418kJrcPkzL__SX328_BO1,204,203,200_It seems as though there have been a lot of first novels lately; maybe there always have been and I have just been oblivious. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer”, winner of the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Award for Excellence in Fiction, is a good one, so long as you do not mind vivid descriptions of deception, murder and torture! 

Nguyen’s lead character and narrator is a Captain in South Vietnam but he is also a spy for, and sympathizes with, the Communists. And do not worry, I am not giving anything away. The first line of the book is “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.” The Captain is a complex man, the product of a Vietnamese mother and a French priest. So when he says he is a man of two faces, he means it both literally and figuratively and portions of the book speak to the prejudice he experiences from being biracial and without a traditional father.

When we first meet the Captain he is being held by the Communist victors well after the fall of Saigon and is being forced to write his confession. Through his confession we learn about the war, the complexities of his interpersonal relationships–both romantic and otherwise–and the very meaningful differences between American and Vietnamese culture and perspective. Everything is told through the Captain’s experiences and wry observations.

The Captain works for a South Vietnamese General as a fixer, getting all sorts of things done behind the scenes. The Captain has two very close friends, one of whom is active with the Communists (Man) and the other is a loyal supporter of the other side (Bon). The General is planning an escape to America before the fall of Saigon and the Captain is ordered to go with him and report on his activities. The Captain, the General, the General’s family, Bon and a host of other characters make it out of Vietnam and settle in the Los Angeles area. Initially they all struggle but the General finds his way and continues to give orders and arrange assassinations of those he believes to be disloyal.

The Captain has a couple of romantic relationships while in America and ultimately becomes a consultant to the creator of a movie about the Vietnam War. When reviewing the script, written by a famous and narcissistic Hollywood Director, the Captain is shocked by the lack of meaningful input by any Vietnamese character. “I was flummoxed by having read a screenplay whose greatest special effect was neither the blowing up of various things nor the evisceration of various bodies, but the achievement of narrating movie about our country where not a single one of our countrymen had an intelligible word to say.” And when the Captain suggests to the Director that he did not get certain details about the war and Vietnam correct, the Director is outraged that the Captain should think that his personal experience should be more meaningful than the Director’s research on the topic.

The Captain’s perspective on America is not complimentary. Throughout the book he offers caustic and critical commentary on Americans, American politics and the country itself. In anticipation of his trip to America, the Captain describes his perspective of America, where he had previously been educated, as follows: “America, land of supermarkets and superhighways, of supersonic jets and Superman, of supercarriers and the Super Bowl!…Although every country thought itself superior in its own way, was there ever a country that coined so many “super” terms from the federal bank of its narcissism, was not only superconfident but also truly superpowerful, that would not be satisfied until it locked every nation of the world into a full nelson and made it cry Uncle Sam?”

The Captain returns to Vietnam, reconnects with Man in the most unlikely of ways and engages in some serious soul searching, wondering whether he had chosen the right or wrong side and ultimately concluding that, in the end, the victors of battle seeking political change become nothing more than the oppressors who preceded them. “…I understood, at last, how our revolution had gone from being the vanguard of political change to the rearguard of hoarding power….Having liberated ourselves in the name of independence and freedom –I was so tired of saying these words!–we then deprived our defeated brethren of the same.”

“The Sympathizer” is well-written, thoughtful and complex. There are various scenes and situations which are very uncomfortable to read, but history can be uncomfortable and there are things we need to know and should never forget. The book deserved the Carnegie Award for Excellence in Fiction and is a good, challenging read. You can reserve this book at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/record/C__Rb11156111__Sthe%20sympathizer__P0%2C2__Orightresult__X7?lang=eng&suite=gold and you can actually register to see the author at the South Euclid Lyndhurst Branch on April 12 by clicking on http://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/Events/Event-Results/Event-Detail.aspx?id=77183. Register soon as I am sure this one will be a sell out!

414iVLHAtVL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_Every so often you read a book that is just a puzzler. It was good; it was bad; it was everything in between. I just cannot make up my mind. That is how I feel about Paul Murray’s “The Mark and the Void.” Ireland’s fictional approximation of The Big Short, it has elements of reality and surreality, morality and immorality, evil and good, all told in a rather absurd and ironic fashion.

Murray’s lead character and narrator, Claude, has come to Ireland from France to make his fortune and to create a singular existence in his work as an investment banker. He is succeeding in his search for a one dimensional anonymous existence when he runs into Paul. Paul has been watching him from a distance and finally approaches him asking if he can observe and use him as his everyman lead character in a novel about banking. After a great deal of thought Claude agrees, and of course his search for anonymity and a one dimensional existence focused on banking begins to unravel in the most unlikely and unbelievable ways.

Claude’s bank, Bank of Torabundo, has been very successful during the volatile banking years due to the steady and conservative approach of its leader. Unlike its neighbor, Royal Irish, which has to be bailed out more than once by Ireland as a result of its aggressive ventures into risky markets, Torabundo avoided complex derivatives, as well as the secondary mortgage market. As a result, Torabundo rose to the top and as a reward, the CEO was fired for costing the bank investors. The bank’s new CEO is a charismatic counterintuitive risk taker and the bank goes from steady and stable to aggressive and volatile.

We learn that banks have their own class system and Claude explains the hierarchy of the bank by describing the back room. “There is a strict hierarchy to investment banking, of which back office lies at the very bottom, below even lawyers.” Oh no–not that low!

Throughout the book the  bankers are making crazy investments, dealing with shady characters and spending a lot of time drinking and doping and going to sex clubs for lap dances. It becomes increasingly clear that the bankers do not even really know what is going on. When Claude interviews the CEO of Royal Irish, the CEO confesses: “‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you’re here to ask me how it all works, and I’m just going to tell you the truth, which is that I don’t have the faintest f…ing notion.'” A group of protestors dressed as zombies camps out across from Royal Irish to protest the bank’s excesses and the government bailouts (the Irish version of the Occupy Wall Street movement). By the end of the book the zombies have inexplicably disappeared.

Meanwhile, Paul observes Claude in his work environment, researching for his book, but all is not as it seems. Claude dumps Paul, then becomes inexplicably deeply involved in his life. Paul dumps Claude and they become even more entwined. Claude falls in love with the waitress at the local café and Paul tries to help him attract her. Torabundo and the Irish economy go into a death spiral, the café closes and the waitress is gone, Paul’s poverty is causing him to lose house, home, wife and child and who oh who will come to the rescue? I guess you need to read the book to figure it all out.

Throughout the book the worlds of finance and art are interwoven with the handwringing  lifelong quandary of where and how to find meaning. The entire theme of the book can be summed up in one quote on page 427 where Claude is yelling at Paul to write his book and find his place. “‘Jesus, will you get off my case? You’re not going to make me feel guilty about this. If I was some big bank going bust I’d have governments around the world throwing money at me. Instead, because I’m just some ordinary defenseless Joe Schmoe, I’m left to rot.'”

The “Mark and the Void” is a cynical, surreal, unsubtle account of banking, art, and the unfairness of society. It is a story about the evils of greed, a lesson about the results of wealth disparity and an indictment of the banking industry. It is also a story about the importance of compassion, purpose and love. Was it good? I just don’t know. Did I like it? I cannot decide. Why don’t you read it and tell me what you think? You can reserve this book at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on  http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/record/C__Rb11171009__Sthe%20mark%20and%20the%20void__P0%2C1__Orightresult__X7?lang=eng&suite=gold.

24998948“Mrs. Engels”, a first novel by Gavin McCrea, is a fictional account of a three year period (1870-1873)(as well as some flashbacks) in the lives of the authors of the Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), told from the perspective of Friedrich Engels’ wife, Lizzie Burns. 

Lizzie and her sister, Mary, Irish by birth, are alone and struggling to survive in 1842, when they both attain jobs at a mill in Manchester that happens to be owned by Friedrich’s wealthy German family. Friedrich befriends Mary and Lizzie and the book alternates between Lizzie’s recollections of that developing relationship and Lizzie’s life with Friedrich in London, where they move to be closer to Karl Marx.

Throughout the story we meet and get to know Karl Marx, his wife, Jenny, and their daughters, Tussey and Janey, all through Lizzie’s unique, no holds barred perspective. Interestingly, while theorizing about class struggle, and advocating for a worker revolution, Marx and Engels employ domestic workers in their households who are not in any way treated as equals. In addition, they live rather extravagant lives and are constantly in need of and spending large amounts of money, mostly supplied by Friedrich’s wealth. Money and relationships between men and women are significant themes in this book, summed up by Lizzie’s observation that “What matters over and above the contents of his character–what makes the difference between sad and happy straits for she who must put her life in his keeping–is the mint that jingles in his pockets. In the final reckoning, the good and the bad come to an even naught and the only thing left to recommend him is his money.”

When the French Commune in Paris falls in 1871 and tens of thousands are killed, many of the French communists find their way to London and to the homes of Karl and Friedrich. The French men challenge Friedrich and Karl as being only theoretical and taking no direct action toward a communist revolution. Lizzie delights in the attacks on Karl.

Friedrich is constantly having to answer for his and his family’s wealth, and yet Karl, although completely dependent on that wealth, always seems immune to this inquiry. After a specific exchange with one of the French survivors from Paris where Friedrich is criticized for his wealth, Lizzie observes that “It’s not uncommon that he has to answer to this charge, not uncommon even though the world knows he worked in that mill to keep Karl and the Movement afloat. And knock me acock if I ever see Karl having to defend himself in this way.” Throughout the story we see Karl and his family through Lizzie’s observant and not particularly flattering perspective.

Lizzie is a strong independent woman, who engages in  unusual activities and interactions for women in the 1870s. For example, Lizzie reconnects with an old lover, Moss, who is involved in the Irish resistance against England. She hides him after a violent encounter and provides him with money for his movement. She goes to bars and drinks alone. She is seen traveling to parts of the city where a single woman should not go. No one really approves of Lizzie’s activities but she is difficult to stop. When some London neighbor women stop by uninvited to snoop into Lizzie’s life and express thinly veiled disapproval, Lizzie observes that one of the women “has drawn back her lips and is thirsty for the truth. For that’s how they bite you: smiling.”

The book provides an interesting perspective into Marx and Engels, as well as class, political and gender related issues in London at that time. The book has its own rhythm and it takes a while to get a feel for it, but once you get into the rhythm it is an enjoyable read. There are some really interesting twists, turns and surprises, disclosures of which would be total spoilers–which is a shame, because I really want to tell you about them! You can reserve this book at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/record/C__Rb11182974__Smrs%20engels__P0%2C1__Orightresult__X7?lang=eng&suite=gold.

 

 

I need to start this blog by coming clean, by confessing a couple of things about myself.

CONFESSION NUMBER 1: I am an ERISA lawyer and that means I spend my days dealing with the intricacies of the Internal Revenue Code, the obscurities of ERISA and the agonizing and yet rewarding task of solving complex problems. I spend my days talking with accountants, hr professionals, ceos, cfos and actuaries, and while some of my best friends are actuaries (really they are!), this is not exactly the “stuff that dreams are made of”. Employee benefits provides for creative thinking and problem solving in its critical, but narrow realm and sometimes I need a creative diversion. So what could be more perfect for a person who spends her day solving business problems, than to spend her free time studying how other people solve their personal problems. And what better way to do that than by reading fiction, where the characters pour out their longings, their hopes and fears and their disappointments and the story usually unfolds with a solution that is either satisfactory or tragic (my problem solving, by the way, never ends in tragedy!). Amazingly enough, sometimes fiction actually overlaps with ERISA. Did you know that Sara Paretsky included ERISA in at least two of her V.I. Warshawski novels, one involving a life insurance dispute and one involving pension fraud?

CONFESSION NUMBER 2: I love books and particularly fiction. I am a book snob (which you might not have picked up on based on my V.I. Warshawski reference). I spend a significant amount of my nonworking waking hours reading books, thinking about books and talking about books. Some day I might even write a book. I sit on the Board of the Cuyahoga County Public Library (one of the top rated libraries of its size in the country, by the way – www.cuyahogalibrary.org) so that I can participate in encouraging others to love books and reading. It has been suggested to me that perhaps my love of books and libraries is too singularly focused, but I reject this observation as failing to comprehend the life changing impact of a truly great novel.

This blog is about an ERISA lawyer’s love and contemplation of books, especially fiction. I will write about what I am reading and what I think about what I am reading. Sometimes I might throw in a comment about some nonfiction. I would love to hear what you think about the books I discuss here.

 

519bPxM7VqL__SX329_BO1,204,203,200_Every year it seems there are innumerable new novels that take place in London during the blitz of World War II. And of course while I cannot claim to have read all of them, I always wonder how any single one can have anything new or fresh to say. Chris Cleave’s “Everyone Brave is Forgiven,” which takes place between September of 1939 and June of 1942, and was influenced by the experience of Cleave’s grandparents, finds a way to feel both fresh and new.

Mary North is a privileged debutante, from a wealthy political family. The day war is declared she signs up to volunteer for duty, choosing to take what is assigned rather than using her family connections to receive favored treatment. Expecting that “they would make her a liaison, or an attache to a general’s staff,” her very first lesson in war is a disappointment when she is assigned to teach. She is even more disappointed to learn that the children she is to teach are being evacuated from London (but only after the evacuation of the zoo animals). “Mary almost wept when she learned that her first duty as a schoolmistress would be to evacuate her class to the countryside.  And when she discovered that London had evacuated its zoo animals days before its children, she was furious.” She quickly learns that the evacuation does not necessarily include special needs children or black children. And so she stays behind to teach the “less favored”.

In the meantime, she meets and falls in love with Tom, who is responsible for the schools that are left open. Her best friend Hilda spends much of her time plotting how to meet and marry a man in uniform. Tom and Mary arrange for Hilda to meet Tom’s friend Alistair, who has just left France and is on his way to Malta. Mary, Tom, Alistair and Hilda are the focal points of the story.

Hilda and Mary become ambulance drivers during the bombings and see all of the terrible things that one would expect to see. Mary and Hilda grow and change throughout the almost three-year span of the story. As the war comes closer to home, Mary’s perspective shifts and changes. “I was brought up to believe that everyone brave is forgiven, but in wartime courage is cheap and clemency out of season.”

Mary becomes more and more aware of the different experience of war for people of wealth and privilege. After their first day as ambulance drivers, and having experienced senseless death and devastation, Mary observes to Hilda: “Two dozen rooms in my house, I should think and six in your flat, and hardly a bomb has touch Pimlico. If we truly wanted to help, we could have hosted this whole street in your place and mine, instead of digging through their rubble.”

In addition to the inequities of wealth and privilege, Mary also experiences first hand the racism and intolerance of London. When Mary clashes with her mother over men, race and obligation, Mary’s mother comments that “The young see the world that they wish for. The old see the world as it is. You must tell me which you think the more honest.”

Throughout the book depictions of battle, horror and hunger alternate with stories of romance and friendship, all told with a touch of humor and endearment. Somehow throughout all the tragedy, death and devastation, people never lose their humanity and sense of hopefulness. If the book has one flaw, it is that in places the dialogue is simply too clever, a flaw which can be forgiven. Be sure to check out this book when it is released in May. You can reserve it at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/record/C__Rb11195731__Severyone%20brave%20is%20forgiven__P0%2C1__Orightresult__X7?lang=eng&suite=gold.

 

41T34374hhL__SX324_BO1,204,203,200_Memoirs can be great or awful. Sometimes a memoir is nothing more than an author’s musings about some specific event in his or her life, with little to offer the reader beyond the author’s singular self-absorbed experience. Too much “me” and very little “why should I care?” That said, I have just read the second memoir in less than 12 months that I absolutely adored (the first being “H is For Hawk”– read earlier review). Sally Mann’s “Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs” is a great combination of personal stories, life lessons, and historic and cultural observations. A brilliant photographer, Mann describes a thoughtful way of looking at life through the literal and figurative lens. The book is a complex and moving story of family, place and meaning, including numerous photographs to illustrate the ideas along the way. “Hold Still” was just awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. 

Sally Mann grew up in Lexington, Virginia, the third child and only daughter of a physician father and a beautiful, but reserved mother, who ran the book store at Washington and Lee College. Sally describes a childhood of privilege and wildness, being sent to boarding school at Putney in Vermont at the age of 16, midway through high school. Mann described her initiation to Putney as follows: “I was the most ridiculed minority of all: a dumb cracker, with a trunk full of very uncool reversible wrap around skirts my mother had sewn herself…Nobody at Putney had hydrogen peroxide blond hair teased into a beehive, nobody at Putney wore makeup, and nobody at Putney listened to the Righteous Brothers or wore her boyfriend’s letter sweater…” It was at Putney that Mann became interested in writing and then photography. After Putney, Mann enrolled at Bennington College. She met Larry Mann at Christmas break in 1969 and they were married 6 months later.

Larry  came from the east coast and was the son of seemingly wealthy snobby east coast parents who were none too pleased about the choice their son had made for a wife. “When we announced we were going to get married in six weeks, his parents and grandparents burst into tears and left the table.” Needless to say, there was a great deal more drama where Larry’s family was concerned, although not necessarily of the type you might think based on my last sentence! Ultimately Larry and Sally return to Lexington.

Sally Mann took a series of photographs of her three children, frequently in the nude. When  the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story in its September 27, 1992 edition entitled “The Disturbing Photographs of Sally Mann”, Sally received numerous letters which she divided into three categories: “For, Against and WTF”. Many of the letters questioned her skills as a mother and the impact the photographs would have on her children as they grew up. Generally Mann was able to put the writers’ concerns in proper perspective. But one letter writer commented that it was not the nudity that bothered her, but the looks on the children’s faces–“‘They’re mean’, this total stranger to my children states with authority.” In response to this comment Mann explains the illusion of photography. “How can a sentient person of the modern age mistake photography for reality?…Photographs economize the truth; they are always moments more or less illusorily abducted from time’s continuum.” The book’s description of the series and the responses, both from the public and from Mann, is deeply moving and thought provoking, as is almost everything else in this incredible memoir.

The memoir focuses on the beauty and history of the south and the impact of that beauty and history on art and culture. In terms of art, Mann describes the impact the beauty of Lexington had on artist Cy Twombly, who was born in Lexington and lived half of each year there. She quotes Wombly as saying that:  “Where I’m from, the central valley of Virginia, is not one of the most exciting landscapes in the world, but it’s one of the most beautiful. It’s very beautiful because it has everything. It has mountains, there are streams, there are fields, beautiful trees. And architecture sits very well in it…”

Mann explores the south’s racial history and its impact on southern perspective and culture. On a trip through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, Mann marvels at the juxtaposition of beauty and the frightful history of slavery and racism. “The pictures I wanted to take were about the rivers of blood, of tears, and of sweat that Africans poured into the dark soil of their thankless new home. I was looking for images of the dead as they are revealed in the land and in its adamant, essential renewal.”  

But the racial issues addressed by Mann were not merely historic. She explores the south’s racial issues through family experience as well. She recalls being raised by her beloved Gee-Gee, a dedicated black woman who worked for the Mann family much of her adult life (until her early 90s!). Mann comments that “down here, you can’t throw a dead cat without hitting an older, well-off white person raised by a black woman and every damn one of them will earnestly insist that a reciprocal and equal form of love was exchanged between them.”

Her relationship with Gee-Gee best describes through experience some of the challenges faced by black southerners and the impact of the history of slavery. In response to her gradual appreciation of the role of history, including her own family history, in southern racial issues, Mann took a series of photographs of black men in an effort to “visually articulate my sense of the unsettling accounts left to us by that brooding curse.”

The book reflects a southern obsession with death. Initially Mann attributes the obsession to her father. But it unveils itself over and over in her photography and thoughts and in her recitation of the history of the south. Early in the book she comments that “It’s not that we southerners are exactly in love with death, but there is no question that given our history, we’re on a first name basis with it.” As to the impact this obsession with death has had on Mann, she observes in a compelling and beautiful passage that “as for me, I see both beauty and the dark side of things; the loveliness of cornfields and full sails, but the ruin as well. And I see them at the same time, at once ecstatic at the beauty of things, and chary of that ecstasy…for there cannot be any real beauty without the indolic whiff of decay. For me living is the same thing as dying and loving is the same thing as losing, and this does not make me a madwoman. I believe it can make me better at living, and better at loving, and just possibly, better at seeing.”

A review cannot do this book justice. You have to read it. When you finish this remarkable memoir you will have learned about Sally Mann, but you will also have experienced a unique perspective about life, and about the impact of love, family, and history, on who we are and who we can become. I got this book from the library but I am going to buy my own copy.  It’s a definite reread. You can reserve this book at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/record/C__Rb11164150__Shold%20still__P0%2C1__Orightresult__X7?lang=eng&suite=gold

 

26131641Anna Quindlen’s “Miller’s Valley” is Mimi Miller’s reminiscence of the more than 10 year period in her life when the federal government was planning to move a dam and flood her home town of Miller’s Valley. The story relays the expected emotional opposition to loss of home and place, but along the way it touches on virtually every life issue that is a normal (and in some instances unusual) part of a person’s and community’s history.

The story begins when Mimi is 11 years old. We meet her as she and her older brother Tommy are eavesdropping on their parents’ conversations through the heating vents. Those conversations are sporadically muffled by the sound of the sump pump chugging along to keep the constant flow of water out of the basement. At the beginning, these overheard conversations inevitably included the government’s plans to flood Miller’s Valley and her parent’s differing views on what would and should happen.

Mimi is the youngest of three children. Brother Tommy is handsome and at loose ends. Ultimately he enlists in the Marines and finds himself in Vietnam. Brother Eddie is 10 years older than Mimi, was high school class valedictorian and when we first meet him is at the state university on a Rotary scholarship studying to be an engineer. Mimi has two friends, LaRhonda, the daughter of an entrepreneurial restauranteur, and Donald, the son of divorced parents, who spends time in Miller’s Valley with his much beloved grandparents.

Mimi’s Aunt Ruth, her mother’s sister, lives in a separate house on Mimi’s parent’s property and refuses to step foot outside the house. Ruth has a very close relationship with Mimi’s father, Bud, who farms the property and is the community’s fix it man. Mimi’s strong willed mother, Miriam, is a nurse.

Throughout the story many things happen. Mimi falls in love and discovers sex, Donald moves away to California but stays in touch, LaRhonda gets pregnant and marries young, people die and are born and ultimately, in the end, the dam is moved and Miller’s Valley is flooded.  This is not a giveaway–you know it at the beginning!

The book is ambitious in its effort to address virtually every life issue that arises from birth to grave. Government, politics, war, aging, love, disappointment, loss, grief, mental illness, money, sexism, feminism, destiny, identity, religion and sex are all touched on in this relatively short book.

A recurring theme of the book is a parent’s desire for better things for her children and how the child’s success seems to emphasize the disappointments in the parent’s life. When her father interacts with his engineer son Eddie, Mimi observes that “I think deep down inside he didn’t know exactly how to feel about Eddie. He was proud of how well he’d done, but the way in which he’d done well made my father feel like Eddie was above the life he’d been raised in.” And when Mimi decides to become a doctor, she says of her mother, “My mother was never one of those nurses who complained about the doctors, but when I listened to her talk about me becoming a doctor myself I figured out pretty quickly that I was paying her back for years of feeling like she’d come in a distant second.”

The book is a pleasant and short read, but is overly ambitious and tries too hard to tackle all of life’s issues and wrap them all up in a neat package with a pretty bow (this may be the holiday season speaking through me). The writing and story telling is a little too cute and convenient for my taste. If you are an Anna Quindlen fan, or if you like a life story that doesn’t drag you down into the depths of despair, then you might want to check this out when it is released in April.  You will then be able to reserve the book at Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on   http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/record/C__Rb11195723__Smillers%20valley__Orightresult__X7?lang=eng&suite=gold.

51kuUoWRHNL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_[1]“[H]e was worried because to be alive was to worry. Life was scary; it was unknowable… They all…sought comfort, something that was theirs alone, someone to hold off the terrifying largeness, the impossibility, of the world, of the relentlessness of its minutes, its hours, its days.” This is Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life”.

“A Little Life” is the tragic story of four college friends, JB, Willem, Jude and Malcolm. The book revolves around Jude, slowly revealing his violent and abusive childhood, his resultant demons and torment and the impact he has on the lives of his friends. This book answers the question of the meaning of life with a resounding NONE. In fact, in the view of one of the characters, even considering the meaning of life is a luxury. “It had always seemed to him a very plush kind of problem, a privilege, really, to consider whether life was meaningful or not.  He didn’t think his was.”

When we first meet the four friends, they have finished college and graduate school and are starting careers. Jude is a lawyer working in the US Attorney’s office, has physical challenges, suffers from intermittent severe leg and back pain and has difficulty walking. Willem is a struggling actor and part-time waiter, JB is an artist and Malcolm is an architect. As the story unfolds, all four become wildly successful in their chosen careers and the story focuses more and more on Jude.

Jude goes from the US attorney’s office to a large Manhattan law firm, where he is a successful litigator and becomes the head of litigation and a member of the Firm’s management committee. Jude’s law school professor, Harold, becomes a very important part of Jude’s life. The book involves a lot of discussion of the law, including the importance of law in society and the intellectual discipline needed to practice law. Although this part of the book may be the most positive and least depressing, Yanagihara finds a way to take the positive and make it a negative.

For instance, Harold, who loves the law, finds himself regretting that Jude has become a lawyer because of his perception of the intellectual restrictions the practice of law places on a person’s creativity. “But later, often, I was sad for him, and for me. I wished I had urged him to leave law school…I wish I had nudged him in a direction where his mind could have become as supple as it was, where he wouldn’t have had to harness himself to a dull way of thinking. I felt I had taken someone who once knew how to draw a dog and turned him into someone who instead knew only how to draw shapes.” This from someone who loves and values law about someone who is able to find pleasure (perhaps his only pleasure) in the practice of the law.

Jude spends the majority of the book trying to hide his past from everyone close to him. When asked about his childhood he would comment that it was too boring to even discuss and observes how easily people accepted this response. “He was astonished but  relieved by how easily they accepted that, and grateful too for their self-absorption. None of them really wanted to listen to someone else’s story anyway; they only wanted to tell their own.”

The other college friends fade in and out of the story except for Willem. Willem becomes a wildly successful actor and Willem and Jude are very close. Willem spends a great deal of time trying to draw out Jude’s story and becomes an important part of Jude’s life.

For some inexplicable reason, Yanagihara feels the need to consistently torture her characters (and thereby tortures her reader). During the periods in their lives when they are happy and successful, the characters  drop out of the novel, only to reappear when something is going wrong. Every reappearance is tinged with regret, tragedy and sadness.

Ultimately nothing good happens in this 720 page novel of utter hopelessness, regret, cruelty and despair. If you like books where the author consistently tortures her characters and punishes her readers, where utter hopelessness is the only theme and where you finish and ask yourself “what the hell was that?”, then by all means, read “A Little Life”. You can reserve this book at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/record/C__Rb11150051__Sa%20little%20life__P0%2C1__Orightresult__X7?lang=eng&suite=gold.

download“Wind/Pinball” is the 2015 translation and American publication of Haruki Murakami’s first two novels, written in the late 1970s. Both novels are very short and the book is preceded by a wonderful author’s note about how he became a writer. If you are a Murakami fan, you will recognize the magical realism, existential, and spiritual tones found in all of his later works.

The first novel, “Hear the Wind Sing”, is told by a 29 year-old narrator looking back on eighteen days during a summer spent at home while on break from college. The novel revolves around the narrator’s friend (Rat), a girl he meets passed out on the bathroom floor in a bar, the bar owner (J), baseball, American pop music, and memories. I had a hard time writing the review for this first novel because the events of the story are so disjointed and the foggy feel in the book comes through the characters thoughts and cryptic conversations, none of which makes for easy summarization.

Rat comes from a wealthy family, hates rich people, drinks too much and speaks in philosophical riddles. “The Rat’s favorite food was pancakes, hot off the griddle. He would stack several in a deep dish, cut them into four neat pieces, then pour a bottle of Coke over the top.” We learn that Rat is involved with a woman and he arranges for the narrator to meet her. When the appointed time arrives, and the narrator shows up in suit and tie as requested, the Rat advises that “It’s a no go….I gave it up.” Rat suffers from dark moods and the story ends with him writing novels, presumably because that is what people who suffer from dark moods do.

The narrator loves to write and finds it easier than living in the moment. “I love writing. Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it.” The only thing we learn about the narrator’s family is that his father required that he and his brother shine his shoes every day. The narrator describes each of the girls he has slept with, including the woman he met passed out on the floor in a bar. In one particularly peculiar interlude, a disc jockey telephones him and tells him that a young woman has dedicated the song California Girls to him, because the narrator had borrowed the album from the woman many years before and never returned it. He goes out and buys the album and spends a great deal of time trying to find her. The book ends with the narrator going back to college.

The second book, “Pinball, 1973”, involves Rat and J the bartender again. In this book, the narrator and a friend have begun a translation business and business is booming. The narrator is living with female twins who somehow just show up at his door. We learn more about Rat and the woman he is involved with, and J and Rat become very close. In the meantime, the narrator tells us a little history about pinball machines and he becomes obsessed with a particular machine in J’s bar. When the bar is closed and the machine suddenly disappears, he goes on a quest to find it. In typical Murakami fashion, that quest takes him to a surreal warehouse filled with 78 previously discarded pinball machines and at least one of the machines virtually comes alive.

If you are a Murakami fan, then read these two novels just to get a sense of his beginnings. If you are not a Murakami fan, do not read these novels; because if you do, you will never become a Murakami fan and you will miss the good stuff, like “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” and “Kafka on the Shore.”

You can reserve “Wind/Pinball” at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/record/C__Rb11163893__Swind__P0%2C20__Orightresult__X6?lang=eng&suite=gold.

519szyUFmCL__SX329_BO1,204,203,200_Have you ever wondered how the mind of someone different from you works and what the person might be thinking and feeling? That is exactly the insight that Eli Gottlieb provides when he gives you a glimpse into the mind of an autistic man, Todd Aaron, in “Best Boy.”

We first meet Todd when he is 13 years old, on the day his mother is leaving him at Payton Living Center. Todd describes Payton Living Center as a community of “Developmentals” and “BIs” (brain injured). The drop off at Payton Living Center is stressful for Todd, as he “felt the volts getting ready to burst and sizzle in my head and I began to scream.” Payton Living Center becomes Todd’s permanent home and we next meet him 41 years after the drop off.

Todd is one of the most senior members of Payton Living Center and the staff refers to him as the village elder. He begins by describing his life there as happy until several things happened and then he stopped being happy. “The unhappiness kept getting larger and larger till finally I was so unhappy that it was raining all the time in my head even in sunshine and wherever I looked all I saw were gray dots of water falling sideways across the view.” Todd’s story and insights revolve around the events that made him unhappy.

The first cause of his unhappiness was a new roommate, Tommy Doon, who lived with him in a two-person cottage. Tommy Doon had suffered a brain injury and spends most of his time in the cottage trying to make Todd miserable. “Staff explained to him that if I get too upset I’ll suffer an attack of volts and he’s been trying to make it happen ever since.” Todd avoids Tommy as best he can.

The second cause of Todd’s unhappiness is the arrival of a new staff member, Mike Hinton (Mike the Apron). When Todd first encounters Mike at a meeting in the community hall, he immediately feels sick and begins to whimper and cry. At this point we learn that Todd struggles with new male staff, but generally adjusts. But Mike Hinton reminds Todd of his violent father and Todd cannot get past his initial reaction. As a result, the staff decides that Mike and Todd need to spend more time together and that’s when trouble starts.

While Todd is dealing with Tommy and Mike, he becomes romantically attracted to a new resident, Martine, who encourages Todd to stop taking his medications. The reasons for Martine’s stay at Payton are not entirely clear, although her prior decision to poke out her own eye may have had a role.

Todd’s brother, Nate, checks in with Todd on a regular basis and Todd decides he wants to move home with Nate and his family. Todd starts out on a challenging quest to make that happen. After a great deal of resistance, Nate arranges for Todd to spend some time with his family and his experience is difficult, but  positive. While visiting Nate, Todd tours the home where he grew up and the entire family experiences a flood of memories. Ultimately, Todd returns to Payton Living Center, the problems that faced him are resolved and he continues his life there.

Throughout the story we learn a lot about Todd and how his mind works. For instance, we learn that Todd remembers every song he has ever heard and can remember exactly where he was and what he was doing when he first heard it. Todd does not like looking people in the eye “because it feels like they’re touching my nerves with their actual fingers.” He explains that although he does not always understand what people say to him, he can feel their meaning. And we learn that the people in his life are very important to him. At a particular low point, Todd comments that, “To try to feel better I remembered the people who loved me.” 

Most importantly, we learn that although he is different and does not communicate in a familiar way, he is sensitive, perceptive and just like everyone else, wants to be loved and accepted.

“Best Boy” is a short, thoughtful and enjoyable read. You can reserve a copy at the Cuyahoga County Public Library by clicking on http://encore.cuyahoga.lib.oh.us/iii/encore/rerd/C__Rb11154635__Sbest%20boy__P0%2C3__Orightresult__X7?lang=eng.