Learning to Die in Miami by Carlos Eire

Oops - this memoir is a sequel to a book I read last year but forgot to review at the time!  I had heard Carlos Eire interviewed on NPR and thought his story was interesting.

The first book was called Waiting for Snow in Havana.  In that book, Carlos is growing up in Cuba in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  His privileged and sheltered childhood comes to an abrupt end when he is among 14,000 chilren airlifted out of Cuba and sent to the U.S. upon Castro's ascendance.

This book picks up with Carlos adjusting to life in the U.S.  He is shuffled among family friends, foster homes, and other living arrangements, sometimes with his older brother and sometimes alone.  The title of the books is an allusion to his belief that "Carlos" from Cuba has to die for his American "Charles" or "Chuck" or other identity to emerge.  While the first book told a lot of his childhood, this one talks about him mostly as a pre-teen and teen, and flashes forward many times to his life as an adult.

Unlike other memoirs I've read that have been written in more than one part, these two books were very similar in style, tone, and composition.  I enjoyed Eire's style in fact - it was unusual - the books being written more as a reverie, a collection of memories, than as a straightforward linear narrative.  Eire was very poetic in places, very sad in others.  This was not a laugh-out-loud set of books, but I did learn about an immigrant experience I was unfamiliar with, and was compelled to read the second one.

The Forgetting Tree by Tatjana Soli

Soli's previous book The Lotus Eaters was one of my favorites, so I was excited to read this 2012-published novel by her.  I liked it - it was really good.

The story starts with the main character, Claire, experiencing a tragic accident in her family on the farm they own and run.  Years later, her marriage has fallen apart but she remains on the farm, even though her family moves away.  When she is diagnosed with cancer, she hires a young woman  named Minna to help her around the house.  While Minna is a good caretaker, she begins to exhibit unusual behavior and her past slowly comes out throughout the story.  Claire and Minna's relationship develops into something Claire does not expect, and becomes the focus of the majority of the book.

This book was haunting - when Minna's back story comes out, it is touching and surprising and violent.  Similarly strange is Claire's acquiescence to a lot of Minna's idiosyncrasies.  Whether either of their backgrounds justify their behavior throughout the story is perhaps the biggest question left with the reader at the end of the book. 

Falling together by Maria Dos Santos

This was another book I picked up at the library without any recommendations.  It was an easy read although also complex. 

The story follows three college friends: Pen, Cat, and Will.  After college they become estranged from each other, then many years later Cat "summons" Pen and Will to their college reunion.  I'll reveal that they both decide to go, but to tell you any more would ruin the sprawling, multi-layered, story that spans continents and decades.  The book tells the story of their friendship in college, the events leading up to their estrangement, and their developing relationships in the current time, after the college reunion.

Overall I enjoyed this book and looked forward to reading it each night before bed. 

The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman

Many years ago I read Practical Magic by Hoffman and really enjoyed it - it became a movie in the '90's too - with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.  When I saw this book by the same author at the library, I picked it up.

This book is about a family of women, each of whom has a special talent - for example, knowing if someone is lying.  When Stella comes of age and finds out that her talent is clairvoyence, she is put in a difficult situation when she sees her father commit a crime in the future.  Once a series of events comes from this, she goes to live with estranged grandmother, complicating things for her mother.

I liked the mix of supernatural and "normal" worlds - not too science-fiction, but certainly a required element of the plot.  I also liked thought the characters were well-developed and strong.  It wasn't the most memorable book I've read recently, but I did enjoy it.

Pack of Two by Caroline Knapp

Disclaimer: I’ve become an extreme dog person in the past two years, since Lucy came home with us.  This book is only for extreme dog people. 

This book is by Caroline Knapp, author of many of my favorites, including Appetites.  She gets a dog (coincidentally named Lucille) who changes Caroline’s life.  This book was a lovely story about their friendship and how having a dog changed Knapp’s outlook on life.

I definitely related to some of her sentiments around how it feels to be around a dog.  She was a more solitary person than I am, so in some sections she described a relationship with Lucille that was more intense than mine with Lucy.  But overall I appreciated her elevation of dog to complete companion and enjoyed her anecdotes and reflection.

The Litigators by John Grisham

I hadn’t read a John Grisham book in a while and Web had this one around the house.  On a whim I asked him to bring it to Paris for me.

The story is about a small “ambulance-chasing” law firm.  Shortly after hiring a new associate (a young burnt-out attorney from a big firm) the firm takes on a giant pharmaceutical company in a case that quickly becomes that which will make or break the partnership. 

It was pretty standard Grisham.  Fast-paced, quickly-drawn good characters, and didn’t take itself too seriously.  Good airport read.

Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

Webster bought this book for me a few years back when we last went to Paris.  Since I didn't read it then, I thought last week's trip to Paris (part work part play) would be a good time.

The memoir is by Adam Gopnik, an occasional writer for The New Yorker, and chronicles his family's move to Paris when his son was a toddler.  He and his wife and son live there for a few years and this book is a collection of essays he wrote during that time.

I enjoyed reading this book but it wasn't what I expected.  I thought it would be a lightweight memoir about his time there.  While there was some of that (anecdotes about finding an apartment, taking his son to the park), the book was much more a set of reflections on society and what it means to be Parisian - including politics, labor relations, medicine, and the pure quintessence of living in Paris.

I’d recommend the book; just don’t expect a lighthearted memoir.

The Love Wife by Gish Jen

This book is a rarity for me – I took a few minutes to browse in the library and picked out with no recommendations and no knowledge of it.  But it was a good choice!

The story follows a Chinese-American man who marries an American woman (“Blondie”) and they adopt two children.  His disapproving Chinese mother has strong feelings about his decisions, and after her death he finds that in order to inherit some particular items of great sentimental value, the family has to take in a distant relative from China.

I’ll leave the plot there, but it was a good story.  Also unique was the alternating narrators – not just each chapter but every few paragraphs.  Very interesting style that I thought would be annoying but actually worked.

Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey

In my search for books prior to vacation this year, I learned that Marie Antoinette was raised in Vienna.  Since we were visiting Vienna, I decided to try a historical fiction book about her childhood.

This book was not great literature (more like a beach read), but fun to read.  It followed Marie's silver-spoon childhood which comes to a screeching halt when her mother decides to marry her off.  She is betrothed to Louis XVI of France who will one day be king, which will help Austria's political prospects greatly.  However, Marie is scarcely more than a child, so the first third of the book is about all the training and primping and planning that goes into turning her into a proper princess. 

Once she arrives at Versailles, there is a lot to get used to.  There are political and social requirements and factions, there are limits to her free time and her privacy, and there is the delicate matter of getting to know her also-young husband, both privately as well as in the context of a friendship.  The latter proves easier than the former, though both stump her for a while.

The book, part one of a trilogy, ends with King Louis XV's death and Marie and her husband's ascent to the throne.  It will be fun to read the next book in the series when it is published.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

The next book I read on vacation was this one - The Historian.  It is a novel about a group of people searching for Dracula - not Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the purportedly real Dracula whose myth evolved into the vampire we are familiar with today.

The book was really fun to read - it alternated between the 1970's where a young girl discovers her widowed father's fascination with Dracula and the 1950's when he was actively searching for traces of Dracula across Europe.  A mix of history, adventure, and a little supernatural, the story held my attention.  The narration was shared by several of the characters and various articles, letters, and other "primary sources," which made some of what would have otherwise been dry historical content easier to digest.  Also keeping the book lively was the well-developed cast of characters, which included the daughter who finds her father's books, her father, father, his college professor, the professor's daughter, and many librarians, historians, monks, students, and others.

Being in Central Europe while I was reading this book was fun - there are scenes that take place in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and other places in the region we were in.  This was a good vacation read - not fluffy by any means, but one that you need to read a chunk of at a time to really appreciate.

QBVII by Leon Uris

I hadn't read anything by Uris in years, although Exodus (about the creation of Israel) is one of my all-time favorite books.  I picked this for our trip to Europe and it was a great read.

The book is about a trial - the trial of an author whose book about the Holocaust makes mention of a particular doctor's activities in a concentration camp; the doctor sues for libel. It's fast-paced, and unlike some courtroom dramas, it doesn't suffer from pages of detailed testimony.  Much like Uris' other books, a great deal of the book is dedicated to the back story of each of the main characters.  I did not find there to be a clear protagonist and antagonist: both the author and the doctor were characters I could root for. 

I particularly enjoyed reading this while in Central Europe because in Prague and Budapest, we saw a lot of Jewish history sites from before and during the Holocaust that enabled me to better connect with some of the themes in the book.  There were also several ethical dilemmas in the book (e.g., should the doctor have followed orders, should camp survivors have been asked to testify, etc...) that kept me thinking and engaged.

One note: this book was written in 1970 and in one particular way shows its age. The female characters are thin and predictable, reminiscent of Marjorie Morningstar or early Le Carre.  That aside, the book still resonated with me and kept me thinking long after it was over.

Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

I'm not sure what Dave Eggers was thinking about for this book.  Many of his others are my favorites - but this was confusingly lacking in a compelling plot or set of characters.

The story follows Alan, once a rising executive for Schwin bicycles, now reduced to leading a group of young people to pitch a technology to the King of Saudi Arabia because he once - briefly - knew the King's nephew.  Alan faces many common middle-class issues: a demanding ex-wife, a daughter whose education is expensive, a career winding down before his financial responsibilities are complete.  He and his colleagues arrive in a beautifully designed but completely unoccupied housing and commerce development in Saudi Arabia, and are frustrated to find that schedules and plans are ignored, and that the sense of urgency they feel to "do business" is unmatched.  They are bored, waiting days to present.  Sadly, I was bored, waiting days for the book to pick up.

I've read reviews that this is a modern-day parable of globalization.  OK.  It didn't make any points to me that I hadn't thought about myself, and I don't think about globalization that much.  I am hopeful that Eggers' next book is more compelling, like his earlier work.

My New American Life by Francine Prose

I really enjoyed this book.  It was about a young Armenian woman named Lula who works as a housekeeper for a father and son outside of Manhattan.  The story follows her relationships with them and with her immigration lawyer.  Things get interesting when some fellow Armenians find her and insert themselves into her tidy life.

What was great about this book was the author's ability to detail different aspects of Lula's story.  In some cases, we learn about her first few months in the US in a bar with other immigrant friends.  In other cases, we peek into her domestic life.  We see her act as a caretaker for the teenage boy in the home she works in, as well as for his father.  And the scenes with the other Armenians are very rich - the contrast between her life and theirs very sharp while their similarities are also brought into focus.

I'd enjoy reading something else by Prose in the future.

South of Broad by Pat Conroy

Somewhere along the way I had put Pat Conroy in a lightweight beach-reading category, and it wasn't until I read a review of this most recent book of his that I realized he was a more serious author than that.

South of Broad was a good read.  It is about a group of friends who grow up together in Charleston, South Carolina, and alternates between their lives as teenagers in the late 1960's and then as adults twenty years later.  As children, the group forms around Leo, a bright kid who appreciates who his friends are, independent of race, class, and sexual orientation.  Years later, he remains the stable force who keeps the friends together.

The character development was definitely the most compelling piece of this book.  In addition to Leo, there were at least seven or eight main characters, all of whom I felt like I knew. In particular, I was impressed by Conroy's ability to develop the characters over 20 years.  I also liked how Conroy addressed several major social issues without that being the central theme of the book.

I would definitely choose something else by him in the future.

World Without End by Ken Follett

Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth - the epic story of several generations building a cathedral in the 12th century - is one of my all-time favorite books.  Recommended by my high school guidance counselor as a great example of someone who combined two lifelong interests, it was captivating from the first page.

When World Without End, the long-awaited sequel, came out a few years ago (and 20 years after Pillars) my dad sent me a copy the day it was released.  I was excited to read it but somehow couldn't get started - Web read it instead and then it sat on my bookshelf. 

Well once I finally opened the book I couldn't put it down.  It was great!!  It seemed to be written in a less sophisticated style than the original, compounded by the beginning of the book following several young children who are playing in the woods.  Another difference from Pillars was that in this book, two of the main characters were women, a point of view I enjoyed reading.  The story was about the town the cathedral had been built in, and how it had evolved 150 years later.  The relationships between the royalty, the Church, and the guild were really intriguing, and I also enjoyed the inclusion of real historical events like the Plague.  All of that coupled with a cast of good characters (as well as some great "bad guys") the book read quickly.

If you loved Pillars, (how could you not/?)  this is a good sequel.  I think the book would stand alone also, but you may as well read Pillars first.