June's starting point is Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. The subtitle is "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference."
That made me think of some of my favorite "little" books, including Louisa May Alcott's classic, Little Women. A story of four sisters, and yes, fiercely independent Jo was my favorite, too.
The sisters in Little Women manage to maintain the bonds of sisterly affection (as I imagine they would put it). Not so the sisters in Ian McEwan's Atonement. This one has it all: misunderstandings, class differences, betrayal, guilt, war, and a love-it-or-hate-it ending. It was made into a film (with a fabulous cast) in 2007.
One of the stars of that film, Saoirse Ronan, was also in the film adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel, Brooklyn, a story about the personal growth of a young Irish immigrant to New York.
A very different New York experience can be found in the non-fiction Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman. It is the story of a 104 year old reclusive heiress, a great fortune, and the mystery of her life.
An American heiress of a rather different type is the subject of Jeffrey Tobin's American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes, and Trial of Patty Hearst. The subtitle says it all; it was a series of strange events during a strange time in American history.
The original Hearst fortune was a product of the American west (so was the Clark fortune). But the vast majority of those who went west hoping to find their own fortune were not so lucky. One of those was the Ingalls family, well-known from Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books. But those books, while based on her story, were fictionalized. For a more thorough picture of Laura's life and work and that of her daughter, Rose, who was more famous than her mother for a time, Caroline Fraser's excellent Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder is the book to read.
From little things to little houses....there is this month's six degrees. Thanks to Books are my Favourite and Best for the six degrees meme. I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's chains!
Title: A Confusion of Languages
Author: Siobahn Fallon
Edition: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 2017
Setting: Jordan
Genre: Contemporary Literature
Blurb: "A searing debut novel ...
about jealousy, the unpredictable path of friendship, and the secrets
kept in marriage, all set within the U.S. expat community of the Middle
East during the rise of the Arab Spring."
Cassie, married to a soldier working at the US Embassy in Jordan has signed on to be a mentor to a new arrival, Margaret. Also married to a soldier working at the Embassy, Margaret is a free-spirited young mother who doesn't doesn't seem to feel that the rules that Cassie tries to teach her, the rules that govern the lives of embassy employees and staff, apply to her.
The novel begins with the husbands out of town and Cassie, Margaret, and her baby involved in a fender-bender on the streets of Amman. Margaret is required to go to the police station to attend to paperwork (and a small bribe, says Cassie), while Cassie returns to Margaret's home to watch the baby. When Margaret doesn't return, Cassie searches Margaret's home and finds her journal, and from there the story unfolds in flashback.
This is a very interesting story about intentions, aspirations, struggles, friendships, marriage, cultural differences and the difficulty of communicating about all of those things. That difficulty is the "confusion of languages" the title alludes to. And there are so many languages! Military jargon, the language of diplomacy and custom, body language, subtext, and literally the different languages spoken by the American and Jordanian characters.
I liked the excellent writing, the very human characters with their questionable decisions, the theme of the difficult of comprehending and communicating with others, and the originality of the story. This would be an excellent book club choice as there is much to debate and discuss in the story.
This month we're starting with Arthur Golden's 1997 bestseller, Memoirs of a Geisha. I read this novel many years ago as part of an "Around the World" book challenge: read a book set in or about a country in each of six continents: Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, South America, Australia/Oceania. The few books set in Antarctica tend to be about polar exploration or natural history, and there aren't a lot to choose from, so the challenge allowed us to either pick one of them or read a second book about a continent we particularly wanted to "explore." For the Asia part of the challenge, I picked Memoirs of a Geisha since I think half the people I knew had read it and recommended it. I enjoyed it, but I can't say that much of it stayed with me. Some of the other books that I read for that challenge have.
For Europe, I read The Siege, by Helen Dunmore. Set in what was then Leningrad in the Soviet Union during the first winter of the city's besiegement by the Germans during World War II, this is a beautifully written story of physical and emotional survival and endurance. It is sometimes harrowing, but the writing flawless, and the theme is lightened by the love and beauty the characters find, even in such circumstances.
Another difficult but rewarding read was my choice for Africa, Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. What an excellent writer she is! Five memorable characters in 1960s Nigeria discover which are the ties that bind - or don't. Ties of family, ethnicity, politics, love, country, class - all of these come into play. This is one of my "desert island" books.
One of the best things about this challenge was discovering writers who were new to me. For Australia/Oceania, I was introduced to a wonderful writer, well-known to Australians, Tim Winton, author of Cloudstreet. This saga is about two very different working-class families who live in a huge, old house called Cloudstreet in Perth and covers 20 years of joy, tragedy, marriage, birth, and death. The writing is both earthy and spiritual (and there's a bit of magical realism involved). Heartwarming and heartbreaking and highly recommended.
My North American stop involved another new-to-me writer, Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies. This is a fictionalized story of the Mirabal sisters, four sisters who opposed the corrupt and murderous dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, in the 1950s. The story is told in flashbacks with alternating points of view so that we come to know each of the sisters as individuals with virtues and flaws, and the reader sees how each came to find herself resisting the Trujillo regime. Anyone who wants to read about strong, female characters will appreciate this novel.
For South America, I chose a non-fiction book, Fordlandia, The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin. This is one of those forgotten history stories, that of a rather bizarre attempt to build Ford's vision of a small American town in the middle of the Amazon. Fordlandia, as the town was called, was supposed to be the headquarters of a rubber plantation (tires for all those model Ts!). If you're thinking that plunking a mid-western industrial plant and town in the jungle and expecting success isn't going to go well, you're right. It turns into a fascinating and at times funny story of man vs. nature. Spoiler alert: nature will always win.
My "reader's choice" and final stop was back in Asia: A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry. Set in India during the government-declared State of Emergency in 1975, it tells of four people in an unnamed city (speculation is that the author had Mumbai in mind): a shrewd widow, a naive student, and two tailors from a small village, all of whom live in the widow's apartment. The novelist has been compared to Dickens, and I think that's right in his scope and in his empathy for so many different characters in all kinds of situations. This one really stayed with me; I can remember scenes from it as though I read it last week. Wonderful.
So there we are: around the world in 7 books! As always, thanks to Books are My Favourite and Best for the Six Degrees meme.
One of the joys of reading is the ability to be an armchair traveler: to go any place, any time, to meet anyone. What are your favorite armchair travel books?
Title: The Girls in the Picture
Author: Melanie Benjamin
Edition: Delacorte Press, 2018
Setting: Hollywood
Genre: Historical Fiction
The blurb for this novel reads: "An intimate portrait of
the close friendship and powerful creative partnership between two of
Hollywood’s earliest female superstars: Frances Marion and Mary
Pickford. An enchanting new novel from the New York Times bestselling
author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator’s Wife."
It doesn't do it justice. It's more than that description, which sounds like a dusty piece of historical non-fiction. Instead, this is a vibrant portrait, not only of two women (rare enough!), but of the beginning of an industry - Hollywood. And by beginning, I mean starting in pre-WWI America, with "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford moving from theatre to being "the Biograph girl" to filming by the seat of the pants in very early Hollywood. And who is Frances Marion, you ask? Friend to Mary Pickford, screenwriter, director, author, and one of the most influential women in Hollywood in the days when women had a lot of influence in Hollywood.
And this power and influence is one of the themes of this novel, as Mary and Frances take advantage of the fact that movies are a new industry, one without rules and customs that would keep them from having power and influence. And how they use it! Both become among the highest paid in their professions, Frances wins two Oscars, Mary is the driving force and one of the owners of United Artists Studio. Beyond their professional lives, the book is also the story of their friendship and an honest depiction of both the power struggles within that friendship and the strong bonds that helped them make their way through life.
Finally, it's the story of an industry alive with new ideas and innovations: "These are the golden years, we assured each other, sometimes solemnly, sometimes with a giddy laugh, before one of us jumped up with an idea or a bit to add to a scene and then we were off and running, Mickey scrambling up a ladder behind the camera to shout out the new setup to the extras, while Mary got down on her kneed and tickled the children in the cast to get them to act more naturally around her, and I raced off to the prop department to retrieve the items required..."
Melanie Benjamin says in her author's note that she hopes people will think of Mary Pickford and Frances Marion as more than just names, but as innovators, artists, and friends. I think she's written a book that will assure that. Highly recommended.
And we're off!
This month we're starting with Naomi Wolff's The Beauty Myth.
You know who was a beauty and mythical? Helen of Troy, who appears in many great works, including Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" If you haven't seen this play, give it a try. It's seriously great - Dr. Faustus, in deciding to sell his soul to the devil is possibly the first anti-hero.
The devil does love to make an appearance in literature, and in modern times, too. Take Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin. Far creepier than Faustus! And set in the Bramford, which we all know is really the marvel of 19th century NYC architecture, The Dakota.
And when speaking of great NYC architecture, Rockefeller Center -home of 30 Rock and Radio City Music Hall - will definitely be on that list. To learn more about the politics and personalities behind its construction, read Pulitzer Prize finalist, Great Fortune, by Daniel Okrent.
There are all kinds of theaters in NYC, from Radio City Music Hall to the low-rent, Second Avenue, Bowery location of the movie theater box office staffed by Saint Mazie - the "Queen of the Bowery" who sells tickets and takes care of the homeless during the Great Depression. A wonderful novel by Jami Attenberg that is both funny and touching.
In The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown, on the other hand, the Great Depression is raw and real. This is the story of young men who have already lived through the hardest of hard times, striving for something better. A college education at the University of Washington, a gold medal at the 1936 Olympics, personal redemption, learning to trust.
Set in Seattle 70 years later and a few miles away from where the boys practiced rowing, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple is many miles away in tone! It is a spot-on satire of life in Seattle, complete with tech nerds, virtual personal assistants (or are they?), competitive helicopter parents, unrelenting political correctness, coffee, and blackberries (Puget Sounders will laugh knowingly about the blackberries).
So there we go - from serious to humorous in six steps! Happy Reading!
Six Degrees of Separation is courtesy of Books are My Favourite and Best
June's starting point is Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. The subtitle is "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference." 
That made me think of some of my favorite "little" books, including Louisa May Alcott's classic, Little Women. A story of four sisters, and yes, fiercely independent Jo was my favorite, too. 
An American heiress of a rather different type is the subject of Jeffrey Tobin's American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes, and Trial of Patty Hearst. The subtitle says it all; it was a series of strange events during a strange time in American history. 
