My Antonia and The Bean Trees

The midwest might be considered the breadbasket of America, but my sister and I knew midwestern foods from the following categories: vegetables were from a can, and usually casseroled with the help of cream of mushroom soup. Salad would be based on jello not lettuce, and would be sprinkled throughout with marshmallows or mandarin oranges, not peppers or croutons.  By late January the snow piles had reached 5 feet and taller and I had a nostalgic hunger for not just banana pudding and Old El Paso tacos, but tales of survival in the midwest when survival meant more than shoveling the front sidewalk.

I'd read My Antonia by Willa Cather in high school and remembered loving it, although the story had faded in my memory.  In the last quarter of the 19th century Antonia arrived in Nebraska farmland with her family from Bohemia. Not farmers by trade, they struggled through the first winter, with Antonia easily doing the farm work of any boy her age and aided in English lessons by Virginia transplant Jim, a boy a few years her junior.

A century later Taylor was making her own journey out west in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees.  For Taylor, survival meant escaping her native Kentucky without getting pregnant, but when her car breaks down in Oklahoma and she's given a catatonic little girl, she names her Turtle and takes her with her to her ultimate stopping point of Tuscon, acknowledging the irony.

Jim is the narrator in My Antonia, but the women are it's heroines. He admires their strength and beauty-- these are women who have to work to earn a living. For some that means prospecting for gold, opening a successful dress shop or raising a family to work the farm. He defends them the anti-immigrant bias of the day and even years later when he's a successful Harvard trained attorney, is humbled by their success.

To rescue herself, Taylor jumps into motherhood, rescuing Turtle, but also rescues Estevan and Esperanza, immigrant refugees from Latin America and Lou Ann, a woman who becomes her roommate and confidante and needs Taylor as much as Taylor needs her.

Five stars for both books, which satiated my hunger for the midwest while I was holed away in a terrible New England winter...even if I did have to indulge in some 7 layer dip and Snickers salad.

A Gate at the Stairs

The past seven or eight years have brought a host of post-9/11 novels. Some are good, some are bad. I like that most maintain the delicate balance of public tragedy and a new world order with people who still need to live their lives. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore seems to almost privatize the public and publicize the private.  So I've been processing it the past couple days and am still not sure what I think.
Tassie is the protagonist; a good, Midwestern girl entering her sophomore year of college as 9/11 takes place.  She takes it in stride, instead worrying about what any 20 year old would worry about-- finding a job and finding a boyfriend.  She takes a job as a nanny for a bourgeois yet very liberal older couple who are adopting.  Sarah and Edward bring Tassie along to meet various birth mothers and finally end up with a mixed race 2-year old.  From here the story takes off: Sarah becomes a mouthpiece for every liberal stereotype-- she worries about Emmie facing racism and so forms a support group of like minded (sometimes) parents.  But as Tassie brings Emmie everywhere, she bears the brunt of public reaction-- is she the young mom?  The baby daddy must be black (bringing positive and negative reaction).  She absorbs it and meanders between her Sufism class and her boyfriend's (of dubious heritage and ethnicity himself) house, all the while forgetting that her younger brother is threatening to join the army after graduating high school.
A Gate at the Stairs is dialogue rich and Tassie's carte blanche viewpoint makes us realize our culpability with so many pre and post-9/11 social issues.  It's a compelling read and a great way to get back into novels after reading so much non-fiction.  It raises questions without providing answers. 
This is a vague review...readers and comments welcome!
Netflix stars: 4/5

Run

I tend to be highly critical of books and movies about Boston, always looking for inauthenticity. The Afflecs are always, "We're from Bahston, we've got the accent." And I'm like, "No, you're from Cambridge. But thanks for advocating for the larger Boston metro area." Authors tend to overstate Boston landmarks, making egregious references to neighborhoods like Roxbury, Dorchester and Charlestown. In Run, Anne Patchett made mostly skillful remarks about landmarks, noting the Citgo sign on a drive to Cambridge, and referencing various T stations. In fact, knowing the city and knowing how small it really is and how various locations fit together, is key to the story.

A prominent Boston Irish politician and his wife adopt two African American children after they couldn't have any more children (suspend your disbelief that such a mixing of races could happen 25 years ago in Boston) and Run takes place over the 24 hours after one of the grown sons is nearly hit by a car, save a strategic push from a woman who turns out to be his and his brother's biological mother. The woman's young daughter, Kenya, witnesses the event and over the course of the night details how she and her mother know the family, and how they have been secretly keeping tabs on the boys for years. This sort of anonymity and close proximity is so possible in a city like Boston. Save the transient college students, Bostonians live here for generations and the city is small enough that you can run into the same people over and over again. Blue blood Boston Brahmins live mere blocks from the city's poor in public housing.

Besides checking on the accuracy of references to my city, I also hold close a carefully edited book, one which keeps the economy of words in check. Fortunately this book held up on both accounts. I'll give it 4/5 netflix stars.

As a nice aside, my mom went to a reading by Ms. Patchett and had this book signed for me!

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home

I picked up this book after seeing an ad for it in the New Yorker; a memoir about a young woman's life in France and her love of food...having just finished My Life In France I was still hungry.  Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee delivered on the romantic just as Julia Child's book did.  But it was filled with bittersweet and sometimes downright depressing imagery as well.  The end of most chapters contained at least one recipe corresponding to the remembered time and place just described.
Ms. Sunee was adopted by a New Orleans couple after being abandoned on the streets of South Korea with just a handful of crumbs for three days.  Like other books I've read about an adopted child, Ms. Sunee is never quite happy, and doesn't fit in.  She and her sister are the only Asian children in school and she always feels uncomfortable around her parents.  She does find solace with her grandparents, especially her grandfather, from whom she learns the secrets of Louisiana cooking.  As soon as she's old enough to leave home, she does.  She spends a semester abroad in France as her first travel alone.  She wants to become a poet, a writer and learns French.  She is soon able to translate for work.
At a young age she meets men more advanced in years and experience, but being seemingly fearless, Ms. Sunee follows them, looking for her own history.  At 23 she falls in love with a wealthy, nearing 40 year old French businessman with an adolescent daughter.  Ms. Sunee is soon "adopted" into this family with various roles: lover, step mother, social hostess, home keeper and cook.  She only feels truly comfortable cooking and provides the reader for recipes such as spring pea salads and La Daube Provencale, wild peaches poached in Lillet Blanc and Figs roasted in Red Wine.  Some of her recipes are memories of a past both real (Monday red beans and rice, Crawfish bisque) and imagined (quick fix kimchi).
As the years pass she feels more and more unsettled, especially as her partner Olivier establishes a life for her more and more.  She ultimately has to make decisions that women twice her age have a hard time making, and her naivete and inexperience push through her strong facade.  While I respected her for her bravery, I was conscious of her seeming lack of appreciation for a life she had, whether she truly wanted it or not (probably an inherent trait in a young 20 something).
I liked this book, but I was hopeful for more sophisticated self reflection, a la Eat, Pray, Love.  Still, it was an enjoyable read, one that took the gloom out of a bleak Boston Sunday.  4/5 netflix stars.

Origin

Maybe it's the approaching holidays, but reading Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber really made me think of my family. My mom is an avid mystery reader and has sometimes been found reading a good book on the couch in the middle of the night. It's been awhile since I've read a mystery-- I loved the Nancy Drew books growing up, but never got into another series as an adult. So this book club book reminded me of the joys of reading a mystery. I kept turning the pages even though it was getting late, past midnight on a work night.
Lena is a fingerprint technician in a crime lab and is investigating a series of suspicious baby deaths, labeled as SIDS, but quite possibly something more sinister. At some point the investigation leads to questions about her own birth and upbringing. Lena grew up with foster parents who never were able to answer her questions about her biological parents. Interestingly, A Gesture Life concerned the flipside-- the father's perspective on being an adoptive parent and his reasons.
Ms. Abu-Jaber portrays Lena as frequently moving through life in an otherworldly existence. She describes Lena as feeling drowsy, her limbs heavy, her mind elsewhere. It's clear that her desire to uncover the truth about her past is all-encompassing, carrying her from clue to clue. Likewise the other characters, Keller, Charlie, her co-workers, are equally well described and unique, so you can envision how each one acts and behaves.
A good mystery keeps you guessing and if by the end I haven't figured it out, I consider it a successful read. I'l give this 4/5 netflix stars. And now back to the Proust...decidely not mysterious at all, just long descriptions about eating cookies.

A Gesture Life

Most of us have an incident or event that we would like to atone for, but rarely do we go as far as Franklin, the protaganist of A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee. This was a back up pick for book club but I decided I'd be better off by reading it, and I think I was. We learn early that Franklin once lived with someone named Sunny, but it's not clear who Sunny is, or what relation she is to Franklin. In a unique use of flashback, Mr. Lee recounts Franklin's stint in the Japanese army as a medic during WWII. He faces moral and ethical decisions everyday, many that regardless of his choice, have negative outcomes. When "volunteer" comfort women are brought to the camp to keep the morale high, it is Franklin's responsibility to make sure they are kept fit. He is a witness to, and asked to be an accomplice to, life changing violence. Years later he adopts Sunny as a young child as a way to make up for his role in the destruction of the young womens' lives.
In his later, American, life, Franklin makes a series of gestures, or tokens, to atone for everything he's been through. He's a model shopkeeper, a diligent neighbor, and a loyal friend. But no matter what he does, misfortune seems to prey on those he loves. Not one to be dogged down, he gives everything he can for those around him. It doesn't come off as desperate or pathetic, however, as he doesn't ask for recognition.
I enjoyed this book; it was an easy but thoughtful read and I'll give it 4/5 Netflix stars.
Wine pairing: Retsina Wine by Boutari. This Greek wine has pine overtones that Franklin would appreciate as they'd remind him of his well minded suburban garden. The woodsiness might also be reminiscent of working in the field during the war.