Every Bone a Prayer (2020) by Ashley Blooms

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Every Bone a Prayer (2020)

 by Ashley Blooms

Cutshin, Kentucky

Kentucky: 10/16

    I think Kentucky will prove to be my favorite state in this chapter.  It's either going to be Kentucky or Tennessee (It will NOT be Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Arkansas or Missouri).  I was heartened when the jacket copy indicated that Every Bone a Prayer was a work of speculative fiction- a genre that is pretty much completely absent from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  I can only surmise that it has to do with the tastes of editor Susan Straight, who clearly sees this project as an opportunity to the tell the stories of impoverished and neglected women and girls as the priority in her selections. 

  Thus, the speculative fiction still involves a main character who is helpless and abused and spends the entire book in this one holler in Kentucky.  She also talks to crawdads, witnesses life size glass sculptures of people sprout the front yard of near by trailer and slips out of her skin and walks around a skeleton at night.  Other than as a metaphor for the disassociation felt by victims of childhood sexual abuse, I wasn't sure what to make of any of it.

The Breakup (2026) by Kurt Andersen

Book Review

The Breakup (2026)

by Kurt Andersen

  I've been a fan of Kurt Andersen since his Spy magazine days.  For those of you who don't know, Spy Magazine was a hugely influential title that lasted from the mid 1980's to the late 1990's.  It was known for its tone, generally called "snarky," which proved hugely influential in the early days of the internet, specifically when it came to Gossip-Culture websites like Gawker (RIP). I also enjoyed Turn of the Century, his last attempt at a zeitgeist-y style of literary fiction.  The fact that Turn of the Century was published in 1999 should tell you that he hasn't exactly been working to perfect his approach, with his recent works including a co-write with murderer Alec Baldwin about our unhinged Commander-in-Chief. 

  The Breakup, on the other hand, got me excited based on the review in the New York Times book section.  Truth be told I'm a sucker for anything that combines post-apocalypitc/dystopian themes with any other literary fiction adjacent drama.  Here, the dystopia is a very well imagined Civil War 2 which has resulted in a bifurcation as imagined for the micro-targeting era, with cities functioning as "blue" enclaves in post-split "red" states and red portions of blue states splitting to start new states, etc.   The story is about as minimal as it gets: Jewish tech-bro executive and his red-state, Cuban immigrant, poetess wife breaking up and making up as they tour their non-gender conforming daughter across the post-split landscape.

 I fully agree with the New Times write-up: that the pleasure here is in the richly imagined details rather than any satisfaction with the loosely woven plot.   I devoured The Breakup over a vacation weekend on my Kindle and barely wanted to stop reading for any reason other than meals.

  To me, the most trenchant theme was one that was largely (though not wholly) unexplored: That the blue parts of the map would be more than happy to be shed of the red parts, or at least those red parts that feel so strongly about the issue.  In The Breakup, the capital of the post-split red state is Abilene Texas, the largest metro area remaining in red America.  The last current event type thing that happens in the book is a "recission" where the state of Montana realizes that they are going to be on the hook for paying a bunch of literal poor, white, trash and vote to go back to the United States (after voting to leave.)  In that way, The Breakup ultimately imagines Civil War 2 as a kind of post break-up revenge fantasy.

The Memory Seekers Daughter (2005) by Kim Edwards

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Memory Seekers Daughter (2005) 

by Kim Edwards
Lexington, Kentucky

Kentucky: 9/16

   The Memory Keeper's Daughter is about a physician father who gives up his Down's Syndrome afflicted daughter at birth, asking a trusted nurse to deposit her at a nearby institution (as was often the practice back then).  He tells his young wife that the daughter- the twin of a healthy baby boy, is dead and this lie becomes a sin that the couple can absolutely not surpass.  Of course, I knew on a variety of levels that once this Dad gave away his daughter with Down's Syndrome, everyone would spend the rest of their lives thinking about little else.  The new mother, of course, dedicates her entire life to fighting for this child.  The father is never really able to connect with his son or wife.  The actual mother never, ever, for one single day stops thinking about her dead daughter.  And we are talking 500 pages of this.

  The Doctor's wife, at least, has a little Betty Draperish vibe that entertains.  The Doctor himself is sad. 

As for the woman who raises this child as her own... I myself was the older sibling of a similar brother, someone who was not given away.  I've spent a lot of time living the experience that this woman went through, albeit not as a single mother in 1980's Pittsburgh.  I was interested to see how author Edwards resolve the question that I have (and still have not gotten an answer for):  Of course, it is great that parents devote their entire lives to raising special needs children instead of having them institutionalized.  But what about the fact that all this work is performed under the guide of someday generating an independent human being who can, in fact, exist without 24/7/365 support which is provided by these parents.  My personal experience is that this idea of adult independence for special needs folks is a bit of a sham.

 Of course, The Memory Seekers Daughter ends just when we might expect to see how everything works out, but who can blame the author.  She doesn't have an answer, no one does.