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Read: September 2021

Breathe

by Joyce Carol Oates

Reading Breathe by Joyce Carol Oates was a book I knew I needed to read once Jan was diagnosed. Although the book might trigger negative memories, I finally read Breathe. It was what I needed to read at this point in my journey.

Ms. Oates wrote the book in 2019 after her husband, Charlie Gross, died. The novel is a story of love, loss, and loneliness, topics that I write about on this blog. I needed to read the book both for my mental health and for the readers of Sharing Jan’s Love.

The protagonist, Michaela, loses her husband while they are on a sabbatical in New Mexico. Her husband, Gerard, writes a book and teaches a class on memories. Jan and I never considered relocating before her illness, but this book convinced me that it would have aggravated my grief journey.

One of the parallels I observed while reading the novel is the similarity between Gerard’s reluctance to let family, friends, and co-workers know of his illness. Jan shared that reluctance in the early days, but I convinced her that the only chance of beating cancer was with the help of family and friends.

This dialogue could easily be one that Jan and I had.

Of course you want to summon his family—his (adult) children—but quickly, he says no.

Still waiting.

But – When?

Just not yet.

He is not an alarmist. (You are the alarmist.)

The novel is written in two parts – The Vigil and the Post-Mortem.

The opening paragraphs set the tone.

A Hand is gripping yours. Warm, dry hand gripping your slippery, humid hand.

Whoever it is urging you – Breathe!

Leaning over you begging you – Breathe!

As one mourning the death of the love of his life, I found several phrases in the book helpful in understanding what I have gone through and will continue to confront.

Among them is grief-vise, which I have written about in this stream.

In the grip of the grief vise, all that you will do, all that you even imagine doing, will require many times more effort.. Hardly daring to breathe for the grief-vise will tighten around your chest, squeezing the very air out of your lungs.

In the early stages of grief, the vise was strangling me. Breathing was impossible, and weeping was constant at times.

Michaela struggles with her grief. Seeing her husband every time she sees a man alone, even if they are older or younger than he was. I know I have felt Jan’s presence and still expect her to walk into our apartment.

Her struggles with a grief counselor and overly helpful friends are an experience I have not had but are familiar to those suffering from losing a loved one.

The last chapters are ones in which time becomes confusing and chaotic. At times, I was uncertain about which were real or imagined. The end, like all good novels, was ambiguous.

These are some of the other phrases I have found useful and will include in posts.

If there is no one to love, do we merit existence?
Never come to the end of kissing.
The first principle of life is; Breathe.
Shy in the language of intimacy.
As if a life lived with strangers could compensate for the emptiness in your heart.
No purpose in your life. No compass.

What you love most, that you will lose. The price of your love is your loss.

I recommend this book to all readers, even those struggling with grief.

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Read: March 2022

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Weather: A Novel

by Jenny Offil

Weather: A Novel by Jenny Offil was a book that I was confused and uncertain if I wanted to finish for the first few pages. I am delighted that I did, and I highly recommend this book. Its brief diary-like dispatches about life in our time when we sense that we may all be doomed to a climate catastrophe made this a book I truly enjoyed reading. The subtext of the rise of right-wing strongmen in the USA and abroad adds to the crisis her dispatches describe.

Her Obligatory Note of Hope challenges all of us to engage in solutions instead of accepting doom.

How can we contribute to the common good? There are people all over the world trying to answer these questions. In big ways but also in small ways. In grand leaps but also in fits and starts.

I always thought it was ridiculous to try and fight for social change when I couldn’t even get my own house in order. How could a meat-eating, plane-flying, march-hating person like me ever find a place in the climate justice movement? But then I started to read about all the different ways ordinary people were refusing to give into fatalism and were exploring the possibilities of what they could do, what they might fight for in this half-ruined world of ours.

There were saints among these accidental activists, but also stone-cold hypocrites like me. Slowly, I began to see collective action as the antidote to my dithering and despair.

There’s a way in for everyone. Aren’t you tired of all this fear and dread?

Goodreads provides an overview of the book if you are not yet convinced to read it.

Lizzie Benson is a very relatable woman who slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: a fake shrink. She has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother for years. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with her husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, proposes. She wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers concerned about the decline of western civilization. Sylvia has become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right wingers worried about the decline of western civilization.

As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you’ve seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to address the limits of her own experience. But she still tries to save everyone, using everything she’s learned about empathy and despair, conscience and collusion, floundering the library stacks her years of wa.. And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in—funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.

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Read: November 2022

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On the Rooftop: A Novel

by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

On the Rooftop: A Novel by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, is a stunning novel about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters’ ambitions for their own lives—set against the backdrop of gentrifying 1950s San Francisco. The first few pages moved glacially and then the story unfolded fully and became a page-turner that I highly recommend.

After hearing Ms. Sexton’s interview on Get Lit with All Of It, a monthly on-air, social media, in-person, and live-stream book club hosted by Alison Stewart of WNYC’s All Of It, I picked up the book. The novel had been on my to-read list.

The novel was loosely based on Fiddler on the Roof and it worked exceedingly well. Vivian is the overbearing mother and the daughters who have their own dreams and goals. With urban renewal, AKA Urban Renewal, as the backdrop, the novel was one that I could not put down.

The small section of the song that Esther writes so she can sing for her people, was a song I wish I could hear in its entirety. That Chole choose to sing it for final audition made it even more powerful.

You put words to the music inside my heart You showed me the world could be its own art I’d never felt myself so whole before I’d never known how much I could reach for.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they’ve become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore.

Now Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she’s been praying for. But sometime between the hours of rehearsal on their rooftop and the weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, the girls have become women, women with dreams that their mother cannot imagine.

The neighborhood is changing, too: all around the Fillmore, white men in suits are approaching Black property owners with offers. One sister finds herself called to fight back, one falls into the comfort of an old relationship, and another yearns to make her voice heard. And Vivian, who has always maintained control, will have to confront the parts of her life that threaten to splinter: the community, The Salvations, and even her family.

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: November 2022

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A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is a transporting novel about a man sentenced by the government to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel. In 1922, a Bolshevik tribunal deemed Count Alexander Rostov an unrepentant aristocrat. His house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

During my grief journey, I have on occasion felt as if I was a prisoner in my apartment, so I found this novel to be one that provided me an alternative to understanding what it would have been like to be under house arrest as Count Rostov was.

A Gentleman in Moscow was a page-turner. The plot captures a unique historical time and how Count Rostov makes the best of a bad situation. I highly recommend this novel.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

With his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late 1930s Manhattan to life with a splendid atmosphere and an excellent command of style. As NPR commented, readers and critics were enchanted, “Towles writes with grace and verve about the mores and manners of a society on the cusp of radical change.”

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day. He must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates to the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

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: April 2023

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The New Earth

by Jess Row

The New Earth, by Jess Row, is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure. When I read books about dysfunctional families, I am reminded of how important family is to our health and how blessed I am not to be a member of a family like the one Jess Row has created. I highly recommend this book!

The Wilcoxes saga is a case study of the difficulties of modern relationships. The reunion at the wedding of their daughter Winter unfolds in a manner that keeps the reader engaged until the final words appear on the page. Lies, infidelity, and how these actions compound and create problems for the younger generation is a book well worth reading.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine’s West Bank, where an Israeli Army sniper killed her.

In 2018, Winter Wilcox is getting married, and her only demand is that her mother, father, and brother emerge from their self-imposed isolations and gather once more. After decades of neglecting personal and political wounds, each remaining family member must face their fractured history and decide if they can ever reconcile.

Assembling a vast chorus of voices and ideas from across the globe, Jess Row “explodes the saga from within–blows the roof off, so to speak, to let in politics, race, theory, and the narrative self-awareness that the form had seemed hell-bent on ignoring” (Jonathan Lethem).

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 2022

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Trouble the Saints

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson is one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020. The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in this timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City at the dawn of WWII. Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens.

The book is written in three sections with different protagonists and voices. Phyllis, or Pea as her friends call her, is a black assassin for a white mob boss narrates the first section of the book. Her saint’s hands are the ability to use knives to commit murder. She can also pass as white as Phyllis, but she is a black woman from Harlem as Pea. The section she narrates is difficult at first to follow as she attempts to deal with the consequences of her actions. Can the past ever be the past?

Dev, Indian and Phyllis’s lover, narrates the second section. He is an undercover cop who protects her and helps her free herself from the mob boss. This section is located in the Hudson Valley and highlights the tensions before the war between whites and non-whites.

The third protagonist, Tamara, narrates this section. The war separates Phyllis and Dev. Phyllis is pregnant, and Dev and Tamara’s love interest are serving in the military. This section brings together the threads and reminds us that the past is never the past.

As Goodreads summarizes the book,

But the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most.

Can one woman ever sacrifice enough to save an entire community?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

I recommend this book and encourage all readers to read it to the end.

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Read: March 2024

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Great Expectations: A Novel

by Vinson Cunningham

Today, I began reading “Great Expectations: A Novel” by Vinson Cunningham, a staff writer and theatre critic at The New Yorker. David, the protagonist, had seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his. Still, the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.

Upon hearing the Senator from Illinois speak, David experiences conflicting emotions. He is fascinated by the Senator’s idealistic language yet ponders the balance between maintaining solid beliefs and making the necessary compromises to become America’s first Black president.

The book Great Expectations narrates David’s experience working for eighteen months on a Senator’s presidential campaign. During his journey, David encounters diverse individuals who raise questions about history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood. These inquiries prompt David to introspect his life and identity as a young Black man and father living in America.

Meditating on politics, religion, family, and coming-of-age, Great Expectations is a novel of ideas and emotional resonance, introducing a prominent new writer.

Just for Today, Keep it Simple!

Breathe

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