Three Days in June

Three Days in June is a short, optimistic affirmation of live, love and family.  The novel is quintessential Ann Tyler, with seemingly straight forward characters and situations reflecting the complexities of life.

The novel starts, on a day in June, with Gail, the assistant head mistress at a prestigious girl’s school in Baltimore, dreading her daughter’s rehearsal dinner later that night.  The headmistress calls Gail into her office, tells her she is retiring and that the school is bringing a new headmistress and assistant from Nashville.  Gail expresses surprise that she has not been considered and is told “’Face it: this job is a matter of people skills…And surely you’ll be the first to admit that social interactions have never been your strong point.’”

Gail heads home and broods over the fact that her daughter, Debbie, is having a day of beauty with her soon to be mother in law and that Gail was not invited.  Gail’s ex-husband Max shows up at her door with a cat and explains that he needs to stay with Gail because Debbie’s fiancée, Kenneth is allergic to cats.  Gail is less than thrilled.  Max teaches at risk students and she met Gail after college when he moved into the house she was living in with other young teachers.

Debbie shows up at their house and says she cannot marry her fiancé, Kenneth, because she found out he cheated.  Gail supports that decision but Max thinks the issue is more complicated.  Kenneth denies that he cheated on Debbie and Debbie decides to go forward.  “I’d been scared of the wrong thing, it turned out.  Not that Debbie would marry Kenneth even after he’d betrayed her, but that she would take his word for it when he claimed he hadn’t.”

The rehearsal dinner is pleasant although Gail struggles with Kenneth’s mother, Sophie, who is glamorous and outgoing.  After the dinner Gail is exhausted.  “I don’t think I’d ever come home from a social event without feeling drained and exhausted.”

Day 2 is the wedding.  Debbie shows up during the day and insists on taking Max to buy a suite so that he does not wear the same jacket and pants he wore to the rehearsal dinner.  During the day Gail does a lot of reminiscing.  She thinks about Gail as a child, Max’s parents and her marriage to Max and why it did not last.  “I wondered how it was that anyone on earth found the courage to marry.”  In the space of all those thoughts are some surprises.

Max and Gail take Gail’s mother to the wedding.  Gail’s mother is a character with lots of opinions.  During the wedding they learn there is tension between Max and his sister and that the sister is refusing to give a toast.  Despite the tensions, the wedding is a success and they make it through the evening.

On day 3, Max stays with Gail and they go to lunch.  He suggests that she move to where he lives and teach at his school.  They seem to be getting along and the books ends with her considering her options.  The novel is lovely, funny and uplifting.  You can reserve it at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on: https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/332926

The Rachel Indident

It is 2021 and Rachel Murray is an Irish journalist, married, pregnant and living in London, when her 2009 self presents itself in a pub and she decides to tell her story.

In 2009, Rachel was a college student living in Cork Ireland and working at a book store.  The country was in a financial recession and Rachel’s parents (her father a dentist and her mother also working in the practice) had fallen on hard times.  Rachel meets James Devlin at the book store and they become fast friends.  James suggests she move out of her parents’ home and live with him. Rachel is fairly certain that James is gay but he denies it.  She decides to move in with him.

Rachel has a crush on her professor, Dr. Fred Byrne.  He is 38 years old in 2009 and married to Deenie, a book publisher.  Dr. Byrne has published a book call “The Kensington Diet”, which is about Irish writers during the famine.  Dr. Byrne shows up at the book store and asks how many copies the store has ordered of his book.  Rachel looks on the computer, sees that the number is zero and tells Dr. Byrne that the store has ordered 15, all customer requests.  She then arranges for him to launch the book at the store.  She is hoping she can use the opportunity to seduce him.

When the book launch is over she goes to the stock room to return some of the books where she finds James and Dr. Byrne in a passionate embrace.  This is the beginning of an intensive romantic relationship between the two.

Rachel meets a man named James Carey.  He is six years older than Rachel and seems to be at loose ends.  They begin a passionate relationship, but James is erratic.  Long stretches of time pass when he is absent and uncommunicative and the relationship ends.  In the meantime, she is trying to figure out what she wants to do after graduation and is considering publishing.  Dr. Byrne arranges for her to have an internship with Deenie for a modest (very Modest) wage.    Dr. Byrne and James are on and off and James decides that he and Rachel should move to London.  James has been writing a television show and is hoping to sell the show. Rachel is considering whether to move.

Carey and Rachel reconnect and she has trouble telling him that she plans to move to London with James.  Carey’s mother becomes ill and he moves home to help.  She is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and, for a variety of reasons Rachel and Carey’s relationship is on and off.

In the meantime, Rachel is doing more and more work for Deenie but Deenie does not increase her pay.  “I was terrified of being ungrateful, so instead I said nothing, and just became resentful.”

The bookstore falls on hard times and Rachel is fired.  She gets a job at a local call center which she finds absolutely mind numbing.  Deenie accuses her of having an affair with Dr. Byrne and ultimately, Rachel uses the accusation to her benefit and moves to London.  James gets a job with a night show and moves to New York where he becomes fabulously wealthy.

Rachel returns to Ireland to visit her family with her newborn son.  While she is there she faces her past through an encounter with Deenie.  If you want to know the rest you have to read the book. The Rachel Incident is a clever, twisting coming of age story, with joy and sorrow and a lot of humor.  You can reserve the novel at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on: https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/213801

The Great Mistake

“The Great Mistake” is a really interesting piece of historical fiction about the almost forgotten Andrew Haswell Green.  The novel begins when Mr. Green, at the age of 83, is gunned down in front of his home on Park Avenue in 1903, in a case of mistaken identity.  And no, this is not a spoiler; it is in fact (or at least most of it) the first line in the novel and also information that is readily available to anyone who might be curious enough to look up Mr. Green on Wikipedia!

But who was Andrew Haswell Green?  The novel tells us that he was born in 1820 “into a respected Massachusetts family that fell, during his youth, into debt.”  He was the seventh child of 11 children and was considered quiet, thoughtful and not particularly manly. 

At age 15, his father sends him to New York to work as an apprentice in a small store.  He sleeps in a damp basement and is given very little food.  One day while at work, a man enters the store looking for extract of tomato pills.  That man is Samuel Tilden, who had attended Yale and was in New York for law school.  The two men become very close friends, despite the differences in their social status.  However, when Tilden discovers that people are talking about the friendship, he chooses to distance himself from Green.

Green takes ill and returns to his father’s farm.  After some time he learns that there is a need for men to serve as supervisors on a sugar estate in Trinidad.  He is told that “by working in Trinidad for some brief months [he] could make a reasonable wage while…supporting the efforts of the Anti-Slavery Society in approving conditions of workers over there, who were newly free…”

Green goes to Trinidad where things are not exactly as described.  Ultimately he returns to New York with some money and returns to his friendship with Tilden.  He convinces Tilden to train him in the law and his career begins to take off.  He becomes the president of the New York Board of Education and later the Comptroller of the City of New York (where he receives a bomb in the mail).  Green is credited with the creation of Central Park, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other New York City landmarks.  He is also credited with chairing the committee that consolidated Manhattan with Brooklyn, western Queens County and Staten Island.

Ultimately Tilden is elected Governor of New York and makes a run for President.  Tilden and Green remain friends until Tilden’s death. 

The novel is also a sort of detective story.  Inspector McCluskey is investigating Green’s murder and the murderer, Cornelius Williams.  The investigation takes McCluskey into interesting parts of the city and we learn a bit about Williams and New York’s racial divide. Each chapter in the novel is the name of a gate in Central Park, where there is a park bench dedicated to Mr. Green.  The novel is wonderful and paints an interesting picture of New York at a specific period in time.  You can reserve the novel at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on: https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/171145

Playground

“Playground” is a futuristic story about the wonders of the ocean, the possibilities of artificial intelligence, mankind’s insatiable desire to monetize nature and the barriers of race and poverty in interpersonal relations.  And more than all of that, Playground is a compelling, hard to put town novel!

Todd Keane is a technology genius and is writing his story at the age of 57 while his mind is deteriorating from dementia with Lewy bodies.  Todd was born into a well to do family in Chicago.  His father was a trader at the Chicago Board of Trade and his parents fought constantly.  Todd spent his childhood taking apart electronics and figuring out how they worked.  At the age of 10 Todd beats his father at backgammon and as a reward his father takes him to a bookstore and lets him pick any book he wants.  He chooses a book called “Clearly it is Ocean”.  The author is Evelyne Beaulieu and Todd falls in love with her based on her picture on the jacket cover.  He reads the book every day for two weeks and “When I finished, I started it again from the beginning.” Todd attends St. Ignatius College Prep, a prestigious private school.

Rafi Young, an African American from a working class background, gets admitted to St. Ignatius College Prep, where he meets Todd Keane.  They become friends over chess and in their sophomore year, Rafi wins the “Keane Fellowship,” endowed by Todd’s father.  Although the two go to school together and are friends, their lives are worlds apart.  Todd comes from parents of privilege and Ravi’s father is a firefighter and his mother a bus driver.  They live in very different neighborhoods.  Their relationship revolves around games, starting with chess and evolving to GO!.  Rafi is very bookish, while Todd becomes interested in computers.

Rafi becomes obsessed with a book entitled “The Philosophy of the Common Task”, by Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov.  The book is about the future of evolution and suggests that it is possible to engineer immortality.  Todd and Rafi both decide to go to the University of Illinois for college, where Todd focuses on computers and Artificial Intelligence and Rafi focuses on literature.  At the University Rafi meets the love of his life, Ina Aroita. Ina has an interesting and unique background, having been raised on a variety of islands.  The relationship among the three of them is complex.

Meanwhile, the novel also focuses on Evelyne Beaulieu, the author of “Clearly it is Ocean”.  Through her father, Evelyne learns to dive and is focused on becoming an oceanographer.  The time period is the mid-1950s and the world is not supportive of women explorers.  Evelyne presses on and is able to become quite expert and famous for her explorations of the sea.  She also marries and has two children.  Her observations of the ocean and its inhabitants is an absolutely fascinating part of the book.

The novel then moves to a more current time period on the island of Makatea, where Ina and Rafi and their two adopted children are four of the island’s 82 inhabitants.  Evelyne Beaulieu is also spending time on the island. By this time, Rafi and Todd have not spoken to each other for decades.  Life on the island is simple, but a proposal from an American company to develop the island and build sea based communities is threatening its beauty and quiet.  It is this proposal that brings everyone in the novel back together.

The novel is in part an environmental warning, as well as a mystery, and a fantasy about the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence, with a little magical realism thrown in.  The novel is fabulous and was long listed for the 2024 Booker Prize.  You can reserve “Playground” at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on: https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/295502

Table For Two

“Table for Two” is a wonderful collection of six short stories and one novella.  The short stories all take place, at least in part, in New York City and the novella, which is one of the most enjoyable things I have read in a long time, takes place in Los Angeles.

Each of the stories reflect the ups and downs of marriage, money, culture and life in general.  For instance, the first story, “The Line”, is a tale of two Russian peasants just trying to survive in 1918 Moscow.  Pushkin, a farmer, and his wife Irina, move to Moscow where Pushkin is completely unprepared for every job he attains.  Irina, on the other hand, works 12 hour days and  is a member of the workers’ committee.  Her disgust with her husband’s inability to hold a job is best illustrated when she exclaims “’Dismissed!…How does one get fired from Communism?’”  Irina assigns her husband the domestic tasks of standing in line for bread and life’s other essentials.  Even this he cannot do properly, but because of his kind nature he finds himself agreeing to stand in line for other people.  This job as a stand in becomes his full time vocation and ultimately lands the couple in New York, where it all starts over.

In “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett”, Timothy, a recent college graduate, spends his time at the New York Public Library, waiting to become a famous novelist.  Unfortunately, Timothy has no story to tell.  While sitting in the library he meets a man who owns a bookstore that sells rare books to collectors.  The value of the books increases if the books are autographed.  While working at the store, Timothy helps attain some seemingly impossible autographs.  By the end of the story, Timothy definitely has a story to tell.

“I will Survive” is a story of a mother daughter relationship and their growing understanding of each other.  Nell’s mother Peggy lives in the upper east side with her second husband, John.  Peggy’s first husband and Nell’s father,  Harry Foster had numerous affairs and left Peggy.  Peggy tells Nell that she thinks John is having an affair and Nell offers to follow him.  Peggy says no but Nell follows him anyway and discovers what he is doing.  When she discloses John’s activities to Peggy, everything changes and the unintended consequences of the disclosure affect all of their lives.

Each of the short stories is well told and thought provoking.  But the novella, “Eve in Hollywood” is just irresistible.  In September of 1988, Evelyn Ross, the lead character of “Rules of Civility”, is headed back home from New York when she decides to extend her train ticket and go to Los Angeles.  This is in 1918.  While on the train she meets an older man, Charlie Granger, a recently widowed retired police officer.  They part as friends upon arrival in Los Angeles.

Eve settles herself in a high end hotel and meets Prentice Symmons, who introduces himself to her as “an aging, overweight oncewas who no longer lays claim to his city’s indulgences.”  In response, Eve tells him she has “a soft spot for oncewases.”  A fast friendship forms.

Eve meets Olivia de Havilland when she runs into her  in the lady’s room of a high end restaurant.  Having noticed that Olivia seemed awfully bored with her companion, Eve approaches the table, makes an excuse for Olivia and they make their escape.  Olivia is under contract with a studio and the studio watches every move she makes.  Eve gives Olivia a sense of adventure and another fast friendship has formed.

When Olivia receives a package of compromising photographs with a blackmail letter attached, Eve and her new fast friends set out on an adventure to destroy the photos and ensure they never see the light of day.  A grand combination mystery/detective story follows.  And I will stop here so that you can read the novella and enjoy its twists and turns.

Table For Two is an enjoyable romp.  It has a little bit of everything for literary fiction lovers.  The stories and novella are thoughtful, well written and clever.  I wish I could read it again for the first time!  Table For Two can be reserved at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on: https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/248617  

the wren the wren

The wren, the wren is a complex novel about family.  Nell, age 22,  is struggling with her career as a writer and social media influencer.  She is pondering the differences between people and the way they think  “We don’t see the same street  as the person walking beside us.  All we can do is tell the other person what we see.”  Nell is in an unhealthy relationship with Felim which she has kept a secret from her mother, Carmel.

Carmel is a single parent who raised Nell alone and never identified Nell’s father.  Nell and Carmel are close and distant and have a complicated relationship.  Nell explains that “My  mother is strongly of the opinion that, if you don’t talk about yourself then you won’t have any problems.” 

Carmel’s father, Phil McDaragh, was a famous Irish poet.  He left the family when Carmel was 12 and her sister, Imelda was 17.  At the time he left, their mother, Terry, was recovering from breast cancer.  Imelda and Carmel had a difficult relationship and Imelda was physically abusive.  Phil ultimately married a significantly younger woman who had been a student in America and they lived in Chicago.  Phil died in the mid-1980s

The years go by and Carmel and Nell both have relationships and meaningful lives.  Imelda also has a relationship with Carmel and Nell.  The one constant is that Phil and his poetry are in the background of their lives.  The wren, the wren is a poem he wrote for Carmel.

The novel’s chapters are divided by Nell’s story, Carmel’s story, and here and there Phil’s story.  In addition, each individual’s chapter is preceded by a poem.

The novel is compelling in its   depiction of family history, dynamics and generational impact and has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.  Anne Enright is a master storyteller of Irish familial ties.  You can reserve this novel at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on: https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/209383

Remarkably-Bright-Creatures

Let me just start this post by saying this is not the sort of novel I usually read. It is a feel good novel and some might say perhaps a little too tied together.  However, there is something special about this story and its characters and I am glad I read it.  You should read it too!  Ok, now on to the book!

“Remarkably Bright Creatures” is a novel about hope from the perspective of a Giant Pacific  Octopus named Marcellus.  And yes, also from the perspective of some people.  Marcellus is living in an aquarium in the fictional town of Sowell Bay in the Pacific Northwest.  The novel begins with Marcellus’s thoughts on “Day 1,299 of My Captivity.”  “Each evening, I await the click of the overhead lights, leaving only the glow from the main tank.  Not perfect, but close enough.  Almost-darkness, like the middle bottom of the sea.  I lived there before I was captured and imprisoned.”  Marcellus believes he is a prisoner and because his life span is only 4 years (at most only 160 days remain), he is trying to make a difference.

Tova Sullivan, a 70 year old recent widow, is the evening cleaning person at the aquarium.  One evening she discovers that Marcellus has escaped from his tank and she saves him.  They develop a unique relationship. 

Tova is grieving the loss of her husband Will.  In addition, Tova’s son, Erik, disappeared before his 18th birthday, almost 31 years earlier, and Tova is still grieving. Is it possible that Marcellus knows something about Erik’s disappearance?

Tova has a group of friends that call themselves the Knit-Wits.  The group had started with seven friends but is slowly decreasing due to the vagaries of old age.  The Knit Wits annoy Tova and yet she is begrudgingly dependent on them.  She begins to consider whether she should move into a senior community.

In the meantime, meet Cameron Cassmore.  Cameron is a ne’er-do-well thirty something who cannot hold a job or maintain a relationship.  His mother abandoned him with his Aunt Jeanne when he was nine years old and he has never known his father.  He is obsessed with finding both.  After he loses yet another job his girlfriend throws him out and he finds himself basically homeless.  He stays with friends (very good friends) while deciding what to do.  In a box of mementos that his aunt has provided, he finds a picture of his mother with Simon Brinks, a wealthy real estate mogul in the Pacific Northwest. He also finds a class ring from Sowell Bay.  He reaches the obvious conclusion that Simon Brinks is his father and he decides to go to Sowell Bay to find him.

Cameron ends up working at the aquarium and meeting Tova.  Things develop from there.

The novel is filled with family intrigue, romantic relationships, grief, confusion and ultimately love, friendship and satisfaction.  Marcellus is the vehicle through which everything moves forward.  The book has a happy ending and is as much about hope and the inherent goodness of all creatures as much as anything else.  In these difficult times, believing in that  inherent goodness can only help get us through.  You can reserve this novel at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/183105

The-Other-Eden

This Other Eden is a work of historical fiction based on the story of Malaga Island from the mid-1800s to 1912.

This Other Eden begins when Benjamin Honey, a former slave, shows up on an uninhabited Island with  “his wife, Patience, nee Raferty, a Galway girl, in 1793.”  The island was “hardly three hundred feet across a channel from the mainland, just under 42 acres, twelve hundred feet across. East to west, and fifteen hundred feet long, north to south…”  Benjamin brought with him various apple seeds, all of which failed to grow, and a determination to create a life on the island.  The island became known as Apple Island.

The story then moves to 1911 focused on the Honey descendants and other residents of the island.  Esther Honey is the great granddaughter of Benjamin and lives with her son, Eha and her grandchildren Charlotte (age 8), Tabitha (age 10) and Ethan (age 15).  There are also two other families on the island, the Larks and the McDermotts, as well as Annie Parker, “who lived alone, and Zachary Hand to G-d Proverb, who lived by himself, too, mostly inside a hollow tree…”  There were three dogs on the island too.

The families seem happy in their situations.  The Larks, most likely brother and sister as well as husband and wife, have four living children with various issues.  The McDermott sisters are raising Norma, Emily and Scotty Sockalexis.  Their mother, Cheryl Sockalexis, claimed that her brother was Louis Sockalexis , a professional baseball player with the Cleveland Spiders.  Cheryl left the children with the McDermott sisters.

The families are eccentric but happy and Esther has a secret about Eha’s father, which she carries with her. 

Every June Matthew Diamond, a missionary,  would arrive at his summer home on the mainland directly across from Apple Island. Diamond takes a boat from the mainland to the island, where he  brings the islanders certain necessities and teaches the children in a small schoolhouse.  Esther does not like or trust Diamond,   “She believed…that no good ever came of being noticed by the mainlanders…The more good he tries to do, the more outside attention he‘ll bring, and that’s no good.  No good at all.”

Soon enough, representatives of the state show up on Apple Island, along with doctors forcibly running tests on the islanders.  Diamond knows trouble is coming and arranges for Ethan, a promising artist, to move to Massachusetts and live on a large property prior to going to art school.  While living on the property in Massachusetts, Ethan befriends the house maid and you can imagine the rest.

Ultimately, the state evicts all of the residents and forces some of them into institutions…the same conclusion for Malaga Island.

Paul Harding is an excellent writer.  The book is short, beautifully written and focuses on the unintended consequences of imposing one set of values on people who live by a different, harmless set of values.  The novel was short listed for the 2023 National Book Award (Blackout by Jason Torres won) and the 2023 Booker Prize (won by Paul Lunch’s Prophet Song).  You can reserve this novel at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/199603

The Postcard

“The postman had just dumped the mail on the ground at the foot of the mailbox.  My mother went to collect it…She flipped through the stack of envelopes…All very typical for early January.  Except for the postcard. ..What caught my mother’s attention right away was the handwriting, strange and awkward…Then she read the four names, written in the form of a list.

Ephraim

Emma

Noemie

Jacques

They were the names of her maternal grandparents, her aunt, and her uncle.  All four had been deported two years before she was born.  They died in Auschwitz in 1942.  And now, sixty-one years later, they had reappeared in our mailbox.  It was Monday, January 6, 2003.”

If this beginning of the novel “The Postcard” does not grab you,  I do not know what will. The novel is semiautobiographical and is the story of the Rabinovitch family, beginning in Moscow in 1918, led by Nachman and Esther Rabinovitch. In the year 1919, Nachman announces that is time for all of the family members to leave Moscow due to growing threats of antisemitism. Son Ephraim is relatively secular, although his wife Emma is observant, and refuses to acknowledge the threat. Nachman, Esther and one daughter go to Palestine and the rest of the family leaves for other places. Ephraim and Emma start out in Latvia, but then decide to go to Palestine due to the antisemitism they experience. Palestine is a little too undeveloped for them and ultimately they land in Paris and then to Les Forges in the countryside.

Ephraim refuses to acknowledge the dangers to them in France. He believes that they are exempt. In the meantime, his oldest daughter, Myriam, falls in love with Vincente Picabia, an uneducated, rather bohemian Parisian, and they marry. Vencente is not Jewish. When the Vichy officers come for the Rabinovitch children in Les Forges, Myriam is hidden and escapes. Her brother, Jacques, and sister, Noemie ultimately land and die in Auschwitz, as do her parents.  Their route to the end of their lives is heartbreaking.

Myriam survives through the help of her husband’s family and friends, who are with the French resistance.

The novel’s narrator, Anne, is learning this family history as a result of the postcard. Anne’s mother, Lelia, daughter of Myriam, is a journalist and writer and has been making archives of the family history. Anne did not know any of the story until the postcard showed up in 2003.

Anne and her mother go in search of the family’s past and the creator of the postcard. What they find is frequently chilling, including property owned by their family and remnants of the Nazi and Vichy perspective. The search includes Anne better understanding her mother, as the child of a survivor, and Anne’s clarity regarding her Jewish history and identity.

“I was Jewish but didn’t look it. Sarah [Anne’s friend] looked Jewish but wasn’t according to the texts. We’d laughed about it. It was all so silly. Ridiculous. And yet it affected both our lives deeply. As the years passed, the issue remained complex, intangible, incomparable to anything else…Nothing else had ever characterized me as strongly in the eyes of the men I’d loved…My Jewishness always mattered in some way; it was never insignificant.”

 The novel is part holocaust story, with a very personal and uniquely French perspective, part mystery and part examination of Jewish identity. Anne explains that although she knew she was Jewish, she had never received a Jewish education, celebrated Jewish holidays or been in a synagogue. And yet, the specter of modern day antisemitism arrives at her door when her six year old daughter, 16 years after the postcard arrived, tells her that “They do not like Jews very much at school.”

“The Postcard” was published in France in 2021 to great acclaim and translated and released in the United States in 2023. The novel is insightful, horrifying and unforgettable. In light of what is going on around the world right now, the novel reminds us of the importance of history and the importance of recommitting to Never Again! You can reserve The Postcard at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/207061

Be Mine Richard Ford

“Be Mine” is a novel about finding contentment with age and dealing with loss. Richard Ford is one of my favorite authors, and his ability to address the struggles of life in a matter of fact and sometimes amusing way is on display in this sometimes uncomfortable and yet reassuring novel.

The novel begins with a chapter entitled “Happiness”. “Lately, I’ve begun to think about happiness…To be happy—before the gray curtain comes down. Or at least to consider why you’re not, if you’re not. And whether it’s worth the bother to worry about…It is worth worrying about—although I’m certain of little else…But to go out the door…and not bother with being happy is to give life less than its full due. Which after all is what we’re here for…Or am I wrong?”

Frank Bascombe, the semi-retired real estate agent and prior sports writer, at age 74, is struggling with these questions. And his struggle comes in the form of caring for his 37 year old son, Paul, recently diagnosed with ALS. Paul and Frank have traveled to Minnesota, from Haddam, New Jersey, so that Paul can receive experimental treatment at the Mayo Clinic.

Paul is a unique character and his relationship with his father feels tortured and yet genuine and heartfelt. “For all of life, our father-son discourse has been encoded and elliptical—sustained, on-topic converse being simply not our way. Sometimes to the point of silence.”

Frank also has a daughter, Clarissa, who lives in Scottsdale and runs a boarding and grooming kennel. She does not think much of her father and their relationship is fraught. “My daughter can churn up deranging effects in me. I don’t much like her, if truth were told.” Clarissa does not approve of Frank’s efforts to take care of Paul and thinks that Paul should stay with her and her wife in Scottsdale.

While Paul is receiving treatments at the Mayo Clinic, Frank busies himself with his care and with other entertainments, including the very young masseuse Betty. In the meantime, Frank is planning a RV trip with Paul to Mt Rushmore. He rents an out of date, unusable old camper attached to a Dodge 1500 with Florida plates, because this is what Paul chooses.

The last step in Paul’s care at the Mayo Clinic is an appreciation event. The descriptions of the Mayo Clinic, and the staff at the Mayo Clinic feel like something out of a futuristic dystopia. “Gonda Atrium is a lofty, buzzing, light-shot Scandinavian fishbowl…Over in front of the great window…a barbershop group of red-jacketed oldsters crooning “Edelweiss” and “Sunrise, Sunset”…Wide corridors lead unceasing foot traffic in all directions…”.

Ultimately Paul and Frank make it to Mt. Rushmore, and despite all the difficulties, the trip is a success. Throughout the novel, Frank is meeting new people and remembering the life he has led to this point. Ultimately, Frank and Paul do end up with Clarissa in Scottsdale and that is where Paul’s life ends. Frank concludes that “It isn’t life that’s well-nigh unfathomable and in need of amplification and more light…its death that’s the profound mystery and the real story.” The novel ends with a final chapter on Happiness. 

Although Frank Bascombe is trying to come to terms with aging, happiness and death, and he is trying to convince himself that he has done just that, I believe he has failed. That said, I believe he has come to terms with understanding that these are all things that he cannot exactly control and that for the short time we all have, we should continue to seek and hopefully find, if not happiness, contentment. Be Mine can be reserved at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/202423