Driftwood Summer by Patti Callahan Henry

Patti Callahan Henry never disappoints. One day I picked up one of her books off a New Fiction table, and two chapters in and I just knew I would read all of her books. I devoured her latest book in one day finishing it at 4 in the morning.  I am not sure I can put my finger on exactly what makes her stories so readable, but her characters and settings always easily draw me in.

This book focuses on the relationship between sisters, something I cannot relate to at all as I only have brothers. But I still find it inherently amusing. I suppose a lot of women's fiction focuses on the relationship between sisters, in fact Kristin Hannah's last book focused on three sisters as well.  And yet, Callahan Henry's books never seem cliche or derivative.  Even though many of her books seem to replay similar ideas or conflicts, they are each unique.

The book also focuses on a small town book store, something I know I would love. I loved my local bookstore as a child--it was called The Corner Book Shop and I spent most of my childhood weekends inside its doors.

At the heart of it this book focuses on how the events of adolescence and childhood stay with an individual - something focused on in most of Callahan Henry's books. She understands young love in such an obvious way.  This book also focuses on the sandwich generation, and adults dealing with the sickness of their parents.  Callahan Henry grapples with so many issues in this book, and yet the heart of the story is the deep friendship between Mack and Riley and the rift between Riley and Maisy. I suppose it isn't a new story - sisters fight over boy, boy chooses beauty over best friend. And yet, as I said before Callahan Henry's stories always seem new.

Sima's Undergarments for Women by Ilana Stanger-Ross

Any woman with experience with a independent lingerie store will find something special in this book. Stanger-Ross clearly understands Jewish women in their natural habitats. I was personally excited to get more of a window into Brooklyn, and Boro Park, as I have filled a series of journal pages writing about the young Hasidic mothers of Williamsburg.

In some ways this book is heart-breaking. One wants to strangle Sima, who seems to have lived her life, specializing in being unhappy, feeling annoyed by her oafish husband and forever altered due to one poor decision. But its easy to imagine that women like Sima do exist. Her loneliness and her longing are incredibly believable. Sima, has worked for 35 years fitting the women of the neighborhood with bras and underwear. She watches as the young women get married, fits them for their wedding night lingerie, and then a year or two later fits them for nursing bras. She listens as young mothers, nearing 30, complain of the exhaustion caused from having three children. Sima herself expected children to follow quickly after her marriage. But through slivers of flashbacks we discover that Sima is barren, due to a secret she has kept from her husband.

An interaction with a young Israeli woman who she hires to be a seamstress changes Sima. One review talked about the fact that the reader waits for a bigger change than actually occurs. While I too longed for more of a climax at one point, I think the subtle changes that occur in Sima are very realistic.

A couple days after finishing this book I was running through my parent's neighborhood and I noticed an old woman walking - I couldn't help but think about Sima. Recently, I've been very interested in how people deal with the choices they make as young people. In many ways this book shows that we are forever overcoming the traumas of our adolescence.

A Day at the Beach by Helen Schulman

I can remember when the first few fiction books and movies that tried to respond to the events of 9/11 first came out. There was such a collective holding of breath. Could authors and screenwriters tackle this subject artfully?  How does one try to say something about such a catastrophic and insane event?  

I personally haven't read much fiction that incorporates 9/11.  Only Maynard's novel the Usual Rules, which was so full of real, human, colorful characters that one wasn't too concerned with the portrayal of the event.

Reading A Day at the Beach was haunting, as it narrates the events of September 11, 2001 so realistically. Schulman reveals that she studied tapes of the newscasts at the Museum of Radio and Television, and that she also lived in lower Manhattan.  It's hard not to read this book and recall one own's experience of that fateful day. I was a freshman in college in Philadelphia.  I was woken up by a phone call from my roommate's parents who implored us to turn on the TV.  The first building had been hit but I still went to my 10 am class.  Later, classes would be cancelled. But that morning I sat through my regularly scheduled Freshman Seminar on Desert Islands (comparative literature).

This book is so magical.  It narrates the events of that fateful day through the eyes of a German former famous ballerina (who had his own company) and his muse and wife, a Jewish woman who grew up in Riverdale.  It offers one small perspective on this national tragedy, and by doing so allows the reader to ponder a series of larger than life questions: what is the value of art? what does it mean to be part of a community? do we ever truly overcome our past?  what does it mean to be a supportive spouse?

I am having trouble coming up with the right words to explain the essence of this novel.  The blurbs on the back seem to capture everything I want to say and more:

Elissa Schappell writes: "An astonishing tour de force of a novel, deeply compassionate and piercingly intelligent  Schulman's A Day at the Beach has echoes of DeLillo but is wholly her own vision of what it means to be  a human living in a complicated universe full of desire and longing, addressing the power of art, the costs of love, the wages of history, and how 9/11 cast every American's life into sharp relief.  The ending left me in tears, shaken, but intensely grateful for the gift of this remarkable book."

Kurt Anderson writes: "A precarious marriage, a teetering career, betrayal, and paranoia -- all set in New York on September 11, 2001.  Who knew those elements could be a recipe for redemption and uplift? Helen Schulman's craft and wisdom are both impressive and effortless-looking and A Day at the Beach is a riveting story that captures the zeitgeist pitch perfectly."

I think the only thing I want to add is that Schulman is able to tackle so much in only 209 pages. This to me is tremendous.  Bubbling throughout the one and a half days that are narrated are issues pertaining to jealousy, longing, loss of one's self to motherhood, the fleetingness of success, autism, the difference between Europeans and Americans, love, the grandness of NYC and so much more.

I almost feel as my review cannot do this book justice.

No One You Know by Michelle Richmond

This is somewhat of a delayed post. I read this book on the floor of BandN about a week ago.  I loved Richmond's last book (The Year of Sand and Fog) and had been meaning to read this latest one for a while. 

I am floored by Richmond's talent. I love her style, the way she seamlessly builds a story, her use of language. I don't tend to read literary mysteries, and so this is another thing I love about Richmond - the way she helped me discover and enjoy a genre I don't often read.

This book tells the story of Ellie Enderlin, who is  trying to come to terms with the murder of her brilliant older sister Lila ( a gifted mathematician who was pursuing a Phd in Math) which occurred twenty years before.  After Lila's death Ellie shares all of her thoughts and emotions with a professor of hers, who turns the story into a bestselling true crime book which implicates Lila's math partner in her death and causes a great deal of anguish for Ellie's family. As an adult, Ellie finally digs beyond the story created for this crime book and realizes a great deal about her sister and her self.

I love the way Richmond interweaves quotes about writing and reading into this book. So many of the specific quotes spoke to me.  One is now on a clean sheet in my journal.

This book, like The Year of Sand of Fog, raises so many thought-provoking questions, about loss and love, crime, sibling relationships, secrets and story-telling. It's a great read.

Waiting on Wednesday: Labor Day

I am so excited for the summer season of books to be released. Can't wait for the new releases by some of my faves: Christina Baker Kline, Elin Hilderbrand, Patti Callahan Henry, Jennifer Weiner, Julie Buxbaum.

The forthcoming book I am highlighting this week is Labor Day by Joyce Maynard. It will be available July 28.  

I recently read Maynard's The Usual Rules (another book with an adolescent main character) and absolutely adored the book.  After some research on Maynard I realized I had read and owned her other YA book (The Cloud Chamber) as well. Maynard tackles adolescent issues so adeptly and compellingly.

Amazon's write up for Labor Day below:

With the end of summer closing in and a steamy Labor Day weekend looming in the town of Holton Mills, New Hampshire, thirteen-year-old Henry—lonely, friendless, not too good at sports—spends most of his time watching television, reading, and daydreaming about the soft skin and budding bodies of his female classmates. For company Henry has his long-divorced mother, Adele—a onetime dancer whose summer project was to teach him how to foxtrot; his hamster, Joe; and awkward Saturday-night outings to Friendly's with his estranged father and new stepfamily. As much as he tries, Henry knows that even with his jokes and his "Husband for a Day" coupon, he still can't make his emotionally fragile mother happy. Adele has a secret that makes it hard for her to leave their house, and seems to possess an irreparably broken heart.

But all that changes on the Thursday before Labor Day, when a mysterious bleeding man named Frank approaches Henry and asks for a hand. Over the next five days, Henry will learn some of life's most valuable lessons: how to throw a baseball, the secret to perfect piecrust, the breathless pain of jealousy, the power of betrayal, and the importance of putting others—especially those we love—above ourselves. And the knowledge that real love is worth waiting for.

I'm Down by Mishna Wolff

This is a memoir about a young white woman who according to the blurb on the inside, grows up in "a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black." The author explains: "He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains, and a Kangol--telling jokes like Redd Foxx and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn't tell my father he was white."

Mishna grows up trying to please her father, lost in a world that is foreign to her. Eventually she learns to "cap" (insult her friends with sayings similar to yo mamma jokes) and finds enjoyment in playing on an all black basketball team. But she also attends a special school with upper-class white students who find her weird. She learns to navigate these disparate worlds and obviously turned out alright, as she was previously a model and a comedian and now has penned an engaging memoir.

I found this book completely engaging. As someone who formerly taught African American and Latino students, I felt this book gave a me a greater understanding of some of their behaviors. As someone interested in the effects of growing up in poverty, I found Mishna's story something incredibly elucidating. Neither of her parents finished college, but they still supported her enough to get her on the right track in life. While her father may have been more concerned about her standing in the community, and whether she could stand her own in a fight or be cool enough to hang with the sistas, he also encouraged her to try new things: track, music, basketball, swimming. While he clearly wanted his daughter to excel at the things he deemed important, he found a way to accept her for exactly who she was and was incredibly proud of her accomplishments.

Jennifer Weiner recently blogged about how seeing an author's photo can affect one's reading of a novel (she reported that reading a book via Kindle, which meant she had no photo helped her not to prejudge the author and approach the book with a more open mind). Wolff's photo shows that she is clearly gorgeous. But this book reveals so much of the confusion she felt as a young person. I think it would be impossible for someone to read this memoir and not fall in love with the young version of Wolff we are introduced to. She wants so badly to be accepted. She tries equally hard at mastering capping in second grade then she later does swimming, a sport she loves because she doesn't have to worry about letting down teammates the way she did in basketball. She tries so very hard to be accepted in the disparate worlds she navigates. And she never thinks she is better than anyone else.

The book surprisingly offers somewhat of a critique of the upper middle class lifestyle. It is Mishna's friends from her special school that struggle the most with finding happiness. While Mishna's African American step mother struggles to support her family, and blames a lot of her unhappiness on Misha, we see her through a whimsical light as well. Mishna's adolescent friends seem more troubled dealing with absent parents, the pressure of success and their absolute boredom. Overall the book is funny, insightful and interesting.

The Last Beach Bungalow by Jennie Nash

Part of me feels this book both tries too hard and yet doesn't deliver.  I wanted to like this book but it didn't deliver as compelling a story as I imagined based on the blurb. It was highly readable. But I felt myself just wanting to finish. I wasn't savoring it the way I usually do with compelling fiction.

For me, something was missing in this story.  I cared about the narrator, her husband and daughter but not enough.  The family seemed so cliche. And while the narrator is a freelance writer, who shares with the reader the entirety of her inner dialogue, I didn't feel that connected to her.  For me, the characters never really came alive. I get that the narrator was still coming to terms with her diagnosis of cancer five years before, and was herself discovering that she was going through the motions and not celebrating life. But I still found myself feeling detached from the developing story.

The most interesting part of the novel was the bereft widow who cannot imagine life without her beloved husband and is looking to find a meaningful way to sell the house she shared with him for many years.  Their house is the the last beach bungalow on Redondo beach, and the only one that has not been torn down and replaced with a McMansion.  To me this woman and her captivating house, is the heart of the story and I think the novel would have been infinitely more interesting if the story was told from her perspective.