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258. Go Set a Watchman

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Harper Lee

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

278 pages, published July 14, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Go Set a Watchman is the sequel to the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird and the only other book written by Harper Lee who died within two years of its publication.   The title comes from Isaiah 21:6: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth” and alludes to Jean Louise Finch’s (aka Scout) view of her father, Atticus Finch, as the moral compass or watchman of Maycomb.  In Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise  is now 26 years old and has returned home to Alabama from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus.  Set during the Civil Rights struggles, Jean Louise’s world view comes crashing down when she discovers some disturbing truths about her family and longtime beau and must decide what values will define her.

 

Quotes 

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

 

“Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.”

 

“[T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right”

 

“A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”

 

“She was almost in love with him. No, that’s impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren’t. Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all.”

 

“If you did not want much, there was plenty.”

 

“The only thing I’m afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn’t be worth living in. The only thing in America that is still unique in this tired world is that a man can go as far as his brains will take him or he can go to hell if he wants to, but it won’t be that way much longer.”

 

“But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I’m nearly out of my mind.”

 

“She was a person who, when confronted with an easy way out, always took the hard way. The easy way out of this would be to marry Hank and let him labor for her. After a few years, when the children were waist-high, the man would come along whom she should have married in the first place. There would be searchings of hearts, fevers and frets, long looks at each other on the post office steps, and misery for everybody. The hollering and the high-mindedness over, all that would be left would be another shabby little affair à la the Birmingham country club set, and a self-constructed private Gehenna with the latest Westinghouse appliances. Hank didn’t deserve that.”

 

“[S]ome men who cheat their wives out of grocery money wouldn’t think of cheating the grocer. Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise. They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways.”

 

“I’m only trying to make you see beyond men’s acts to their motives. A man can appear to be a part of something not-so-good on its face, but don’t take it upon yourself to judge him unless you know his motives as well. A man can be boiling inside, but he knows a mild answer works better than showing his rage. A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them. … Have you ever considered that men, especially men, must conform to the demands of the community they live in simply so they can be of service to it?”

 

My Take

Having read, and loved, To Kill a Mockingbird, I was very interested to check out Go Set a Watchman, Harper’s Lee update to her classic American novel.  I was also intrigued that these were the only two books ever written by Lee.  While Mockingbird is by far the superior novel, there is much of interest in Watchman.  The de-pedalsting (not really a word) of the moral giant Atticus Finch took me by surprise, but added a fascinating conflict for Jean Louise (aka Scout) to grapple with.  I was also intrigued by the characters’ differing views on the Civil Rights movement and what that meant to Southern states and towns of the time.  If you, like me, are a fan of To Kill a Mockingbird, then a I recommend giving Go Set a Watchman a read.  Also worth noting is the very good voice work by Reese Witherspoon.

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253. The Orphan Master’s Son

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Aileen Schwab

Author:   Adam Johnson

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

443 pages, published January 10, 2012

Reading Format:  e-Book

 

Summary

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Orphan Master’s Son is an epic novel set in North Korea.  The book follows the life of Pak Jun Do, whose mother, a beautiful singer, was “stolen” to Pyongyang to entertain the corrupt elites.  Pak is left to languish in Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans that is run by his influential father who does not acknowledge him.  Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Pak becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive.  His service to North Korea takes him to the United States where his contact with a woman in the CIA changes the course of his life.  Surviving horrific torture by the pitiless state machine, Pak pretends to be a rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”

 

Quotes 

“Where we are from… [s]tories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change. …But in America, people’s stories change all the time. In America, it is the man who matters.”

 

“But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.”

 

“Today, tomorrow,” she said. “A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten thousand matches before it have gone out.”

 

“A name isn’t a person,’ Ga said. ‘Don’t ever remember someone by their name. To keep someone alive, you put them inside you, you put their face on your heart. Then, no matter where you are, they’re always with you because they’re a part of you.”

 

“They’re about a woman whose beauty is like a rare flower. There is a man who has a great love for her, a love he’s been saving up for his entire life, and it doesn’t matter that he must make a great journey to her, and it doesn’t matter if their time together is brief, that afterward he might lose her, for she is the flower of his heart and nothing will keep him from her.”

 

“In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range”

 

“When the dogs returned, the Senator gave them treats from his pocket, and Jun Do understood that in communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.”

 

“I wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do. Is it true you’re given no ration card, that you must find food for yourself? Is it true that you labor for no higher purpose than paper money? What is California, this place you come from? I have never seen a picture. What plays over the American loudspeakers, when is your curfew, what is taught at your child-rearing collectives? Where does a woman go with her children on Sunday afternoons, and if a woman loses her husband, how does she know the government will assign her a good replacement? With whom would she curry favor to ensure her children got the best Youth Troop leader?”

 

“It’s called a gui-tar. It’s used to perform American rural music. It’s said to be especially popular in Texas,” he told her. “It’s also the instrument of choice for playing ‘the blues,’ which is a form of American music that chronicles the pain caused by poor decision making.”

 

“Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn’t matter what they were about. It didn’t matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack—if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous.”

 

“It’s called a gui-tar. It’s used to perform American rural music. It’s said to be especially popular in Texas,” he told her. “It’s also the instrument of choice for playing ‘the blues,’ which is a form of American music that chronicles the pain caused by poor decision making.”

 

“Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn’t matter what they were about. It didn’t matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack—if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous.”

 

My Take

The Orphan Master’s Son is a depressing, yet intriguing, book.  Depressing because author Adam Johnson takes you deep inside the violent, arbitrary and dehumanizing world of North Korea where even young children are fodder for the ruthless, totalitarian machine of the government.  In 2018, it is remarkable that a place like North Korea exists.  While the all encompassing suffering imposed on the people of North Korea is hard to read about, Johnson interlaces it with a captivating story of one man’s response to crushing dehumanization.  He even manages to interject a little romance into his grim tale.  Not hard to see why this book earned a Pulitizer Prize.

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238. Gardens of Water

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Terra McKinnish

Author:  Alan Drew

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Foreign

288 pages, published February 5, 2008

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In a small town outside Istanbul, Sinan Basioglu, a devout Kurdish Muslim, and his wife, Nilüfer, are preparing to celebrate their nine-year-old son Ismail’s coming-of-age ceremony. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, İrem, resents the attention given by her parents to Ismail.   In contrast, when she came of age, there was no celebration.  Instead, she had to start wearing a hijab and stay hidden away from boys.  After a massive earthquake destroys their home, Sinan focuses all of his attention on finding Ismail, ignoring the plight of his wife and daughter.  Miraculously, Ismail is saved by the expatriate wife of a Marcus, a missionary from America who lives in the same building.  Marcus’ wife dies in the earthquake, leaving behind Dylan, her teenage son who has secretly been developing a relationship with Irem.  The Basioglu family has lost everything and are forced to live as refugees in a Christian Missionary camp run by Marcus.  Sinan struggles with his inability to support his family, the Christian influence of the camp and the pulling away of his daughter as she secretly falls in love with Dylan.

 

Quotes 

“Our children are not ours. That’s our mistake. We think they are. It seems so for a while—a few brief years—but they aren’t. They never were.”

 

“It’s all a gift. All of life is a gift.”

 

“Instead, he stared at every woman he saw in hijab, his anger flaring when he saw a fundamentalist, dressed in black from head to toe, as if she were already dead. It was one thing to be humble and modest, but it seemed to Sinan that the abaya revealed men’s disgust with women, as though men thought God had made a mistake and they needed to hide it. Sinan would never make his wife and daughter wear such a thing; he would never allow them to be so blotted out of existence.”

 

“He was a Kurd and the world would tell him he was nothing. He was poor and the world would give him nothing. He was a Muslim and the world would ignore him, and being ignored was like being dead. The boy had his name and his name was everything. Take away his name and the boy had no future, no honor, no respect, no reason to look in a mirror and see his own perfection. “Ouch, Baba! You’re doing it too hard.” Ismail’s skin was red from the scrubbing. He stopped and told the boy to rinse off. What if Irem did something that denied her entry to Heaven? Skin was only the container of the soul, but the soul was a fragile membrane—it could easily be ripped and once it was, there was no sewing it back together. To kill her before she destroyed that, she would remain innocent, she would enter Paradise as a child, as clean as the day she was born. And Ismail wouldn’t have to feel less than anyone in this world, ever.”

 

“I never gave a damn about independence, anyway. All I really wanted to do was farm. Didn’t care if the land was called Kurdistan or Turkey or Iraq. But the stupid PKK and the military won’t leave you alone; you’re everyone’s enemy if you just want to be left alone. You’ve got to pick a side.” He tossed his cigarette down in disgust. “Is there anywhere in the world you can just be left alone?”

 

My Take

Gardens of Water was an intriguing read that explored universal themes such as the relationships between parents and children, the conflict between the new world and the old, and the strain between tradition and personal freedom.  I didn’t know that much about Islam and felt that I learned a bit about the religion after reading this book, especially the conflict between traditional Islam and the modern world.

 

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231. The Underground Railroad

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Heather Ringoen

Author:  Colson Whitehead

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

306 pages, published August 2, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Underground Railroad tells the story of Cora and other slaves as they suffer through the brutalities of slavery in the South and dream of freedom.  When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells Cora about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. The two are hunted by the merciless Slave Catcher Ridgeway as they make their way out of Georgia.  Author Colson Whitehead traces the brutal importation of Africans to the United States and re-creates the unique terrors black people faced in the pre-Civil War era.

Quotes 

“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes–believes with all its heart–that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.”

 

“Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.”

 

“She wasn’t surprised when his character revealed itself—if you waited long enough, it always did. Like the dawn.”

 

“Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.”

 

“The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the freemen had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others.”

 

“If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn’t be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it’d still be his. If the white man wasn’t destined to take this new world, he wouldn’t own it now.  Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor–if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.”

 

“The world may be mean, but people don’t have to be, not if they refuse.”

 

“Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death.”

 

“Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren’t looking, alluring and ever out of reach.”

 

“Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth.”

 

“Yet when his classmates put their blades to a colored cadaver, they did more for the cause of colored advancement than the most high-minded abolitionist. In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man’s equal.”

 

“There was an order of misery, misery tucked inside miseries, and you were meant to keep track.”

 

“The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it.”

 

My Take

While The Underground Railroad was richly rewarded (Man Booker Prize Nominee for Longlist (2017), Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2017), National Book Award for Fiction (2016), Arthur C. Clarke Award (2017), Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction (2017)

The Rooster – The Morning News Tournament of Books (2017), NAIBA Book of the Year for Fiction (2017), Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction (2017), Kirkus Prize Nominee for Fiction (2016), Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction (2016), PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Nominee (2017), I did not connect with this book as much as I expected too.  It was too graphically and unrelentingly violent.  The subject of slavery is depressing and this is quite a depressing read.  If you want to read a book about slavery, I prefer The Invention of Wings.

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230. Before We Were Yours

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Kay Lynn Hartmann

Author:  Lisa Wingate

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

342 pages, published June 6, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Before We Were Yours follows the stories of two families, separated by several generations that intertwine as a result of the actions of a nefarious children’s adoption home.  The first story starts in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee and focuses on twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings who live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat.  When their father and mother leave them alone on a stormy night to go to the hospital for the mother’s problematic birth of twins, Rill and her siblings are stolen and placed in the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage. Fast forward to modern day South Carolina and we meet the wealthy and privileged Avery Stafford, a successful federal prosecutor with a handsome fiancé.  Avery, who is being groomed to replace her cancer stricken Senator father, discovers some incongruent facts about her Grandmother Judy and starts down a path that will reveal some long-hidden family secrets that connect them to the Foss family.

 

Quotes 

“In my multifold years of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don’t intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving.”

 

“One of the best things a father can do for his daughter is let her know that she has met his expectations. My father did that for me, and no amount of effort on my part can fully repay the debt.”

 

“But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse.”

 

“We plan our days, but we don’t control them.”

 

“And if you haven’t got a single book, the idea of putting your hand on one is like Christmas and a birthday rolled up together.”

 

“Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn’t suit the moment.”

 

“A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music. To hear the tune, she must only stop talking. To herself, I mean. We’re always trying to persuade ourselves of things.”

 

“I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not one that goes on forever and cuts all the way to the bone.”

 

“The good life demands a lot of maintenance”

 

“one of the paradoxes of life. You can’t have it all. You can have some of this and some of that or all of this and none of that. We make the trade-offs we think are best at the time.”

 

My Take

Before We Were Yours was an absorbing read that I whipped through in a few days.  I found the characters to be very relatable and the both plot lines held my interest (although I preferred the older one that focused on the injustice to the Foss children).  I was also interested to discover that the central story of the corrupt and reprehensible Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage is based on a true story.  It is hard to believe that child stealing, neglect and even murder occurred in our recent past.

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229. The Pearl Thief

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Elizabeth Wein

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Foreign

320 pages, published May 2, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Pearl Thief is a prequel to Code Name Verity and follows the life of fifteen-year-old Lady Julia Beaufort-Stuart before she became a World War II spy operating under the code name of Verity.  When she returns to her grandfather’s Scottish estate, Julia gets entangled in a mystery involving some very valuable river pearls.

 

Quotes 

“It is possible there are some things you want so badly that you will change your life to make them happen.”

 

“I need complicated railroad journeys and people speaking to me in foreign languages to keep me happy. I want to see the world and write stories about everything I see.”

 

“I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it’s worth.”

 

“It’s like being raised by wolves — you don’t realize you’re not one yourself until someone points it out to you. Sometimes it makes me so mad that not everyone treats me just like another wolf.”

 

“For the pleasure of giving, because what’s the point of just having? If I give a thing, I remember how happy we both were when I made the gift.”

 

“Inspector Milne’s suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.”

 

“That is a terrifically intimate thing, you know? Letting a stranger light your cigarette. Leaning forward so he can hold a flame to your lips. Pausing to breathe in before you pull back again.”

 

My Take

After reading and really enjoying Code Name Verity, I put in a request at the Library for the prequel and sequel.  The prequel, The Pearl Thief, was first up.   I liked it, but not nearly as much as Code Name Verity.  It was a bit hard to follow at times and I had trouble keeping some of the characters straight.  While Julie, the main character, has a lot of appeal, I still found the book to be limited in other regards.

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221. Orphan Train

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Christina Baker Kline

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

278 pages, published April 2, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Orphan Train tells the story of two orphans, nonagenarian Vivian Daly and the teenaged Molly Ayer whose community service sentence requires her to help Vivian clean out her attic.  As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly discovers that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be.  We flash back to the 1930’s when Vivian (formerly Nieve and then Dorothy), a recent immigrant from Ireland, is sent on an orphan train from New York City to Minnesota.  Nieve is placed with several horrible families until she is rescued by her teacher and permanently settles with a couple who lost their daughter.

 

Quotes 

“I’ve come to think that’s what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.”

 

“You got to learn to take what people are willing to give.”

 

“Time constricts and flattens, you know. It’s not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.”

 

“I am not glad she is dead, but I am not sorry she is gone.”

 

“I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.”

 

“Upright and do right make all right.”

 

“And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you’re lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you’re broken inside.”

 

“I love you,” he writes again and again. “I can’t bear to live without you. I’m counting the minutes until I see you.” The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.”

 

“Turtles carry their homes on their backs.” Running her finger over the tattoo, she tells him what her dad told her: “They’re exposed and hidden at the same time. They’re a symbol of strength and perseverance.”

 

“So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason – to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?”

 

“It is good to test your limits now and then, learn what the body is capable of, what you can endure.”

 

My Take

As a big fan of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books, I enjoyed the parts of Orphan Train that focused on the scrappy orphan and Irish immigrant Nieve and her fight for survival during the Depression.  She is a very can-do child who does her best to deal with everything that life throws her (which is a lot).  I enjoyed how Orphan Train convincingly transplanted me to another time and place.  A good read and recommended.

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217. Code Name Verity

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Nancy Sissom

Author:  Elizabeth Wein

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

353 pages, published May 15, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

On October 11th, 1943, a British plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. It is piloted by English Maddie (code name Kitty Hawk) after her best friend and spy Scotswoman Julie (code name Kitty Hawk), parachuted out.  Verity is arrested by the Gestapo and she’s given the choice of revealing her mission or face a painful execution. Through her confession, Julie tells the story of her friendship with Maddie and how she came to enter France as a spy for Britain.

 

Quotes 

“I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can’t believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant.

But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.”

 

“KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!”

 

“It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, ‘You stupid ass, just wait a minute,’ and she’ll open her eyes! ‘Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time!’ But they always do.”

 

“A whore, we’ve established that, filthy, it goes without saying, but whatever else the hell I am, I AM NOT ENGLISH.”

 

“People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school everyday, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette of a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night’s air raid. But you don’t talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance.”

 

“What’s strange about the whole thing is that although it’s riddled with nonsense, altogether it’s true – Julie’s told our story, mine and hers, our friendship, so truthfully. It is us. We even had the same dream at the same time. How could we have had the same dream at the same time? How can something so wonderful and mysterious be true? But it is.

 

And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie’s written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I’m reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She’s right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can’t be landed, stuck in the climb – alive, alive, ALIVE.”

 

“Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don’t think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.”

 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audio version of Code Name Verity (which had terrific voice work) and felt transported to World War II era England and France.  While the story is crackling good, what really appealed to me was wonderful, fully drawn characters of Julie and Maddie and the development of their signature friendship.  I’ve read a lot of books in the past two years that take place during World War II, but this is one of the best (see also The Nightingale).

 

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215. Lincoln in the Bardo

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Author:  George Saunders

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

343 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Set in a graveyard during a single night in February 1862 and narrated by a variety of characters stuck in a limbo type existence, Lincoln in the Bardo is a unique literary experience.  It is near the beginning of the Civil War and President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son Willie dies and is buried in a Georgetown cemetery.  A grieving Lincoln returns to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.  Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory in a graveyard populated by a bizarre set of ghosts.  Within this transitional state, called a bardo in Tibetan tradition, a epic struggle ensures over Willie’s soul.

 

Quotes 

“His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help, or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.”

 

“Strange, isn’t it? To have dedicated one’s life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one’s life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one’s labors ultimately forgotten?”

 

“Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.”

 

“What I mean to say is, we had been considerable. Had been loved. Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departures caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory.”

 

“Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the bring of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise, this grand marketplace lovingly stocked with every sublime thing.”

 

“When a child is lost there is no end to the self-torment a parent may inflict. When we love, and the object of our love is small, weak, and vulnerable, and has looked to us and us alone for protection; and when such protection, for whatever reason, has failed, what consolation (what justification, what defense) may there possibly be?”

 

“His mind was freshly inclined to sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in the world one must try to remember that all were suffering (non content all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but rather, its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone, and given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.

All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be.

It was the nature of things.

Though on the surface is seemed every person was different, this was not true.

At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end; the many loses we must experience on the way to that end.

We must try to see one another in this way.

As suffering limited beings-

Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.

His sympathy extended to all in this instant, blundering in its strict logic, across all divides.”

 

“Oh, the pathos of it! – haggard, drawn into fixed lines of unutterable sadness, with a look of loneliness, as of a soul whose depth of sorrow and bitterness no human sympathy could ever reach. The impression I carried away was that I had seen, not so much the President of the United States, as the saddest man in the world.”

 

My Take

While Lincoln in the Bardo has received numerous awards (Man Booker Prize (2017), Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (2018), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Historical Fiction (2017), Waterstones Book of the Year Nominee (2017), Gordon Burn Prize Nominee for Longlist (2017)), I liked it, but did not love it.  First of all, the book is a serious downer with its focus on grief and loss.  George Saunders has some eloquent things to say on these subject and does so in a very inventive and creative manner (hence all of the awards).  However, I found it difficult to really get into this book and didn’t mind at all when I finished.

 

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206. The Alice Network

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Kate Quinn

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

520 pages, published June 6, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Alice Network tells two parallel stories.  The first takes place in 1947 and focuses on college girl and American Charlie St. Clair who is pregnant, unmarried, and at a crossroads in her life.  She travels to England to enlist the help of the grizzled and standoffish former English spy Eve Gardiner in a desperate bid to find her cousin Rose who disappeared during World War II.  Also along for the ride is Eve’s assistant Finn, a handsome, and magnetic Scottish ex-con who Charlie finds her falling for.  The second story spotlights Eve’s time during World War I when she was part of the “Alice Network,” a group of female spies stationed primarily in France.  We follow the trio’s journey as they uncover the truth about Rose and Eve’s past during both of the World Wars and come to terms with themselves and each other.

 

Quotes 

“What did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done?”

 

‘To tell the truth, much of this special work we do is quite boring. I think that’s why women are good as it. Our lives are already boring. We jump an Uncle Edward’s offer because we can’t stand the thought of working in a file room anymore, or teaching a class full of runny-nosed children their letters. Then we discover this job is deadly dull as well, but at least there’s the enlivening thought that someone might put a Luger to the back of our necks. It’s still better than shooting ourselves, which we know we’re going to do if we have to type one more letter or pound one more Latin verb into a child’s ivory skull.”

 

“Hope was such a painful thing, far more painful than rage.”

 

“It is facile to condemn the French for giving in to the Nazis too easily when many French citizens would have still borne the horrendous scars of the first occupation, would have clearly remembered having to stand back while German sentries robbed them of everything but the nearly inedible ration bread because the only alternative was to be arrested, beaten, or shot. The French survived not one but two brutal occupations in a span of less than forty years, and deserve more credit for their flinty endurance than they receive.”

 

“You think there are no idiots in the intelligence business, that your superiors are all brilliant men who understand the game? […] This business is rife with idiots. They play with lives and they play badly, and when people like you die as a result, they shrug and as ‘Risks have to be taken in wartime.’ You’d really march yourself into a firing squad for that kind of fool?”

 

My Take

While The Alice Network is an enjoyable read in the spy/World War genre, I found The Nightingale to be a much better book.  The characters fell a bit flat and the plot could have been more intriguing.  Not a bad book by any means.  There is just better material about World War I and II out there.

 

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