Stepping in the Write Direction

The Whispers by Ashley Audrain, similar to another of her books, The Push, touches on the tipping balance of power in a relationship, and within the parents themselves, when a child comes into their lives. Up until that point a woman always has the freedom and options a husband does, presuming employment is equally remunerative.  The books also involve the societal shift towards a couple becoming parents, the tribal expectations and responsibilities placed on male and female in this life passage, that impacts mothers more heavily, often in ways never anticipated, and frequently out of sync with the hard won equality in the workplace and widely evolving global community of the last century.  Audrain’s narrative is further concerned with the internal dialogue women have with themselves as they are abruptly redefined by the outside world upon becoming mothers, and grappling with the enormity of this seismic psychological shift at the very moment they feel overwhelming responsibil...

A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysha Chang  is a  powerful book about autonomy, obligation, and love in relationships, family, and between sexes, as told through disparate stories of interconnected lives.   You might say life is a quitter’s paradise. Or rather the difficulties and challenges in life lend themselves to frustrations that could lead one to give up or quit. A Quitter’s Paradise  is as much a story about connection building, as it is about the lack of connections, and the stories we tell ourselves to come to terms with our lives’ deficiencies. The book follows immigrants from Taiwan who marry and their adult children’s relationships. Rita, who has a largely adversarial relationship with both her daughters, admonishes Eleanor : “You think you are escaping me? By getting married? Let me tell you the truth. A woman never escape.” In this book there are numerous stories about relationships covered, some healthy, and some predatory. Eleanor later seems to share...

The Birds of the Air by L. H. Arthur was compelling reading. I got a heads up about the Kindle edition being on sale for $0.99 from Ereader News Today, so listened to the Audible sample, then ordered the Kindle sample, and the minute the sample ended I immediately purchased the Kindle edition with Audible narration. I practically read it in one sitting, and barely did any highlighting of passages because I was turning pages so quickly to see what would happen next!  The story takes place in 1933. Two sisters are in the yard while mom makes a grocery run. The older sister is hanging out the wash to dry, and turns to see her younger sibling talking to a man near the street. She becomes alarmed and rushes over.  “The man stayed where he was, smiling in a way that looked almost friendly, but not quite. He was short for a man, and stocky; his face was red, with threads of darker-red veins worming beneath the skin of his nose and cheeks. An odd construction of sticks and wire hung o...

Regarding Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, one Amazon reviewer wrote, “Like Being Inside a Fun House That Wasn't Fun.” That comment made me want to revisit this author. Other reviewers have described Wise Blood as “‘low comedy and high seriousness’ with disturbing religious themes.” In the Author’s Notes to the 1962 edition, she wrote, “The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui [in spite of himself], and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death.” She continues, “Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.”   I’ve always considered myself a fan of O’Connor’s work, but it’s been a very long time sinc...

If you’re lucky and had great parents, you come from a place of optimism and possibilities. Like the Little Engine Who Could, you keep on chugging whatever the circumstances are. Divorce is rarely an expectation, never something wished for as a child or an adult, because you’re not a quitter or anyone who wants a family split. One thing is certain, if you’ve experienced divorce, you can connect with other people’s similar experiences and feelings about it. It’s a bridge of commonality that spans differences such as who you hated and who you loved in the last election, what kind of music is best, or whether you believe God exists or not. Poet and author Maggie Smith’s book You Could Make this Place Beautiful: A Memoir surely resonates with many as it is a series of vignettes about her thoughts and experiences going through a divorce as a mom of two and a serious writer. It is a poignant, humorous look at a painful time, that in the hands of a poet, deftly lays bare the human and soc...

I read Yeonmi Park’s 2015 book In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom the first week of this month. It was the riveting, excruciating account of her life in North Korea and the harrowing story of her escape to China, South Korea, and America. Two weeks later I finished her 2/14/23 book While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America, which contrasts the tyranny and oppression she experienced in North Korea to her concerning observations of things she’s experienced here in “the land of the free” where censoring and “group think” may foreshadow sliding down a slippery slope toward erosion of American freedoms she holds so dear. In his forward Jordan B. Peterson states Park seeks “to warn us here in our luxury and comfort not to fall prey to the same ideological temptations that doomed the Soviet Union and all its satellites and that still possess the billion-plus people in China, much to the detriment of that country’s beleaguered c...

Dave Barry, author of Swamp Story, is “A wildly popular syndicated columnist best known for his booger jokes; Barry won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.” (from Swamp Story “About the Author”) His much anticipated annual Year In Review is a must read in our household.  What Carolyn Chute did for Maine Gothic and Flannery O’Connor did for Southern Gothic, Dave Barry is doing for Florida Gothic. Swamp Story is a funny and fast moving tale teeming with bad guys, a few good people, Everglades swamps and sinkholes, a 14’ gator, a 16’ python, a wild boar, a politician and an attorney, both morally bankrupt, a mom dreaming of her escape from her feckless baby daddy and his cohorts, ATV chases, gleaming gold bars, hidden treasure, get rich quick schemes, crazy viral internet stories, and the usual suspects struggling to survive in the hot, humid Sunshine State.  Barry brings the disparate plots and characters together in a climactic swamp side scene at the state sponsored announ...