Thursday, February 6, 2025

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Beautyland
 by Marie-Helene Bertino
Read by Andy Arndt
8 hours, 56 minutes
Published January 2024 by Farrar, Straus, Giroux

Publisher's Summary: 
At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings. 

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.

My Thoughts: 
One of the best parts of being part of a family of readers is that they make another great source of book recommendations. In this case, Beautyland was recommended to me by Mini-me. As much as I like to think of myself as reading somewhat diversely, Mini-me puts me to shame. They read everything manga, sci-fi, fantasy, nonfiction, literary fiction. Beautyland is billed as science fiction, what with Adina being an alien communicating with her home planet. But this book can't be so narrowly defined; it reads much more like literary fiction to me. 

Adina "activates" when she is four-years-old, at the moment her head hits the concrete after she is pushed by the father she won't see again until she is an adult. That night she "wakes up" in a classroom with otherworldly teachers who tell her that her mission is to find out if Earth is a planet where others from her planet can survive when their dying planet is no longer viable. When her mother brings home a fax machine from a neighbor's trash and puts it in Adina's room, Adina discovers that if she sends a fax, she will get a reply she believes is coming from her handlers. She begins regularly sending them her impressions of our planet, the humans who inhabit it, and her own life. 
"I require speech lessons and corrective lenses and most likely teeth braces. I am an expensive extra­terrestrial."

‘‘The ego of the human male is by far the most dangerous aspect of human society.’’ 

 ‘‘Death’s biggest surprise is that it does not end the conversation.’’ 

Her observations are often spot on, often touching, and frequently amusing. Often equally amusing are the responses she receives.  

Adina is young, but wise enough never to mention the nightly lessons she will have in the coming years or that fact that she is from another planet that can't be seen. Still others can plainly see that Adina is unusual. It's that very fact that makes her a character that will stay with me for a very long time. While almost all reviewers refer to this as a work of science-fiction, I'm still unsure. Was Adina an alien being or a woman whose brain was rewired by trauma that left her with a unique life experience and take on the world around her? Beautyland works either way, and maybe the fact that I was left wondering made it all that much more impressive. 


Tuesday, February 4, 2025

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

By Any Other Name
by Jodi Picoult 
544 pages
Published August 2024 by Random House Publishing Group
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley

Publisher's Summary:
Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.

In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.

My Thoughts: 
Until a little over six years ago I had never read one of Picoult's books. I have now read five of them. My previous reluctant had mostly to do with my reluctance to read books that dealt with the latest "hot" topic. And while the main theme of this book, feminism, is certainly a hot topic, it is also a theme that resonates through the centuries which is the very reason this book is written in dual timelines. 

I have a tough time with dual time lines. I understand why authors utilize a modern timeline to help readers see the importance of stories set in the past. In this case, Picoult uses the story set in the present to introduce ideas to the reader that there's another person who plays into the idea that William Shakespeare was not the author of the works attributed to him. In fact, at least one of the true authors of the works may well have been a woman. Emilia Bassano was a real person who lived in the time of Shakespeare. The fact of the matter is that Bassano had skills and life experiences that Shakespeare did not, skills and life experiences that would have allowed her to write about the Danish court or life in Italy. 

Inevitably for me, one story nearly always outshines the other. Generally that's the story set in the past and this book was no exception, as difficult as it was to read. While this is a work of fiction, Picoult has crafted it around the known details of Bassano's life and the realities of women of the time. Picoult's vision of Bassano's life is a tough read. She is sold into becoming a courtesan at age 13. When she becomes pregnant, she is sold to a man who will horribly abuse her for decades and drink away everything they have, she will never be able to be with the man she truly loves, and her writing will only find an audience through a man who underpays her for her work. 

I felt like both story lines could have been pared down considerably.  Melina's story got pulled in too many directions - a love story, a storyline involving her father, a misunderstanding that puts her into an impossible (but also unbelievable) situation, and a detour where Melina is the bad guy in a diversity battle.  Emilia's story sometimes felt a little repetitive and that Picoult had too many terrible things happen to her. 

But Emilia's story is well worth the read as is Melina's fight to bring Emilia's story to life. I highly recommend reading the Author's Notes and the References to Shakespeare at the back of the book, which I found terrifically interesting and gave me a greater appreciation for the ways that Picoult had managed to work into the story the works attributed to Shakespeare. 

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Life: It Goes On - February 2

Happy Sunday! The neighbor's children are playing outside today and their son is wearing gym shorts. Mind you, I would not wear shorts today, it being only 53 degrees, but still. It does start to get a person thinking that spring can't be that far away, even if Punxsutawney Phill saw his shadow this morning. I'm prefer Michigan's Woody the Woodchuck, who predicted an early spring. 

Are you old enough to remember the show Bewitched and the character Gladys Kravitz?  That's kind of what I feel like when I'm sitting here at my desk, looking out the front windows, perhaps judging what the neighbors are doing. What age was I when I started to get cranky about someone who wasn't visiting me parking in front of my house? 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, as recommended to me by Mini-me. I'm going to have to get more recommendations from them! Today I started Cozy Minimalist Home, a book I actually own in print and have read; but since I'm working on the room hushing with the group right now, I decided a reread might be a good idea. 


Watched: We finally saw Wicked last night. We both enjoyed it; thought the costumes, cinematography, and acting was good. But the Big Guy thought a lot of the songs were really dull, which I know is blasphemous to those who love the show. 

Read: I finished Jodi Picoult's By Any Other Name and highly recommend reading Picoult's notes at the end of the book. Yesterday I started Thirty Umrigar's latest, The Museum of Failures.


Made: For the most part, cleaning out the freezer remains the goal so we've been throwing together some kind of strange things. Except for the night that BG came home from Costco with mini-corn dogs so we had those for supper. Because we're grown adults who eat like children some days. 


Enjoyed: Tuesday was a milestone bday for BG so we went out to eat with friends. It also happened to be the 15th anniversary celebration for a local restaurant so we joined in that celebration. It was quite an event, with four courses, three wines from Italy introduced to us by their supplier and the owner of the vineyards where the wine is produced, and a visit to our table by the chef. Great food and a lot of fun. We even came home with a bottle of wine!

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: Room hushing continues. Last week was the bedroom. For the most part, I really love my bedroom. But as soon as I cleared the surfaces, I could really see somethings that I wanted to do in there. So I've redone my gallery wall, switched chairs, redone the top of my dresser and bookcase, and reorganized the way my jewelry is stored/displayed. I'll join in again with whatever room is being done this week, but I'm also working on Go Simplified's calendar for working your way through your home. January was bathrooms; February is entertaining spaces (this week is china and silver - will this be the time I finally part with one of my sets of china?). 


Thinking About: Our cat had surgery on Friday. She came through just fine, but it's really gotten me thinking about what life will be like when she's gone. We likely won't get another pet. I won't miss cat hair everywhere, litter boxes, and all of the other gross cat things. But golly I'm going to miss having a sweet girl curled up at my feet while I sleep or want to be snuggled first thing in the morning. 


Feeling: I took a half day off Friday and will be off again tomorrow...just because. It feels so good to be at Sunday and not be spending any time today thinking about work tomorrow. 


Looking forward to: BG's bday celebration with family this weekend. We're not going to have the friends  with us that I was planning on, but I have a lot of fun things planned and he's going to be so surprised. 


Question of the week: How's your reading going so far this year? Even though I felt like I was reading more, I only managed to finish five books in January. 

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

Pineapple Street
by Jenny Jackson
320 pages
Published March 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary:
Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be. 

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.

My Thoughts: 
This book was our January book club selection, recommended by one of our members. It was also a Good Morning America book club selection and it appeared on a number of best of 2023 lists. I had really high hopes going into this one. I wish it would have lived up to them. Unfortunately, for me, it didn't. Which is not to say there wasn't something to like about it. 

What I Liked: 
  • The ideas of it: middle-class girl marries into rich family and has to learn to navigate that environment, rich person begins to wake up to her privilege and wants to better herself, mom realizes that, while she loves her kids, being a stay-at-home mom isn't necessarily for her.
  • There were a lot of themes addressed: family, privilege, racism, classism, infidelity, marriage, philanthropy and its warts. 
  • The jabs at the truly rich, in so far as it went. 
  • The characters, in so far as they were developed. One I really did like was Tilda. Why her? Because she didn't change - she never apologized for who she was and remained an elitist snob. Which makes her not so much a character I liked, but I appreciated the reality of her character. 
What Didn't Work For Me: 
  • Those ideas I liked weren't as fully developed as I would have liked. I get that Jackson was trying to write a book that addressed some big issues but with a lighthearted approach. That approach often works for me (Lian Moriarty is terrific at it). Here I really wanted more depth. 
  • All too often I wanted to slap almost all of the characters. Sasha married Chip in no small part because she wasn't too intensely in love with him; yet even before they are married, he hasn't stood up for her when it comes to his family. Why would she marry someone who picks his sisters over her? Why doesn't she stand up to him even after they are married and demand he choose her as his priority? Why doesn't he see that he never puts her first? Georgiana, who has an affair with a married man, who is truly oblivious to her privilege, even though she works in a non-profit to help those in need worldwide. Georgiana and Darley who make up their minds about Sasha early on and refuse to give her any grace, even knowing that she isn't from the world they've been raised in. They adore their brother, but think he's so clueless that he's marry a gold-digger? 
  • There are plenty of jabs, as I said, at the rich. But then Jackson goes on about their clothes, their homes, their jewelry, their cars, their airplanes...all in a way that appeared to me to be meant to impress. Nothing is made, for example, of the fact that Brooklyn has been so gentrified that the people who used to live there have been chased out by astronomical prices. 
  • I felt like the growth that we did see in the characters was too rapid. Georgiana suddenly wakes up one day and recognizes that she has well more money than she will ever need and decides to give it all away? (At the same time, she doesn't recognize that she's been looking down on her own sister-in-law for having come to the marriage with less.) 
  • Georgiana becomes an addict (although it's never called that) and then she just suddenly isn't, without any work put into it. That's not how addiction works. 
Now, I do need to tell you that in addition to all of those glowing reviews from well-known writers and all of those spots on best book lists, everyone else in my book club liked this book a lot more than I did. And it does make a good book for discussion, so in that regard, I would recommend it. 

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Happy Sunday! I've got sunshine, it's a big football day, and I get Tommy cake tonight to I'm a happy girl today. What's Tommy cake, you ask? It's a delicious chocolate cake with an insanely rich frosting that the Big Guy's grandmother made and she started calling it Tommy cake because BG's big brother loved it when he was little and he was her favorite. I. Can't. Wait! 

That pic to the left? Not today. Not any time this winter. While the south has gotten a lot of snow this past week, we haven't had this much snow all of the winter combined. We have, however, had a mean cold streak this past week - hats, mittens, scarves all required if you were going to be outside at all. On the plus side, January is almost done - the LONGEST month of the year! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I started Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertina, which was recommended to me by Mini-me. Very unusual and I'm really enjoying it. Meanwhile, they're reading Lauren Groff's Matrix, which we gave them for Christmas. 


Watched: Will and Harper, which we both highly recommend. It's a story about friendship, acceptance, finding your place in the world. Go into it open-minded and learn something. 


Read: Finally, Jodi Picoult's By Any Other Name. At almost 500 pages, it's taking me a while. 


Made: We're working on trying to use up the food we already have, instead of buying anything more (except milk and fresh produce). This week we've made a peanut stir fry (that also became chicken fried rice), tacos (leftover meat then became taco salads), chili cheese dogs (BG's favorite Saturday lunch). Partly this is a matter of not wasting food. Partly it's a matter of making room so we can stock up before prices begin to soar, which we fear will happen. 


Enjoyed: BG is having a milestone birthday this week and I've been planning a big weekend getaway to celebrate and having so much fun with it. He is completely clueless, which makes it even more fun!

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: I'm behind with the Cozy Minimalist communities Hushing Challenge for this past week, which was the family room so I'll be working on that. I've had time to do it, but it's a daunting task when you have a lot of bookshelves in a room and a lot of stuff on them. And then there will be a new room to work on announced on Tuesday. 


Thinking About: Ways to fight back.


Feeling: Overwhelmed and incredibly sad for our country, particularly for its most vulnerable citizens. 


Looking forward to: Dinner out on Tuesday for BG's bday. We're going with friends for a special event at a really good restaurant. 


Question of the week: If you're feeling like I am, how are you managing? 

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Hidden Valley Ranch: Inside the Mind of An American Family by Robert Kolker

Hidden Valley Ranch: Inside the Mind of An American Family 
by Robert Kolker
Read by Sean Pratt
13 hours, 8 minutes
Published April 2020 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
 
Publisher's Summary: 
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.


My Thoughts: 
In the early 1990's, the University of Nebraska football team had a player whose mental health ended his playing career and eventually ended up with him being shot and paralyzed by police. At the time, the word was that he had schizophrenia (that is not the diagnosis they later gave him). By that time, I had two small boys and I spent some portion of their late teens and early twenties worrying about schizophrenia because of what I'd learned all of those years earlier, terrified that one of them might begin exhibiting signs in his early twenties. Fortunately, neither did. 

Don and Mimi Galvin were not so fortunate. Because of mental illness, one of their sons killed himself and then his girlfriend, one of them sexually assaulted their two daughters, two of them died after decades of taking medication. 

When their eldest, Don Jr., the golden child began exhibiting troubling signs of mental illness in the 1960's, the Galvins worked hard to hide his illness from the outside world. Mimi, in particular, worked hard to get him the help he needed. But help was hard to find then, as it continued to be as one and then another of the boys' mental health declined, to find the help they needed. There was very little knowledge of schizophrenia - no known cause (nature vs. nurture being an ongoing battle amongst those who did research the illness) and no effective medical treatments that didn't leave the patient a shadow of themselves. As that young football player had done, the Galvin boys repeatedly stopped taking the medication, convinced that it was not helping or that its help came at too high a cost. Through it all, Mimi continued to fight for her sick boys, at the expense of her healthy children.

Alongside the story of the Galvins, Kolker also gives readers some background on the history of schizophrenia research and treatment, introducing readers to scientists and doctors who, in an effort to prove the biological and genealogical cause of the disease, worked tirelessly to find answers. '

Eventually the two paths crossed. Because of the high incidence of the disease in the Galvin family (as well as hundreds of other families who also had high percentages of family members with the disease), the researchers were able to reach a great number of conclusions as to the biological cause of the disease and to work toward finding a medical treatment. Here's where our medical system has failed all of those who came after the Galvins - there is not a lot of money to be made in developing and marketing medications to treat schizophrenics and so pharmaceutical companies don't. 

As I read, this book reminded me very much of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, although the Galvins were not unwilling participants. And unlike that book, this one doesn't end with an "at least groundbreaking research resulted and so many lives have been saved." Kolker ends with us understanding that, despite everything that researchers have learned, there's still a long way to go in finding out how to treat patients with schizophrenia. 

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Tenth of December by George Saunders

Tenth of December
by George Saunders
Read by George Saunders
5 hours, 40 minutes
Published January 2013 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 
In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In “Home,” a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.”


My Thoughts: 
I feel like a broken record when I say this, but it seems to be a truism (for me, at least) when I tell you that in this collection of short stories some were stronger than others. 

Maybe it's because I listened to it. As much a fan of having authors read their own works as I am, here is was something of a problem for me. Professional readers or actors are able to alter their voices to make the characters from story to story unique. Mr. Saunders either isn't or chose not to do so. Because of that, it was difficult for me to adjust to new stories because it felt very much like I was still listening to the main character from the last story. 

Maybe it's just me, because "real" reviewers praise the heck out of this collection. Perhaps I just don't get it; perhaps, once again, it would have made more sense for me to read one story a day and not read straight through. Maybe it's just that my reading mood, my mood in general, was not in a place to take in all of the unrelenting harshness of the stories.

All of that being said, some of these stories really made an impact. In "Victory Lap," I was literally on the edge of my car seat, not going in to work, as the story finished up, terrified by what might happen to the children involved. "Escape from Spiderhead" made me really consider the choices we make and truly what our criminal justice system and science might be capable of doing. So many of the stories (all?) deal with human beings capacity for hope, but also for delusion. No story captures that better than "Al Roosten." The story that really touched me the most was "Tenth of December," where a dying man, set out to commit suicide to avoid a slow, even more humiliating end, wanders out into the cold woods to die. When he sees a young boy fall into a not quite frozen lake, though, he needs to find the strength and determination to save him. 

And here I am, in the end, questioning whether or not short stories are for me. Or are the really good stories worth searching for amongst the stories that don't work as well for me? 




Sunday, January 19, 2025

Life: It Goes On - January 19

Happy Sunday! It's sunny here...at least for now...but only a whopping 3 degrees so we're hunkering down. Sitting here next to the windows on the north side of the house, it's considerably cooler than where I've been sitting, enjoying my morning coffee and watching CBS Sunday Morning. May have to grab a cardigan and some slippers if I'm going to sit here long enough to finish this and write up a couple of reviews. How many more days until summer? 

Last Week I: 


Listened To: Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker. I don't have any audiobooks that have become available just now, and I'm way behind on podcasts, so I'll probably listen to some of those until a book becomes available. 


Watched: Football, college basketball, women's professional volleyball. Did I tell you that Omaha is home to two professional women's teams? Last week we watched one team and this week we watched the other. Pretty excited that ESPN feels like there's a decent enough audience that they will be showing at least some of the matches for that team. It also has Nebraska alum on it, included two that are Olympians. 


Read: Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson for book club this week. 


Made: What did we eat this week? I'd like to tell you but I honestly can't remember anything other than homemade mac and cheese. I cannot get myself in the mood to cook lately. 


Enjoyed: Wednesday was hair night and you know I always love that. Friday we had dinner with friends and I always enjoy that. But what I most enjoyed was texts and FaceTime calls I was getting from Miss H, who is on a trip to Phoenix this week. Life was really hard for her for a really long time and it makes this mama's heart so happy to see her loving life and having great adventures. 

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: This past week, as part of the Cozy Minimalist Community's House Hushing Challenge, I started "hushing" my house. In hushing you clear the surfaces in a room (at least) and live with it emptied for at least 24 hours then make the decision on what to bring back. Tuesday the next room will be announced and I'm eager to start that, after seeing this past week's results. 


Thinking About: Less than two months until Daylight Savings Time begins and I can't wait for sun in the evenings. I mean, it's dark in the morning here until about the time I'm half way to work everyday - I don't care if it's light then since I can't see outside during the day anyway. 


Feeling: Lighter. This week I "hushed" my kitchen. Which is to say that I took everything off of the counters and refrigerator and lived with it like that for 24 hours before deciding what needed to come back in. I found new homes for several things (my big mixer will now live in the basement since I only use it a few times a year and I am loving the the result. Now to work on the tops of the cupboards!

Looking forward to: Book club this week. 


Question of the week: January tends to be the time that people either decide to start living healthier or to declutter and reorganize (or both). Are you one of those people, if so, which do you do? I have given up on using January as the time to start a regime for lifestyle (the gym is too full, there's often too much decadent food left over from the holidays, it's too cold to walk outside). But you know I'm all about any kickstart I can get to declutter and organize! 


Tuesday, January 14, 2025

The Antidote by Karen Russell

The Antidote
by Karen Russell
432 pages
Published March 2025 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.

My Thoughts: 
The Antidote was a great book to finish off 2024. It defies classification: it is both historical fiction and fantasy. It is political commentary, sweeping saga, intimate personal stories. It is devastating and hopeful, tense but not without humor. It's set in one of the most notable times of this country's history but addresses concerns that span the centuries. And it's set in a fictional small town in Nebraska, but it's packed with real places, the real history of the state, and real photographs taken by those sent to record that time.
"Black Sunday began as a gash in the western sky, growing wider and wider and spilling down dirt instead of blood. Sometimes I imagine the glee of those journalists in the New York City papers - typing up the story of our worst day in their fancy language. Adjusting the margins and pushing our tragedy into a skinny column, just like old Marvin at the funeral home shoving a tall corpse into a tight suit."
"Imagine every ghost rising up to hurl their cemetery earth at the living. That was the sound we heard last Sunday afternoon. At 3:00 p.m the sun was murdered in cold blood, in full view of every woman and child. The sun sank into black cloud. Buried alive, at a shocking altitude, but the duster to end all dusters."
We get the story primarily from The Prairie Witch, Asphodel Oletsky, Harp Oletsky, and Cleo Allfrey whose names will change as chapter headings as the books progresses. But we also get chapters from the points of view of a cat and a scarecrow, chapters that are The Antidote's history, and one of Harp's "deposits." In less skilled hands, all of this shifting could be confusing; but Russell skillfully blends all of these points of view at the same time she is moving the story forward while giving us the backstory of the land and the people. The characters are fully realized, their travails their own but their concerns and hopes universal. While the full story is slow to develop, it's never drags and it's well worth the time spent when everything comes to a conclusion with a second cataclysmic (and real) event. 
"The Republican River became a four-mile-wide whitewater monster, thrashing its long tail from eastern Colorado to Oxford, Nebraska. Twenty-four inches of rain fell in twenty-four house! Bridges split and splintered apart. Hundreds of miles of road got washed out. The river poured forward with enough force to carry cars and rooftops. Walls floated away. Friends became cadavers in outfits we recognized, floating beside tractors and drowned cattle. Bodies were seen riding on the crest through the middle of towns, their shy faces staring underwater even as we screamed their names."
At a time when I was really struggling to focus on any book, this one grabbed me and kept me reading. The concepts, the history, the characters, the writing, the pacing, the creativity all worked to make this book that will stay with me a long time. As much as it is set in the past, it is filled with lessons to be learned, not the least of which are to see how history is repeating itself and how human nature remains unchanged. Russell leaves us with hope - we see that there is an opportunity to learn from the past and to change our future. If only we will listen. 

One final note, if you read this book, make sure you read the Land Lost Acknowledgment and the Author's Note at the end. 



Sunday, January 12, 2025

Life: It Goes On - January 12

Happy Sunday from Omaha, where, at least for now, the sun is finally shining. I've been whinny about the grey and the low pressure system; but I'm grateful to have dodged the ice and snow storms that have crippled so much of the country. Now if we could both just get healthy at the same time! 

We finally got this Christmas tree down on Friday. I'd taken off all of the ornaments a week ago but needed Big Guy to help with the lights and the tree. Between one thing and another, it just didn't get done all week. What a relief to finally have the family room back in order and my favorite chair back in the room. It's my favorite place to curl up and read! 

Last Week I: 


Listened To: I finished my first book of the year, George Saunders' The Tenth of December and started back up with Hidden Valley Road. When I looked at my reading numbers for 2024, I had read very few short story collections and not as much nonfiction as usual, so I'm off to a good start in turning that around in 2025. 


Watched: The usual football, college basketball, and the season opener of one of Omaha's professional women's volleyball teams. What an exciting match, with Husker alumni on both sides of the net and a record women's professional volleyball crowd in attendance. We also watch a couple of episodes each of Shrinking, Loudermilk, and Only Murders In The Building


Read: I started both Jodi Picoult's By Any Other Name (finally!) and All The Colors of the Dark, by Chris Whitaker, but not sure which one I'm going to stick with to the end first. I did not, as I had said I would, get back to either of the books I'd been reading as part of readalongs. 


Made: It's been so cold here lately so it's soup season. This week we made potato soup and corn chowder. 

Enjoyed: We went to see a movie...in the theater!...on Monday - A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalomet. Well done movie with really good performances. I'm not a huge Bob Dylan fan so I could have done with a little less of the music, but the friends we went with really enjoyed that. 


We also enjoyed an overnight visit from my brother who was headed up to pick up some beef. Do people outside of the midwest buy meat by the half or quarter of an animal? 

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: BG is celebrating a big birthday this month so I'm working on a little family surprise for him. With everyone's schedules, it may not happen until a week or so after his birthday so I'll have to find another way to celebrate on the actual date. 


Thinking About: California. It's so huge and overwhelming to think about and my heart breaks for all of those affected. So much as been lost, so much that can never be replaced. It's so frustrating to see some trying to make this a political issue at a time when people are suffering. 


Feeling: BG is sick again. I'm pretty convinced that he's never fully recovered from what we got in November. I'd like to be sympathetic; but, honestly, I'm feeling a little cranky about having to wait on him again and do everything around here. 


Looking forward to: Last week ended up being kind of a weird week so this week I'm looking forward to a normal week. Although I have no idea what's on the calendar, not having turned the page yet. 


Question of the week: How are you holding up, now that the holidays are behind us and most of winter lies ahead?