A Portable Magic

Thankfully, this month featured the last time I’m scheduled to be apart from the family until November, when I’ll go to Skate America. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy having a little space and time to myself every so often, but I really do miss my husband and kiddo when I’m away. Turns out I’m a sap!

In Books…

• Loving: I had expected this to be more about the actual background of Loving v. Virginia, which it was not really trying to be in a direct sense. Instead, Sheryll Cashin reviews the history of inter-racial romantic relationships for about the first 40% of the book, spends about 20% in the middle talking about the Lovings and the situation that brought them to the Supreme Court, and the back 40% speaks to the increasing frequency of close relationships (platonic but deep friendships, love, sex, parenting) between people of different racial backgrounds and how these bonds have the power to shift public opinion towards greater progress towards integration. I found the initial portion of the book to be the most compelling, tracing the way interracial couplings have been socially and legally received since the days of Pocahontas and John Rolfe in Jamestown. At first, social concern was directed at the difference in religious practice between spouses, and even in the early days of slavery as Africans began to be imported into the country, there was still much greater potential for social connection and movement for interracial couples. It was only as fortunes began to depend on slaves as a permanent underclass, as powerful landowners realized that the natural affinity between whites and blacks living in poverty could overwhelm their concentration of wealth, that the rules changed. Cashin spends the most time with anti-miscegenation laws targeted at whites and blacks, which extended further northwards than you would think, but also touches on their history in the West aimed primarily at Asians, the racial background of most of that region’s large imported workforce. We get a relatively quick sketch of the Lovings themselves and virtually nothing about the long legal process of taking their case to the Court. I hadn’t realized that Richard Loving lived less than 10 years after they won their victory, dying in a car accident. The back half of the book is the weakest. While Cashin presents quite a bit of research regarding the positive effects of relationships from simple casual exposure to people of other racial backgrounds to much more devoted relationships like marriage and adoption, in today’s political climate the sunny predictions of a growing ease and tolerance as more and more people form connections with those unlike them ring agonizingly naive. This is quite a short book before endnotes, less than 200 pages, but it’s not the most engaging prose so it took me longer than expected to read. It’s fine if you’re looking for information about the history of interracial marriage, but otherwise very skippable.
• The Witch: Pierrot, Lucie, and their twin daughters Maud and Lise live what appears to be an extremely normal life in a small town in France. He works selling timeshares, she’s a homemaker, and the girls are being raised to appreciate the finer things in life, though both of their parents grew up much less well-off. But lurking under the surface is unhappiness: the marriage is loveless, the girls are turning into snobs…and Lucie is a witch. She’s not a very good one, and unlike her own, more powerful mother, she can see only small glimpses into the past and present, not the future. When Maud and Lise turn 12, though, Lucie initiates them into the world of magic, and watches them grow far beyond her abilities very very quickly. As their power and strength expand, the fragile bonds holding together their parents’ marriage start to crumble. A customer who has left his wife and family gives Pierrot the idea to do the same for himself, and soon he’s gone and has taken a large sum of money Lucie was given by her father. This becomes a problem when Lucie’s father needs it back, but she decides to try to use it as leverage to achieve her dream of reuniting her father and her mother as a couple. This does not work out the way she had intended. It’s hard to describe the plot of this book, because there really isn’t a lot of plot. Nor are there really characters. There are themes, and prose styling, and vibes. Ndiaye creates a world I was left with a lot of questions about. Besides the very obvious allegory of witchcraft with menstruation/puberty (one is initiated at about age 12, women shed blood when using magic, men seem to find it vaguely gross and refuse to speak of it, it gives the power of transformation and escape), it was unclear to me how literally I was meant to take witchcraft in this world. Are Lucie and her families the only witches, or are there others out there? None are even mentioned. When Lucie’s father is physically changed after his coerced re-connection with her mother, is that meant to be believed a literal, permanent change? Or is his new form meant to comment on his previous behavior? I don’t think I’m meant to ask these questions, I don’t think the book is meant to be read literally, but I am a very literal reader. This made for a bit of a mismatch between me and the novel…or rather, novella, as it’s quite short. The prose, in translation from the original French, is beautiful and insightful about the human condition, but that was the high point for me. I just don’t tend to care for allegorical stories, so if you’re like me on that front, I can’t recommend this.
• Mexican Gothic: Noemí Taboada, like Emma Woodhouse, is handsome, clever, and rich. But this isn’t an Austen-esque story, it’s a Brontë-esque one…albeit in 1950s Mexico City rather than windswept English moors. Noemí’s cousin Catalina, who recently married a white guy and moved to his family’s home in a dying mining town in the mountains, has sent a worrying letter to her father. Concerned that Catalina is ailing and may need psychiatric help, Noemí is sent to investigate. Despite her high spirits, she struggles to make much headway when she arrives at High Place, where the Doyle family lives together in genteel, isolated decay. There are precious few operational electric lights, and there’s mold on the walls and in the books in the library. Catalina’s husband Virgil is handsome and talks smoothly, but the whole household revolves around the very aged and openly eugenicist Doyle patriarch, Howard, and his comfort. Which requires quiet at all times, there isn’t even really conversation over dinner, much less merriment or music. Noemí is told that the family’s (white) doctor has diagnosed Catalina with tuberculosis, and though she’s certainly unwell the symptoms don’t quite seem to fit. Noemí struggles to secure a second opinion from a local doctor, but she’s barely able to see her cousin as is, constantly shoo-ed away so that the other girl can “rest”. The only person who is regularly kind to her is Virgil’s shy, mousy cousin Francis, who encourages her repeatedly to leave. She won’t heed his warning until, after she starts to be plagued by vivid, frightening dreams and finds herself sleepwalking around the house, it’s too late, and she discovers that the rot in the Doyle family runs much, much deeper than she ever imagined. This novel doesn’t fit neatly into a single genre, with elements of horror, suspense, and, of course, the gothic. There’s a lot of evocative imagery here: a cemetery whose paths are cloaked in swirls of mist, sharp ravines, moldering books, beautiful silver implements left to tarnish. And that’s not including the supernatural elements, which are key to the story, so if you’re looking for a book planted solidly in reality, this may not be for you. The lushness of the scene-setting is a particularly strong element here, High Place is as vividly etched as Manderley or Thornfield Hall. I wish the characters had been as strongly painted. Noemí is an engaging enough heroine, spunky and quick-witted, but it’s hard to understand her actions. She protests very little her restricted time with Catalina, and ignores the increasingly unsettling atmosphere around her until well past when common sense would have demanded her exit from the premises. Characters acting in ways that the plot demands rather than what their development would otherwise suggest is nothing new, but the plot, and more specifically its pacing, is also an issue. It drags in the first half and feels overstuffed in the second, though this is also true of many other gothic novels. The thematic elements dealing with colonialism are painted with a very broad brush. All of that sounds quite critical, but this is one of those cases where I did like the book and couldn’t help but think about ways it could have been better. Despite the pacing issues, it’s an engaging read, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s prose is sharp and witty. This is a good book that could have been great, but it’s still a good book and I’d recommend it!
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Arnold Spirit, Jr, called just “Junior” on the Spokane Indian reservation where he grows up, is already an outsider. Born with hydrocephalus, the surgery he had to fix it caused damage that gave him a lisp and a stutter, but his brain otherwise works more than fine…outside of the usual mishaps typical to the brains of teenage boys. He’s small and skinny and terrible at fighting, but that’s okay because his best (and only) friend is Rowdy, who will happily beat up anyone he can for virtually any reason. At the beginning of high school, Junior is genuinely excited to learn new things, but when the names in his algebra textbook reveals that it was once his own mother’s book, that it’s been that long since the reservation school was able to afford new books, he snaps. One of his teachers recommends he attend the local public high school outside the reservation, in a very white town called Reardan…over 20 miles away. Despite the strong social pressure to be like the other members of the tribe and stay on the rez, Junior wants to go, and his parents support him. Despite the difficulty (if his parents lack the money for gas or to fix the car, he either needs to hitchhike or walk), he goes, and finds himself in a whole new world. He’s the only Indian kid and finds himself the target of racial bullying, but he also finds unexpected friendships. He even manages to wind up the sort-of boyfriend of one of the popular girls. A talented basketball player, he makes the varsity team, setting up two of the book’s central scenes: Reardan’s two games, home and away, against the reservation high school, at which the simmering tensions around Junior’s decision to transfer become openly hostile. That hostility extends to his relationship with Rowdy, who has all but disowned him. As a tragedy in Junior’s family unfolds, his relationship to his community continues to evolve as he tries to understand what his future might hold. I’m not going to get into the allegations against Sherman Alexie here except to say that I bought this book well before those came to light. I have complicated and evolving feelings about consuming work made by people who I know to have done things I find reprehensible. That aside, I understand the fuss about this book now that I’ve read it. I’ve had a hard time connecting with young adult books recently, which makes sense because I am fully 40 and the themes these sort of books often focus on are less relevant to my life than they once were. But this book’s energy practically pushes right off the page, with Ellen Forney’s lively, funny illustrations (Junior is a budding cartoonist, the drawings are incorporated into the text) and Alexie’s semi-autobiographical voice of experience, wit, and verve combining to create a compelling, engaging quick read. There’s a lot of dark, sad stuff here: a beloved sick dog is put down at home for lack of money to take him to the vet very early on, there are multiple human deaths, a teenager is bullied and roughed up by men in their 30s, the ruinous effects of alcohol play out in several contexts, but this isn’t a book that wallows in misery. There’s an irreverence to it, a refusal to drown in sorrow. And there are bright lights. Junior’s parents, for all their flaws (his father is an alcoholic), are very supportive of their son to the extent they can be. His decision to take action to leave the reservation inspires someone else to take similar action. There is humor, there is devastation, there’s everything in between. There are issues, of course. Characters and plot elements are not uniformly well-developed. But all around, it’s a vibrant, interesting book that will speak especially, I think, to young teen boys who don’t quite know who they are quite yet. I’d definitely recommend it.
• The Woman Warrior: Maxine Hong (later Kingston) is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, growing up in California. Her parents, particularly her mother, raise her with stories, the telling of which they refer to as talking story. Some stories are folklore (many prominently feature ghosts, a category that includes essentially every white person), some are based in real history but have taken on mythic proportions (like the story of Fa Mu Lan), some are essentially real with some fantastical elements (like her mother’s story of living in a dorm with other female students studying to be doctors). Talking story is different than lying, different than delusions. It’s the invocation of a ancient tradition of oral tale-telling. For Maxine, growing up is a struggle to balance the American culture that surrounds her with the sense of filial responsibility that her upbringing has inculcated in her. This is the sort of book that I found myself wishing I’d read in college, because I felt like there was much more going on in terms of language, culture, and writing style than I was really able to fully comprehend. It has aspects of memoir, but does not comport to the usual structure of the form. There’s no attempt to tell stories chronologically or even in a way that has superficially obvious connections. It is often not obvious at the beginning of a story how true it is, if it’s even “true” in a literal sense at all (a large portion of the first section of the book is an imagined version of what might have happened to an aunt that died in China). This made it a difficult book for me personally to enjoy. I was constantly trying to figure out when/where I was, never mind if what I was reading was meant to be taken as something resembling reality or not. It was interesting in that it was unlike anything else I’d ever read before, but it wasn’t really an enjoyable reading experience so I can’t really recommend it either.
• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter: Olga Reyes is a dutiful daughter in her Mexican-American immigrant family. She’s helpful and obedient. She doesn’t challenge her parents, who are undocumented. She doesn’t push for a life bigger than the ones her parents want for her inside the relatively small Mexican community in Chicago, even in her early 20s. But Olga Reyes dies, hit by a car as she crossed the road, leaving behind her devastated parents and a little sister, Julia. Julia is nothing like Olga. Julia is prickly, defiant, determined to get out of not only her neighborhood but her city. Smart and ambitious, she dreams of becoming a writer in New York. This forms the throughline of the novel’s tension, as Julia tries to figure out how to escape and her parents, devastated by the loss of their other child, struggle to keep her contained. Just a few months away from her 16th birthday as the book begins, Julia is trying to figure herself out the way that all teenagers do, and when she discovers that Olga might not have been exactly who she seemed to be on the surface, figure out who her sister was too. This is very much a young adult book, and I mean that in a less-than-complimentary way. It’s all surface level, everything is underdeveloped and underexplored. Which is unfortunate, because this could have been much richer. Julia’s anger is certainly explicable, but it’s her most defining trait and reading along with the perspective of someone who’s angry all the time is just tiresome. I wanted more about her relationship with Olga than just resentment, there’s no complexity to what could have been a nuanced relationship. Her dynamics with her overbearing mother and withdrawn father feel rooted in stereotype. There’s some potentially interesting material when her best friend Lorena starts hanging out with another classmate, but even that doesn’t really go anywhere. The plot elements seem to happen because they’re what the author wants to put in place, not because they’re rooted in either well-defined character motivations or necessarily real-world sense. Of course in a YA book the cute, well-off white guy Julia meets cute in a bookstore is genuinely interested in her as well, but the mother we’ve just been repeatedly told is incredibly strict constantly buys her daughter’s excuses to leave the house and she’s able to spend hours talking to a strange boy on the phone when she’s at home. There are many other plausibility-straining developments. In different hands, this could have been something poignant, there are moments that should have been able to rendered with tenderness and sensitivity that might have buoyed some of the weaker stuff. But as is, I did not enjoy anything about reading it and can’t recommend it.
• Everything Everything: Madeline might be an adult at 18, but her life is tightly constrained. She goes to school online, the only people she sees in person regularly are her mother and Carla, her nurse, and she never ever goes outside. That’s because Madeline has severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), probably best known as “bubble boy disease”. Without a functional immune system, a basic cold could rampage through her body and kill her. She’s made a sort of peace with her existence: she reads and watches movies, she plays word games with her mother, she dreams of being an architect. But things change when a new family moves in next door, and the teenage son, Olly, is very cute. She’s curious about him, he’s curious about the glimpses he catches of her through the window, they manage to exchange contact information by holding up signs. And soon they’re talking on instant messenger late into the night almost every night. This turns into Carla sneaking Olly in (only after he goes through the disinfection procedure required to be in her company) while Maddy’s doctor mother is at work to visit. Which turns into feelings, which turns into stolen kisses. Maddy can no longer be content with her little pristine world, takes big risks, and learns devastating things about herself and her life. Reading more YA than usual this month has made me think about different kinds of YA. There are some that are written with a teenage audience in mind but are broadly appealing and well-constructed enough to engage adults. There are some that are written in ways that capitalize on teenagers generally being less sophisticated readers than adults and feel like they cut corners around character development, prose styling, and plot believability. And then there’s a lot of stuff in between. I’d place this book in the in-between. It was easy to get caught up in, the way Nicola Yoon structures it (it’s written in short chapters, incorporating IM chats, book blog posts from Maddy, notes, etc) makes it very quick and entertaining to read. The plot developments, even the ending twist, are not difficult to see coming and there are definitely elements that do not withstand even mild scrutiny. Whether or not one will enjoy reading it depends on how bought in one becomes in the relationship between Maddy and Olly. It’s all about capturing the heady intensity of teenage first love, with the melodramatic stakes made even higher by Maddy’s condition. I wasn’t all in, but found the overall reading experience appealing enough that I was willing to let the book sweep most of my quibbles to the side while I was reading it. This is not Serious Stuff (despite the subject matter), it’s a teenage romantic drama, and if you go into it expecting no more than that, it’s satisfactory. If you want something with real depth and heft, though, this will almost certainly disappoint.
• The Library of Flowers: For centuries, the women of the Hua family have been perfumers. The firstborn daughter in each family has a special gift, the ability to infuse their perfume with a power, like improving the mood of the people who smell it or creating calm. The wealthiest families of China are willing to pay a very high price for these scents. But for every fifth first daughter, the power is the same: the perfume will bring the wearer their true love. That is, every fifth daughter until Luling “Lucy” Hua. When she was 20, her first attempt at making her magical perfume did not result in a happy customer walking down the aisle, and that crushing disappointment (combined with her longtime-best-friend-turned-love-interest Rafe not responding positively when she makes a move on him) sends her fleeing across Canada from her native Vancouver, as the family has relocated there. At 32, she’s wound up in Toronto, where she rents half a store from a vintage shop owner called Ana. She still makes perfumes, but thousands of miles away she doesn’t have to face her mother’s pressure to figure how what went wrong and fix it. They can just be regular perfume. But of course, family ties are never cut that neatly. The death of her grandmother, and her inheritance of the logbook of Hua perfumers, sends her back into her family’s orbit…and at the same time, the long-estranged Rafe pops up much closer than she ever would have anticipated. It’s now or never for Lucy to decide who she wants to be. I’m not gonna lie, I thought this was going to be super cheesy and romance-forward. I do enjoy some fluff every now and again, but this surprised me in being much more a story about a woman coming into her own than a romance. That angle is there, of course, but it’s not the focus of the narrative. It’s much more about the complicated dance between mothers and daughters, and the way that children and parents alike can get so locked into their narratives about each other that it’s hard to see outside them. It’s also about male resentment of successful women, even when they benefit from that success. There are some excerpts from the life stories of other Hua women over time that echo these same themes. But at its heart, it’s about Lucy deciding whether to keep running away from her problems or face them head on. Though she’s in her early 30s, she’s been unsettled enough that she’s never had to do that work, and she doesn’t do it perfectly. She spends a lot of time creating narratives about other people in her head and interpreting them through that lens. Which makes her occasionally frustrating (and the book winds up feeling pretty repetitive at points), because we see her do it again and again, but I appreciated that it felt like a real person trying to learn and grow instead of something easy and saccharine. I wish there had either been more historical perspectives or they had been omitted entirely, it was infrequent enough that it took me out of the story when it did happen. There are a couple other plot threads that felt like they could have been trimmed out without losing much. But overall I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this book! If you’re looking for something that centers a romance, this might not be what you quite wanted. But if you’re interested in a story about a person figuring out how to be her better self, regressions and all, this is a very solid read and I’d recommend it!

In Life…

• Quick trip to Michigan: One of my longest-time friends got married in the middle of the month, and even before our current geopolitical disaster it was expensive to fly the whole family out, so I went alone for a quick trip to the mitten to be a bridesmaid! It was great to be back in my natural habitat and spend the time with the bride and my other friends who were there, and it was even greater to get home to my little family!