The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom 

384 pages

Published February 2010 by Atria Books

Publisher's Summary: 

Orphaned during her passage from Ireland, young, white Lavinia arrives on the steps of the kitchen house and is placed, as an indentured servant, under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate slave daughter. Lavinia learns to cook, clean, and serve food, while guided by the quiet strength and love of her new family.

In time, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master’s opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous yet protective son. She attempts to straddle the worlds of the kitchen and big house, but her skin color will forever set her apart from Belle and the other slaves.

Through the unique eyes of Lavinia and Belle, Grissom’s debut novel unfolds in a heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of class, race, dignity, deep-buried secrets, and familial bonds.

My Thoughts: 

This is a book that's been on my to-be-read list for years. When I was creating my book club's reading list for 2024, I looked at that list for ideas and noted that this one was also on a lot of lists of best books for book clubs. Before I get into my thoughts on this book, let me tell you two things that may sway your opinion of the book. Number one - every one in my book club really liked this book. Number two - it was a great book for a discussion. That may be, in part, due to my opinions about the book, which pushed people to have to defend it. 

• It felt quite melodramatic and was made more so because everything terrible that could possibly go wrong did. To the point that it lost any tension - I already knew what was going to happen. 
• Too many stereotypes for me - the evil overseer (a la Simon Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin), the mamee who mothers both her own children and the those in the big house, the damsel in distress lady of the house. 
• Entirely too many cases of miscommunication that lead to tragedies for years. 
• I felt like Grissom missed the boat with Marshall. Fair enough, so many terrible things happened to him growing up - an absent father, sexual abuse at the hands of a man his father defended, his mother's lack of caring for him and idolization of his sister, an attachment to a man who lead him astray, a growing hatred of the enslaved people, and alcoholism. One reviewer suggested the book would have been better if Marshall had been an attentive, loving husband to Lavinia and then an evil man with Belle and the other blacks...a Jekyll/Hyde. I definitely agree. We never see anything redeeming about him after a point. 
• I honestly just want to slap Lavinia again and again. Yes, she was young when she came to the plantation; yes, she was white but raised by and lived with the enslaved people. They were her family. Still, she never really seemed to grasp the division between the two. Then there was a very important packet she saw delivered and then completely forgot about for nearly the entire book; the marriage to Marshall, a man she had already known to have a fiery temper; and her belief that Belle's son's father was a man she might have ended up with had it not been for this and her inability to see what was plain to see just by looking at the boy. 

My book club worked hard to change my mind; but, in the end, I felt like this book missed its very real potential. 

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

400 pages

Published August 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. 

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

My Thoughts: 

Confession: this is another one of those books that I picked up without any notion of what it was about; I picked it up solely based on the author, an author I've been meaning to read for years, an author who's written three books I own but have never read. It's time I thought. And now I can't help but wonder if I might have done those other three books a disfavor. Not so much in ignoring them for so long (although that's certainly a disfavor), but in having set the bar so high for them with this one. 

The New York Times calls this book "a murder mystery locked inside a Great American novel" and a web. 

That murder mystery begins in the opening pages of the book, when that skeleton is found and then the mystery disappears until it is finally explained in the closing pages of the book. There is not much investigation, nor an inquiry in 1972 and readers will be forgiven for forgetting about that skeleton over the course of the book. They'll forget about it because McBride's about to weave that web, bringing in more and more story lines that, at first, seem to be leading nowhere. 

We quickly travel back in time to the 1920's and 1930's, to Chicken Hill, where African Americans and Jewish immigrants live in sometimes uneasy peace with each other and with the "real" Americans who live down the hill in Pottstown. McBride introduces to a wide range of characters in the neighborhood and a complicated water rights issue that will try your brain but stay with it, the payoff is well worth it. Not even the smallest detail is a throwaway in this book; everything points to something more. McBride takes his time building the novel; but it never felt too slow, so wrapped up was I in the people of Chicken Hill, the dynamics of the people who lived there, the music and politics of the time. There is humor here, tension, heartache, sadness, satisfaction, and joy and so many small and great lessons to be learned (although McBride is never preaching here). 

I picked this one up without knowing anything about it. Now I doubt I will ever forget it. 

Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Horse by Geraldine Brooks

14 hours, 6 minutes

Read by James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, Katherine Littrell

Published June 2022 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.  

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success. 

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

The only known photo of
Lexington

My Thoughts: 

I've long been a fan of Brooks, first discovering her work when I read People of the Book before I started this blog. Brooks does have something of a pattern, which, to be honest, doesn't always work for me. There are (nearly) always dual time lines (here there are actually three). No matter how well the modern time line works, it always pales (for me) in comparison to the historical time line. Perhaps that's because Brooks' stories nearly always begin with some nugget from history that piques her interest and starts her down her research journey. 

Here that start was learning about Lexington, a horse so fast that the modern-day stopwatch was invented to be able to time him and who sired 236 winners, including Preakness from whom the now-famous race is named. And then he disappeared from history, his articulated skeleton languishing for years in a Smithsonian attic. In her research, Brooks also discovered that Lexington had been painted by several painters, including a lost painting that was referenced to include "black Jarrett." Brooks also discovered the crucial part that enslaved persons played in antebellum horse racing - they were grooms, trainers, and jockeys. 

Painting of Lexington by Thomas Scott

It is Jarrett, and his relationship with Lexington, that is the true heart of this book, the two sold together from one rich man to another. Lexington isn't the only historical figure that Brooks includes in the book - each of Lexington's owners, his first trainer, abolitionist politician Cassius Marcellus Clay, and itinerate painter Thomas Scott are also featured in the book. 

Jarrett, and the role enslaved persons played in horse racing, launched Brooks' book; but as she wrote, Brooks discovered that her story needed to be about race, not just racing. How she fared with this is the subject of some debate; a white woman writing the stories of two young black men is a risk, one Brooks was bold enough to point out in the book. Here again, I felt like she addressed this situation better in the historical parts of the book and was disappointed in how she finished out the modern story line in regard to this. 

Brooks is always strongest when she's using her research to guide her stories; her books are always filled with details but rarely to the point where I feel like she's trying to cram in everything she's learned. Here we learn about how scientists clean bones, how skeletons can reveal so much about an animals life, about art preservation, and, most of all about horse racing in a time when horse racing was a much different sport. 

The book is told from several points of view, fleshing out the full history of the characters and their stories, including the only first person narrative told as diary entries made by Scott.  As with the time lines, some of the points of view are stronger than others. The audiobook uses multiple readers for the different points of view and only one really didn't work for me; otherwise, the readers served to enhance the reading experience for me.

Is it sometimes a bumpy ride? Yes. But despite the flaws, I really enjoyed this one; Brooks' strengths far outweigh the faults in my opinion. And, as always with her books, Brooks has been doing some digging on my own to learn more about the subjects she's presented and the historical figures she's included. I'm always a fan of a book that makes me want to keep learning.