Such a Fun Age is a bighearted story about race and privilege, set around a young Black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. In a time when race and privilege are issues that need to be addressed, I recommend this book with our reservation.
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by Kiley Reid
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. Although many reviewers highly rated this book, I was unsure it was the book for me. However, once I started reading, I could not stop. It is “a striking and surprising debut novel from a compelling new voice. Such a Fun Age is a big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young Black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young Black woman out late with a White child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.
But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At 25, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves and each other.
With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Ageexplores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family”, and the complicated reality of being a grown-up. It is a searing debut for our times.
When race and privilege are paramount issues, this book is a first step to understanding the intersectionality of the issues and addressing them. I recommend this book with our reservation.
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by Elena Ferrante
I’ve just started reading The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante after finishing My Brilliant Friend. This book is among the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. I chose to read it after watching An Undoing, a documentary about healing from an abusive 20-year marriage using unstitching wedding garments, one stitch at a time.
The film was part of the first night of the International Women’s Film Festival in Cranford. Although, except for one brief moment, I have never been in the same situation as the woman in the short video or Olga, the protagonist in the novel, I choose this as my next book to read. Of course, Ferrante’s writing is known for rich character development and powerful prose.
The Days of Abandonment follows the gripping story of an Italian woman named Olga, whose husband suddenly leaves after fifteen years of marriage. With two young children to care for, Olga finds it increasingly difficult to maintain her previous lifestyle of keeping a spotless house, cooking creative meals, and controlling her temper. After encountering her husband with his much younger lover in public, she even resorts to physically assaulting him.
In a “raging, torrential voice,” according to The New York Times, Olga describes her journey from denial to devastating emptiness. Trapped within the four walls of their high-rise apartment, she confronts her ghosts, the potential loss of her identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal.
by Authors Guild
I started reading Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel today. It is set in a Lower East Side tenement during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Fourteen Days is a unique collaborative novel from the Authors Guild with a twist. A different, prominent literary voice has secretly written each character in this diverse cast of New York neighbors. These voices range from Margaret Atwood and Celeste Ng to Tommy Orange and John Grisham.
The novel’s story begins one week into the COVID-19 shutdown, where tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have gathered on the rooftop to tell stories. As the nights pass, more and more neighbors join in, bringing chairs, milk crates, and overturned pails. Gradually, the tenants, some of whom have barely spoken to each other, become neighbors.
In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editors Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to those trapped when the pandemic hit. Fourteen Days is a dazzling, heartwarming, and ultimately surprising narrative that reveals how some communities managed to become stronger despite the loss and suffering brought about by the pandemic.
Includes writing from: Charlie Jane Anders, Margaret Atwood, Joseph Cassara, Jennine Capó Crucet, Angie Cruz, Pat Cummings, Sylvia Day, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, John Grisham, Maria Hinojosa, Mira Jacob, Erica Jong, CJ Lyons, Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, Mary Pope Osborne, Douglas Preston, Alice Randall, Ishmael Reed, Roxana Robinson, Nelly Rosario, James Shapiro, Hampton Sides, R.L. Stine, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Monique Truong, Scott Turow, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rachel Vail, Weike Wang, Caroline Randall Williams, De’Shawn Charles Winslow, and Meg Wolitzer!
by Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom
Today, I embarked on an emotional journey with “A Matter of Death and Life” by Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom. This poignant narrative follows the renowned psychiatrist and his talented writer wife as they navigate a year filled with profound reflection following her terminal diagnosis. I received this thoughtful gift from my son Mike and his family, which makes it all the more special.
As the year winds down, I’m excited to say that this will be the final book I dive into in 2024 and will also mark the beginning of my reading adventures in 2025! Irwin and Marylin Yalom‘s exploration of love and living without regret is touching and inspiring, reminding me of the journey my wife and I took after her diagnosis of lymphoma in August 2019.
Irvin Yalom, an internationally acclaimed psychiatrist and author, dedicated his career to counseling those suffering from anxiety and grief. However, he had never faced the need to counsel himself until his wife, the esteemed feminist author Marilyn Yalom, was diagnosed with cancer. In “A Matter of Death and Life,” the Yaloms share how they confronted profound new struggles: Marilyn aimed to die a good death, while Irv sought to continue living without her.
Through alternating accounts of their last months together and Irv’s first months alone, they provide a rare window into facing mortality and coping with the loss of a beloved partner. The Yaloms enjoyed a loving family, a home in Palo Alto under a magnificent valley oak, a large circle of friends, avid readers worldwide, and a long, fulfilling marriage. Yet, they faced death, as we all do. With the wisdom acquired over two lifetimes and the familiar warmth of teenage sweethearts who grew up together, they explore universal questions of intimacy, love, and grief.
Informed by their extensive life experiences, “A Matter of Death and Life” is an open-hearted offering to anyone seeking support, solace, and a meaningful life.
by Michael Stephen Daigle
The Swamps of Jersey by Michael Stephen Daigle is the first of the Frank Nagler series. Having read the fourth one – The Red Hand, I thought this was an excellent time to read the first in this impressive deceptive series. It was, in fact, an excellent decision. Understanding Frank Nagler better now, I plan to read the next two and the Red Hand to be ready for the fifth book Dragony Rising.
Ironton, New Jersey has seen hard times before. Deserted factories and empty stores reflect the decades-long decline, that even Mayor Gabriel Richman, scion of one of the city’s leading political families, cannot seem to rectify. Now families are living on the street or in the shells of the old factories.A week-long tropical storm floods the depressed city bringing more devastation as well as a new misery: The headless, handless body of a young woman in the Old Iron Bog.
Between the gruesome murder and an old factory suspiciously burning down, Detective Frank Nagler begins to believe that incarcerated Charlie Adams, the city’s famous serial killer, may have fostered a copycat killer. Determined to find the truth, he follows the case that leads into unexpected places.
Knowing the author and the geography of NJ, I found this book a must-read.
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by Diane Cook
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook. The New Wilderness is a timely book and one that resonated with me. When Jan and I met in 1973, it was a revolutionary time with movements encouraging communes and returning to the farm. Neither Jan nor I were interested in living in a commune. Reading this book helped reassure me that we made the correct choice.
The summary of the book is:
Margaret Atwood meets Miranda July in this wildly imaginative debut novel of a mother’s battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change; A prescient and suspenseful book from the author of the acclaimed story collection, Man V. Nature.
Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home. If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. There is only one alternative: the Wilderness State, the last swath of untouched, protected land, where people have always been forbidden. Until now.
Bea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, guinea pigs in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it. Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, they slowly and painfully learn to survive in an unpredictable, dangerous land, bickering and battling for power and control as they betray and save one another. But as Agnes embraces the wild freedom of this new existence, Bea realizes that saving her daughter’s life means losing her in a different way. The farther they get from civilization, the more their bond is tested in astonishing and heartbreaking ways.
At once a blazing lament of our contempt for nature and a deeply humane portrayal of motherhood and what it means to be human, The New Wilderness is an extraordinary novel from a one-of-a-kind literary force.
When I finished this book, I read Pompeii Still Has Buried Secrets by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker. It reminded me of all of the threats to civilization that we face, who will be Pliny the Younger to be “the only surviving eyewitness account of the disaster.” Fleeing our cities for the wilderness is no longer an option!
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by N. K. Jemisin
The City We Became: A Novel by N. K. Jemisin is my first science fiction and urban fantasy novel in quite some time. It is a story of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City. Jan and I had lived in New York City, and the book brought back fond memories.
Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children.
But every City also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the City and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
As Jemisin writes:
A city is never alone, not really — and this city seems less solitary than most. More like a family: many parts, frequently squabbling … but in the end, against enemies, they come together to protect one another. They must, or die.
The challenge is when evil forces threaten the City; the entire community needs to unite, and the City’s avatars for each of the five boroughs.
Initially, this is supposed to be one for each borough and one for the entire City. In the end, one of the avatars for the five boroughs chooses not to unite with the others. Without all six, they stand no chance to defeat the forces of evil.
How do they solve this? By adding the sixth borough – Jersey City.
I recommend this book without reservation.
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