Say Nothing(2018) by Patrick Radden Keefe

 The Top 100 Books of the 21st Century: New York Times

Say Nothing: 

A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018)

by Patrick Radden Keefe

#19

   I visited Belfast over the Christmas/New Years Holiday period last year.  While I was there, I took a "black cab" tour where a local takes you on a tour of both sides of Belfast- Catholic and Protestant.   You see plenty of murals, and it's clear that conflict by proxy continues- the Catholic side is filled with Palestinian flags and the Protestant side with Israeli flags.  Keefe's account of the "troubles" which is a period in Northern Ireland history that generally corresponds to the time between the 1960's and the dawn of the Good Friday agreement signed in 1998,  has been hailed as a classic, and its inclusion on the Top 100 Books of the 21st Century- I think as the only non-American history book on the list... and the recent Hulu television version.

   I listened to the Audio book, and it works well in that format, since much of the writing seems to come from transcribed interviews.  The major narrative thrust beyond documenting the historical facts involved (from the perspective of the Catholic side) involves the fate of a handful of "disappeared" including a single mother of seven children- Keefe's desire to "solve" these disappearances is the tension-inducing narrative device that elevates Say Nothing above an ambitious oral history.

Sounder (1969) by William H. Armstrong

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Sounder (1969)

by William H. Armstrong

Bartow County, Georgia

Georgia: 3/26

  I guess it isn't so hard to imagine at time when a book that uses the "n" word like a comma could not only be a children's book but also a prize winning children's book, is as the case with Sounder, about the son of share-cropper who is hauled off to a Georgia prison after he is accused of stealing a ham to feed his impoverished family.  Sounder is just a slip of a book, 116 pages, so it had that going for it, and also the fact that it wasn't a YA issue based novel published in the last decade, which are truly the most insufferable titles in the 1,001 Novels list. 

Dear Martin (2017) by Nic Stone

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dear Martin (2017)

by Nic Stone

Westbrook Academy, 

401 Lewis Braselton Road, Atlanta, Georgia

Georgia: 2/26

   Dear Martin is another YA title, by far my least favorite category in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.   This book is a good example of what I find so unlikeable about the whole category:  It's a book about a African-American high school student who is on scholarship at a prestigious Atlanta-area boarding school.   He has to deal with normal prep school kid stuff, then about 100 pages in, his best friend gets shot by an off-duty cop at a traffic intersection.  Then, of course, you get another hundred pages of him dealing with his emotions about the shooting.

 Despite this extremely adult subject, the rest of the book is written like the author is trying to PROTECT her audience from every other adult subject.  I.E.: Not one curse word, not one act of adult sexuality beyond holding hands and light kissing and no violence.  If you are going to write a novel about a teen being murdered in cold blood by an off-duty cop, doesn't the audience deserve the rest of adulthood?  According to the conventions of YA fiction, they do not.  Thus, it is a universe of books about rape without any sex, about murder without any violence and about complex emotions without complex characters.

Far From the Tree (2012) by Andrew Solomon

 New York Times 

100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Far From the Tree (2012)

by Andrew Solomon

#67

  This is a 41 hour Audiobook.  I have been trying to get through it since November 20th of last year.  I finally finished a couple days.  Four separate check-outs.  Truly a beast of an Audiobook and depressing as hell, but I totally get while it was included.  Solomon, known for his journalism and his memoir about depression tackles this project charting societal attitudes towards "children who are different than their parents" with characteristic ambition.  Each chapter was an average of eight hours.  He covers deafness, dwarfs. down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, rape, criminals and transgenders with book-ending chapters about his own experience growing up gay and later experience as a gay dad of a very modern family.

  As Solomon repeatedly acknowledges, his sample is limited by parents of these different sorts of children and the children themselves who want to sit down to extensive interviews with a nosy journalist asking all sorts of extremely private questions.  Solomon is right on top of his major theme: Which is that even allowing for the need of humans to find meaning in cruel fate, parents of these children are by in large grateful for their experience.   One group that was noticeably, noticeably absent from every single chapter of this book was any input from the "normal" siblings of the subjects of this book.  As one of those siblings, and a reader of this book, I was astonished how every chapter featured the parents DESCRIBING how the normal siblings felt or what they thought they felt, but that almost none of them actually were asked anything.

   One of the justifications, traditionally, for warehousing children in these various categories was that it would have a negative impact on the "normal" siblings, which means that in each chapter that viewpoint is explicitly ruled out and ignored.  In some chapters it makes sense- I would hope and expect the hearing and normal sized siblings of the deaf and dwarves would be able to make a go of it.  The next four chapters: down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia and disability- which means basically vegetables, could have used some perspectives from the children in these families who have to watch their parent's lives irrevocably altered and generally ruined.  Of course, the parents can and do need to come to terms with it, but I would have liked to hear how out that ceaseless attention impacted the later lives of the siblings.

   The chapter on Prodigies is a clear outlier in that Prodigies carries a positive connotation, but paradoxically this is the one chapter where the parents often come off as manipulative and selfish. The last three chapters- rape, criminals and transgender were almost impossibly cruel in their details.  I think actually the transgender chapter was the hardest of all- hearing from parents who'd had their whole world destroyed because they lived in a small town and had a child who decided He wanted to be a She at a young age.  Published in 2012, I was still frequently shocked by the treatment experienced by the transgender families with young kids.  I certainly won't forget Far From the Tree.

The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) by Alice Walker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)

by Alice Walker

Eaton, Georgia

Georgia: 1/26

   I started the next two chapters of 1,001 Novels: A Library of America at once.  Chapter 4 is Mountain Home & Hollows, Smokies & Ozarks and it contains Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.   The Third Life of Grange Copeland is the first book from Chapter 5: Blues & Bayous, Deltas & Coasts and it contains books from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.   My sense is that Pennsylvania would have been a better fit in either the chapter with New York/New Jersey or the last chapter next to Viriginia, Maryland and DC but I haven't found a single interesting book yet in the Pennsylvania chapter and it is really slowing me down.

   Chapter 5, on the other hand, seems very promising, and more geographically aligned with the original sweep down the Atlantic coast that the first three Chapters seemed to promise.  I think I'll abandon Chapter 4 and do Chapter 5 first, then come back to 4.  

  Anyway, The Third Life of Grange Copeland was great- very dark but really good, and the first novel by Pultizer Prize winner Alice Walker.  The writing in Grange still seems fresh today- maybe more so today than it was back then.   Alice Walker is no stranger to the pages of this blog.  I read The Temple of My Familiar (1989) back in June of 2017- a book that was in and then out of the 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die list.   Of course, The Color Purple is a drop-dead banger- also read that back in 2017 as part of the 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die list.   I guess maybe Walker isn't considered to be as sophisticated as Toni Morrison, or maybe she is just a victim of The Color Purple's cultural success.  

 Unlike The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar is a historical novel served straight up with little deviation from a consistent timeline and narrative perspective.  What's amazing about Grange Copeland is that it almost seems like they are living in the 19th century all the way up until voting rights activists make an appearance.  Grange Copeland was also another example of Walker's theme of a deep and absolute hatred between black and white people, which I've noticed in her other books. 

Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) by Waubgeshig Rice

 Audiobook Review

Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018)

by Waubeshig Rice

  I think I discovered this book via the "recommended" tab in the Libby library app- which is pretty good if you are reading books in translation or literary fiction.  Moon of the Crusted Snow is a typical end of the world type book with the exception of the perspective, which is that of a Anishinabbe community living in northern Canada (not far northern Canada, just regular.) The protagonist is Evan Whitesky, a regular joe type who lives and works in his native village, a place relatively recently connected to the modern world via the wonders of the internet and power from a nearby hydroelectric project.  Evan and his tribe/band first know something is wrong when the cable goes out, then the power.  Winter is setting in, and deliveries from the outside world have ceased, when confirmation finally arrives from two residents attending college in the nearest patch of so-called "Civilization."

  Of all the many works of post-apocalyptic fiction I've read, I would be hard pressed to name another volume that is so low-stakes.  One of the funniest moments in the entire book comes when one of the village elders asks Whitesky to explain this term "apocalypse" means that the young people are bandying about, and when he defines it, she laughs and says that her people/his people have been through at least two others, the first when they were moved north, the second when the Canadians took their children away to Indian schools.  

  Danger arrives in the form of a white survivalist/homesteader type who follows the tracks of the returning college students, and the drama is in the form of the dwindling food reserves the tribe has socked away for just such an occasion.  

Nickel and Dimed (2001) by Barbara Ehrenreich

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: New York Times

Nickel and Dimed (2001)

by Barbara Ehrenreich

#57

   I actually remember the release of this book- I was surprised to find out it happened in the 21st century.  For me, one of the consequences of the rise of Trump has been a corresponding decline in the empathy in the real people depicted by Ehrenreich in this book: white, minimum-wage, poorly educated, with a myriad of health and housing issues.  These are, of course, Trump voters and it's hard for me to muster any kind of enthusiasm for their plight.   Ehrenreich spends each chapter in a different chapter: She starts in Florida, working in a restaurant and briefly, in a motel.  Then she moves to Maine- where she cleans houses in and around Portland.  She ends up in Minneapolis working in Walmart where she reveals that it was essentially impossible for her to get by on a minimum wage salary.

  In 2025, it is hard to imagine that anyone would feel bad for these future Trump supporters.  Ehrenreich is careful to keep her depictions positive- you don't hear any racist slurs or witness any of the kind of disgusting (spitting in customers food) type behavior that makes me reluctant to even eat at many sit down chain restaurants. 

  It's also worth noting that 25 years on and after eight years of Obama and four of Biden, no one has done anything to help these folks except by raising the minimum wage. It occurs to me that the best solution might be to hand the kitchen work and house cleaning over to robots and pay folks who can't hack it some kind of minimum amount of money to provide for food and housing.  The cost of shitty housing is one facet of Ehrenreich's poor people cos-play that stood out to me- because 25 years later it is still true.  Poor people often end up spending as much as a mortgage payment to stay by the day and week at SRO type motels and other temporary living arrangements which become permanent. 

  Surely, the need to provide more affordable housing options (or workforce housing, as they call it in some parts of the country) is a solution that all can agree upon.

Oromay (1983) by Baalu Girma

 Book Review

Oromay (1983)

by Baalu Girma

   Oromay is an Amharic language novel written by a member of the Ethiopian Communist elite circa 1980.  It proved, let us say, controversial in his native Ethiopia, where the Communist Derg were not known for their sense of humor, and where Girma was allegedly murdered by said Communist government of which he was a member.  Easy come, easy go! Oromay is about the lengthy, unsuccessful and ultimately pointless war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Historically, Eritrea was a province of the Ethiopian empire, and independence was tied to the Italian colonization of the area (the title of the novel is an Ethiopianisation of an Italian expression), but it was basically a decades long civil war that Ethiopia eventually lost.

   In this particular book, Girma covers one unsuccessful campaign among what had to be dozens, and adds an interesting entry to the shelf of books set in 20th century Communist dictatorships.  Honestly, the Ethiopian Communists don't sound half bad, so far as books like this one go. 

The Argonauts (2015) by Maggie Nelson

100 Best Books of the 21st Century- New York Times

The Argonauts (2015)

by Maggie Nelson

#45

  The Non-fiction portion of the New York Times 1001 Best Books of the 21st Century list should be subtitled, "How the Left Lost the Culture War," because all of these titles celebrate and draw attention to diversity, and different types of diversity, and it is exactly what the right is targeting when the eliminate "DEI" initiatives.   I've written on this blog about the importance I place on diversity and different viewpoints, and while I personally adhere to that view, it's also hard not to see things from the other side, particularly since the other side is in power and is doing whatever they want in that department.

   And of course, Maggie Nelson, is no doubt appalled beyond belief by Trump and Trumpism, although there are elements of her reference points which might suggest a post-modern-like joy at the bare face of evil power as it relates to issues like transgenderism and queerness generally.  At the same time, Nelson: a queer, sex positive lesbian in a relationship with a f2m/genderfluid artist (Harry Dodge), writing a book about motherhood and sexuality, is like, exhibit "A" in what the right has SUCCESFULLY critiqued about the left. 

  I imagine a member of the MAGA movement would read three pages of The Argonauts and as dismiss it as deviant trash, and it is the book that the New York Times represents as the 45th best book of this century.  Good for Nelson, Good for the Times, bad for the left and bad for the electoral potential of the Democrats in the middle of the 21st century.

Victorian Psycho (2025) by Virginia Feito

 Book Review

Victorian Psycho (2025)

by Virginia Feito

  I swear the E-book edition I checked out from the library managed to inform me that this book was already set to become "a major motion picture featuring Margaret Qualley" which seems almost impossible considering it just got released in the UK and hasn't yet been published over here, but such is the way of publishing rights- they can be sold before the book is even written- a la the Godfather by Mario Puzo which was under contract for a movie before Puzo ever set pen to paper.  Victorian Psycho is pretty much what the title promises, a Victorian-era riff on American Psycho with the nepo baby Investment Banker replaced by a Victorian governess.  What Victorian Psycho sadly lacks is any sort of narrative ambition, we learn, yes, that the Governess has had a difficult upbringing (who didn't, back then?)  The violent bits aren't particularly memorable.   The supporting cast, aka the wealthy family who hires this lady to work with them, are little more than collections of narrative conventions about the Victorians. In short, I was underwhelmed.  I will be interested to see the film.