A Word About Awards

MOM KILLS KIDS & SELF by Alan Saperstein   Award: PEN/Hemingway Winner 1980   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1980   Date Read: December 31, 2021   I will never understand why people hide from each other, particularly spouses. Wouldn’t you want someone to hear your doubts, frustrations, truths? You are, after all, allegedly spending a lifetime together. Acting like strangers is maybe easier, but so much more lonely.   This is essentially at the heart of Mom Kills Kids & Self. Only after the Wife (do we ever really learn her name or is she every wife?) is dead does the Husband fully understand her desires, frustrations, struggles, and losses. Through such a desperate act, he can acknowledge all she had given up and how little she had gained in assuming the role of wife and mother, in particular a stay at home wife and the mother of a developmentally challenged child with gender dysphoria.   They never talk about the violation by the Sophomore, who comes to their house and tak

THE LAST HUNT by Milton Lott   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955   Date Read: December 27, 2021   The Last Hunt is a fictional recounting of the decimation of the last buffalo to roam the prairies of America. Sandy and Charlie are a mismatched team of buffalo hunters, killing buffalo for the profit of their skins. While Sandy is measured and calm, going about his business with a level-head and sense of purpose, Charlie is hot-headed, easily triggered and a generally unlikeable sort.   What will remain memorable for me is that all the participants in these buffalo hunts know what the outcome of their excess will be. They are fully cognizant of the fact that at some point, with their rate of unprecedented killing, that the buffalo will eventually become extinct. And yet, like all humans that are aware of the outcome, they continue anyway, killing even more buffalo than they can skin.   Around the campfire, the hunters acknowledge that there may not be any buffalo left by next winte

PREP by Curtis Sittenfeld   Nominations: NY Times Finalist 2005, Women's Prize Longlist 2006   Date Read: December 24, 2021   I have very mixed feelings about Prep. I was excited to read it because a salacious novel about hormonal teenagers at an elite boarding school sounded like mind-numbing fun. The mind-numbing part turned out to be true enough.    Lee is already an outcast before she even arrives at Ault School. She’s from the Midwest, on scholarship and, perhaps worst of all, has a tragically underdeveloped self-esteem. Instead of throwing herself into the decision she made (at the age of 13!), she holds herself apart and continuously ponders why anyone would want to be friends with her, imaging how other are judging her and avoiding as many social situations as possible.   During her 4 years at Ault, she has a heart bursting crush on Sugar Crossman (what’s with that name?). After a brief afternoon meeting up at a mall on their day off in Freshman year, they haven’t had conta

UNION DUES by John Sayles   Nominations: National Book Finalist 1978, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1977   Date Read: December 21, 2021   Union Dues is essentially about work – the dignity of a job, the plight of the worker, the decline of the unions in the 70s. At the heart of this is Hunter McNatt, a coal miner from West Virginia. He’s a widower with two sons. His eldest son, Darwin, has already left home, having returned from Vietnam and realizing he has nothing in common with his father, he takes off for somewhere in Massachusetts. His other son, Hobie, has run away to Boston to find his brother but his ultimate reasons aren’t quite clear.   Somewhere in the mix is the “revolution” that Hobie is ensnared in, a disjointed attempt to free the American worker and return the means of production to their hands. All Hobie really knows is it’s a place to stay and regular meals. The female pickings aren’t bad either.   As McNatt searches for his boy, we are eavesdroppers on the coa

STAY WITH ME by Ayobami Adebayo   Nomination: Orange Finalist 2017   Date Read: December 21, 2021   Stay With Me explores the boundaries of marriage, infertility, and honesty against a backdrop of a crumbling Nigeria. Akim and Yejide are relatively happy in their marriage. The only glaring problem is they have no children after 6 years of marriage. While the both of them are learning to live with this fact, Akim’s mother is not having it. She’s not having it to the point of finding him another wife.   This intrusion into their marriage isn’t welcomed by either Akim or Yejide. Yejide realizes the only way to get this interloper out of her marriage is to get pregnant and fast. So she does what any good Nigerian does – she goes to the local shaman. And voila! She looks like a pregnant woman, eats like a pregnant woman, waddles like a pregnant woman. But, alas, so desperate is she to get pregnant that her psyche actually manifests this desire in her physical body.   From here, everything s

THE HUGE SEASON by Wright Morris   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955   Date Read: December 16, 2021   I’ll open by saying this is the most expensive Kindle book I’ve ever purchased. At $23.75, it should come with a compliment or a massage. Sheesh.   The Huge Season explores the ideals of four young men as they hold up against the test of time. We see three men in particular, Lawrence, Foley and Proctor, with Lawrence’s friend Dickie popping in and out at times. They all met at a west coast college and found themselves as roommates, each with distinct personalities, goals and passions. The narrator, Foley, recaps their college shenanigans and the real world that was waiting for them during an era of great social upheaval.   Charles Lawrence, a tennis star, an intellectually lazy student with a penchant for danger, dies after committing suicide after being gored by a bull in his nether-region, most likely diminishing his manhood. It is largely Charles’ death that brings the friends

BLACK SUNDAY by Tola Rotimi Abraham   Nomination: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, Kirkus Finalist 2020   Date Read: December 14, 2021   When a family falls apart due to fraud, the four siblings left behind rely on each other and their creativity to survive. The family is well-off, particularly by Nigerian standards, however, the father is swindled out of their entire wealth by a scam perpetrated by a pastor.   After this devastating change in their circumstances, the mother simply vanishes, leaving her four children behind. Not long after, the father also leaves, causing all 4 children to fend for themselves. They are somewhat fortunate that their grandmother takes them in but she is elderly and distrustful of their youth. She shamelessly parades the kids before the local merchants, telling them to never sell anything to these kids because if they had any money it was stolen from her.   These industrious children – twin girls Ariyike and Bibike and their younger brothers, Peter and Andrew –

THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE by Audrey Niffenegger   Nomination: Orange Longlist 2004   Date Read: December 13, 2021   I read for many reasons, but perhaps the primary reason is to discover beauty – in language, in story, in characters. And I found beauty here. Although I am still trying to wrap my head around the flitting in and out of past, present and future, this is a beautiful story masterfully told. And just about everything can be found here – profound love, desire, intellectual curiosity, humiliation, the art of letting oneself down, appreciation for the moment. All of this and more are woven into these pages.   I found the ability for Henry to meet up with himself bizarre and relieving. He can warn himself, guide himself, and help his younger self acquire the skills he will need to survive his bizarre life. And, yes, he can alleviate the all-encompassing desire for sex every teenager has by – having sex with himself. This was quite a brilliant point Niffenegger made since Henry wa

THE DOLLMAKER by Harriette Simpson Arnow   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955   Date Read: December 7, 2021   Gertie Nevels is a survivor. She will do anything for her family – to keep them alive, to keep them safe. From the first pages, we see her not taking no for an answer when she’s trying to save her son Amos. I instantly respected her.   And then she caved. I still can’t understand why. Although she’s a grown woman with children of her own, she can’t seem to please her mother regardless of what she does and she ends up bowing to the will of her mother and husband. Just as she’s about to fulfill a lifelong dream, owning a farm of her own, her mother insists she move her and the kids to Detroit to be with her husband, Clovis. Clovis has moved to Detroit to make some good money at the steel mills that are churning out machinery for WWII. Gertie acquiesces and it would be an irreversible decision.   Detroit is filthy, unkind, noisy and corrupt. The neighbors in their government

WINDS OF MORNING By H.L. Davis   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1953   Date Read: December 2, 2021   First of all, this book caught my attention from the first page because one of the main characters is named Busick, which is the original version of my last name. But I digress…   Busick, a foreman for a wealthy landowner who manages the more unsavory projects, accidentally shoots and kills Piute Charlie, a well-known Indian on the frontier. This killing launches a cascade of misadventures for young lawman Amos Clarke. The arrest of Busick forces Clarke to move a herd of wild horses that were in Busick’s possession. Almost immediately he meets up with Pop Hendricks, a salty horse herder who is skilled in all the old ways of the frontier.   Along the way, they resolve a murder of a wealthy landowner, herd the horses across the frontier, keep their young Mexican hand from being arrested and help Busick’s young daughter. One situation leads to the next in a series of plot twists.   Win