It’s September 1st and Labour Day Monday, and the new school year is upon us. It’s early evening and I have to be at work tomorrow morning, but I wanted to take this opportunity to write a very, very brief post about the last two books I read. I’m sad that I don’t have more time to talk about them because they were both awesome, but if I don’t do this now, there will be no other time for a while and by then I’ll have forgotten what the books were about!!
The first book I reread was A Sudden Light by Garth Stein. Here’s what I said about it when I read it the first time in February, 2018:
“I just finished the book, A Sudden Light by Garth Stein (you may be familiar with this author’s name associated with his most popular novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain, told from the point of view of a dog). I’m not quite sure why I had A Sudden Light on my shelf, but I picked it out along with a pile of other books I know nothing about. I decided that I needed to weed out some books, so I read the first few pages of each and either kept it or brought it to the Little Free Library that is at the end of my street. This one I stuck with, and finished reading last night. It is told from the point of view of Trevor, an adult looking back on the summer he was fourteen, when his father took him to his Grandpa Samuel’s estate just outside of Seattle, an estate that seemed to be suspended in time, having never moved beyond the night Samuel’s wife, Isobel, passed away, leaving their son Jones and daughter Serena motherless and in the care of Samuel. But sixteen-year-old Jones is sent away to school shortly thereafter, leaving eleven-year-old Serena to care for drunken Samuel, causing her to feel trapped and embittered. Nearly twenty-five years later, she wants to sell the North Estate, a crumbling mansion surrounded by 200 acres of pristine forest, and develop it into 20 lots of 10 acres each for the newly-rich to build their McMansions on, making her rich and allowing her to travel the world. But Jones’ ancestors, in particular his great-grand-uncle Ben, had other ideas: they wanted to return the estate to its natural state and preserve it, a repayment for the rape and pillage of so much land, as well as the exploitation of the men they employed, that made the family rich in the timber industry in the early 1900s. Grandpa Samuel is suffering dementia, and Serena needs him to sign over power of attorney, which is where Jones comes in. Jones and his wife Rachel are experiencing marital problems after their personal bankruptcy, and are in the midst of a trial separation, and all Trevor wants is for them to get back together and be happy again. He believes that money is the solution, but can money truly buy happiness? Through letters and diary entries, Trevor pieces together the intentions of his ancestors, and must struggle to reconcile his desire to stay true to his dead family's wishes and his need to try to bring his living family back together. This sprawling, multigenerational story exploring the consequences of wealth and greed and the search for redemption, with a supernatural twist, is totally not my type of book, but it had me hooked! Stein’s exploration into the motivations of Trevor, Serena, and to some extent Jones, was riveting, and this book reminded me in some ways of The Hunger of the Wolf by Stephen Marche, also about a wealthy, powerful American family with dark secrets, although Marche’s book was more literary, more of a “Lee Valley” book, than Stein’s “Canadian Tire” bestseller. Still, it was an enjoyable read, and while I felt it dragged a bit, I still wanted to find opportunities to read and get to the end to find out how things are resolved. There were also times, particularly in the first half of the book, when it reminded me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, probably because both books involved a father and son on a quest to discover the true meaning of value and integrity. I would definitely recommend this book to just about anyone, as it defies categorization: it’s part historical fiction, part ghost story, part domestic fiction, part psychological fiction, and so much more.”I pretty much agree with everything I said above, and it was exactly the type of book I needed as we’re facing Doug Ford’s Bill 5 here in Ontario. I think I enjoyed it even more this second time around, although I’d forgotten about the ghost story parts.
And the second book I read was also amazing. Sandwich by Catherine Newman tells the story of a single week spent at a cottage in Cape Cod. Rocky and her husband Nick have brought their children, Willa and Jamie, to this cottage every summer for the past two decades. Now the children are adults and living their own lives, Rocky is experiencing the emotional and biological changes associated with menopause, and Rocky’s parents are getting to that age when everything causes her to worry. Divided into days of the week, with flashbacks interspersed throughout, this book focuses on Rocky’s experiences as she deals with her empty nest and her emotionally wrought responses to everything that is happening around her, from her adult children’s life journeys to her husband’s seeming lack of biological changes with aging, while also coming to terms with her own regrets from her past. I wish I had more time to tell you about this amazing book, sandwiched between FIC NEV and FIC NEX on the library shelves (I couldn’t resist!!), because it really, really spoke to me in a way that I could totally understand and empathize with. I look forward to the sequel, Wreck, coming out in late-October. I would highly recommend this to any woman who is approaching mid-life or is in the middle of this tumultuous time. Newman nailed it, managing to pack a whole lot of insight into a very small, compact novel. PS Even the elderly cat, Chicken, got a "speaking" part in the book, which was a delightful addition!! Every time my Riley sits on my lap, I am reminded of Chicken asking if his neck smells like cheese!!
That’s all for tonight. Happy September, everyone! Bring Fall on!!
Bye for now...
Julie
