A Word About Awards

AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE by Tayari Jones Award: Aspen Words Prize Winner 2019, Women's Prize Winner 2019   Nominations: BookTube Longlist 2019, Carnegie Longlist 2019, Dublin Finalist 2020, Goodreads Finalist 2018, LA Times Finalist 2018, National Book Longlist 2018, Oprah Book Club 2018   Date Read: February 26, 2021   This entire novel has beauty and sorrow, wisdom and ignorance and brief but profound glimpses of the American black experience. Roy and Celestial have only been married for a year and a half before Roy is incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit. As Celestial says, before their marriage could really take route.   During the entire time of Roy’s imprisonment, he holds the thought of reclaiming the one thing that he still can: his marriage. His career and family, specifically his mother, are irretrievably lost, but he knows Celestial is still waiting. For him, time is standing still.   But for Celestial, time is definitely marching forward until Roy has been gone for mor

MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR by Herman Wouk   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1956   Date Read: February 23, 2021   Wouk does it again. First, he managed to make a mutiny aboard a submarine absolutely riveting and then make me feel guilty for my rah, rah sentiments. Now, he manages to not only entertain again, but to take the tendency towards a traditional life and actually argue their merits. Yet, what seems simply traditional is also beautiful, meaningful and inevitable for us all.   Marjorie is a spitfire, ready to conquer the theater world, at the misgivings of her parents. After several brief boyfriends, she ends up in the arms of Noel Airman, an undeniably talented songwriter she meets at a theater camp. Noel will prove to be the love of her life and, if she lets him, her total undoing.   Noel is hell-bent on living an unconventional life and, for the time being, so is Marjorie. She wants to succeed in the theater and is not interested in tying Noel down, particularly because it’s alm

THE BOATBUILDER by Daniel Gumbiner   Nomination: National Book Longlist 2018   Date Read: February 21, 2021   Some books fall into your lap just at the right time. I am not an honest judge of whether this has exceptional literary merit, but the characters reminded me of a few things that I really needed to be reminded of right now.   This story takes place in the small, Northern California town of Talinas, which I swear is meant to symbolize Bolenas. Regardless, Berg arrives in this town to rebuild himself and his life after he keeps relapsing in his opioid addiction. In this town he finds friendship, mentorship, beauty, more addiction and self-reflection.   Although Berg has never built boats before, he immediately becomes interested in giving it a go after meeting Alejandro, an instantly likeable character that offers up wisdom and compassion like little feathers floating on the breeze. He is known by almost everyone in the town and is highly regarded for his craftsmanship, intellige

ALMOST ENGLISH by Charlotte Mendelson   Nominations: Booker Longlist 2013, Women's Prize Longlist 2014   Date Read: February 19, 2021   Marina is the granddaughter of Hungarian immigrants, living with her mother, Laura, grandmother and aunts all crammed into a single London flat. Her father, Peter, abandoned the family long ago. Their lives are beginning to change, with the initial catalyst Marina’s decision to transfer to a somewhat prestigious school for her last years of what we would call high school.   Marina wants nothing more than to fit in, as all children do, and is embarrassed by her family’s foreignness. Yet, so much of this novel is based on what isn’t said. Laura wants Marina home and Marina wants to be home, regretting her decision to transfer. This inner-dialog goes on page after page, chapter after chapter. I found this so entirely frustrating and repetitive. Then again, had they just had an open conversation, this novel wouldn’t have a plot.   Both Laura and Marina

BABY LOVE by Louisa Young   Nomination: Women's Prize Longlist 1998   Date Read: February 16, 2021   At first I found it difficult that Angeline is a consultant and “expert” on belly dancing. Someone of Egyptian origin would be a better expert wouldn’t you think? But as I kept reading, the way she described the movement and how it relates to the music, the control a dancer has to have over their bodies, I honestly found myself visualizing everything she was saying.   I found Baby Love entertaining and that’s about it. The plot was fast-paced and fun towards the end when everything explodes. Angeline and her sister Jane were in a motorcycle accident when Jane was 8 months pregnant. After an emergency C-section, the baby Lily survives but Jane does not. Angeline becomes Lily’s mother.   Add in a DUI, a custody battle, a blackmail that finds Angeline under cover and you have a pretty fun romp. I am surprised this was even in the running for the Orange but I had a good time so I can’t

LOST IN THE FOREST by Sue Miller   Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2007, Women's Prize Longlist 2006   Date Read: February 15, 2021   Lost In The Forest is the story of a family in sudden and unwanted transition, of the beauty and difficulty of marriage and the pitfalls of coming of age. As a blended family, these characters seem to have reached a satisfying stasis that is upended with the loss of John, Eva’s current husband. Although John is not Emily and Daisy’s bio-dad (only Theo claims that title), they feel his loss profoundly as their relationship with their bio-dad, Mark (Eva’s ex-husband) doesn’t seem as stable.   The loss of John allows both Eva and Mark to re-explore the marriage they abandoned, which leaves Mark wanting Eva back and Eva unsure. Ultimately, their relationship never materializes as they both embark on other more compelling unions with the passage of time.   As the family is in chaos, reeling from this loss, Daisy, Mark and Eva’s daughter, is left much to her o

ALIAS GRACE by Margaret Atwood   Nominations: Booker Finalist 1996, Dublin Finalist 1998, Women's Finalist 1997   Date Read: February 13, 2021   Based on a true story, Alias Grace follows the imagined inner working of Grace Marks, a notorious convicted murderess. Beyond the sensational headlines and gossip lies a real woman with hopes, dreams and failed ambitions. No one really knows whether she really did assist in the murders of her former employer, Mr. Kinnear, or his housekeeper and lover, Nancy Montgomery. This ambiguity is at the heart of my three-star rating while so many others gave a five.   While I don’t need details spelled out for me in black and white, I found this story riveting until the hypnosis scene. Atwood seems to half-heartedly delve into the mystical/pseudo-science here without fully committing. While the audience in attendance at the hypnosis bought her being occupied by a spirit, others proclaimed there should be a psychological explanation yet none was ever

THE COUNTERLIFE by Philip Roth   Award: National Book Critics Circle Winner 1987   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1987, NY Times Finalist 1987   Date Read: February 10, 2021   The Counterlife marks the third Zuckerman novel I’ve read in a row and I am endlessly fascinated at how Roth is like a dog with a bone. Regardless of subject – Judaism, masculinity, sex, literature, you name it - he can brilliantly take any subject and beat it to fucking death. The Counterlife shows Zuck and his brother, Nathan, in various outcomes of existence; a study in paths taken and not, resentments held and released, affairs embraced and forsaken.    I did find Roth’s ponderings about his Jewish ancestry very interesting. I have always been fascinated by Judaism and there is rich ground here for exploration encompassing Zionism, the militarism of Israel, the post-Holocaust Jew in modern culture, the anti-Semitism that is still rife throughout the world. I found all of these probings fascinating and ric

LIE DOWN IN DARKNESS by William Styron   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1952   Date Read: February 8, 2021   Lie Down In Darkness is a beautiful and tragic look at a family imploding from the inside out. Unlike some disintegrations that amount small sorrows until there is no return, the Loftis family moves from one large sorrow to the next without ever regaining their footing.   Milton, the father, is a drunk with a wandering eye, looking for comfort and acceptance that his wife is unable and unwilling to provide. Mattie, one of the daughters, is physically and mentally disabled, with declining health and requires constant care until her brief life mercifully ends too soon. And then there is the mother and other sister, Helen and Peyton respectively. These two are beyond measure.   Helen basks in her righteous indignation, believing everything that occurs in the Loftis family is a direct betrayal of her and all she holds dear. More concerned with appearances than substance, she see

THE ANATOMY LESSON by Philip Roth   Nominations: National Book Finalist 1984, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1983, NY Times Finalist 1983   Date Read: February 7, 2021   The Anatomy Lesson finds Nathan Zuckerman a hot mess. Overmedicating for a pain no doctor can diagnose, over-womaning to soothe his sexual and mental isolation and overtaxed by his chosen profession, Zuck is in a bad way that just keeps getting worse. Add in middle age, three failed marriages and a non-existent relationship with his brother who is his only remaining family and you almost feel sorry for the poor bastard. You know, if he wasn’t such a prick.   As this is the second Zuckerman novel in a row, I have to admit that I don’t believe his work ages well. I find him so misogynistic that it’s difficult at times to continue. Consider this lovely gem: “On his back he felt like their whore, paying in sex for someone to bring him the milk and the paper.” Because his cock is such a gift to women! And this nugget

MY LIFE AS A MAN by Philip Roth   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1975   Date Read: February 5, 2021   I am going down a Roth-hole and this is the first of the Nathan Zuckerman novels I am reading. I wished I had held off on reading The Ghost Writer but I shall press on. The Zuckerman portion in My Life As A Man is terribly brief, constituting only 2 small chapters here but this is where we start.   I cannot tell if Roth is a misogynist, clueless about women, informed only by the times (this novel was written in 1974) or all of the above. The portrait he paints of women in this novel is bleak. Women are to be fucked, manipulated by, escaped from, dominated or, again, all of the above. I am going to give Roth the benefit of the doubt and say he was limited in his understanding by the cultural times, where women were beginning to come into their own.   My Life As A Man focuses on an insane marriage between Peter Tarnopol (Roth?) and Maureen, a manipulative shrew if ever there was one.

PETER SMART’S CONFESSIONS by Paul Bailey   Nomination: Booker Finalist 1977   Date Read: February 2, 2021   Peter Smart’s Confessions opens with Peter in the hospital for an intentional overdose and the doctor berating him for attempting suicide. Although he recovers, this novel does not. Peter’s life and personality are shaped by the horrible (some have said grotesque) family, friends and acquaintances surrounding him.   One of the largest influence is Peter’s mother. She never refers to him by name but calls him “You.” With that single word she sentences him to the permanently accused, forever suspecting him of some misdeed, error or outright lie. In private she is a monster; in public, she puts on an act so that others believe her to be pleasant. The only person for which her mask drops is Neville, Peter’s friend and roommate.   Peter himself is mild-mannered and often sarcastic. Although he does make mistakes in his life (who hasn’t?) I believe his greatest failure is his own perce