A Family Examined – This Is Not about Us, by Allegra Goodman

I had quite a wait for this novel – I think there were about 150 people ahead of me on the library's hold list. I'm happy to say it was worth it.Allegra Goodman does not disappoint, whether she is writing about the generations of a Jewish family, as in this book, or in Isola, about a 16th century French noblewoman who is abandoned and stranded on an island in St. Lawrence River in Canada but lives to tell the tale. That shows the diversity of her talent.

The Rubensteins are a close family, but when Jeanne, the youngest of three sisters in their seventies, dies of lung cancer, a petty argument between the remaining sisters Sylvia and Helen over apple cake develops into a long-standing feud between them, and creates awkwardness among the other family members.

That is a kick-off into an examination of the relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives (and that of the family's lesbian granddaughter/niece/cousin and her wife), younger siblings, and cousins. We meet them all in this story: Sylvia's son Richard whose wife Debra is divorcing him, their concerns about their two daughters, and the subsequent developments that impact them; Helen's older daughter Pam and her personal difficulties; Helen's younger daughter Wendy and her protective, loving wife Jill; and, Jeanne's sons Steve and Dan, their marriages to Andrea and Melanie, and their kids, Zach and Nate, and Phoebe.

As in every family, there are conflicts and disappointments, joyful occasions and celebrations. Goodman paints a complex portrait of a Jewish family that many readers will relate to, no matter what their ethnicity or religion.

The writing is beautiful, just descriptive enough to provide context, and cuts straight to describing the emotions felt by the family members as they cope with their individual challenges and find their places in a changing world. For Helen and Sylvia, who towards the end of the book, are now approaching or just past 80, it's also a look back while they continue to move forward.

I was glad to read about multiple characters who are at later points in life, the sisters at 80-something, their children in their 40s and 50s, but also the grandchildren finding their ways through adolescence and young adulthood. It was a multi-faceted portrait, but age and experience, while respected, were not shown to be infallible. A good story, all around.

Looking Back to a Better Time – Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American by Rachel Gordan

This scholarly book examines what the author, Rachel Gordan, calls anti-antisemitism writing, in novels and non-fiction books about Judaism, and in magazines, starting just after World War II and going into the 1950s. One of the most famous examples of fiction of the period is the 1947 Gentleman's Agreement, by Laura Z. Hobson, a novel about a gentile journalist who goes undercover as a Jew to write about the experience of antisemitism and exclusion in New York City and the upper class suburbs of Connecticut. It was a tremendous bestseller, and was made into an Oscar-winning movie with Gregory Peck in the leading role.

Another is the 1958 Exodus, by Leon Uris, about the founding of the State of Israel following the voyage of the immigration ship "Exodus". It too was made into a highly successful film, released in 1960, starring Paul Newman in the central role. Though I was a young child in pajamas in the back of my parents' car at a drive-in theater, I still remember the impression made on me by its stirring music and vivid graphic opening.

Gordan examines other best-selling fiction by such writers as Herman Wouk, the author of Marjorie Morningstar and The Caine Mutiny, who also wrote the non-fiction This Is My God, his interpretation of Judaism (also a bestseller), and similar non-fiction texts by rabbis of the period. Wouk was a practitioner of Modern Orthodox Judaism, and the other books examined Judaism from the Reconstructionist and Reform viewpoints.

In addition, she describes the special features on Judaism (and other major religions) in mainstream magazines like "Time", "Life", and "Look", which were revolutionary in bringing a Jewish perspective into the mainstream of American life.

On the whole, it presents a positive view of the evolution and mainstreaming of Jewish life in America after World War II, and onward, until the last decade or so, when we began to see obvious evidence of increased antisemitism once again, typified by the Tree of Life synagogue attack in Pittsburgh in 2018. It is a highly informative and fascinating book, but it was written before the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and the ensuing events. Since then, everything has changed, and the hopeful sentiments of this book must, sadly, be viewed as nostalgia.

Growing Up in The Bronx – City Boy by Herman Wouk

This charming book by Herman Wouk chronicles the adventures of Herbie Bookbinder, an eleven-year-old Jewish boy growing up in The Bronx of the pre World War II era. Even though Herbie is a child, and an intellectually precocious one, this is a book for adults.

 
Herbie lives with his parents and older sister in an apartment in the working class East Bronx, and his father is a partner in an ice business, an essential in the days before refrigerators had arrived in households. It is 1928, and the horrors of The Great Depression, World War II and The Holocaust are yet to come. In that respect it is an innocent era, and boys Herbie's age enjoy a visit to the corner soda fountain for a "frap" (an ice-cream soda), or to buy the latest comic book.

Herbie has a crush on his 7th-grade teacher, and then on a girl in his class, who becomes his girlfriend, in the most innocent sense of the word. Unlike some of his classmates, he is not an athlete, and not interested in sports. He would much rather spend his time reading. He is stout, and some of his classmates torment him at times for it.

Herbie, his sister, his girlfriend, and his cousin, along with his nemesis, the ultra-athletic son of his father's partner, end up spending the summer at a sleep-away camp in the mountains, where many of his escapades are based, and where he misses his parents, but also pays little attention to regularly writing to them.

This gentle novel feels as though it might be somewhat autobiographical of the author's own childhood. There are intimations that Herbie may someday go far in life, but as an eleven-year-old, he has more immediate concerns – and worries, though all comes out well in the end.

I enjoyed this book immensely, and as my own father was born in 1917, the same year as Herbie, I'm sure he had some similar experiences in his Philadelphia childhood, some of which I heard about, but many he most likely stored in his memory, and savored over time.

Always a Beautiful Experience – Selected Poems by Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg has been my favorite poet for many years. I find an extraordinary peace in reading his work, and there is always something new in it to discover. I recently found this edition of Selected Poems in a Little Free Library on a walk in my neighborhood – what a lucky day that was...

I truly enjoyed visiting the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in North Carolina, near Hendersonville, and his birthplace in Galesburg, Illinois.

Modern Renaissance Man – Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris

Mike Nichols was an acclaimed director of theater and film, but also acted and performed comedy in his early career, particularly with the writer Elaine May. His most famous movies include "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, "The Graduate" with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, and "Silkwood" with Meryl Streep, Cher, and Kurt Russell, just to name a few. On Broadway, he directed "Barefoot in the Park", "The Odd Couple", and many others. He died in 2014.

This book is an encyclopedic compendium of his many projects, with a tremendous amount of detail, many interviews, and quotations, but it is not an insightful interpretation of the man and what made him tick. The author presents Nichols's life chronologically, with many pages devoted to his childhood and early career. I kept waiting for the author to get into the meat of Nichols's career, and it took a long time for that to happen. I found that his approach made me impatient, and I began skipping sections and chapters to get to the highlights that most interested me.

I found the sheer volume of material to be overwhelming, and felt the book would have been more effective with closer editing and the shortening of some of the chapters. Still, if you are interested in learning everything there is to know about such subjects as the disastrous making of the film "Catch-22", but also the triumph of "The Graduate", then this is the book for you.

Women's Struggles – Murder on Washington Square by Victoria Thompson

This series set in New York around 1900-1910 is so entertaining. This particular book was well-plotted, with a very unexpected twist. Having read several of the later installments, it's interesting to have taken a step back in the relationship between lead characters Sarah Brandt, a society woman turned midwife, and Frank Malloy, a New York City detective. At that time, graft and payoffs to the police were rampant, and Frank would have been one of the few honest cops, though he certainly knew how it all worked. 

Someday I'll go back to the beginning and read all the books in the series I've missed, which is still most of them, so I have plenty of enjoyment ahead.

Not Forgotten – The Many Lives of Anne Frank by Ruth Franklin

The Diary of Anne Frank is the best-known chronicle of Jews in hiding during World War II and Anne Frank is one of the war's most famous victims. Anne was a German Jew who emigrated with her parents, Otto and Edith and older sister Margot, to Amsterdam during the rise of Hitler. At the age of 13, Anne and her family went into hiding in rooms above and behind her father's place of business, where they were joined by their friends, the van Pels and their son, and later Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist. They were able to survive in hiding for over two years, but were betrayed, arrested, and sent to the concentration camps. The sole survivor of the eight was Otto Frank, who lived to 1980, and died at the age of 91.The diary has been translated and published in a multitude of languages and countries. It was dramatized in a Broadway play, Hollywood movie, and other formats. This is all well known.

Ruth Franklin, this volume's author, has taken a unique approach to Anne's life. She has divided Anne's life and afterlife as a celebrated icon into separate sections.

The first section is biographical, but in greater depth than is often presented, with material about her friends and classmates, as well as her parents and sister, and of the helpers who brought food and supplies to the hidden families, and who kept their secret.

The second part addresses the publishing of the diary, the development of the play and film, and delves deeply into Otto Frank's decades of work to bring his daughter's writing to the greater world. While I was certainly familiar with some of the events that resulted in the diary's initial publication, and translation into English, this book examines the circumstances of its publication and the following representations in much greater depth. Franklin also covers the creation of the Anne Frank House, the museum in Amsterdam at the site of the hiding place, and its further evolution.

I first read the English translation, published in the United States in 1952, as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, in the mid-1960s, when I was about 12, so I was close to Anne's age at the time. I remember how shocked I was when reading the text after the final entry: "Anne's diary ends here". I felt such a strong kinship with her, and each year, when her birthday would come around, just two days before my own, I would remember her and how old she would have been had she survived the war – and I still think of her each year, though now she would be approaching 100. I had such a hard time accepting that Anne had been arrested, held in captivity, and eventually died a sad and painful death. It truly registered with me in the most graphic way just how unfair life could be.

I no longer have my original copy, but I read it over and over, along with the following revised edition, and many books that both examine and extol Anne's work, but Franklin's book is so insightful, and so moving, that I felt almost overwhelmed by it. It is a fascinating testament in particular to Otto Frank's work to bring the diary, and Anne's story, to the world. He succeeded. As Anne wrote, "I want to go on living after my death", and yes, she truly has.

Trailblazer –The Path Beneath Her Feet by Janis Robinson Daly

A great book for Women's History Month.

This is a work of historical fiction centered around a woman physician in the early decades of the twentieth century battling sexism, ageism, and conventional mores.

The fictional Dr. Eliza Edwards is a rarity in her time as a gynecologist and obstetrician in private practice in Boston. When the Great Depression forces her and professional partner to close down due to dwindling business, she is at loose ends. As a woman in her late 50s, there are very few options.

She finds a temporary opportunity at the polio institute in Warm Springs, GA where she will encounter a frustrating and difficult situation.

Her next challenge is in Jellico, Tennessee, a remote and impoverished community in the mountains of Appalachia, where she first assists a surgeon operating on children with facial birth defects, but then stays on to provide gynecological and obstetrical medical care. There she also meets individuals who will change her life in many ways.

As the 1930s roll into the 1940s, Eliza will return to Boston where she cares for an aging aunt who is suffering from dementia, seeing her younger son off to the war in the Pacific, and a host of other personal challenges – an early example of what we now call "the sandwich generation".

This is a fascinating book full of carefully researched historical information and memorable settings, and is peopled with both real-life figures and institutions, as well as well-drawn fictional characters. It is the second book featuring Eliza Edwards – the first is The Unlocked Path, covering her earlier years, which I plan to read as soon as I can.

From the Flames – Kalman & Leopold: Surviving Mengele's Auschwitz by Richard K. Lowy

This extraordinary book is an account of what two young teenaged boys, each one half of sets of fraternal twins, experienced, in the time preceding, and during their incarceration, in Auschwitz during World War II.

They were subjects of cruel, invasive, and horrific medical experimentation performed by Dr. Josef Mengele and his staff of doctors and technicians. Mengele's particular subjects of interest were sets of twins and dwarfs, who upon their arrival at the concentration camp, were separated from other family members who were often sent directly to their deaths in the gas chambers, or worked to death if they were deemed fit enough upon entry.

The two boys were Kalman Braun, who became Kalman Baro-On in his new post-war life in Israel, and Leopold Lowy, who emigrated to Canada where he married and became the father of three, including Richard K. Lowy, a filmmaker and the author of this book.

In Auschwitz, the two boys worked together on whatever duties were assigned to them by their Nazi handlers. Any mistake or misstep resulted in harsh punishment, but their solidarity helped them to survive, with Leopold (known as "Lipa"), the older and more worldly wise, often advising and protecting Kalman.

Many years later, Richard Lowy made a film about his father's life, which was shown on Israeli TV. Kalman, who had been searching fruitlessly for Lipa for decades, saw it, and that ultimately led to their being reunited. Kalman contacted Richard, and with his reminisces, along with his father's, this extraordinary book came about.

The book includes accounts of their Auschwitz experiences from Kalman and Leopold, maps, and other supporting documents, all carefully annotated and footnoted. Reading what these boys and the other inmates experienced is horrifying.

Yet, the reader leaves on a positive note, because both of these boys, as men, were able to create new and productive lives, a testament to the resilience of their humanity, and a lesson about what can be accomplished in life despite an experience of the worst that humankind can inflict on one another.

I highly recommend this book with the caveat that it is not sparing in its recounting of what Kalman and Leopold and millions others experienced at the hands of the Nazi regime. It does not whitewash or excuse any of the crimes that were perpetrated, or diminish their impact. We must never forget, but we can heal.

Interlude in Verona – The Lost Dresses of Italy by M.A. McLaughlin

Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) was an English poetess of Italian descent, and a member, with her two brothers, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Rossetti, of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement in art and literature. Many of her poems, including "Who Has Seen the Wind?", are familiar classics. Her only rival for fame and accomplishment among female English poets would be Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
In 1864, Christina and William, along with their mother, Frances, traveled to Italy. This novel is built around the author's imagination of the events of that trip, and also has an alternate timeline in 1947, when a fictional American clothing historian and war widow, Marianne Baxter, comes to Verona at the invitation of her old college friend Rufina. Marianne is to mount an exhibition of three dresses purported to have belonged to Rossetti which were found in a trunk in a hidden room in the (also fictional) Fondazione Museo Menigatti, located in a war-damaged palazzo.

Alessandro, the museum director, is both reluctant to have Marianne there and demands that she follow a number of "rules" that will make it difficult for her to do the work she has traveled from Boston to complete, but she is determined.

As Marianne works on the dresses, she uncovers mysterious notes and other items hidden inside the garments, and becomes caught up in why Christina placed them there. The alternating chapters on Christina and Marianne create a lushly romantic literary mystery that is eventually resolved by a most unexpected conclusion.

The author has clearly done her research on the works of Rossetti and what is known of her life, while creating a multi-layered characterization for her during her Italian sojourn. Her descriptions of the dresses, and the Veronese and other settings, during both timelines, are highly detailed and convincing, right down to the food eaten by the Rossettis and Marianne.

A very appealing work of historical fiction and mystery for those interested in literature, art, vintage textiles, and more.

Enthralling – An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin

If it were possible to give this book 6 stars, I would. It is an extraordinary account of the history and politics of the 1960s, told from a personal perspective.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is the acclaimed author of Team of Rivals (Abraham Lincoln), No Ordinary Time (Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt), The Bully Pulpit (Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft), and a number of other titles. As a young woman, she worked in the Lyndon Johnson White House, and became close to him and his family, and later wrote the biography Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream.

Her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, worked in the John F. Kennedy White House, where he was a leading speechwriter, and then for Lyndon Johnson. He was a close friend of Robert Kennedy, worked on his presidential campaign, and was with him when he was murdered in Los Angeles in 1968. Goodwin was also very close to Jackie Kennedy.

The Goodwins met several years after those events; their paths did not cross in the White House. They eventually married and had two sons.

Dick was more than a decade older than Doris, and when he reached his mid-eighties, they agreed to go through the many cartons of documents and memorabilia he had retained, in the hope of writing a book together. Their examination of what they found in the boxes and what they remembered and discussed became the narrative of this book, which Doris wrote alone after Dick's passing. Both the historical events that it describes chronologically in great detail, and the parallel of their personal stories make this an incredible account of a unique time in American history.

I was a third-grader when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but like everyone who was alive at the time, I have a personal memory of hearing that dreadful news and what immediately followed. By the time we came to 1968, and the country was torn apart again by the murders of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, I was thirteen, aware of current affairs, but still too young to have the capacity to grasp and understand the significance of everything that was happening. This book clarifies and explains the events of the 60s in a remarkable way. It is so vividly written that it has the ability to transport the reader straight back to those times, and provide a new understanding of that tumultuous decade, which set the stage for so much that has followed, and the perilous times we sadly find ourselves in now.

World of Confusion – Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

I really wanted to like this book, and it started off appealingly, but as I read on it became more and more disjointed. I suspect that was the author's intention, with the book partially set amidst a geological and political disaster, but I eventually just lost interest. I skipped through to the end, and I was never really clear on where it was all going. The end didn't clarify or wrap up anything for me. It was disappointing. I was hoping to discover a new Latina voice I could embrace.

This is a family story of three generations of women of Guatemalan heritage living in Boston: elderly grandmother Candelaria, her daughter Lucia, and granddaughters Paola, who disappeared and is now back and calling herself Zoe, while living as part of a bizarre women-only brainwashed cult; the second daughter is Bianca, who became an archeologist but was pushed out of her Ph.D. program after an affair with her program advisor; and the youngest, Candy (short for Candelaria) a recovering heroin addict and film buff, who works in an art house cinema. The granddaughters' lives become intermeshed through their attachments to men and others. There's a kind of magic realism quality to the book, but it's more nightmarish than mystical. 

This was a novel I chose as one of my Mark Twain American Voice in Literature candidates to read and rate in the initial round of that selection. Unfortunately I cannot recommend that it goes forward in the competition.

A Family Odyssey – Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

This is a beautiful, moving work of fiction that is primarily based on the life of the author Elizabeth Graver's grandmother, Rebecca Cohen Baruch Levy (born in 1902), and other family members. Graver incorporated family stories and photographs, but created a narrative that incorporates what she has conceived of their inner lives and intimate experiences. 

The Cohens were Sephardic Jews who left Spain as a result of the Inquisition and settled in Constantinople, Turkey. For several hundred years, under the Ottomans, they prospered financially, living a refined upper class lifestyle, and practiced their religion. After World War I, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the development of modern Turkey (which was declared a republic in 1923), their fortunes declined, and the relatively secure position of Jews changed. The Cohens lost their money and business (partly due to Rebecca's father's poor business practices and gambling), and they eventually were forced to move away from what had become Istanbul, and resettle in Barcelona, Spain, living in much reduced circumstances.

The rise of Fascism and other right-wing movements in Spain leading to the Spanish Civil War made life dangerous for Jews. Rebecca, whose first marriage was a failure and who became a widow with two sons upon the death of her husband, traveled to Cuba to meet Sam, a widower, and potential second husband. Sam and Rebecca married and traveled to Queens, New York, where they joined his mother and disabled daughter. Her sons eventually joined them and they had children together. 

The novel recounts all this in rich detail and we share in the author's description of how she imagines Rebecca's thoughts and feelings, through the following decades of her life with Sam, the tragedies of World War II, the loss of family members, and especially the challenge of caring for and encouraging Luna, Sam's daughter. 

It is a remarkable story, painful in many places, but ultimately triumphant. Rebecca must have been a truly extraordinary person and a true "woman of valor". 

This is the fifth of the eight novels I plan to read for the 2024 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and certainly one of my two favorites thus far. I hope to complete the final three by the mid-May deadline. 

From the Mines Onward – American Ending by Mary Kay Zuravleff

Yelena was the first of her family to be born in America, in 1899. When we first meet her in 1908, she is living with her struggling parents and younger siblings in Marianna, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining town southwest of Pittsburgh, though in their isolated and impoverished circumstances, it would seem light years away, though it is perhaps only 20 miles distant.

Yelena's family are Old Believer Russian Orthodox, a highly conservative sect, which doesn't allow married women to cut their hair, dancing or card playing, though all the adults, especially the men, indulge heavily in vodka. Roles are highly defined, and the men and their sons, some barely teenagers, work in the dangerous mineshafts from the early morning hours until they stagger home for dinner and then drink themselves into a stupor. The women cook, clean, sew, and perform other household tasks in primitive conditions, and there is never enough money, especially after the men indulge at the taverns. Tension and violence, domestic and otherwise, is high, due to the possibility of a mine cave-in at any time.

The town is also strictly broken down into ethnic and religious enclaves: the Russians, Poles, Italians, and "Blacks" each have their own neighborhoods. The Russians have brought a strong anti-Jewish attitude with them and they, and the Poles, their Catholic rivals, still believe that the Jews were Christ-killers.

The children, for as long as they are allowed, attend school together where they are taught by an Irish schoolmistress from New York. Yelena and her immediately younger brother, Kostia, are two of the school's brightest pupils, but they are weighed down with chores. Still, they attempt Still, they attempt to learn as much as they can. Their mother, Katya, values education, and in fact speaks several languages, and reads and writes in a beautiful script. Her husband Gregor is illiterate, though not unintelligent.

When Gregor and Katya immigrated from Suwalki in Russian Poland, they left behind their two oldest daughters with Katya's parents. Katya saves and saves to bring them to America and once they finally arrive, Yelena's role in the household is forever changed, and she resents that. She is also forced to leave school before the fifth grade, though she continues to try to educate herself.

The book progresses through her remaining child and teen years, and her early marriage to Viktor, one of a set of brothers also from Suwalki. He was the eldest, born abroad, though his younger brothers were born in America, so were citizens from birth. Hard work in the mines, food allergies and asthma, which were not well understood, have made his health precarious. Like Yelena, he is as well-read as a person of limited schooling can be.

Yelena and Viktor press on to make a life together. They leave Marianna, eventually moving to Erie, where there is other work, but it is still a struggle with Viktor's poor health. Meanwhile, Yelena has become an avid supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and has a hero in Rose Winslow, formerly Ruza Wenclawska, a suffragist and labor movement leader, also from Suwalki.

In 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and it was ratified in 1920. Yelena is at home with her two young children when a census worker arrives to interview her. The young woman, a college girl working the census as a summer job, is surprised that Yelena, whose name she Americanizes to Elaine, as a married mother of two, is just 20, her age. The two women could not be more different. Yelena tells her that she is a natural-born American but when the woman finds out that Viktor is a still unnaturalized alien, she changes Yelena's nationality to alien, much to Yelena's shock. The law of the time, it turns out, was that American women who marry foreign nationals were no longer citizens...but a different set of rules applied to men.

...that law was the Expatriation Act of 1907. It said that any American woman who married a foreigner would assume his nationality. The 1922 Cable Act partially reversed the 1907 law, but it wasn't until 1940 that all aspects of the 1907 law were rescinded and women and men had independent citizenship that could not be stripped away by marriage. These immigration laws as they applied to the period of this book were explained in an appendix after the last page, with the 1940 information here my addition.

This novel was also one of my Mark Twain American Voice Prize in Literature choices to read and rate. I hope it will continue forward in the judging. It was vividly written, deeply felt, with strongly crafted characters, and provided a historical and geographical context that made it highly accessible. The author based this novel on the experiences of her own family in Marianna, now, per Wikipedia, a town of around of 400 residents. A major explosion killed over 150 miners in 1908, and is described in the book. The mine passed through several rounds of ownership and eventually closed in 1988.

Caught in a Web – The Dissident by Paul Goldberg

A very hard book to read, and like, in my opinion. Another of my choices to read and rate for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, I had very different expectations, based on the brief synopsis provided by the prize organizers (and the rather deceptive jacket copy). 

Set in 1978, as the Soviet Union was beginning to disintegrate, it is a story about Refuseniks, especially one in particular, Viktor, a Jewish man who is stuck in Moscow, since the government has refused his visa request to emigrate to Israel. Of course, this was a common situation at that time with many Jews seeking to leave for Israel or the United States. I knew a few who managed it, and spent some time getting a taste of their world in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, visiting the shops and restaurants. 

Since it is the Soviet Union, he gets caught up in the impenetrable web of a KGB murder investigation, after he comes upon the scene of the crime, and is seen leaving the site. Viktor's hero is none other than Henry Kissinger, certainly a highly controversial figure on his own, but who is supposed to be arriving for a state visit when the murder, which involved an American, took place. The investigation must be resolved before Kissinger's visit, as it will be a diplomatic issue.

As Winston Churchill said, Soviet Russia is "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.", and that is certainly true of this novel. Perhaps obtaining a view of that warped world was the author's point, but I just couldn't go along. 

In my Mark Twain reviewer's scoring form, I said that this book did not represent an American voice, but while that's not entirely correct, the form does not provide a lot of space to elaborate. The author is a Russian immigrant who came to the United States as a teenager, so while you could say his is one of many hyphenated American ethnicities writing in the United States today, with the setting of this book in Moscow, it is very far away from what I find to be a relatable tale or an accessible point of view. 

A Sweet Treat – Dangerous Curves Ahead by Sugar Jamison

A mostly-lighthearted romance novel with a few twists to make it more interesting and unconventional. 

The main character, Ellis, is a former attorney who practiced in a high-powered firm in the city but returned to her much smaller university town where she has opened an apparel business focusing on the needs of plus and other hard-to-fit women. Ellis, an attractive woman of plus dimensions herself, has recently broken up with a man who put down her appearance and made her feel bad about herself.

Ellis has a very conventionally attractive but emotionally immature older half-sister, Dena, a feminist college-professor mother, and a scientist father who is loving but somewhat on the Spectrum. Ellis was adopted by her parents, who are very supportive of her many accomplishments.

Mike, the man she falls for, has a ladykiller reputation, and had briefly dated Dena in the past, though the relationship never advanced to sex. Dena also moves from relationship to relationship, always seeking attention and affirmation from men.

Ellis and Mike meet (actually re-meet) in an adversarial encounter. How that evolves, along with Ellis's business, is the story, and it's a fun (and sexy) one. 

The audiobook version was entertaining and well-performed. 

Perfectly Titled – Onlookers: Stories by Ann Beattie

These somewhat-connected stories are set in Charlottesville, VA in the aftermath of the 2017 White Supremacist riot and during COVID. The privileged characters that inhabit them are mostly unlikeable and feel almost entirely one-dimensional. 

I was interested in reading this book since the setting is a familiar one to me from multiple visits during business trips of the 80s and 90s, and what happened there in 2017 was especially shocking against that cultured, liberal environment. 

That being said, I have never been a fan of Ann Beattie, but I thought after so many years I might change my opinion. I had always found her writing to feel very detached and cold, filled with people who don't seem to connect, but now I get the feeling that that is reflective of her worldview, and I find that very sad.  

Trapped in Their Own Web – Hope by Andrew Ridker

This novel by Andrew Ridker was one of my choices to read and rate for this year's Mark Twain American Voice in Literature award. Our group of readers was presented with a lengthy list of nominations. Each person must choose several books to read and rate (rather than review). Once this reading period is over, the selections that garnered positive ratings will go on to the next round. 

This book captures a unique cultural segment of American society – the contemporary secular Jewish family...not about the Orthodox or the various groups of Hasidim in Crown Heights, Williamsburg, or Borough Park, not about the Holocaust, not about mid-twentieth century Brooklyn or the Lower East Side of Manhattan, or about the immigration of Eastern European Jews in the late 19th and early 20th century, which are subjects that have been endlessly covered by many authors over the years, and are usually what we find in books about Jewish people.

While the milieu of upper middle class Brookline, a close-in suburb of Boston, will not be familiar to many, Ridker gets inside it so thoroughly that we feel we know these people, nearly all of whom are Jewish. The author very skillfully takes the characters from what first appeared to be clichés to something much deeper and more profound. The writing is exemplary. It addresses the moral ambiguity of modern American life without preaching. 

In brief, the book covers one year in the life of the Greenspan family. Husband and father Scott is a respected cardiologist, wife and mother Deb is a former dancer who is devoted to liberal causes, daughter Maya works in publishing in New York, and son Gideon is a pre-med student at Columbia. Each of them is faced with a personal crisis that threatens the entire family's status quo and shakes their stability, but the chain of events is set off by financial problems that Scott tries to solve by falsifying the information he provides for clinical trials, which he thinks will pay him the money he needs to extricate himself and his mother, Marjorie, from poor financial choices...until he gets caught.

Almost Clueless –The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict

A book club choice that received mixed reviews in our discussion: I would normally have returned it to the library after the first 25 or so pages, but I like to honor my book club reading commitments. I've enjoyed many works of historical fiction that are written around the life of real-life person, but this one felt a bit flat. To me, it was clear that Agatha Christie's staged disappearance in 1926 was partly a publicity stunt, and partly a move of revenge against her husband, who had just demanded a divorce. It generated a vast amount of publicity so Christie was successful in grabbing the attention of the public while she dealt with her husband's infidelity and what comes across as his mental cruelty towards her.

The author, Marie Benedict, specializes in bringing the lives of obscure or somewhat-forgotten women to light in her novels. I previously read her book about Albert Einstein's first wife, which claimed that she (also a physicist) was responsible for the Theory of Relativity. I recall that I didn't care much for the book, and found it somewhat unbelievable. Benedict also wrote a novel about the actress Hedy Lamarr, who was also an inventor and scientist – and much more interesting to me. I haven't decided as yet whether or not I'll read it.

Insight into a Distant Time and World – Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See

A fascinating look into the lives of (mostly) upper-class women during the Ming Dynasty (15th century) in China. Tan Yunxian lost her mother at an early age and was raised by her wealthy maternal grandparents, who were both doctors, and were training her in their profession. Chinese medicine was far more advanced in many ways at this time than Western medicine, and this well-researched novel brings us into a world where male and female doctors (who existed, but were rare) played very different roles. Women were also midwives but this was not a profession practiced by upper-class women, though midwives played an important role in all women's lives.

Yunxian was "married out" at 15, to the son of another even more wealthy family, who lived in a vast compound. Not only did she have to leave her beloved grandparents, but also her only friend, Meiling, the daughter of a midwife. While women played subservient roles to the men in their lives, and men could take multiple wives, concubines, and consorts, when a young wife moved into her husband's family home, she soon learned the hierarchy of the women in that household, which would be headed by the wife of the most senior man.

The societal roles and rules of China, especially of the upper classes, were extremely rigid, especially for women and girls. Every aspect of appearance and behavior was scrutinized.

In this novel, we follow Yunxian through all of her life stages, her marriage and children, her medical studies and eventual practice, her relationships with her mother-in-law, the other women in the household and so much more. The writing is so rich, exploring her physical, emotional and mental states, and we are introduced to the Chinese terminology used for the female body, its functions, and development through the stages of aging. The author includes highly-detailed descriptions of the settings, the furnishings, the foods, clothing, and of the herbs and materials Yunxian uses in her medical analysis and practice. The reader is immersed in all aspects of Yunxian's inner and outer life.

It was fascinating to look through this window into such a sophisticated culture, which was amazingly advanced, elaborately structured, and so far beyond what most of Europe would have known at the time. At the same time, the author creates a deep feeling of sympathy and understanding for Yunxian and the challenges she faces and confronts.

A satisfying and illuminating book – highly recommend!