I’VE TRIED BEING NICE: ESSAYS by Ann Leary

It’s a real thing. As a woman of a certain age (I obviously can’t speak for men of a certain age, but I imagine this never pops up in their mental feeds, like ever), one of my regrets is all the people-pleasing I’ve done. People pleasing is a one-way street of self-satisfaction in making another’s life more pleasant—if only for a moment or evening or while this person is in my life—and from there on out, I’m duty bound to make an effort. Why? Well, there are a few reasons I’ve discovered through therapy, but I also found I’m not alone in this behavior common among women of a certain age. Ann Leary is around my age—or at least we were brought up in a time when women were taught to be nice. Even the word is grating to say. Pleasant sounds better—and a little bit more aloof. Which I like. Because if you’re aloof, you’re a little bit mysterious but not offending, just pleasant. Leary’s twenty essays look back at her early writing anxieties, alcoholism, marriage slumps, learning how to play tennis, red-carpet weirdness (she’s married to the actor Denis Leary), and her love of dogs and horses. The conclusion? A sixty-year old who likes her own company.

Favorite line(s): We began to see a marriage counselor, who, among other things, suggested that we have a regular date night. Our apathy was such that our date night was our marriage-counseling night. We went to our weekly counseling session and afterward, we sometimes went to a movie. One of the movies we saw was March of the Penguins. This movie moved us to tears because whatever battles raged between us, however ugly the other often appeared to be, we had these two very delicate fledglings that needed to be protected and carried along carefully, so carefully, because is anything more fragile than a preteen girl or a growing, unsure boy? These great children were the reason we were in counseling, the reason we were trying to keep the family egg whole. So we worked hard at playing nice.

HISTORY OF THE RAIN by Niall Williams

I read this novel by the Irish writer Niall Williams while in Ireland this month and the tone and settings meshed with everything in my purview. Ireland is rain. Rain is Ireland. The land soaked through with folklore, religion, and mysticism all told by poets, writers, and artists. Ruth Swain spends most of her time in bed in the attic of her family’s home on the banks of the Shannon River in County Clare. Ill with possibly some blood disease she watches her mother hold the family together while her father tries to farm the land but then gives it up to write poetry. Her brother, Aeney, active and never still, runs circles around all of them. Ruth narrates the story of the family and the ancestors' past lives. Left with her father’s books to fill her time and the intuitive sense to write the family’s story down, Ruth brings to life the hopes and dreams of her parents and grandparents set against the raging river and the small town life that is home. A mesmerizing novel that reads like a long fairytale.  

Favorite line(s): In time the seaweed people and the sky people found attraction in each other, and intermarried and became the Irish. That’s the short version. That’s why some of us are always longing for sky and some are of us are longing for the sea, and some, like my father, were both. We’re a race of elsewhere people. That’s what makes us the best saints and the best poets and the best musicians and the world’s worst bankers. That’s why wherever you go you’ll see some of us—and it makes no difference if the place is soft and warm and lovely and there’s not a thing anyone could find wrong with it, there’ll always be what Jimmy the Tank calls A Hankering. It’s in the eyes. The idea of the better home. Some of us have it worse than others.