here, and the reading days for 2016 are coming to an end. My reading has slowed a bit amid the holiday rush and festivities, but still I’m getting to some great books. I hope to squeeze in a couple more before the year’s end.

This week I finished Imbolo Mbue’s debut novel “Behold the Dreamers,” which was mentioned to me by my sister, who had read it for a book club group. Wow, what a great book it would make for a discussion. It turned out to be one of my favorite reads of the year. It’s neat when that happens — when you’re not expecting to come across a Favorite Book of the Year and then sometime during your reading of it a light goes on in your head and you think: “Whoa, this is one of them.” Have you had that happen? Well, I had the light go on with Imbolo’s “Behold the Dreamers.”

I guess I didn’t know much about it when I picked it up, but the story hooked me right away. It’s about an immigrant family from Cameroon that tries to make ends meet living in Harlem New York. Jende and his wife Neni love America and want to give their 6-year-old son the opportunity for a better life, but they need decent-paying jobs while working towards getting their papers for a more permanent status in the States. So all is good when Jende lands a job as a chauffeur for a senior executive named Clark Edwards at Lehman Brothers. In time, Jende gets to know the wealthy Clark and his family, and Clark’s wife Cindy offers Neni a job at the Edwardses’ summer home in the Hamptons. Things seem promising for Jende and Neni’s all-consuming dreams of staying in the U.S. — that is until Lehman Brothers collapses and the lives of all four are upended.

Yes, this novel is set amid the troubled times of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. It’s not your average immigrant tale I can assure you. It grabbed me by my lapels so to speak and had me racing through it. I liked how the story delved into the lives of both the immigrant family’s and those of the white executive’s. Neither is all good or all bad. The novel paints a more realistic, complex picture of both couples, each wanting the best for their kids. And under the strains, the marriages of both are put to the test.

I felt for Jende and Neni who struggle so desperately to get their U.S. residency papers. I remembered when I came to Canada — it’s not exactly easy living in another country; there’s a lot of procedures, application paperwork, and hassles. It’s a long, long process, believe me. For the immigrants in this story, it was far worse. Among other things, they didn’t marry into it like I did.

“Behold the Dreamers” is pretty gushy about “America” and all of its opportunities. It felt a bit weird reading about it like that — I’m sure I take too much for granted being from the U.S. and perhaps don’t see it so unblemished as the characters in the novel do. But by the end, the story also reveals the high price people can pay for living in the land of opportunity — not only in terms of financial obligations and how much people have to work but also in terms of stress and other things. Each of the characters in the book is pushed to a breaking point, and you wonder along with them: at what cost is it worth it?!

It reminded me slightly of T.C. Boyle’s 1995 novel “The Tortilla Curtain,” which I also read this year and loved. That novel about a Mexican illegal alien couple and a white yuppie couple whose lives collide in California suburbia was more satirical than this one, but this novel has little of that in it. I’m totally impressed that “Behold the Dreamers” is a debut novel, which it didn’t seem like, by an author from Cameroon who came to New York in 1998. I watched an interview of Imbolo on video talking about the book and she seems like a breath of fresh air. If you have time, check it out here.

Also this past week, I saw the movie “Allied” with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. For some reason, I was preparing not to like it — as if it had a high bar to clear, but then I liked it quite a bit. So I’m glad I went. It’s fun too that Pitt plays a Canadian intelligence officer in the film who says his dream place is Medicine Hat, Alberta, which is just a few hours away from here. That got a few guffaws from the audience.

Anyways, the movie is set in WWII and Pitt’s character meets a French resistance fighter played by Marion Cotillard on a mission behind enemy lines. Later they meet up in London, and you are led to wonder whether one of them is betraying the other. Both Pitt and Cotillard are pretty good in this, and the screenplay by Steven Knight, who also wrote “Eastern Promises,” “Locke,” and “Pawn Sacrifice,” moves fairly quickly. I wouldn’t say “Allied” is an award winner, but I did find it entertaining. And who doesn’t want to look at the magnetism of these two stars?

What about you, have you read “Behold the Dreamers” or seen “Allied,” and if so, what did you think?

Also I want to wish everybody who reads my blog Happy Holidays and a very Merry Christmas. Thank you for stopping by and for making it such a great year at The Cue Card. I really appreciate all of your comments and insights and think very highly of all of you. It’s been great this past year getting to know my regular readers.

We’ve had Arctic temps here this past week. It’s been about -10F or -23C outside. Ouch! Luckily I’ve worn my trusty big gloves and snow boots, which have worked well on my early morning dog walks. Yes, my dog still wants to go out and chase her ball. Yikes, she’s pretty oblivious to the cold and to me trudging through it after her. Next week, the cold snap should break and it’s supposed to hit 15F, which should feel easy peasy by then. But it’s still a good thing I’ll be in California over Christmas week. I’m looking forward to de-thawing then and visiting with family.

Meanwhile this past week I finished Camilla Gibb’s 2010 novel “The Beauty of Humanity Movement,” which was a read for my book club. It’s my second novel about Vietnam this year, but it’s a bit different than the other one I read — Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel “The Sympathizer.”

The title of Gibb’s book “The Beauty of Humanity Movement” is a bit of a mouthful, but it refers in the novel to a group of Vietnamese dissident artists who meet during the war at Hung’s cafe in Hanoi and put out a few underground publications before the cafe is shutdown by the Communists and the artists are hauled away to re-education camps.

Now decades later Old Man Hung is a soup vendor, peddling his popular and delicious “pho” on the streets and living by a dirty pond in shantytown. His most faithful pho customer is Tu, who is the grandson of one of the artists, and a tour guide in the city. One day Old Man Hung is visited by a Vietnamese-American woman (Maggie) who is working in Hanoi to catalogue an art collection for the Hotel Metropole. She is searching for clues to her father, a dissident artist who disappeared during the war after she and her mother fled to the U.S. But offhand Hung can’t seem to remember her father, or what happened to him.

The story follows these three intersecting characters as they dig into the past to try to find out more. Tu develops a crush on Maggie and wants to help her, as does Hung who treasured the dissidents and is haunted by what happened to them and his family during the war. He begins to reflect back to those days, and it’s Hung’s life story that makes the novel so compelling. He gives a glimpse into the violent Communist crackdowns, the U.S. bombing raids, and the sheer poverty of the war years, surviving on trees and what little else he could find by the pond. It’s the making of “pho” for his small community that propels him to live — as well as the dissidents’ publications and his love for a girl named Lan. You’ll want to read on to find out what happens.

It’s quite a bittersweet tale, about lost love and changing times, which by the end might make you hungry for a Vietnamese bowl of pho — Old Man Hung’s specialty. I have not eaten pho in a long while, but in honor of the story I’d like to. What I also liked about the novel was how it brought Hanoi’s past and present together. You really get a glimpse of what it’s like there today and what the people in the North went through many decades ago. I think this is the first novel I’ve read set in Hanoi, as opposed to Saigon, so it was new and interesting to me. The city is still a bit of a mystery to many Westerners. I didn’t find the novel a fast read, but I didn’t mind slowly meandering over its pages. The ending seemed a bit too tidily rendered for the main and secondary characters. Still I thought it was definitely a worthy read, which touched on a number of themes, such as the redemptive powers of community, art, and love.

I wondered a bit how the author wrote about Vietnam so well being from Britain and Canada. I hadn’t heard of her before this book, which a member of my book group picked to discuss. But apparently Camilla Gibb has a PhD in social anthropology from Oxford and seems well adept at traveling the world and writing about other cultures. This is her third novel. Her prior one “Sweetness in the Belly” is about a Muslim girl in Ethiopia. I hope to read that one sometime next year.

As for movies this week, I didn’t make it out to the theater, but we did rent the 2013 TV movie “Burton and Taylor,” about the last work collaboration between the two legendary actors and former married couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. In 1983, they starred in the Noel Coward play, “Private Lives,” together, which is what this movie is about. While making the production, Liz, played by Helena Bonham Carter, comes across as a bratty diva squandering her talents, while Burton, played by Dominic West, seems resigned and conflicted by her. Neither are in good health, or easy much to like. And their relationship is a bit all over the place — with their intense bond and history together eventually pulling them apart. It’s a bit sad really, but an interesting look into their lives. Who knew Burton would die the following year. Till then, apparently he and Liz spoke every few days although they were no longer together. What they shared was quite a connection.

Seeing “Burton and Taylor” made me a bit wistful for their happier “Cleopatra” days.

What about you — have you read Camilla Gibb’s books — or seen this movie? And if so, what did you think?

I want to wish those in the U.S. a very Happy Thanksgiving this coming week. It’s hard to believe Turkey Day is about here and we’re nearing Christmas. Already there’s quite a few Christmas lights up in our neighborhood. We won’t be traveling anywhere this time for U.S. Thanksgiving but are excited to be joining relatives in California for Christmas. So that’s the agenda so far.

Also this week I want to congratulate the 2016 National Book Award winners, notably Colson Whitehead for his novel “The Underground Railroad,” which won for fiction. I heard Colson speak at the BookExpo in May in Chicago and plan to read his novel soon. It’s about a runaway slave named Cora who escapes a Georgia plantation and travels north via a literal underground subway. Judy over at the blog Keep the Wisdom has read and liked it as have other bloggers, so I’m keen to try out my first book by him.

Interestingly another novel given out at BookExpo — George Saunders’s book “Lincoln in the Bardo” — has been hailed by author Zadie Smith as “a masterpiece” in this week’s New York Times’ By the Book interview. Saunders’s book (his long-awaited first novel) is not due out till February but you might want to take note of it, if you don’t already have an advance copy. It’s said to be a “mesmerizing historical novel that’s also a moving ghost story.” It combines a tale of Lincoln with the supernatural. Hmm.

In my reading this past week, I finished Paulette Jiles’s historical novel “News of the World,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award. I have not read a lot of westerns, but this one captured my imagination so I might like to read more in the future. It’s about an elderly widower, a captain in the Civil War, who in the 1870s makes his living traveling around North Texas giving public readings from far-away newspapers to paying customers.
It’s at one of these stops that the Captain is offered a sum of money to deliver an orphan girl to her relatives outside San Antonio. The girl, just 10, had been captured by Kiowa Indians four years earlier when her family was killed. She’s been rescued but now no longer remembers the English language or the white settlers’ ways of life. But the Captain agrees to take her and the two embark on a 400-mile journey south in a wagon with two horses.

It’s not a journey you’d think they could likely make. He’s a 70-plus aged grandpa and she’s a feisty young girl who refuses to act “civilized” and wants to escape back to the Indians. The terrain, too, is unforgiving and the state quite lawless in the 1870s. The towns they come upon often spell trouble, and the threat of attacks on the remote road is high. I was on full alert the whole time, fearing they’d be robbed and their throats would be slit. Maybe I’ve been watching a little too much of the Walking Dead, but they seemed to be sitting ducks on the open road.

As the miles go by, the girl and old man eventually form a bond that helps them endure. Both are appealing. And I liked how a lot of the narrative deals with how different the former-captive girl is — and how she can never fully go back to the ways of the white world. She thinks of herself as an Indian. Apparently this was true of most child captives on the Texas frontier — “they rarely readjusted when returned to their non-native families,” so writes the author in a note at the back of the book. The captain’s character, too, is based on a real person, a friend of the author’s great great grandfather, who traveled around reading the “News of the World” to paying customers in 1870’s Texas. The story of these two combined had me easily hooked to see how it would end — if they would make it to San Antonio, and how the two would part there.

It surprised me how short the novel was. Just 209 pages. This is no epic “Lonesome Dove.” “News of the World” could almost be a novella. It wasn’t a fully expanded drama, but I liked the book’s brevity. The wagon wheels kept turning so to speak. If you’re looking for something short, you might want to throw it into your travel bag. It’ll transport your imagination to the dusty frontier days in no time.

Also this week I finished the audiobook of Wilson Rawl’s 1961 children’s classic “Where the Red Fern Grows,” which I hadn’t read since elementary school. I knew as a dog lover I had to revisit this story about a boy and his two redbone coonhound hunting dogs. Most know the story about Billy and how his family is poor and they live in the remote Ozark Mountains of Oklahoma. And how Billy saves up two years to buy two coonhound pups and train them. Oh yes, Old Dan and Little Ann, how can anyone forget these dogs?

I hadn’t forgotten but I wanted to see what I had recalled of the story from childhood. The good news is after quite a few decades (no one’s counting) I can tell you: the magic of the book still holds up! The love Billy and his dogs have for one another feels very real, and the picture of their lives and the hunting of raccoons they do together at night in the remote woods along the river is very vivid. I was captured by the story once again.

It’s a tale that’s based on the hunting of “coons,” so if you’re sensitive to this topic you might not find it as favorable. But for the most part the scenes are not graphic, they depict more about the dogs’ chase of the critters and the adventures Billy has in the woods with them. There’s one axe scene between Billy and the area bully that scared me as a kid and that still looms large. But compared with today, it’s quite an old-fashioned story that is wonderful for being so. The boy’s narration is pitch perfect and the story of his days with his dogs rings true.

From my youth I had recalled the book as having one of the saddest endings of all time. But luckily I was able to “handle” it a bit better this go-around. It was still very sad, but I reasoned that Billy and his dogs had happily spent the best period of their lives together. That’s all most of us can ask for, right? As a dog person, this book still remains in my Top 10 of canine tales of all time. Children’s book or not.

Lastly this week, I saw the Amy Adams-alien movie “Arrival” at the theater and the Viggo Mortensen movie “Captain Fantastic” on rental. They were both sort of different. “Arrival” seemed to have a slower pace and was more ponderous than I expected. (It would probably be better as a rental.) I liked the scenes where Adams’ character is trying to communicate with the aliens, which are interesting looking things with elephant-like limbs. But perhaps there wasn’t enough in the movie besides the visual. Though there is a time element aspect of “Arrival” that makes you question the sequence of the story. If you like these kinds of “Interstellar” – time sorts of films, you might like this one as well. It makes you wonder about the connectedness of events, and the sequence of them.

As for “Captain Fantastic” — about a father trying to raise his six kids by hunting and gathering in the remote woods of the Pacific Northwest — whoa. It seems a cross between “Swiss Family Robinson” and “The Mosquito Coast,” if you’ve seen those. It’s an engaging film — all the kids are intellectually astute from reading books and being self-taught by Dad — and the first half in the woods is pretty cool, but it gets a bit crazy in the second half as the father and kids reenter society to attend the mother’s funeral. Some parts might stretch one’s believability but still the movie (as a rental) is appealing and at times amusing, especially with Viggo Mortensen as the father, one of my sister’s all-time favorites. “Wherever V-goes, she goes,” apparently.

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

Well it’s been a fairly calm week. I am behind on carving pumpkins and getting the candy stocked for Halloween, but wait, there’s still time! The snow is gone here but most of the leaves are down. I raked them into bags for a couple hours this week and was able to finish the audiobook of Delia Ephron’s 2016 novel “Siracusa,” which is a doozy of a story about two married couples that vacation together in Italy along with the enigmatic 10-year-old daughter of one of the couples. They go to Rome first and then on to the city of Siracusa on the coast of Sicily, where things quickly unravel and something happens that changes their lives forever.

Narrated from the two wives’ and two husbands’ perspectives, this story is pretty hard to put down. There’s Lizzie and Michael who are writers from New York, and Taylor and Finn, who own a restaurant in Portland, Maine and have a daughter named Snow. Lizzie and Finn had once dated back in their 20s, but now that’s over and this is the second vacation in later life they’ve taken together with their spouses. I’m not sure that this would necessarily happen in my household but … I was willing to go with it.

I think I heard about the novel “Siracusa” from Catherine over at The Gilmore Guide to Books, who liked it quite a bit, and I found it didn’t disappoint. I particularly recommend the audio because the four parts are read by four different actors who do a heck of a job with these different characters. You’ll find them an interesting mix with each their own secrets. Taylor, for one, is a helicopter mom from hell who cares only for her shy, beautiful daughter, Snow. And Finn still holds a flame for Lizzie, while Michael’s affections have turned cold towards her. Lizzie though is looking to win Michael back in Italy and jump-start her career as a journalist. But then in Siracusa all goes to hell in a handbasket.

The descriptions in the book and the characters make it an enticing read, but the story is pretty dark and cynical. It reminded me slightly of Herman Koch’s eerie novel “The Dinner,” which is also about two couples in Europe whose families go through something disturbing. But the stories also differ a bit. “Siracusa” is not totally without flaws, you likely will be able to forecast what will happen long before it does, though I still liked hearing how the characters played out their parts, and the ideas they came away with.

I had not read much from Delia Ephron before, though I knew of her from from her 1998 movie “You’ve Got Mail” and of course her famous sister Nora Ephron whose books often made me laugh. I had read parts of Delia’s nonfiction book “Sister, Mother, Husband, Dog: Etc.,” which for some reason I had put down, but nothing like “Siracusa.” It is much darker than I would’ve guessed of her fiction. It’s not exactly fit for an early Meg Ryan type of role: such as “You’ve Got Mail” and “Sleepless in Seattle.”

Speaking of which, I dragged my husband to the movie “The Girl on the Train” this week. (He said when we were leaving the theater he was the only guy in there. Ha ha ha, gotcha.) But “The Girl” was good, if you like this kind of movie. It followed Paula Hawkins’s blockbuster-selling novel closely.

Luckily Emily Blunt starred in it, which made all the difference. She made one hell of a messed-up Rachel Watson, hooray. Just like Rachel is in the book. I’m not sure the movie was all that suspenseful since I already knew what was going to happen — even my husband figured it out pretty early on without having read the book — but still I’m glad I went. Come on, I wasn’t going to miss it.

And the fact that they change the novel’s setting from London to New York for the movie didn’t seem to make much difference. Blunt pares down her English accent quite a bit, and there’s a couple of beautiful shots of the train along the Hudson River, which seemed good to me. While “The Girl on the Train” might not be as good as “Gone Girl,” it still was entertaining in a wacky thriller kind of way.

What about you, have you read “Siracusa,” or seen the movie “The Girl on the Train,” and if so, what did you think?