Sheila's Picks

Named after the literary device that marked regency novels, The Marriage Plot gives us three college students whose lives intertwine first in school, and then again later after several significant life events.  The novel begins at Brown, in 1982, when the trio embark on a cat-and-mouse relationship game, whereby Madeline is (is not) with Leonard, while always running toward Mitchell, who fails to see that it doesn’t much matter what he does, Madeline simply can’t make a sensible decision to save her life.  

The first part of the novel is juxtaposed against Madeline’s semiotics class—making her see nearly everything either Leonard or Mitchell does as a sign of sort.  Like her coursework, Madeline is fragmented and deconstructed.  As it turns out, Leonard is too, and the novel turns toward their relationship and Madeline’s ability (or not) to keep some sense of herself as Leonard psychologically and physically crumbles.  At the same time, Mitchell has headed overseas in order to find some actual (non-sign/symbolic) meaning in life:  no deconstructing there—either he has the chops to work with Mother Teresa in India or not; anything to prove himself worthy of someone’s love.   All eventually end up together again, still circling and still trying to add symbolism to everything they see.  The novel’s conclusion will come as a surprise, as Eugenides doesn’t even hint at how he’ll wrap things up until he’s actually doing just that, on the last page of the novel.  

This one is for fans of Eugenides, stories about challenging relationships and bad decisions, and anyone who has ever had to sit through a college class thinking “what on earth are these people talking about….?”

Colson Whitehead’s Zone One is an apocalyptic novel at heart—and one that moves, quickly, through the lower part of Manhattan as it is slowly taken over by zombies who have been bitten by other zombies  and who either chomp the survivors (and, note, they hide well in the hidey-hole streets below Canal) or live in an endless do-loop of whatever they were doing  when they were affected.   Amid the people with post-apocalypse disorder is a man destined to find and sweep out these leftovers; he assumes the satirical name of Mark Spitz for reasons that become clear only toward the end of the novel.  While Spitz works to clear remnants of what were people, deal with the traumatized people who remain, and think about the possibilities that jersey barriers may not hold back the hordes, he narrates  a tale about loneliness and living with others who may just as well be dead even if alive.  Whitehead’s prose is magnificent; you won’t feel as though you are reading a zombie novel.  But I still wouldn’t recommend you read this one late at night if you are home alone….

For Sicily Coyne, life is defined by tragedy:  the tragedy of losing her beloved father in a fire, the tragedy of living—but losing her ‘real’ life to disfigurement—in the same fire, and the tragedy of realizing that sympathy and love are not the same thing.  Her strong sense of self and her beautiful dancer’s physique buffer her from feeling tragic—until one incident makes Sicily question whether her life can be anything but tragic if she’s disfigured.  Enter physician and face transplant specialist Eliza Cappadora (yes, one of those Cappadoras from Mitchard’s other books), who helps Sicily convince herself that a non-tragic life sans disfigurement is possible, and desirable.  And so with a new and beautiful face, Sicily embraces life and everyone in it, convinced that being “normal” will buffer her from tragedy.  But when she and Vincent Cappadora (yes, one of those Cappadoras) meet all bets are off—Sicily rushes headlong into a relationship and a future that can jeopardize her life and result in even more heartache (and, yes, tragedy).  A medical and ethical decision must be made, and despite the help of her family (and those Cappadoras), Sicily’s future is hers alone to decide.

Steve Bouser’s account of the death of Elva Statler Davidson would not have been told if it weren’t for the off-chance finding of an old photograph depicting  some reporters hanging about the Pinehurst Village clubhouse back in 1935.  As it turns out, they were there to cover the inquest into the death of 22-year old Elva Davidson, a hotel heiress who died in Pinehurst under mysterious circumstances.  At the time, the Elva’s death brought tabloid writers from up and down the East Coast to the village to sensationalize the depression-era account of trouble in paradise.  The death was (and still is) formally unexplained, and it carries with it all the requisite drama attending such circumstances:  Why did friends keep changing their stories?  Was it murder of the newlywed by a husband out for the money?  Or a despondent suicide?  And why did Pinehurst patrons “close ranks” to protect husband Brad Davidson rather than Elva, who had spent so many summers there?

While Bouser explores the sad case of Elva’s short but privileged life, her ill-considered marriage, and the strange legal procedures that resulted in no formal determination of cause of death, he also reports the brief history of Pinehurst and Southern Pines.  Pinehurst flourished as a winter playground for Yankees, including Elva, who flocked to the village to shoot, golf, and play.  And, what happened in Pinehurst stayed in Pinehurst:  any information about Elva, her death, or even what people thought of the outsider-husband she had just married remained in the confines of the village.

Bouser is both compassionate and balanced in his reports of the Davidson affair.  He doesn’t tip his hand until the end, making the reader evaluate whether there was a miscarriage of justice and whether Elva’s will—recently changed to benefit  her new husband—really made Elva worth less when she was alive than dead.  We may not know those things, but we do know this:  Elva died of CO poisoning on a bitter February evening, after a bitter evening out with friends.  The position of her body, the location of the car, her strange clothing, and her recent mental state made it clear that life as a princess at Pinehurst was not so glamorous, after all.

Ryan David Jahn’s Good Neighbors is a novelization of an event we’ve all wondered about—the 1964 murder of a young woman in the courtyard of her apartment building, in clear view of her neighbors.  What were the neighbors doing, and thinking, and why didn’t they help?  Jahn takes us into the apartments of the neighbors, and we learn the simple truth:  our daily troubles blind us to the real needs of others.  The neighbors are an odd collection, and their stories mirror the difficulties of the time and setting.  Jahn’s account of makes us understand the neighbors (though never the murderer, whose thoughts we also hear).   Jahn also takes us into the nightmare of the murdered woman, as the reader hears her thoughts interspersed with the neighbors’ stories.  Despite its macabre topic, this book is riveting.

Bill James wants you to understand why some crimes are “popular,” and what made them that way.  His take on crime is that our fascination with it reflects—and also creates—our cultural ethos.  James’s analysis (sprinkled liberally with opinions, some of which seem remarkably wacky) focuses on our fascination with spectacular crime, which increased in the 60s and 70s due, he argues, to liberal laws favoring the rights of the accused (don’t worry, lefties, he gets onto the right for their contributions to the problem as well).  Along the journey to trace our undying devotion to the lurid, he comes up with a classification system for murder, recounts for us some of the worst murders we can’t forget (Zodiac, Sam Sheppard), essentially solves some (JFK, JonBenet Ramsey), and advises on crime movies and books (read In Cold Blood, see the Onion Field).  So, read Popular Crime to learn the sociological, cultural, and historical forces guiding our endless fascination with the macabre.  Be prepared to recognize yourself in what you read.

Dubus’s account of growing up with his three sibs in a gritty, lower-class MA mill town replete with fast cars, dope deals, hopeless people, dive-bars, and a world of hurt is a study of self-discipline that will leave you highly impressed.   Dubus’s father—a famous writer and a real “academic” type—left the family and became distant and unsupportive (financially, psychologically), and he never even had an inkling of the sorts of trouble his children were getting into.  As his kids turned to drugs, sex, bar-hopping, street violence, and gangs, Andre senior was oblivious.  In the mean time, his son (and his other children) became more and more angry and resentful.  Dubus himself learned street fighting and then boxing—but never managed to learn to control his anger or his feelings.  Ultimately, his anger and resentment are all he has left.  One by one, Dubus and his siblings find some way out of their individual downward spirals, and only then do they begin having any contact with the “old man,” and only then do they start to get some understanding of another perspective.   For Dubus, the anger and resentment as a way of life diminish only when he starts writing; his break from their grip is described in a hair-raising scene that takes place on an evening train in Europe.   You cannot help be in awe of Dubus’s talent as a writer, and you will also admire his drive and discipline.  One of the best memoirs I’ve ever read!

The author of Wickett’s Remedy and Bee Season doesn’t give us the same book twice, and The False Friend shows yet another dimension to Goldberg’s writing and quirky style. You never know what topic she might tackle (self-help, psychotic moms, spelling-bee pressures), but whatever it is, you can be assured that the characters will be well-drawn and that story will be a surprising (if not disturbing) one.

The False Friend focuses on the psychological dramas of mean girls, and what happens to both the girls and their victims once grown. Celia is in her 30s and successful on the surface, but is constantly haunted by her lost friend, Djuna. Together as tweens they were the mean girls, with Djuna the worse of the two, but Celia feels that she did a very wrong turn to Djuna, one that shattered lives. Djuna disappeared one day as a group of girls were walking (arguing, tormenting others) and Celia insists that Djuna never got into a stranger’s car, as all have known to be the case for 20 years, but instead ran into the woods where Celia abandoned her. Celia is so bothered by her own deception that she can’t move on—not to marry her ever-so-right boyfriend or have children. The best she can do is dote on her dogs.

Celia’s parents, Djuna’s mother, and even her brother Jeremy (once the lost soul of her family) insist that Celia had nothing to do with Djuna’s decision to hop into a stranger’s car, and that Djuna really was taken away. It is only the targets of the mean girls—Becky, Josie, and especially Leanne—who hold the pieces to the puzzle. Celia finds each in order to confirm her own beliefs and to find her truth, but instead she is confronted with her complicity in the destruction of several lives. Eventually, Celia sees the harm done to her living victims, chief among them herself.

James Kunstler is known for his social commentary, criticism of American lives and values, screeds against sprawl, and for his predictions of a sparse future for America that includes cataclysmic change.  Kunstler’s arguments (articulated in many of his non-fiction works) revolve around the idea that after the oil is gone, the world will fall into disarray and there will be wars and famines and pirates…and, well, you get the idea.

In The Witch of Hebron (as well as in its prequel, World Made by Hand) Kunstler gives us a novelization of this future.  The world has “moved on” and times are simpler, but much harder.  Electricity and government are gone, a flu has devastated those who didn’t get annihilated in the small-scale dirty bomb wars, family members are “gone” or lost, and people chop wood, ride horses, and churn butter.  While it’s hard, life can be on occasion idyllic, particularly in Union Grove, an upstate NY hamlet safe from the water marauders and off the radar of any foreign invaders.  Oh, gangs can be a problem (one large one, detailed in World Made by Hand), and food and real money are scarce.  Times are hard, but they aren’t impossible.

Little Jasper Copeland, son of the town doctor, has a dog—a pretty rare treat in this new world.  Many of them were carried off by some virus, or made into stew.  Jasper foolishly allows his dog to roam in the large compound of the New Faithers.  That band, led by Brother Jobe, is some Southern-brand of religious folk who live in their own compound and look a little bit like a dangerous sect, although they aren’t too awfully zealous.  They might, however, be able to do some major damage if allowed to run wild; their faith seems to keep them in check.  They also have resources:  talents, money, and horses.  And when Jasper’s dog meets one of the horses, things don’t go well for the dog; that unleashes a set of circumstances that no little kid could foresee.  Jasper takes off and meets on his travels a true bad character:  Billy Bones, who makes his living robbing (and generally killing) whomever gets in his way. 

Trailing Jasper are his father and Robert Earle, a widower and town carpenter.  Earle’s prominence in the story is not only his friendship with the Copelands but his relationship with the wife of Loren Holder, the Congregationalist minister without faith in himself or God.  Doc Copeland and Earle run into many strange people outside of Union Grove, but none more wondrous than one woman, living a comfortable life.

The nexus point of all these persons and lives is that woman; we’ll assume is the Witch of Hebron.  She certainly can manage some magic.  Loren’s troubles, Earle’s doubts, and Jasper’s ill-fated travels are managed in strange but wonderful ways.  She seems to know just what everyone needs and wants, and she’s able to make life seem like it used to before the world moved on.  While it isn’t clear at first what the price for such comforts of the past might be, that price becomes more clear toward the end of the book.  And it’s clear that the price might be harder to manage and more complicated than it seems, but that determination will have to await Kunstler’s next book in the series….

If you like apocalyptic novels, start with World Made by Hand for that little bit of mysticism and magical realism in this new world.  You’ll love the follow up, Witch, even more.

It’s hard to imagine that the economy can provide the backdrop for a novel, never mind a novel about how the “current economic crisis” forces social change, existential angst, and fear and loathing when the mortgage payment comes due.  Janelle Brown’s take on the type of consumption and lifestyle to which we have been accustomed is sharp and witty, and at first it’s hard to recognize that she’s skewering all of us for our social expectations and customs. 

Two lovely, young, and rather bohemian Los Angelenos have almost everything that they dream of, or at least dreamed of at one point:  she is “in film” and awaiting her “gross” numbers at the box office for her first production; he is nearly done with an album.   Together they are Claudia and Jeremy, a happy and youthful couple, awaiting the beginning of the next part of their lives in a wildly overpriced and tiny house outside on the e fringes of LA.  But it’s theirs of course, and so neither earthquakes, a tanking film, a dissolving band, nor the return of a free spirited former lover can take it away from them.  The bank, however, can.  The mortgage payment balloons and everything else goes south.  A minor household disaster ensues, followed by a major relationship trauma, and all of a sudden mortgage payments start looking pretty minor compared to real catastrophes:  compromising your artistic vision, skirting the edges of your ethic,  giving up on your dreams, and cheating on your spouse. 

Brown uses a creative way to shine a light at the end of the tunnel for Claudia and Jeremy, but they dither for awhile on whether to follow that light.  Even their indecisiveness shows their material fondness for what they believe they are entitled to, and their inability to grow up and live within their means.  Or to grow up at all.  But Brown doesn’t leave us hanging with unlikable characters.  She finds, ultimately, the way to make Claudia and Jeremy see the house, their lifestyle, and their expectations for what they are:  the anchor that drags them down.  And like the characters in Brown’s All They Ever Wanted Was Everything (featuring another consumption-driven, existential-crisis ridden family), Claudia and Jeremy are worth following.  You want them to succeed, even at their worst moments.

On a warm summer morning in August of 1974, many New Yorkers stared in awe at a daring display of athletic grace and mental toughness.  Phillip Petite managed to string a large wire between the North and the South Towers of the World Trade Center, and then he walked.  And it was a long walk.  He walked across not once, but oh-so-many times.  He danced.  He displayed.  He entertained.  And he both outwitted those who wished to trap him and entranced those who stared up from below.

McCann sets Petite’s walk as the one constant in a city full of people living on the edge.  There are actually several stories in Let the Great World Spin, and each gives us people getting just a little more desperate, their lives getting a little tougher.  There is a group of mothers who lost sons in Vietnam, and they get together each week in each other's homes to have coffee and look at their sons' bedrooms.  On the morning of Petite’s walk the woman who happens to live on the Upper East Side has her turn, and the situation isn’t very comfortable, nor is the mother’s group very comforting.  The others live in Brooklyn, in Queens, in Harlem...and not now during the gentrified times of New York, but during the gritty 70s where walking anywhere meant taking your life in your hands.  And these women, along with others, really do just that--they just miss or just hit pockets of violence and mayhem rather regularly.  What sets these women apart becomes, for the first time, more important than what binds them.  Although their divisions are keen, the walker—as well as a minor player in one of McCann’s other stories—ultimately will join them, although it will take many years.

Uptown in Harlem a devout Irish monk (yes, Irish…monk) named Corrigan is living and working among prostitutes who neither appreciate nor love him particularly much.  His brother Ciaran visits and is astounded to learn that his brother is both pious and that he lives among thieves, junkies, and whores.  He arrives in due time to meet one of the most important of his brothers’ hangers-on:  Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother who turns tricks alongside her teenaged daughter.  It is Tillie’s daughter and the devout Corrigan who move the story forward, and it is Tillie’s grandchildren who ultimately tie all the characters (even the up-town maven) back together.

Why is Petite's walk the counterpoint to these stories?  It's not always clear what McCann meant by juxtaposing so many New York stories.  He even acknowledges in the story that all of New York and its people are connected—intricately, daily—whether they know it or not.  McCann shows us one small glimpse of how that can be possible.  And while several parts of the book are harsh and difficult to read, the book overall works, and works well, because McCann's writing is seamless and even lyrical at times.  Despite its topic, tone, and language, the book is an excellent reminder of the hope and promise in all of us.

Ron Rash’s prose is elegant even when his stories are spare.  Even in the shortest novella or story, however, Rash can easily bring to life complex multi-sided characters with whom the reader can build a quick empathy.  The primary setting of his novels and of this book, short stories, is Appalachia.  The often-difficult environment and life in Appalachia, in combination with the troubles of the main story protagonists, should leave the reader desolate and desperate.  However, there is an inherent dignity and strength in each of Rash’s characters, and so their stories leave readers rejuvenated and hopeful about the ability of humans to triumph over circumstance, including those they create themselves.

Rash’s stories span time and place, ranging from various wars to current day, up and down the Appalachians and Blue Ridge, from South Carolina to Boone.  One theme is war and its toll on the combatants and those left behind.  In Hard Times starving children in Haywood county during WWII scrap for food, especially eggs—it’s hard to believe it’s this century; and in Return a man changed terribly in war contemplates his life and its changes as he takes his bus ride from Charlotte to Boone after his Army release.  Some stories are heartbreaking--an old man protecting the only earth and land his family has ever known.  Others, macabre:  the practice of digging up Confederate dead for the booty on their belt buckles. 

Rash also explores the scourge of the meth problem in rural areas, seen from the eyes of family members.  In Back of Beyond, a sheriff must do what is right to his addicted brother, regardless of what his heart tells him.  Rash’s real sympathy lies with children of poor drug addicts in The Ascent, whose only Christmas is what they find in the backwoods…

Rash clearly shows that change, too, gives our worst fears play.  You don’t ask much when the man of your dreams shows up at your door, making your life complete for the first time ever.  Even if you know, somehow, that the man of your dreams is a nightmare for others.  Or maybe you’ve moved on from Madison County and maybe you know better than to let a bird in a tree portend your future, but you do anyhow and you can’t explain what’s wrong to the educated people in Raleigh.  Or maybe you’re just a county husband who fears the changes in his life and pride when his wife goes to college.

…and if Rash’s stories haven’t packed enough punch, he saves the one that makes you hitch-your-breath the hardest for last.  After Lincolnites, you might just turn back to the front and start over again, as I did.

David Benioff’s City of Thieves is a novel of two Russians—one a soldier, one a Jew—who are improbably thrown together  over five days during the siege of Leningrad.  The story is ineffably sad but hopeful; it is tense, well-paced, and engrossing with well-constructed plot and action.   

The story clearly depicts the misery of Leningrad in January, where there is nothing but relentless hunger, unbearable cold, and constant bombardment by the Germans from above and outside the city limits.  The Germans aren’t the only enemy:  the citizens have turned in some cases to butchery and cannibalism, and the Communist government runs during the siege the way it always runs:  erratic in its rules and punishments, and  at the caprice of its military ruling personnel.  The citizenry fight back in all ways, from referring to their beloved city as Piter, to exchanging, bartering, and committing all sorts of slights and near-crimes to get by. 

It is the appearance of a downed German parachutist that creates a thief out of Lev, a Jewish teenager hanging tough during the siege.  His mother and sister had long left the city; his father, a famous poet who seems to be known by nearly everyone Lev runs into, was hauled off by the Communists some time ago for being an intellectual (or hanging out with intellectuals; Lev isn’t really sure).  Lev and his friends rifle through the pockets of the fallen German, Lev is caught.  When he is sent to prison that evening, he is certain it is his last, despite that his cellmate Kolya, a soldier in the Communist Army charged with desertion, insists that it is not.  And Kolya may be right:  the ruling commander of the party in Leningrad will give Lev and Kolya their freedom provided they can do one small task:  find a dozen eggs for a cake for his daughter’s imminent marriage. 

There are no eggs to be had in Leningrad for certain, and so the search takes Kolya and Lev outside the city toward the Germans, on a quest that is impossible and which will likely kill them.  During the trek, Lev and Kolya at first exchange only the smallest details of their lives, the pieces of which inform not only each man’s past, but will come to set up plot developments in their near future. 

Kolya is a true romantic.  All of his decisions seem to be guided by a decidedly small set of “wants” most of which are concerned with finding adequate female companionship; he seems to be completely vapid and pretty but as the novel continues the reader comes to realize that he is not only bright and sensitive, but also daring and brave.  Without Kolya, Lev would certainly never have made it out of Leningrad alive, and the reader would never feel even an iota of joy amongst the maddening desperation and gloom of the siege.  Kolya and Lev are defined by the women they’ve known or wanted, and those they meet on their journey.  Benioff draws women as one of two caricatures:  well-fed and pampered (e.g., a group of prostitutes for German soldiers, the Commandant’s about-to-be married daughter) or hollow-cheeked,  melancholy, desperate and starving.  Both rely on the goodness of men to survive.  But it is one other character—Vika, a sharpshooting partisan out in the woods around Leningrad, picking off German soldiers—who becomes Benioff’s most well-rounded and interesting person in the story.  She is the target of unrequited affection for Lev, despite being a stone-cold murderer and person.   

Near the end of the novel there is one chapter where the duo and some partisans meet the Germans head on, not in warfare but in another type of contest.  The battle of wills is but one chapter, but it is the chapter you will not put down and which leads the novel to its conclusion.  Multiple conclusions, actually—some of which are predictable and some of which are not.  While the entire first half of the novel is very good, the last half is incredible and you should not get into it if you have plans or need to be somewhere.   

This is one of the best books I have ever read.

Americans are positive and upbeat, right? 

Except that we aren’t, although we’re told—over and over—that we should be.  And that there is something wrong with us if we aren’t.  What Ehrenreich argues is that Americans have been blindsided about happiness and its nature in our lives.  Buyer beware:  Ehrenreich leaves no sacred cow (religion, psychology, economics) untouched.  If you are relentlessly positive or aspire to be, you’ll not be pleased with Ehrenreich’s thesis.  You’ll be even more distressed at how her research supports it.   

Ehrenreich sets her thesis and tone in “Smile or Die:  The Bright Side of Cancer,” which shows that despite all the wishing in the world, there isn’t a significant causal relationship between being in an upbeat mode and beating a dread disease.  (And that people with cancer may not need us telling them to “keep positive.”)  She then explores the historical roots of the positivity movement, and its inevitable spread to business, sales, and job-seeking.  And while being irrationally upbeat may not have too many detrimental outcomes (but many financial ones for those selling a technique) she shows how the promotion of positive thinking has had large-scale consequences on an intrapersonal, interpersonal, and societal level.  It’s one thing that a US author has made millions promoting a book which argues that if you visualize something and see it coming to you it will come to you (that is, the secret law of attraction); it’s another thing to believe it to the point where you get frustrated when things don’t come your way simply because you beckoned them. 

Religion, it seems, no longer emphasizes atonement but instead focuses on the ability of positive thinking to bring good fortune.  Ehrenreich describes megachurches (and their best-selling author leaders) that exhort believers to visualize positive outcomes, expect that good things are your due, enjoy the fruits of wealth (“God wants you to be happy”), and learn that there is a connection between how upbeat you are, how spiritually happy you are, and perhaps in the long run how rich you are.  Just visualize the seat in the restaurant that you want, smile, believe it can happen and ask God for it…. 

Ehrenreich also takes on the positive psychology movement, a growing area with journals, graduate programs, it’s own guru…and science, right?  She dices much of the science (and does so mostly, but not completely, adequately as there are some empirical relationships in the discipline).  Of course, psychology’s attention to positive thinking ultimately has some large ramifications:  psychologists are on the front line in treating troubled Americans, many of whom need much more than a direction to “think positively.” And while she does note that the media’s treatment of the journal findings is simplified, she also observes that the positive psychology movement has said little when research results are overblown in the popular media.   

Has irrational positive thinking really taken down the entire financial system?  Ehrenreich’s last chapter focuses on the idea that our inability to believe that we could fail, our business could fail, our mortgages could end up in default, and our banks are “too big” to tank has landed us in a mess of trouble.  Failure to face the realities of life have left us not only surprised, but considerably poorer as well.  

Overall, Ehrenreich shows us that people disregard scientific research and logic simply because they want to believe in some power of positive thinking, and they won’t see it any other way.  It must be so…therefore, it is.  And that’s at best an ineffective palliative for the positivism disease.  Worse, it’s irresponsible to promote the idea that being positive, that making yourself happy, that envisioning good (and fiscally lucrative) things happening to you is the secret to true joy—not a mixture of genes, environment, and a clear cognitive interpretation of our world.  And Americans are buying it, standing in line for the happy kool-aid dispensed in smiley face cups.

If we knew of a happiness gene—one detailed on the genome and easily tested—would it change our lives?  Or, is happiness much more a function of worldview than genes?  Richard Powers places these essential questions at the heart of Generosity:  An Enhancement, a novel which (like Galatea 2.2 and The Echo Maker) asks us whether a world with scientific advancements that have the potential to make us happy will be a world in which we are less human.  Are flaws of character, functioning, and grace more appealing to us than perfection and—even the holy grail—happiness? 

In Generosity Powers gives us Thassa Amzwar, an Algerian refugee in the States studying film-making, who enrolls in a creative nonfiction class taught by a man who is happy with nothing and about nothing, not even his writing.  Thassa, on the other hand, has the capability of being happy about almost everything, and typically is, despite war, separation, family tragedy, and the constant “life’s got you downs” like limited finances and nasty Chicago winters.  Every person she encounters walks away amazed and touched, as though she has given them a gift simply to be around her…happiness.  Or maybe just the idea that humans have a capacity for real happiness.  The nonfiction teacher (and former writer), Russell Stone, has a long way to go to be even remotely cheered by anything, but he finds himself so entranced by Thassa that he re-arranges his life around her.  Notably, his attraction is (or at least seems to be depicted as) one that is based on agape rather than Eros, which seems to be the case for most of the people Thassa is around, quite often to the confusion and certainly the consternation of Thassa, who is 23, in college, and ready to embrace and enjoy life and love.  Thassa does bring Russell a love interest somewhat indirectly, when Candace Weld is brought into their lives, and becomes drawn to Russell…who, for once, is….well, happy. 

Miraculous, no?  You know it can’t last.  Word of Thassa’s uniqueness catches the attention of the world.  In the age of cell phone cameras, twittering, and being constantly “on” Thassa cannot escape the frenzy that becomes her once-simple and enjoyable life.  She is no longer able to take delight in daily pleasures.  She is pursued relentlessly by a scientist who needs to study her genes, genetic counselors who want her eggs, acolytes, desperately sad people, and a big-time journalist who just might have questions of her own-- beyond the scoop--about whether there is a happiness gene, or whether some people just decide to be happy.  And—surprisingly—Thassa becomes a tad…morose.  Perhaps this happiness-all-the-time thing is fleeting, some pathology resembling a big up phase in a bipolar episode?  Powers never lets us figure that out, because Thassa moves on, leaving behind her a collection of friends whose lives are different in ways they cannot quite understand.  Did they learn the art of happiness from Thassa?  Or did they realize that she merely made them very, very happy? 

Powers’s strong suit as a novelist is not only his ability to tackle huge questions about what makes us human, and whether human nature defies scientific description, but also his depiction of strong and intriguing women characters.  In Generosity the questions are powerful, and their answers are left in the hands of….a world-renown scientist and his scientific community, and an intriguing young woman from Algeria.  Who best to provide those answers?

In The Year of the Flood Atwood returns to one of her most powerful topics, a dystopian future.  Atwood gives us a world at some undetermined time in the future that is controlled by corporations that have privatized every aspect of life in America, from public security (or not, depending on who you are) to identification to travel to control of the social, political, and economic order.  In this world, the major task of corporations is to harvest organs, manufacture designer drugs, and oversee gene splicing.  It’s a disquieting new world, where lion/lamb combinations, green rabbits, and neon-hair growing sheep abound.  Oil for solar cars comes from the lipids from decaying bodies, and there are plenty of those as mobs working for the corporations keep the cars running and the organ harvesters busy.  There are strict identity checks and corporate kidnappings; the non-corporate bad guys end up in painball, a survivor-for-real outdoor arena where they stalk and kill each other while millions watch on the web.  Those who win get let out, where they cause even more mayhem.  In this dystopia there are essentially two groups of people—those who work for the corporations, and those Dickensian-like thieves and rogues who roam the pleeblands, scavenging whatever is left.   

One small sect exists in addition to these:  the Gardeners—a cult led by a messiah-like Adam who prothletizes an integration of religion and science.  The Gardeners are homespun, non-protein killing (apologizing to slugs as they remove them from vegetables), earth-and-god worshipping, re-use, re-cycle eco-extremists.  They live in what appears to be a utopian society, high above the pleebs and carefully under the radar of the corporations.  They have daily feasts and named saints (look for Rachel Carson, Euell Gibbons, Dian Fosse, and even EO Wilson to get shout-outs on the name days), and Atwood cleverly begins each major chapter with a sermon (ette) of Adams, which provides lots of back-story to understand the main narrative.  Even more, there is an oral hymn (an ode to snails, or slugs, or extinct critters) following each sermonette.  Adam and the Gardeners called the coming plague (they termed it the waterless flood) 25 years in advance; they put by, stashed, and learned to fend in preparation for the time of the flood.  The story of members of the Gardeners constitutes Atwood’s narrative:  two women, neither with the main group, both strangely protected from a plague that kills nearly everyone else.  How they ended up in their respective safety spots—an exotic dancing club for one, a day spa for another—given their backgrounds as ultra earthy-crunchies is important, but how they respond after they realize they may be the only ones left is even more interesting.  For Ren, the trapeze artist/dancer in a men’s club, her isolation and release allows her to look for something and someone she lost years before.  For Toby, an identity-less Gardener hiding in the day spa, the plague allows for the true test of her beliefs as a Gardener and a woman.  The post-plague portions of the novel focus on what happens to Toby and Ren, and also dovetail with Oryx and Crake (another dystopian novel of Atwood’s); these are the shortest, as Atwood’s description of how the social order fell apart—slowly and inexorably—take the longest portion of the novel.  This book will be compared favorably to The Handmaid’s Tale.  If you like Handmaid, then you will love The Year of the Flood. 

If you have ever had one of those really bad days that turns into one really bad week, then to a month, then to a year, then you’ll understand and empathize with the characters in While I’m Falling, Laura Moriarity’s latest novel focusing on mothers and daughters. 

As the book jacket notes, “Veronica has been falling.  Hard.”  And failing, too.  Her parents’  divorce and their subsequent rancor toward each other serve to push Veronica in directions she may not have gone otherwise, had she time to think rather than just respond.  She’s a college junior failing Organic Chemistry, which is definitely a problem considering that she’s pre-med.  Her father is delighted that she’ll be a physician, as he cannot abide the thought of Veronica not pulling her own weight in a marriage someday, blaming Veronica’s mother for not “doing anything” except raising Veronica and the perfect-sister, Elise.  Veronica is definitely failing at her job as a resident assistant at the big U; she’s too self-absorbed to notice much of anything or anyone else.  She’s not doing too well with the kind Engineering student, Tim, who may love her and who will give her the free ride she needs to move in with him and not work while she focuses on school.  The one simple job—drive a psychopathic man and his girlfriend to the airport and take care of his plants for a weekend—turns out to be a failure when the car wrecks in an ice storm.  And the childhood dog, Bowzer, is definitely infirm and failing.  Together Bowzer’s plight and the impromptu (and very “not” Veronica) party thrown in the apartment she’s sitting prove to be Veronica’s undoing.  Bowzer is living in a van with Veronica’s mother, who couldn’t afford the family home and who couldn’t put the dog down; they end up in Veronica’s dorm room--temporarily.  The party-out-of-hand was supposed to be a temporary diversion.  When it looks as though Veronica’s mother won’t leave, that she’ll lose her job, that the psychotic plant/apartment owner will not leave her alone, that the incessantly nasty Kansas weather won’t quit for just one day, and that she’ll never, ever have the time to study for her chemistry final—when all is lost—for some reason at that lowest point the best qualities of her mother, her friends, and she herself come through.  Oh, nothing really gets resolved—her job is still lost, her mother mostly homeless, the dog isn’t getting better, Tim is still unforgiving about a party incident, and her father hasn’t gotten off his stance of “not one penny more for this family,” but somehow they manage just one more day, then another…until the arrival of Veronica’s sister Elise, the high-powered attorney from California.  Turns out, Elise shows everyone something about failing and falling, and giving up what you’re supposed to do for what you want to do.  Remaining true to yourself, it seems, may not mean you won’t fall, but it does mean you won’t fall so far.

Russo’s forte are novels about middle-age men having middle-age-men crises, and That Old Cape Magic provides another installment in Russo’s set of wry observations about the difficulties of evaluating your life and coming up short.  The Cape Vacation, and all of the family issues that surface when you spend close-in time with your family at the beach, is the central point of the novel.  Griffin’s parents had a fractious and tumultuous marriage that was essentially 50 weeks of hell each year, with only two Cape Vacation weeks of goodness to sustain it, and so Griffin sees the Cape Vacation as the soother of all marital ills.  And he and his wife Joy have been using their Cape time as a fairly effective band-aid for any possible troubles in their own marriage:  they’ve brokered deals about where to live, where to work, and how to raise their daughter while on the Cape.  But the Cape magic ends the summer that Griffin brings his father’s ashes on vacation for strewing; he never can let go of those ashes, which means he never can let go of the mess of his parents’ marriage, which in turn means that he and Joy actually have to look at whether the life they’ve made is the life that they wanted.  It doesn’t look too promising, as shortly after this one weekend on the Cape—a weekend that had so much promise—Griffin and Joy are living different lives, separately, with other people.   

The novel is bookended with two happy weddings, one to start the dissolve and one that effectively ends it.  In between, however, Griffin replays every family vacation he and his incapable-of-happiness parents ever took, and traces how he and Joy managed to create the life that he truly thought they wanted.  While you have a pretty good sense that the novel is going to end on a positive note—Russo normally lets his characters emerge pretty well adjusted after a crisis—the ride to the end is humorous and poignant, and very much worth the read.