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Read: March 2022

Scarlet Carnation: A Novel

by Laila Ibrahim

Scarlet Carnation: A Novel by Laila Ibrahim is a book I enjoyed reading. Having read this book, I am now a fan of Laila Ibrahim and look forward to reading more of her novels. In addition, I am a fan of historical fiction, and this is one of the best I have read about the second decade of the twentieth century.

May and Naomi are related, but their lives are very relatable to the reader. The promises of equality and transformation of women’s roles resonate even now. Bringing together the myriad issues they confront – racism, shaming for decisions they made, peace, and the interlocking of their families from a plantation, make this a book that I highly recommend.

The only observation was my shock at reading that they were petitioning President Coolidge at the start of WW I. It is a minor issue as the story flows strongly from the first to the last page.

The Goodreads overview highlights the narrative of the book.

In an early twentieth-century America roiling with racial injustice, class divides, and WWI, two women fight for their dreams in a galvanizing novel by the bestselling author of Golden Poppies. 1915. May and Naomi are extended families, their grandmothers’ lives inseparably entwined on a Virginia plantation in the volatile time leading up to the Civil War. For both women, the twentieth century promises social transformation and equal opportunity.

May, a young white woman, is on the brink of achieving the independent life she’s dreamed of since childhood. Naomi, a nurse, mother, and leader of the NAACP, has fulfilled her own dearest desire: buying a home for her family. But they both are about to learn that dreams can be destroyed in an instant. May’s future is upended, and she is forced to rely once again on her mother. Meanwhile, the white-majority neighborhood into which Naomi has moved is organizing against her while her sons are away fighting for their country.

In the tumult of a changing nation, these two women—whose grandmothers survived the Civil War—support each other’s quest for liberation and dignity. Both find the strength to confront injustice and the faith to thrive on their chosen paths.

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Read: December 2021

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How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith. This book was a gift from my son Jon. The New York Times selected How the Word is Passed as one of the best books published this year. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.

How the Word is Passed is one of the best books I have read in 2021. I had read an excerpt in The Atlantic on the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. Like most of us, I had placed the book on my to-read list, where it remained lost in the cobwebs. Fortunately, my son Jon purchased the book for me.

Secondly, the book rekindled my long-lost dream of being an American Studies professor. As soon as Jan and I met, I dropped plans to leave Brooklyn and start graduate school in the fall of 1974. I made that decision primarily because of how much I loved Jan. But it was also partly that I did not have a clear vision of what my life would be like as a professor. The book provided clear examples of people like Yvonne Holden at The Whitney Plantation redefining history to be more accurate and inclusive. I probably could not have done as well as she did, but I can now see that it might have resulted in a career for me that could have been impactful.

Goodreads provides this overview for those who still need to be convinced to read this book.

It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a former plantation named for the country from which most of its enslaved people arrived and which has since become one of the most gruesome maximum-security prisons in the world. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in understanding our country.

How the Word is Passed is one of the best books I have read this year and many prior ones. I encourage you to read it and share your comments.

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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: August 2022

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At the Villa Rose

by Major Alfred Edward Woodley Mason

At the Villa Rose by Major Alfred Edward Woodley Mason, initially published in 1910, is a mystery novel in which Major Mason introduced his French detective, Inspector Hanaud, who was an early template for Agatha Christie’s famous Hercule Poirot. Missing jewels, high adventure some one hundred and fifty kilometers from Geneva, a casino, and blind love are all factors in a complex case for Hanaud, which ultimately involves a gang of frightened murderers. If you enjoy deductive mysteries like me, I highly recommend At the Villa Rose.

The Goodreads summary,

In Aix les Bains during the early 20th century, Celia Harland, a beautiful (of course) young English girl down on her luck, is befriended by a wealthy widow, Madame Dauvray, an addict of “spiritualism,” and stages seances for her benefactrix, while knowing full well that the supposed manifestations from the spirit world are entirely bogus. This set-up supplies the opportunity for a criminal gang master-minded by Madame Dauvray’s maid, with their eyes on the widow’s jewelry collection, to engineer an introduction for one of their numbers, Adele Tacé (“Rossignol”), whose taunts of disbelief goad the old lady into allowing a seance to be held which, unsuspected by either Celia or her patron, will be the cover for murder and robbery.

The crux of the plot is that as a medium, Celia will be made their innocent victim, on whom suspicion is to be planted.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Read: July 2024

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We the Animals

by Justin Torres

Today, I embarked on the literary journey of We the Animals by Justin Torres. This novel, listed among the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the Century, is a groundbreaking work of art. The author of Blackouts immerses us in the tumultuous heart of a family, the intense bonds of three brothers, and the mythic impact of this fierce love on the individuals we are destined to become.

The narrative unfolds as three brothers navigate their way through childhood, a journey filled with emotional highs and lows, from playful acts like smashing tomatoes on each other to finding solace in each other’s company during their parents’ conflicts and even tiptoeing around the house as their mother rests after her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma, hailing from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—share a profound and challenging love, shaping and reshaping the family numerous times. Life in this family is intense and all-consuming, filled with disorder, heartache, and the ecstasy of belonging to each other.

From the intense familial unity, a child feels to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel doesn’t just tell a coming-of-age story; it reinvents it in a sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful way. It delves into themes such as love, the meaning of family, and heartache, adding another layer of depth and complexity to the story.

Read: January 2023

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Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion

by Bushra Rehman

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman is a book I encouraged friends to read before I finished reading it. I highly recommend this page-turner novel, which is punctuated by both joy and loss, full of ’80s music and beloved books. Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion is a must-read coming-of-age story of Razia Mirza, a girl struggling to reconcile her heritage and faith with her desire to be true to herself.

Razia Mirza, the protagonist, leaps off the page or screen. Bushra Rehman describes Corona with prose that is vibrant and clear-eyed. When I lived in Brooklyn, I had, on a few occasions, meetings in Corona a decade before the novel’s setting. Reading the book made me remember that time and place and understand intuitively the world that Razia was struggling to reconcile.

Razia’s choice between her heart and her family is one I will not reveal. However, the novel defines the conflicts between the Pakistani-American community and the love that Razia and Anglea experience in clear prose, and the reader can easily accept various resolutions.

The choice that Rasia makes left me desiring to know what happens next. I have added Bushra Rehman to my favorite authors and plan to read more of her novels.

I had this novel on my list for the last month but could not get to it until now. I wish I had read it sooner. It is the eighth book I have read in 2023.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. Razia’s heart is broken when a family rift drives the girls apart. She finds solace in Taslima, a new girl in her close-knit Pakistani-American community. They embark on a series of small rebellions: listening to scandalous music, wearing miniskirts, and cutting school to explore the city.

When Razia is accepted to Stuyvesant, a prestigious high school in Manhattan, the gulf between the person she is and the daughter her parents want her to be, widens. At Stuyvesant, Razia meets Angela and is attracted to her in a way that blossoms into a new understanding. When an Aunty discovers their relationship in the community, Razia must choose between her family and her future.

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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