Winter Book Reviews: 3 of 3

Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic/The birds are singing again/The sky is clearing/Spring is coming/And we are always encompassed by Love.

From “Lockdown” by Brother Richard Hendrick. A poem about hope amidst the coronavirus lockdown. Hear it here https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/03/20/poem-lockdown-hope-coronavirus-town-hall-cooper-sot-ac360-vpx.cnn

Now, three more reviews. Books to the rescue!

WEATHER by Jenny Offill

Like Offill’s novel “Dept. of Speculation,” her latest, “Weather” is written in small tacks-similar to diary entries. Lizzie abandoned graduate school to help her drug-addicted brother. She is still taking care of him years later when climate change has left daily life with her husband and young son all consumed with disaster preparedness, or “prepper things.” Like how a can of oil-packed tuna can provide two hours of light. Offill’s observations are the stuff of dark comedy, and every sentence in this tiny book is honed to perfect points of sharp observations. Nothing is wasted—nothing taken for granted. “Weather” is a study in literary minimalism while showing us a family anxious about a doomed earth.

Favorite line(s): My friend who works in hospice says don’t tell dying people they won’t be around for the beach trip, apples in fall, etc. No more do that than knock a crutch out from under a person with a broken leg. No more apples soon; apples need frost. I decide to reshelve by the big window. It’s beautiful out. There’s a group of students with linked arms, chanting something in the quad. I follow a trail of candy wrappers that are lined up along the sill. The top of that tree is on fire. Or else it’s fall again.

HERE FOR IT: OR HOW TO SAVE YOUR SOUL IN AMERICA by R. Eric Thomas

Thomas’s first book of essays (I’m sure it won’t be his last) tries “to take what’s dark about the world and shake out the satirical and the silly.” And succeeds. Thomas made a name for himself when he tweeted about a photo of President Obama, Justin Trudeau, and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, “grinning as they strode down a red-carpeted walkway in bespoke suits.” It generated enough likes and shares and comments to garner the attention of an ELLE.com director who asked him to write more of the same for their online magazine. And the once failed scholarship student, aspiring playwright, and lapsed Baptist was off and running with his dream job writing about pop culture. Thomas is funny. Really funny. And these twenty essays delve into everything from dating as a gay black man to his love of everything Whitney Houston. He can be self-deprecating and preachy in the same paragraph, and he does it with a wink and a smile.

Favorite line(s): Every family’s story is a tale of becoming, sometimes through oppression, sometimes through achievement, and sometimes simply through the current of time. We were born grasping after freedom, in a house that could not hold us; every day we get closer and closer to our destination, until our features come into view. Soon, everyone further on down the family line can see us from their seas at the table; we’re coming home. Set a place for us.

WRITERS & LOVERS by Lily King

Oh yes, Lily King! So much of the publishing world—meaning the gatekeepers—the agents and publishers that say yes or no to manuscripts seeing the light of day, are not fans of the first-person point of view—and especially a woman’s. A young woman’s. But King’s fifth novel couldn’t be written any other way. Casey Peabody, a former child golf prodigy, at thirty-one, is determined to finish her novel. Gutted by the death of her mother, trying to move on from an affair, the narrator experiences medical and money problems but can’t and won’t give up her determination to live a creative life. Squeezing writing in before and after her waitressing job, we see the sacrifices and the questions Casey asks herself about ambition. Loved it! But then again, I love everything King writes.

Favorite line(s): ‘All problems with writing and performing come from fear. Fear of exposure, fear of weakness, fear of lack of talent, fear of looking like a fool for trying, for even thinking you could write in the first place. It’s all fear. If we didn’t have fear, imagine the creativity in the world. Fear holds us back every step of the way. A lot of studies say that despite all our fears in this country—death, war, guns, illness—our biggest fear is public speaking. What I am doing right now. And when people are asked to identify which kind of public speaking they are most afraid of, they check the improvisation box. So improvisation is the number-one fear in America. Forget a nuclear winter or an eight-point nine earthquake or another Hitler. It’s improv. Which is funny, because aren’t we just improvising all day long? Isn’t our whole life just one long improvisation? What are we so scared of?’