A Word About Awards

SONG OF THE SHANK by Jeffery Renard Allen   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2015, Dublin Longlist 2016, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2015   Date Read: September 29, 2022   Song Of The Shank is a complex and detailed novel about Blind Tom and his rise and fall from fame during the Civil War and just after. Tom is a black piano prodigy who can play a song after hearing it only once. Tom is also mentally challenged; his exact affliction is never mentioned but he sounds as if he’s autistic.   There are a series of interlopers that observe Tom’s talent and immediately see dollar signs. His rise to fame is entirely based on others’ ability to exploit him. The first of these is Percy Oliver, who takes many years to save up his money and come up with his plan. He finally achieves a meeting with Tom’s owner, General Bethune, who agrees to releasing Tom to Oliver’s custody in exchange for continuous kick-backs.   The challenge is finding a piano teacher that can hone Tom’s skill. Being as he’s black and

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY MOTHER by Jamaica Kincaid   Nominations: Dublin Finalist 1998, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1996, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 1997,  Women's Prize Longlist 1997   Date Read: September 21, 2022   Xuela Richardson was born never knowing her mother. She died giving birth to her, leaving her existence a mystery. The little she knows about her mother have been handed to Xuela in small stories and trinkets of her existence.   Xuela’s father, recognizing he wasn’t capable of raising an infant on his own hands Xuela off to his laundress to raise. The laundress treated her as a slave, never honoring her personhood, never offering love or comfort. In this cold environment that focused on survival, Xuela became enchanted with nature, with color, with the deliciousness of the physical world and, most importantly, her changing body.   The one gift Xuela’s corrupt father gave her is the benefit of an education. At a time when only boys went to school, Xuela’s father in

THE TEN LOVES OF MR. NISHINO by Hiromi Kawakami   Award: PEN/Translation Winner 2020   Date Read: September 18, 2022   The Ten Loves Of Mr. Nishino follows the travails of Nishino as he moves from woman to woman, searching for something that is lacking within himself. Having tragically lost his sister and niece, he seems to attempt to replace the emptiness he feels or to consume much of his time so he doesn’t need to think about his loss.   So Nishino is fated to bounce around like a ping pong ball, from woman to woman, terrified of actually falling in love. He proposes to multiple women but it seems like settling down is his worst fear. The only reprieve he has is that women fall in love with him and then end things on their own because they know they can never truly “have” him.   Kawakami, through the hesitant Nishino, uses vignettes of the women who have passed through his life at various stages and only through them are we able to know Nishino. Therefore, we know their perspective

AMERICAN STUDIES by Mark Merlis   Award: LA Times Winner 1995   Date Read: Sepember 17, 2022   Before it was okay to be openly gay, Merlis takes us into a world that is difficult to bare. The men depicted in American Studies live secret lives, in constant fear of being “outed” and persecuted politically, legally and socially. This fear robbed the men of the time from finding true love and connection because brief, short encounters were more discreet and less suspect.   We meet Reeve in the hospital, recovering from a brutal assault from a “trick,” a man he paid and brought home for an evening of sex. Somewhat comical is the way the man rifles through Reeve’s apartment looking for cash and Reeve is trying to explain that everything is handled through plastic now. He has no cash. Added to the terror is the fear that people will find out what really happened and discover he is gay. I cannot imagine.   Set in the world of academia, before universities became coed, Reeve meets Tom, a profes

THE FIELD OF VISION by Wright Morris   Award: National Book Winner 1957   Date Read: September 15, 2022   The Field Of Vision was considered a high modernist style of writing when it debuted in 1956 and went on to win the National Book Award in 1957. The novel is character driven, rather than plot driven, digging deeper under the layers of each of the characters, their pasts, their motivations, their life choices and present desires.   Scanlon is the great-grandfather of the present clan who have all traveled, by car no less, to Mexico for vacation. We find them watching a bull fight, which is so objectionable today that it boggles my mind they used to actually do this. Nevertheless, the family are being entertained by killing bulls. Scanlon reminisces about his days on the wagon trail, pushing for westward expansion and how harrowing the journey was. Scanlon ultimately settled in Lone Tree, Texas and as modernism approached, he let it go on by, preferring the ways and means of the pas

TRULY MADLY GUILTY by Liane Moriarty   Award: Goodreads Winner 2016   Date Read: September 12, 2022   Truly Madly Guilty is another guilty pleasure from Moriarty. Here we have 3 couples, married, middle class and in various stations of happiness in their marriages. They all meet up one fateful day for an innocent barbecue and at first, they are having a great time – perhaps with the exclusion of Erika and Oliver. Vin and Tiffany’s daughter, Dawn, is there as well as Sam and Clementine’s daughters Holly and Ruby.    With great food and engaging conversation, the couples assume the children are being watched over by Dakota, who is a mere 10 years old. Erika is actually the one that finds Ruby floating in a large fountain in Vin and Tiffany’s extravagant backyard. Erika and Oliver perform CPR, which at first doesn’t seem to be working, until Ruby coughs up water. She is airlifted to a hospital and eventually is okay – no long-term impairments.   The long-term impairment, however, is evide

VELVET WAS THE NIGHT by Silvia Moreno-Garcia   Nomination: LA Times Finalist 2021   Read: September 8, 2022   Considered a noir masterpiece, Velvet Was The Night is an intricate narrative that grabs you from the very first page. Set in 1970’s Mexico, intense political upheaval has turned friends into enemies and those you trust cannot really be trusted.    Sprinkled throughout are references to songs popular then and a playlist is even included at the end of the book. Moreno-Garcia includes these references because the Mexican government was actively trying to suppress rock music at the same time they were trying to suppress the student and activist uprisings.    Different factions were formed to confront these uprisings, some of them trained by the CIA. Elvis, one of the more prominent characters, is a member of the Hawks, which are in danger of being shut down in favor of another faction. Elvis’ task is to find a missing girl, Leonora, who supposedly has incriminating film, although

THE GREAT MAN by Kate Christensen   Award: PEN/Faulkner Winner 2008   Date Read: September 6, 2022   Oscar Feldman was a famous painter whose popularity hasn’t seemed to diminish with his passing. In fact, he seems more popular than ever. Two biographers are vying to be the first to write about his life and in so doing, interview the women that surrounded Oscar’s life. A notorious womanizer, Oscar had a wife, Abigail, a mistress, Teddy, and countless affairs. Teddy was more than just a mistress – she and Oscar had twins together. Abigail and Oscar had one son, Ethan, who is severely autistic.   Oscar’s genre was the female form, naturally. The women in his life continually refer to him as a “great man” but was he really? After reading about the different perspectives about Oscar, his motivations, his talent – Oscar seems to be a man that found his niche but had little in the way of an inner life. He seems like a man absorbed by his own pleasure and fascination with women. Talented? Mos

THE BAY OF NOON by Shirley Hazzard   Nominations: Booker Finalist 1970, National Book Finalist 1971   Date Read: September 4, 2022   I seem to have stumbled, quite accidentally, onto my third book in a row where siblings either love each other or succumb to actual incest. Hurricane Season, The Turnout and now with The Bay Of Noon, Jenny, our trusty narrator, admits that she has fallen in love with her brother Eduardo, which compelled her to leave post-WWII London for Africa. From Africa, she finds herself as a translator in Naples, exposed to new sites, people and ways of being.   She quickly makes a friend in Giaconda, who is introduced to Jenny through an English friend. Giaconda’s boyfriend, Gianni, is also taken with Jenny and on an outing makes a pass towards Jenny, which ruins the entire adventure. I know that sense of disappointment where you’re just having fun and then some guy gets it in his head that he has to have you. There’s nothing more tedious or depressing.   And then t

THE TURNOUT by Megan Abbott   Award: LA Times Winner 2022   Date Read: September 2, 2022   “Dara was dark, but Marie was light. Dara was cool, but Marie was hot.” This just goes to show how different these sisters are, from the very beginning of their lives, to the tragic house of cards that come tumbling down on their heads. While Dara does her best to forget all the terrible things that have happened in her life, – her parents violent marriage, her mother having sex with Charlie, her parents’ tragic car accident –Marie wants to face it all, even if it drives her crazy. And it just about does.   Charlie came to live with them as a teenager, the elder Mrs. Durant unwilling to let him go with his bio mother to England. Male dancers are very precious. Almost as soon as Charlie is ensconced in their lives, Dara and Charlie begin a relationship and are eventually married. Marie, for the most part, is single and has been for a very long time. They still live all together in the house until