Black Cake: A Novel
by Charmaine Wilkerson
An Overrated Novel That Is One Big Soap Opera: Melodramatic, Overly Sentimental, and Slow-Paced (4/11/2023)
Whine. Whine. Whine. It seems like that is all the characters are doing. And at 400 pages, that gets old. Fast.
But let's back up. This (overrated) novel by Charmaine Wilkerson tells the multigenerational story of a family from an unnamed island in the Caribbean, and the tale is woven by jumping back and forth in time and place and character. While this is a common literary technique, it takes real skill to pull it off. Wilkerson doesn't have that skill. The extremely short chapters—some just a paragraph or two long—switch topics and characters and timelines so quickly and at times so randomly that the effect is jarring and disorienting.
This is the story of Covey, short for Coventina, the daughter of Johnny Lyncook and Mathilda Brown. He is Chinese. She is Black. But Covey is soon heartbroken when Mathilda disappears one night. She runs away from a life she hated but leaves behind a confused little girl, who is raised by Pearl, the family's cook and housekeeper. Because of something truly horrific that her father does, Covey also disappears from the island, fleeing to England and eventually adopting the name Eleanor. She then leads a convoluted undercover life that is filled with tragedy and fleeting bits of happiness. The other part of the story is told after Covey's death, when her grown children, Byron and Benny, listen to a tape-recording Covey has made, explaining everything. This sends them into a tailspin because it has turned their supposed family history and identity into a pile of lies. And that's saying something because both are already filled with resentment and bitterness long before their mother even died. When the pieces of this long, dragged-out story finally come together, the ending is treacly sweet.
The novel is one big soap opera—and not a fun, sassy soap opera, but rather one that is melodramatic, overly sentimental, and very slow-paced. One horrible thing after another happens. Byron and Benny are consumed with so much anger toward each other that they don't speak, a classic TV soap opera ploy to limit critical communication and further the ridiculous plot. And when they do talk, they whine. Incessantly.
This is such a shame because the story Wilkerson is trying to tell is an important one. But the meaning, import, and historical significance of that story is lost in the amateurish structuring of the novel.
One clever part of the novel is how Wilkerson uses food, beginning with the traditional Caribbean recipe of black cake, a kind of plum pudding that takes months to make, to tell the characters' stories, hopes, and dreams. Unfortunately, the novel is as dense as the cake.
The Winter People
by Jennifer McMahon
Creepy, Creepy, Creepy! A Goosebumpy, Scary Ghost Story That's Perfect for Winter Reading (4/11/2023)
Creepy, goosebumpy, scary ghost stories aren't only for cool fall evenings. It turns out that the middle of January in remote Vermont when it's buried in snow is also the perfect setting for a psychological thriller filled with ghosts.
Written by Jennifer McMahon, this is two stories in one with the common factor the setting of an old farmhouse on a secluded road in the very small town of West Hall, Vermont. The stories alternate: One takes place in January 1908, including flashbacks about 20 years earlier. The other takes place in the present day, also in January. This thickly-wooded homestead includes an outcropping of giant boulders that looks so much like a hand, the area has always been called Devil's Hand. Wander too far into the woods, and you might not make it out alive. Something is going on here, and those who have seen it believe there are ghosts in this spooky forest.
It's January 1908. Sara Harrison Shea and her husband Martin Shea live in the farmhouse with their little girl, Gertie, who is 8 years old. One day she is found dead, having fallen 50 feet down a well. Sara collapses in grief, but writes her fears, anguish, and hopes into a secret diary. Sara comes to an untimely and gruesome death, which remains the stuff of legend in West Hall a hundred years later. She hid her diary in one of the hidey-holes in the old farmhouse, and many people want to find it because in it she supposedly left instructions on how to raise the dead to life.
Meanwhile in the present-day, Alice Washburne lives in the same farmhouse with her two daughters, Ruthie, 19, and Fawn, 6. Alice, who is widowed, has lived off the grid for about 20 years. No computer. No cell phone. No links to anyone in the world. Even in this small town, not everyone knows who she is. On New Year's Day, Alice disappears. More than anything, Alice dislikes the police, so Ruthie knows she shouldn't call the cops. (This is one of several plot points—some small, some big—that make the mystery work. If Ruthie did call the cops or someone didn't lock her cell phone in the car so she didn't have it when she really needed it, things would have worked out quite differently. A little cheesy, perhaps.) The two stories—past and present—converge as Ruthie discovers dark secrets about her own past and those surrounding this strange house.
This is one of the creepiest stories I have ever read, and while the plots from both time periods are rather farfetched, the book is a page-turner. It will keep you up past your bedtime, and if you read it then, you may very well have nightmares.
Count the Ways
by Joyce Maynard
This Is a Really Good Book, but Be Prepared: It Will Envelop You in Sadness (4/11/2023)
Oh, this book is sad. So very, very sad. I was so enveloped in the sadness that when I wasn't reading, I carried it with me. I had to wake up every once in a while and remind myself it was just a book. Not my life. But here's the thing (and this is really important): The writing is so extraordinary and the story so wonderful and the characters so real that the sadness is fine. It's part of the book. And what a book it is!
Written by Joyce Maynard, this is the story of a family from the point of view of the mother, Eleanor. Eleanor grew up an only child in an unhappy family with alcoholic parents. Even though it was the '70s and young women were actively seeking careers over motherhood, all she wanted was to get married and have babies. When this finally happens, Eleanor is ecstatic. She works as an artist and children's book author, while Cam, her red-haired, gorgeous husband, makes wooden bowls to sell at craft fairs. They live on an old and remote farm in New Hampshire where they quickly have three children—two girls and then a boy. Life is sweet. Life is everything that Eleanor ever hoped for…until suddenly Cam does something that results in a tragedy that she can never forgive. As the marriage unravels so do Eleanor's dreams. What does it mean to forgive? To have compassion? To move on? And what happens to those children in all the bitterness and rancor?
The vivid, bold characters are what make this book so wonderful. And while the plot is a gradual unfolding of an entire life of passion, emotion, feelings, and survival it can be slow-moving at times. It is written in envelope structure; that is, the first chapter is actually the beginning of the end of the novel, so it comes full circle. While the ending is sad, there is a sense of redemption—making it perfect.
This is not a happy book. But it is real. And there is power in that. Plus, it's just a really good read that is difficult to put down.
Bonus: On page 439 is the best parenting advice ever. Poetic and oh so real.
River Sing Me Home
by Eleanor Shearer
Beautiful, Almost Lyrical Writing: This Is a Very Good Book but Not a Great One (4/11/2023)
This is a very good book, but it is not a great book. There is far too much introspection and examination of feelings that is interspersed with far too little plot action, although what action there is is riveting and left me glued to the page.
Written by Eleanor Shearer, this historical novel takes place in 1834-1835 on various islands in the Caribbean, beginning with Barbados, moving on to British Guiana, and finally Trinidad. Rachel, who is a slave on a sugar cane plantation on Barbados, is the mother of 11 children, five of whom are still alive, but all of whom have been sold away. When the slaves receive word that England has freed them, they are overjoyed; however, their jubilation is short-lived because the master has informed them that they are now "apprenticed" to him for six more years. They are free, but they can't leave. So Rachel runs. This is the story of her quest not only for freedom, but also to find her lost children: Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane, and Mercy. Because this is a novel, Rachel does find all five of her now grown children on her emotional, harrowing, and courageous journey, but each of their fates is different—from joyful to heartbreaking to tragic.
Unfortunately, the successful search for the children seems too fantastical for belief, and it is drawn out far too long with all the introspection. Still, the writing is beautiful—even lyrical in parts, and Shearer brings to life important history, including the Demerara Rebellion of 1823.
But it is the complex, multifaceted concept of freedom and how each character has his or her own idea of what that means that turns this novel into literature. Again, it's a very good book but just not a great one.
French Braid: A novel
by Anne Tyler
Gorgeously Written! A Brilliant Novel About Families Told with Insight, Compassion, and Wry Humor (4/11/2023)
There is a reason Anne Tyler is one of my favorite authors, and this book is Exhibit A. Her novels speak to our quotidian lives, but instead of being boring, it's brilliant. Her characters are quirky, but their emotions are universal.
Taking place in Baltimore, Maryland, this is the story of the Garrett family beginning with a flash-forward to 2010 and then going back in time to 1959 when the Garretts went on their only family vacation, traveling to Deep Creek Lake on the other side of the state. It spans four generations, continuing for more than 60 years. It all starts with Robin and Mercy, two very different souls, who marry and have three children—two girls and then years later a boy. The girls, Alice and Lily, never get along, while David is remote and tries to distance himself from the family, much to their confusion. Mercy is an artist and once the children are grown, she does something radical, something that hurts Robin so much he tries to hide it from everyone else. It is here that the novel shines as it subtly and gently takes on what it really means to be a woman, a mother, a wife and still have a genuine life. The New York Times book reviewer (author Jennifer Haigh) called it "a quietly subversive novel," and that is a perfect description.
The title of the book is pure genius because of the metaphor of the French braid that is revealed near the end of the book. When a French braid is undone from a woman's hair, it leaves crimped ripples—just as the ripples our families imprint on us whether we like it or not.
As gorgeously written as all the rest of Anne Tyler's novels, this is a story that is defined by the characters. Plot is not the point. Instead, insight, compassion, sympathy, and a wry humor for the human condition is the point. This is a book about family…about life…about truth.
Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel
by Bonnie Garmus
SO Good! This Book Is Like Quicksand. It Will Suck You In and Not Let Go Until You Finish! (4/11/2023)
This book is like quicksand. It will suck you in and not let go until you finish it. Oh, it is GOOD!
Written by Bonnie Garmus, this is a novel that is both a riveting story and a feminist manifesto. It's 1952 and Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant wannabe chemist, is being stifled at every turn, prevented from getting a Ph.D. (and when you find out the reason, you will want to throw something) and unable to find a job suitable for her genius mind. She is forced to settle. Working at Hastings Research Institute in the fictional town of Commons, California as the only female scientist, she spends her days fighting obstacle after obstacle. Then she meets Calvin Evans, the boy genius who is a celebrity in the world of chemistry. The two fall deeply, soulfully in love. Each comes from a tragic background, and they truly find solace in one another until yet another tragedy happens. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is pregnant, which causes her to be summarily fired from her job. Madeline is born, and after a series of missteps, Elizabeth becomes an unlikely TV star, hosting a live afternoon cooking show in which she teaches her largely female audience not only what to make for dinner, but also the chemical reactions involved. And the underlying message of each show, in addition to the chemistry lesson, is the extraordinary value of women—even though in the early 1960s, many women felt they were valued only as glorified maids. Add to the mix an assortment of delightful minor characters and a charming dog named Six-Thirty.
Ingeniously plotted with big, bold, and delightfully quirky characters, an enchanting love story, and a resounding, insightful message, this is a book to be savored and recommended to your best friends.
I hope a lot of young women—those in their late teens and early 20s—read this book so they will appreciate how far women have come and what it (really) was like not that long ago.
Bonus: There are parts of this novel that are laugh-out-loud hilarious. Of course, other parts will make you weep. Kind of perfect!
Lincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders
A Genre-Busting Novel That Is Daring, Peculiar, and Highly Imaginative. Read with Caution! (4/11/2023)
Well, this was, um, interesting. And by "interesting," I really mean bizarre, peculiar, and even rather rude and crude in parts. This Booker Prize-winning novel by George Saunders is not an ordinary novel. Read with caution.
The plot, such as it is, is relatively simple. Willy Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, died on February 20, 1862 of typhoid fever. The president was so distraught and wracked with anguish that the night of Willy's burial he twice visited the crypt in which the little boy was interred in nearby Georgetown. That's all fact.
In this highly imaginative, albeit horrifying, novel, Willy's spirit goes to the bardo, a kind of purgatory, where he is visited twice by his grief-stricken father, who is also distressingly haunted by the enormous death toll of the Civil War. Even though that's the premise, in some ways it's all background noise to the fever-dream thoughts and ramblings of the bardo's other ghostly inhabitants, who mingle with each other, complain, criticize, and argue. (This is where it gets particularly weird.) It's these souls—a Protestant minister, a lust-filled printer, a murderer, a rape victim, a closeted gay man, a pickle manufacturer, a professor, several slaves, and many more—who themselves are striving to stay in this strange limbo but engage in a mammoth struggle over the soul of Willy Lincoln, helping him to move out of the bardo, which they deem is no place for a child. In so doing, they find a new kind of freedom for themselves.
In addition to the action in the bardo, many of the chapters deal with life on Earth—specifically the White House during the Civil War—before, during, and after Willy's untimely death, thus anchoring the novel to a specific time and place.
This novel has been described as "experimental," which is an apt term. It's more like a play than a novel. The narrative in the bardo is just a series of spoken sentences, some as short as a single word and some as long as two or three pages, by the inhabitants. The narrative in the White House is a series of quotes from letters, journals, newspaper articles, and books about the Lincolns. Some of these citations are real, others are fiction, and there is no easy way to tell the difference.
In Buddhism, the bardo is an in-between or liminal state between death and rebirth where the consciousness of the deceased can still understand words and prayers spoken on its behalf. The point of the novel seems to be focused on grief and loss, not only President Lincoln's grief for his son, but also—and especially—the grief the bardo's ghostly inhabitants feel for their own demise and what they have left behind.
This is a difficult book to read at first, but once I got into the flow of the narrative it became much easier. This is a daring, highly imaginative, and genre-busting book that will leave many readers confused but no doubt in awe of George Saunders's talent.
A Rule Against Murder: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #4
by Louise Penny
Witty, Wise, and Wonderful: A Literary Murder Mystery That Is Compelling and Fun to Read (4/11/2023)
And Louise Penny does it again! This is the fourth in the (now) 18-book series of murder mysteries featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and the delightful Canadian town of Three Pines. And just like the three before it, this is a compelling, intelligent story that is also fun to read.
There is something else these books have in common: They are literary murder mysteries. From Greek mythology to classic poetry, you never know what Penny will throw into the mix of blood, gore, and detectives. Oh, and the food. Penny's descriptions of food—all gourmet and extraordinary—will have you rooting in your fridge. If you're not careful, you could gain weight just reading this book.
This novel veers from the first three in that it takes us to a new setting away from Three Pines. Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary in a remote, forested area of Quebec. They are staying at the Manoir Bellechasse located on the scenic Lac Massawippi and ideal for forgetting the worries of the world. Also staying in the inn are multiple members of the Finnley family, who are having a family reunion—and a contentious one at that. This fabulously wealthy family despise one another, but they have gathered to erect a statue of their late father and patriarch. But then the unthinkable happens: one of them is murdered. (Well, it's unthinkable for a family reunion but totally expected for a Louise Penny book.) Gamache swings into action, his anniversary getaway forgotten. Not a word more on the plot! No spoilers here.
Every Louise Penny book is a delight to read. The plots are complex enough that most readers won't figure it out too early, the pacing is perfect, and her words of wisdom about living a good life are sagacious and spot-on. Witty, wise, and wonderful! That's a winning formula that extends to all 18 (and counting) books.
Treat yourself, but you must read them in order, beginning with "Still Life," because subsequent books contain little—but important—spoilers about the previous books.
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