Joan Didion. LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I MEAN. Random House, 2021.
Reprints of previously-published articles from the 60s and 70s. Made me realize how completely I have cut off US culture. Martha Stewart. Tony Richardson, Brit. William Randolph Hearst. Robert Mapplethorpe. Vietnam. Nancy Reagan. I did enjoy the piece about Ernest Hemingway.
Kristina McMorris. THE PIECES WE KEEP. Kensington, 2013.
March book club selection. Again, two separate stories, WW II and 2012?, but they do intersect. One theme, what is "blood memory"? How much of the past lives of our ancestors to we experience, through our dreams or though our dreams? Vivian, an ambassador's daughter, meets Isaac in London. A German. Shares some facts with him. Later, he follows her back to New York, as part of a group of German spies. Their child and grandchild explore the story 60+ years later.
My one hesitation: a seven-year-old boy takes a book from the school library, vandalizes the book by cutting out pictures that he somehow sees as being linked to his life. Nazi images, and an electric chair. The mother dismisses the non-scientific explanation.
I did enjoy reading it.
Harrison Mooney. INVISIBLE BOY: A Memoir of Self-Discovery. Patrick Crean / HarperCollins, 2022.
Borrowed from a book club friend. Local story, a Black child adopted into a fundamentalist White Christian family in Abbotsford, 20 minutes down the road. Mooney is a professional writer which was an unexpected treat to read this often sad and disconcerting story. I kept remembering former students at the age Mooney is describing himself and the reactions often seen in adolescents trying to figure out who they are and who they are meant to be, often without help, and, in this case, with a controlling parent seeming to work against the idea of his "finding himself". He describes his "clown" phase and his "joker" seeking laughs to help himself feel visible.
I enjoyed the local references, the intersections with my own experience in the Fraser Valley (caught in the anti-abortion protest in Abbotsford, visiting Camp Squeah) and the details of church-hopping and different aspects of fundamentalist culture. I was previously unaware of the horrors of home schooling, using American materials, imposing family ideals. I must have confused it with distance education which at least requires that students follow a curriculum. I felt really bad for the boy so desperate to "earn" his mother's love. There was no such thing as "unconditional" or "reject the behaviour, love the child". The disappointment of searching for the birth parents is palpable. My greatest fear, of memoir written by someone too young to see more than his own POV is still there. A sequel will be welcome, after he has parented his own children.
Rob Mclennan. BAGNE or CRITERIA for HEAVEN. Broken Jaw, 2000.
I was reading his Substack about his mother being a poet in Ottawa and before I finished it, I found this book in the BOOKMAN's sale shelves. Interesting. A long list of poems addressed to fellow Canadian poets.
Jeanine Cummins. SPEAK TO ME OF HOME. Henry Holt, 2025.
Book Club selection for February. Multi-generational saga of Puerta Rico family marrying, moving to Missouri, moving elsewhere, moving home. Interesting themes of the island culture, the innate racism, mixtures of Spanish, mixed, African, Irish, American backgrounds. The existence of racism on the island and in the mid-west. How some generations are unaware of their own snobbery. The idea that we are all both felon and victim in our own stories. The difficulty of admitting our own mistakes. The inequity of private medical insurance denying coverage. The unfairness of Puerta Rico being American territory without any representatives or say in US politics. DNA plays a role in inspiring people to tell the truth.
William Shakespeare. The Tempest.
My obsession continues with this play. Reduced my original down to 2500 words, CNF.
Anne Tyler. The AMATEUR MARRIAGE.
Book Club selection for January. The story of a couple who married in haste during the war, had three children, found a grandson and brought him home, and finally divorced after 30-some years. Very incompatible. Married for all the wrong reasons. I'm convinced no amount of therapy would have helped. Personally, the immature and mismatched couple just made me angry.
Joan Didion. LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I MEAN. Random House, 2021. Reprints of previously-published articles from the 60s and 70s. Made me rea...
