I started reading "Absolution: A Novel" by Alice McDermott today. The opening line immediately grabbed my attention: "You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean." In most literature about the Vietnam War, American women, particularly wives, have been minor characters. However, in "Absolution," they take center stage.
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by Alice McDermott
I started reading “Absolution: A Novel” by Alice McDermott today. The opening line immediately grabbed my attention: “You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean.” In most literature about the Vietnam War, American women, particularly wives, have been minor characters. However, in “Absolution,” they take center stage.
The book follows the story of two women, Tricia, a shy newlywed, and Charlene, a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three. They both found themselves in Saigon in 1963, forming a wary alliance. They balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter reaches out to Tricia after encountering an aging Vietnam vet. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, carefully considering that pivotal year and Charlene’s altruistic machinations. They discover how their lives as women on the periphery have been shaped and burdened by the same unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.
This virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant and affecting writers, explores themes of folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.
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.
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.
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by Andrea Elliott
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott was a gift from my son Jon. The New York Times selected “Invisible Child” as one of the best books published this year. It is indeed one of the top books on my all-time list.
GoodReads summary provides a good overview,
The riveting, unforgettable story of a girl whose indomitable spirit is tested by homelessness, poverty, and racism in an unequal America—from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott of The New York Times
Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, this story goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. When Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis explodes as the chasm deepens between rich and poor.
In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to “code switch” between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?
By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality. Based on nearly a decade of reporting, this book vividly illuminates some of the most critical issues in contemporary America through the life of one remarkable girl.
Jan and I were involved and knew that child poverty and homelessness needed repair. In addition, Jan lived on Washington Park across from Ft. Greene Park in 1974-75. We knew the neighborhood where much of the book’s story takes place.
Before meeting Jan in 1973, I was both a community/tenant organizer and a youth worker. In the latter role, I made weekly hostel trips for eight to ten young boys from East Williamsburg during 1973. The trips were the first the boys had ever been outside of their neighborhood.
Many of them had imaginations like Dasani. They also had her instinct to fight. One of my first tasks was to check for any weapons.
Decades later, when I would see any of them, now adults, they would ask when we were going on another trip. I wish I had met Jan when I made those trips. She would have helped me improve them and document the impact. If I could re-write history, I would have her join me as the second adult on the hostel trips.
After that summer, it was clear my primary skills were as a community/tenant organizer. Over the next few years, my work focused on creating affordable and supportive housing.
Jan and I did meaningful work that made a difference, yet the need for a permanent solution to the crisis remains. The book highlights the crucial role of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality. As a nation, we cannot undermine those values by breaking up families, impeding resilience, and maintaining racial and economic inequality.
The current debate in Washington over the Build Back Better legislation needs to focus not on how much we spend but on its impact on children and families.
David Brooks, a conservative commentator, has supported these expenditures for what they can do to address this country’s cultural and economic crisis.
These packages say to the struggling parents and the warehouse workers: I see you. Your work has dignity. You are paving your way. You are at the center of our national vision.
This is how you fortify a compelling moral identity, which is what all of us need if we’re going to be able to look in the mirror with self-respect. This is the cultural transformation that good policy can sometimes achieve. Statecraft is soulcraft.
If you can only read one book this year, this is the one to read. Child poverty, homelessness, and inequality impact all of us. Ending child poverty and homelessness will make us a healthier and more inclusive nation. It is time for a compelling moral call to action!
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by V.E. Schwab
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab is a page-turner, and one of the rare books I have read that I wish had not ended. On the last page, I wanted the story of Addie to continue now that she had modified her deal with the dark side to save Henry Strauss. It was not that I wished Addie and Henry to reunite; it was to see how Addie’s life with Luc would continue. I recommend this book without any reservations!
Both Jan and I have always enjoyed books and movies about time travel. One of the first books I read after Jan died was The Time Travelers Wife, and now I am reading another book about time travel. If I could travel back in time, I would love to spend tens of thousands of days with her again.
But time travel is not possible. Or is it? Her spirit returns to me whenever I am paralyzed, encouraging me to dust myself off and keep going. Maybe one day we will travel together!
The Goodreads summary includes an overview.
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore, and he remembers her name.
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.
by Jennifer Croft
I began reading “The Extinction of Irena Rey” by Jennifer Croft today. The novel is about eight translators searching for a world-famous author, Irena Rey, who has gone missing in a primeval Polish forest. The translators have come from eight different countries and share a deep admiration for Irena Rey. Their mission is to translate her masterpiece, “Gray Eminence,” but their task takes an unexpected turn when Irena disappears within days of their arrival.
The translators begin to investigate where Irena may have gone while continuing to work on her book. They explore the ancient wooded refuge, with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens, and study Irena’s exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. However, their search reveals secrets and deceptions that they are unprepared for. As they grow increasingly paranoid in this isolated and obsessive fever dream, the translators are forced to confront their differences, and their rivalries and desires threaten not only their work but also the fate of Irena Rey herself.
This debut novel is a brilliant exploration of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is a thought-provoking narrative blends humor and adventure, taking readers on an unforgettable journey with a small yet diverse cast of characters. These characters, shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation, find themselves in one of Europe’s last great wildernesses, where the fate of their beloved author hangs in the balance.
by Colin Walsh
Today, I started reading “Kala: A Novel” by Colin Walsh, a gripping literary page-turner from a rising Irish talent. Former friends, estranged for twenty years, reckon with the terrifying events of the summer that changed their lives. Three old friends are reunited in the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, for the first time in years.
Helen, Joe, and Mush were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot center. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.
Now it’s fifteen years later:
But human remains are discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their involvement in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance.
Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its secrets, in a story that builds from a smolder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging and the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.
by Alice Hoffman
The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story by Alice Hoffman is a heartfelt short story about family, independence, and finding your place in the world. The overview should be enough to encourage everyone to read the book. I recommend this short story without any reservations. Ms. Hoffman has written a moving story that helped me to grapple with grief and reminded me that love is the highest and most important goal that humans can aspire.
Isabel Gibson has all but perfected the art of forgetting. She’s a New Yorker now, with nothing left to tie her to Brinkley’s Island, Maine. Her parents are gone, the family bookstore is all but bankrupt, and her sister, Sophie, will probably never speak to her again.
But when a mysterious letter arrives in her mailbox, Isabel feels drawn to the past. After years of fighting for her independence, she dreads the thought of going back to the island. What she finds there may forever alter her path—and change everything she thought she knew about her family, home, and herself.
Isabel sums up the power of love in this paragraph,
She was thinking about the way a fish loved a river, and a bird loved the sky, and a mother loved her daughters. She was remembering everything. How love could change a person, how it could cause you the greatest sorrow or shelter you from harm. There were moths hitting against the windowpanes. A night heron called in the marshland as if its heart were breaking.
I have always fantasized about working in or owning a small bookstore.
The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story rekindled that dream and reminded me of the power of love.
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.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’sJan’s Love blog.
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.
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.
