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Read: January 2022

Man’s Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

I remember reading portions of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl at different times, but I never finished the book. However, recently, eight and a half months after the passing of Jan, the book came up for discussion in one of my groups. Frankl’s theory of logotherapy, which derives from the Greek word for “meaning,” centers around the idea that the primary human drive is not pleasure, as Freud believed, but rather the search for what gives life meaning. I now have a framework for my life without Jan.

For those like me who are widows, Frankl understands suffering,

In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Jan and I lived meaningful lives. My challenge now is to continue to find meaning in my life without Jan.

As Frankl writes,

Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.

The love Jan and I shared was one of my primary sources of meaning. In addition, I stopped working full-time at the end of 2018 and struggled to replace the purpose I had gained from repairing the world. After Jan died, I suffered the “provisional existence of an unknown limit.” Frankl experienced that when he was in the concentration camps.

I have replaced the loss of meaning and purpose with a series of activities:

Planning to Celebrate Jan Day on her birthday this year;
Writing my random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered;
Reading more than ever, including my Goodreads 2022 Reading Challange; and
Walking more than I probably should.

I am also beginning to serve on the board of a few non-profits. It is time to transition from hands-on work to providing leadership differently.

Will this be enough to give my life meaning?

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

I must continue focusing on my search for meaning, as life will change over time.

My grief journey has taught me that love never dies,

For the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

My path forward is to keep Jan’s love alive and continue to share it with others.

I recommend this book without reservation.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Read: January 2024

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Mercury: A Novel

by Amy Jo Burns

Today, I started reading Mercury: A Novel about a roofing family. The family’s bond of loyalty is tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town. The book is written by Amy Jo Burns, the author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner, which I read and enjoyed in 2022. I highly recommend it.

The story is set in 1990, and it follows the journey of a seventeen-year-old girl named Marley West, who arrives in the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. She is a loner who is looking for a place to belong. The first thing she sees when she gets to town is three men standing on a rooftop, and they soon become her whole world.

Marley becomes a young wife to one of the Joseph brothers, The One Who Got Away to another, and an adopted mother to all of them. Marley guides these unruly men as their mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface, and suddenly, the family’s survival hangs in the balance.

With Marley as their guide, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known or build something more substantial in its place.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding gifts made this month, I will match dollar for dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Read: September 2021

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The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett was a true page-turner, and I did not want to stop reading it even when I got to the last page. I am not a fan of sequels, but if I was ever going to change my mind, this is the book I would want to read a sequel.

Ms. Bennett focuses on two twins who run away from home at age 16. They have grown up in Mallard, a fictional town in Louisiana. “In Mallard, nobody married dark,” Bennett writes starkly. Over time, its prejudices deepened as its population became lighter and lighter, “like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream.” The twins, with their “creamy skin, hazel eyes, wavy hair,” would have delighted the town’s founder. One of the women chooses to pass as white while the other does not.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

The question of why people choose to live differently than their origins is one that I often ponder. Growing up in a small town and living in a metropolis raises questions for me as to what my life is now and what was once.

I strongly recommend this book.

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Read: December 2022

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Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories

by Meng Jin

Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories by Meng Jin was written during the turbulent years of the Trump administration and the first year of the pandemic, these stories explore intimacy and isolation, coming of age, and coming to terms with the repercussions of past mistakes, fraying relationships, and surprising moments of connection. I highly recommend Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories!

Each story speaks so clearly to the loneliness epidemic that confronts our world. I would read one short story and promise to stop and wait until another day to read the next one. Instead

One phrase that will always remain with me is: “The hallucinatory quality of grief.” As a widow, the phrase struck a chord that will forever resonate in my soul.

This is the seventy-third book I have read this year.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Meng Jin’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic (Omar El-Akkad, BookPage), “powerful” (Washington Post), and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Jin turns her considerable talents into short fiction in ten thematically linked stories.

Moving between San Francisco and China, and from unsparing realism to genre-bending delight, Self-Portrait with Ghost considers what it means to live in an age of heightened self-consciousness, seemingly unlimited access to knowledge, and little actual power.

Page-turning, thought-provoking, and wholly unique, Self-Portrait with Ghost further establishes Meng Jin as a writer who “reminds us that possible explanations in our universe are as varied as the beings who populate it” (Paris Review).

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Read: January 2023

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Can You Feel This?

by Julie Orringer

Today I read Can You Feel This? by Julie Orringer. This short story rekindled so many memories. In the chaos of a maternity ward, memories of tragedy and grief come flooding back for an anxious mother-to-be as she struggles to balance her child’s needs with her healing. Although Jan and I did not have the shadows of tragedy and grief when our sons were born, this short story was more than a page-turner. Can You Feel This? reminded me of the power of the love Jan and I shared.

When our second son was born, we almost had him at home or in the as we waited too long. In Can, You Feel This? , that was not the case. Both children had two loving parents but also grandparents.

When Jan had the first of several hospitalizations, she was in the hospital where her mother died. Jan told me her feelings, and I comforted her, but I could not fully comprehend her angst.

Can You Feel This? is part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each Inheritance piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. This is the second one in the series I have read. The previous one was Everything That my Mother Taught Me.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Rushed into an emergency cesarean section, a woman finds herself in the same hospital where her suicidal mother died. She’s buried the trauma of her mother’s last hours—and also the dread that she might be just as vulnerable to breaking. As the new mother relives one crisis in the midst of another, prize-winning author Julie Orringer turns the joyous event of birth into a harrowing, poignant short story.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

Read: November 2024

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Creation Lake: A Novel

by Rachel Kushner

Today, I started reading Creation Lake: A Novel by Rachel Kushner, a two-time finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award. This novel follows a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France. It is a gripping page-turner filled with dark humor. Creation Lake is Kushner‘s finest achievement—a work of high art, comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.

The story revolves around a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman who employs ruthless tactics and possesses striking beauty. She is sent to carry out covert operations in France. The narrator introduces herself as “Sadie Smith” when she arrives at a rural commune of French subversives, whom she is secretly monitoring, and to her lover, Lucien, a young and well-to-do Parisian whom she meets by so-called “cold bump”—making him believe their encounter was accidental. Like everyone else she targets, Lucien is helpful to her and ultimately manipulated by her. Sadie operates with strategy and deception, following instructions from her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government. Initially, these contacts want her to provoke reactions. As the story progresses, their demands become more complex.

In this region filled with ancient farms and prehistoric caves, Sadie becomes captivated by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe. Bruno mentors young activists who believe that the path to emancipation lies not in revolt but in a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie thinks she is the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno enchants her with his ingenious counter-histories, poignant laments, and tragic narrative.

In brief, striking sections, Rachel Kushner‘s interpretation of “noir” is taut and dazzling.

Read: January 2022

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A Separation: A Novel

by Katie Kitamura

A Separation by Katie Kitamura is about a young woman who has agreed with her faithless husband: it’s time for them to separate. All I could think about from the opening page until I finished the book was how Jan and I, despite one messy period, never dealt with infidelity or separation. Our love was pure as the driven snow. The subject matter would typically not have interested me enough to read the book. However, it is written in a hypnotic manner that mesmerizes the reader into turning the next page.

I highly recommend this book.

Goodreads provides an overview.

As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to look for him, still keeping their split to herself. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love. In her heart, she’s not even sure if she wants to find him. For the moment, it’s a private matter, a secret between the two of them.

Adrift in the wild landscape, she traces the disintegration of their relationship and discovers she understands less than she thought about the man she used to love.

A story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation is about the gulf that divides us from the lives of others and the narratives we create for ourselves. As the narrator reflects upon her love for a man who may never have been what he appeared, Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on the brink of catastrophe. A Separation is a riveting stylistic masterpiece of absence and presence that will leave the reader astonished and transfixed.

In closing, I highly recommend this book.

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