October 2020

Let's start with a little humor!  Here's what we discussed:

Lamb - Christopher Moore

David Sedaris

Jason "David Wong" Pargin

Mill Town - Kerri Arsenault

Watership Down - Richard Adams

Sergey Prokofiev

Dmitri Shostakovich

The Yarn Woman - Brooks Mencher

How the Penguins Saved Veronica - Hazel Prior

Rage - Bob Woodward

Born to Heal - Ruth Montgomery

Travels with Myself and Another - Martha Gelhorn

From Mary Lou in Maryland:

Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing (2018). Owens is a wildlife scientist and has won awards for her publications about African wildlife. This is her first novel. It is set in the sparsely inhabited North Carolina coastal marsh and filled with eloquent descriptions of the wild marsh, rivers, inlets, and seashore. The main character is Kya Clark, known in the local town of Barkley Cove as “Marsh Girl.” The novel has two alternating narrative lines. In 1952, when Kya is only 6 years old, her mother flees her abusive alcoholic husband, leaving her children and in their shack in the marsh. Soon Kya’s siblings leave also. Kya must learn how to dodge her father when he is drunk and how to survive alone in the marsh without money. We follow her story as she grows up, becoming ever more cleverly self-sufficient. We share her observations of the life-forms of the marsh. A parallel narrative begins in 1969 when the body of Chase Andrews, town football star, is found near the fire tower north of town in the marsh. The sheriff can’t decide whether it is an accident or murder, but Barkley Cove residents believe the “Marsh Girl” killed him. This narrative follows the investigation of the death. The alternating story lines provide plenty of suspense as they begin to merge. Kya is an enchanting character and we are solidly on her side throughout. This is a wonderful novel, exploring complex social and psychological patterns as well as the intricacies of the natural world of the marsh, in the depths of which the crawdads sing.

Kate Atkinson, Started Early, Took My Dog (2011). Life is what happens when you are on your way to something else. This is the world of hapless, reluctant detective Jackson Brodie. In this novel he somehow agreed to search for the biological parents of a woman in New Zealand who was adopted as a small child in the north of England. While he is wandering around Leeds, he rescues a dog from an abusive man. At about that same time in Leeds Tracy Waterhouse, a retired police officer now heading security at a shopping mall, witnesses a known prostitute and thief being abusive to a 3- or 4-year-old screaming girl. Tracy has just taken a lot of cash from her bank and somehow without thinking about it, she offers the woman a large sum for the child. Jackson doesn’t what to do with the dog and Tracy doesn’t know what to do with the little girl. And we’re off and running with another delightful detective novel of the absurd.

Brooks Mencher, The Yarn Woman (2013). The narrator Nat Fisher is a San Francisco journalist and close friend of SF Police Detective William Chu. The Yarn Woman of the title is a woman apparently in her 60s or older who lives in the upstairs of a former movie theatre in a rough part of town. A mysterious Russian, Mr. Kasparov, serves as her butler, cook and general factotum and chauffeurs her around in a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. She is an expert in fabrics and yarns and Detective Chu has sought her assistance in solving several crimes. This volume consists of three novellas: Ghosts of the Albert Townsend, The Fisherman’s Wife, and The Boy in the Mist. The plot if each novella turns on fiber identifications made by the Yarn Woman, with more than a whisper of the paranormal.

Jack N. Rakove, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic (2nd edition, 2002). Besides being the husband of America’s most famous First Lady, James Madison was the most consistent and insightful recorder of the development of the United States of America. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention agreed to keep their deliberations secret, but Madison kept detailed notes and he retained them for historical purposes. He maintained and preserved the records and writings of his four decades of political life, from the state of Virginia to the Continental Congress, to the White House, infamously burned during his presidency. It would be no exaggeration to deem him the Father of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and Author of The Federalist. He was a gifted political thinker, able to be both theoretical and pragmatic. Rakove especially admires him for recognizing the need – and the difficulty – of balancing majority power and minority rights. In addition to his contributions to American history and government, this slim biography details his family background, personal life, and relationships with other more famous founders. He was not an imposing figure or a flashy personality like some of his contemporaries, but his lasting influence on the structure and functioning of our national government is exceeded by none.

Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (2009). The setting is a missionary hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The culture blends African, Mediterranean and Indian; Christian and Muslim and Hindu. In September 1954 twin boys are delivered by caesarian in Missing Hospital. The novel begins with this traumatic event. It then traces the lives of the boys, Marion and Shiva, for 50 years. In alternating chapters, it recounts the lives of their birth parents: from Madras, India, Sister Mary Joseph Praise and from Scotland and the Indian Medical Service, Dr. Thomas Stone. A third plot line tells the story of the parents who raised the twins, internal medicine specialist Dr. Abhi Ghosh and obstetrician Dr. Kalpana Hemlatha (“Hema”), both from Madras. Missing Hospital, its doctors, nurses, staff, and patients, and the social and political features of Addis Aba and Ethiopia are described in detail. The perspective is largely that of the twins as they mature. There is more detail about the practice of medicine than is comfortable to read, but both boys show an early capability for medicine and grow up to become surgeons. From beginning to end, the plot turns on things medical, but the compelling focus remains Marion and Shiva and the other vivid characters who inhabit this novel.