Category Archives: Books

Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke

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I found this book disorienting and at times unbelievable, but nonetheless hard to put down.

Natalie and Abigail were raised by a single hardworking Christian mom who worked as a secretary by day and crocheted baby clothes which she sold at her church by night. Their father “had departed” when they were young, leaving mom to do her best to raise the girls with a conservative moral core. Natalie excelled in school and received a full ride to Harvard. Having never left Idaho, her mother saw her nervously off to the airport with the advice “You can reach anyone if you show them kindness.”

Natalie’s culture shock in Cambridge comes in the form of her prep-school roommate Reena who likes to party and invites boys back to their room for late night trysts. After 6 attempts to get her own room, she finally gets into a physical fight with Reena and her transfer is approved.

She predictably gravitates towards the church group at Harvard. While she is disdainful of Reena and her liberal partying friends, she holds no high regard for the church group either. “I sat with the dumb girls, I suffered their little snuffling moans and sighs of glory to God, and it was fine.”

Already I was questioning Natalie’s narrative. Dumb girls in the basement? Harvard administrative support for Natalie? But I don’t have too much time to dwell on this before the narrative plods ahead.

Her second semester she meets Caleb Mills, from a wealthy conservative family. By her second year they are married, she leaves school and becomes pregnant with her first child Charlotte. Although we are told Natalie comes from a conservative background, we also know that she went against the grain enough to leave home with a full ride to Harvard. Who is this girl?

After an unsuccessful start to her marriage, her awareness of her husband’s lack of ambition, and her growing understanding of the enormous wealth of her husband, Natalie takes things into her own hands. She finds an enormous farm in Idaho, which she is able to purchase and renovate with funds from her father-in-law Doug Mills, who gives her $5M in exchange for her promise to have more kids. She moves her growing family to the farm and she and Caleb dive into farming. After killing 4 cows they realize they need some help and start bringing in workers from the nearby Home Depot.

As they burn through the $5M from Doug Mills, and Natalie is exhausted with her life as mother and farmer, she asks her mother one day how she managed it all, and her mother confesses that she always images performing her everyday tasks for an invisible audience. This odd advice seems to resonate with Natalie, who soon finds herself dropping $1500 on an online course on being a cultural influencer. Natalie starts to produce a perfected version of her everyday tasks of motherhood, homemaking and “organic” farming for an invisible audience. Her efforts are picked up by a conservative podcast and suddenly she has 2 million followers. Advertising dollars start pouring in. She hires a producer, Shannon, to help her with content. She hires 2 nannies to help with the four children. None of these helpers – the Home Depot farm workers, the nannies, or Shannon – appear on camera.

The gap between online and offline Natalie widens. About mid-way through the first section she wakes up in another world, which we come to understand is her same farmhouse, but 150 years earlier. She is surrounded by children who look like her, and call her mama, and a husband name Caleb who is similar but older than Caleb she remembers. Natalie doesn’t know where she is and cannot connect with this family. The narrative splits between the “present” of Natalie’s growing cultural influencer world, her challenges with Caleb, her children, and Shannon the producer, and the “past” of Natalie’s being trapped in what she experiences as a fake family she does not recognize.

As these two timelines fall apart, Caleb tells Natalie he wants a divorce and is moving to California with Shannon. Natalie in a rage confronts Shannon and tries to choke her but manages to control herself and in desperation calls Doug Mills for legal advice. Shannon soon goes public with her story, laying bare the reality of Yesteryear Ranch.

I won’t spoil the surprising ending, which forces an even stronger disjunction between social media presence and the reality of Natalie’s life, and the bleak choices she has made. As noted in the New York Times “Though she’s the mastermind behind their family-cum-empire (which includes a line of cookware and preserves akin to Meghan Markle’s As Ever), she’s still at the mercy of Caleb and his cunning career-politician father, Doug Mills. She wonders ‘what might happen if my husband ever paused and thought about the governing law of his own starry universe: His wife might as well have been a farm dog, for all the rights she had.’ It’s a conclusion that belongs in 1855, but is all too relevant in the present: For women, the system rewards neither path.”

Yesteryear is in many ways a book of our time, and I give it 4.5👍🏼 out of 5👍🏼.

The Hallmarked Man, by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling)

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The disclaimer to this review is that I am a big fan of the Cormoran Strike series and couldn’t put this book down once I started.

A body is found in the vault of a silver shop which specializes in Masonic Silver. The body has been horribly disfigured and there is a question about the identity of the body. Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency were hired by Decima Mullins who is convinced that Rupert Fleetwood, the father of her newborn son, is the body in the vault and wants Cormoran and Robin to prove it.

It turns out that Rupert is just one of four possible victims in the vault – one of four men who roughly fit the description of the victim who have been missing since the time of the murder. The detectives must investigate four sets of scenarios and character groups related to each victim, on top of their investigation of the employees of the silver shop, the people who delivered the silver, and their circles of acquaintances.

I was about halfway through the book when I started to feel like I should have been taking notes, because it was hard to keep track of all the characters and subplots, especially when they started to cross and overlap. Perhaps I just need to re-read the book when I’m not so busy but several times I had to go back and check who was who.

In spite of my confusion, I was still sneaking off to the bathroom at work to read it – basically had a hard time putting it down until I was done. But I think I might need to read it one more time to make sure I got all the intricacies of the plot. I give this one a 4👍🏼 out of 5👍🏼.

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li

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Agnes and Fabienne are best friends growing up in the poor French farming community of Saint Remy. Fabienne is a provocateur- easily bored and always creating new “games” for them to play. Agnes’s job is to follow directions and ask questions.

One day Fabienne tells Agnes that they should write a book. Fabienne narrates and Agnes records the story in her precise handwriting. Fabienne suggests they reach out to the local postman to help with the book. He takes some convincing but Fabienne convinces M. Devreaux to help out and soon the girls are to meet their publisher in Paris. Or actually just Agnes is to meet the publisher because Fabienne has insisted that Agnes be listed as the sole author of the book.

Agnes, who has never left Saint Remy, soon is traveling to Paris for press meetings and meetings with her publisher. An English director of a “finishing school” for girls sees Agnes as a cause celebre, and convinces her publisher and parents that Agnes should come to England to get a proper education. Ms. Townsend capitalizes on Agnes’s publicity for her school, trying convince her to write her 3rd book about the school environment. “Agnes in Paradise”, she suggests as the title.

One day I would learn that Mrs. Townsend was a good record keeper. Of her own life and, for the duration when I was under her supervision, my life. People like Mrs. Townsend, who are obsessed with keeping a full account of their lives, are like artists who create optical illusions. A year is a year anywhere, a day is a day for everyone, and yet with a few tricks these archivists make others believe that they have packed something into their days, something precious, enviable, everlasting, that is not available to everyone.

Agnes hates the school and misses Fabienne and plots to leave. Eventually she gives up everything to return to Saint Remy.

I have summarized above the outline of the narrative but it is not really the subject of the book. I’m not fully sure what the book is about. On one hand it tells the story of an intimate friendship between two girls. Fabienne’s slightly sadistic dominance and Agnes’s total willingness to follow makes reading a cringe-worthy experience. Even though we know from the first chapter that Agnes survives and ends up happily married in America, her journey and the dynamics of their relationship are difficult to read.

Li had moments of great poetry in her observations of the every day.

In the cab I looked at the streetlamps through the rain. I had never watched waterdrops elongating on a glass pane from inside a car. When it moved forward the water streaks changed direction. Back at home rain was simply rain. In this new life, raindrops and streetlamps and the dark shapes of bare-limbed trees all seemed to have something to say to me, but if they were to speak, it would be in English, a language that was still foreign

Like the two girls, Li brought great imagination to the unexpected events which would allow these girls to escape their seeming lot in life. As Agnes explains, coming back from her first trip to Paris,

But here is an explanation, maybe, for the success of my trip. Life is most difficult for those who know what they want and also know what makes it impossible for them to get what they want. Life is still difficult, but less so, for those who know what they want but have not realized that they will never get it. It is the least difficult for people who do not know what they want.

Although the book is not a pleasurable read, I appreciated its moments of clarity and insight. I give this book 4👍🏼 out of 5👍🏼.

The Hunter, Tana French

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A follow up to The Searcher, The Hunter finds us still settled in the machinations of Ardnakelty, Ireland. Trey has developed her carpentry skills and developed a small business with Cal’s mentoring. Lena and Cal are now dating although they maintain independent homes and have decided not to marry. The community has offered subtle support to the Reddy’s, fixing their roof and making helping the family out with small gestures of kindness.

But the peace is short lived when Johnny Reddy, Trey’s father, plops back into everyone’s life, dreaming and scheming, as if he never left. Johnny is not alone, but accompanied by an Englishman Cillian Rushborough, who claims to have relatives from Ardnakelty, who have passed on a tale of gold being found in the land. Johnny convinces the locals make the most of Rushborough’s romantic notions and pull a con and plant gold on the land so Rushborough will invest in local mining rights.

Trey, who is ever seeking revenge for the murder of her brother Brendan, willingly helps her father. She soon realizes however that there is a con within the con. The situation further dissembles when Rushborough is murdered and found by Trey and Banjo on the mountain round just by the Reddy house. Soon the police get involved and a Dublin-based detective starts digging around, pressuring both foes and friends.

The fast moving tale is set in contrast to the slow moving rural Irish landscape in the background. French’s beautiful passages ground the story in its sense of place, with particular rhythms, quality of light, and local customs.

Daylight still slants in at the windows, in long rays turned solid by the lazy hang of dust motes.

The Hunter is a beautiful touching story about families we create and those we cannot escape. I give this book 4.75👍🏼 out of 5👍🏼.

Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt

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Marcellus, our narrator, is a Giant Pacific Octopus, who starts off the novel on “Day 1,299 of Captivity in the Sowell Bay Aquarium”. From his most private spot in his small tank he shares his distain of the chaotic species of humans looking in. He understands all their dialogue-from the pushy father wanting his son to fulfill his dreams of being an athlete to the Aquarium Manager Terry who is chronically underestimating his intelligence. The only exception is Tova, the remarkable cleaning woman who comes at night and shares her life with Marcellus.

In Modesto, California, Cameron Cassmore has yet again lost his job and been kicked out of his girlfriend’s apartment. Cameron sees this as yet another step in his long line of abandonments, beginning with his mother who left him to stay with her sister Jeanne and never returned. Now 30, Cameron’s support network consists of his Aunt, who ended up raising him, and his high school friends Elizabeth and Brad, who are about to have their first baby. Cameron stays on Brad and Elizabeth’s couch, trying to figure out where to go next and reluctantly starts going through a box of his mother’s belongings which Aunt Jeanne has foisted on him. Hidden beneath a large clump of scrunchies he finds a photograph of his mother with a man named Simon Brinks. The photo is wrapped around a high school ring. Cameron is sure Brinks is his father and tracks to the Seattle area.

Van Pelt brings these two narratives together through a touching bit of matchmaking by Marcellus. When Cameron starts covering Tova’s shift Marcellus immediately notices the connection between the two and starts taking pains in his secretive nighttime escapes from his tank to make them see it as well. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a remarkable first novel and beautiful tale about families we choose and those we cannot escape from. I give this book 4đź‘Ťout of 5đź‘Ť.

Do You Remember Being Born, by Sean Michaels

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Do you remember being born follows the life of 75 year old poet Marian Ffarmer who is invited to write a poem in collaboration with an AI Poetry Bot named Charlotte. Marian takes up the challenge and the $80,000 honorarium which would allow her to help her son Courney buy a house.

The oddity of the collaboration and Charlotte’s instantaneous expansive ability to generate “poetic” language makes Marian begin to doubt the project and her ability to produce a long poem in the requisite short period of time. This doubt seeps into her memories of motherhood and the impossibility she faced of being a poet and a mother at the same time.

Marian’s logistics are managed by her driver Rhoda, who remains unflappable despite the changing whims of her client. Rhoda drives her to a late night poetry event, joins her at a day at the zoo, brings her a blueberry smoothy to help with her hangover, and picks up an illicit collaborator Morell to help with the poem. In some undefined way Rhoda helps Marian progress and keep moving. “Proceed” is the button pushed to submit texts to Charlotte. Rhoda allowed Marian to Proceed.

Before I started the book I was skeptical that the voice of a 75 year old woman could be (adequately accurately aspirationally?) written by a male author. But after the first page this question slipped my mind. The challenges of a man passing as a woman was perhaps not unlike from the challenges of a machine passing as a human.

Although not a famous poet and not 75, I do feel out of synch with the cultural interest in AI, and uncomfortable by its potential intrusion in our lives. I do not share the curiosity of my coworkers who are looking to see how AI could make their work more efficient; how they can potentially offload their monotonous tasks to a hive mind.

I like the monotonous tasks, and the way they give my mind pause to consider other more complex projects.

This train of thought is a little far afield from the narrative, but also in keeping with Marian’s wandering memories and reappraisal of her life. A long way of saying that the book gives you a lot to think about. I give this book 4.5👍🏼 out of 5.

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, by Meg Elison

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Notably written before the appearance of Covid 19, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife recounts the story of a global pandemic through the eyes of a nurse working in the maternity ward of a hospital in San Francisco when it first appeared.

The virus was deadly, but particularly so to pregnant women and their unborn children. Suddenly, on her ward, every newborn died and many of the mothers. As the pandemic reached a global scale, the female population takes a nosedive.

After awaking in the hospital morgue, our narrator stumbles home amidst the dead, only to be awaken by a rapist who breaks into her apartment. She is able to kill the rapist but realizes it is no longer safe to be a woman. She chops her hair, gets a girdle to flatten her chest, and sneaks out of SF to find safer havens.

This book shares many elements with Station Eleven except for its focus on women and the effect of their scarcity. In the world of men, the few remaining women seem to be reduced to either sex slave or queen bee. In both cases this occurs in extreme form- either they are forced to crawling around in their underwear with a chain around their neck, or they are calling the shots for massive orgies with 20 men meeting their every need.

It is well past the halfway point when we meet some secluded communities who seem to have maintained their value system. Perhaps I’m naive but it was a little hard to believe. Believability aside, it still made a good read, so I give this book 3.5👍 out of 5👍.

O Caledonia, by Elspeth Parker

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This dreamy literary tale starts off with the discovery of Janet’s dead body, and the absence of a murderer. However it is not a detective story, but rather the lonely tale of the oldest daughter of Vera and Hector. Janet never follows convention, and is happiest when buried in a book of mythology or poetry.

The novel is peppered with quotes from the classics she loves. The references were a bit lost on me although they underscore’s Janet’s deep love of language and literature.

Her descriptions of the Scottish landscape north of Edinburgh where the family lived was the highlight of the book.

Winter descended on the glen; in mid-October came the first thin fall of snow, gone an hour later in the wet wind. The deer ventured down from the hills at dusk, tawny owls shrieked as they hunted through the darkness and shooting stars fled across the night sky. Leafless, the beeches and ashes shivered; the grass was parched with cold; pine and monkey-puzzle stood black and dominant. Only the red earth of the hill tracks retained its colour; the puddles looked like pools of blood.

I give this book 4đź‘Ť out of 5đź‘Ť.

The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith

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In The Running Grave, Cormoran Strike and Robin take on a client who’s son has joined a cult, the Universal Humanitarian Church. The client is concerned that their son Will has lost a significant amount of weight, seems to have his communications controlled, and is giving away his inheritance to the Church. The UHC has become a powerful organization and can afford media and legal consultants to squash or discredit any former members who try to speak out against it. One former member who started a very public blog is found dead.

Robin goes undercover to try to expose the organization, which uses classic brainwashing techniques to transform its members to their insidious ways, including “Spirit Bonding” a term used for the requirement that women have un-protected sex with any male member of the church upon demand (enforced rape). Hard physical work, insufficient food, lack of sleep, and extreme group dynamics make the story a challenge to get through – I was sort of hooked and repulsed, and relieved to get to the end.

The Running Grave continues with the ongoing sexual tension between Cameron and Robin, which still does not resolve at the end of the novel. Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) is a great storyteller and brings life to the psyche of the characters. I give this book 4đź‘Ť out of 5đź‘Ť.