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....

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 ...

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...

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, R...

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 a...

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 ...

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...