April Reading Showers

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, 2023

An epic saga that dives into the lives of the four members of the Barnes family, The Bee Sting is a page turner. Each section is narrated by a character and the richness of the backstory makes for page-turning reading. 

The novel kicks off with Cass Barnes, a teenage daughter whose family is falling apart. Once a prosperous family as the proprietor of the car dealership and garage in a rural Irish town, the Barnes family struggles through a downturn.

P.J. is Cass's younger brother, who endearingly tries to blend further into the background despite his own struggles. Imelda is the mother, who has experienced hardships raised by an alcoholic and violent father. 

Lastly, Dickie Barnes is the head of the family who is desperate to keep his family together and from finding out his secrets as he struggles to financially support his family.

There are many other vivid characters including Elaine, Cass's best friend, and Elaine's father Big Mike; P.J.'s 'best' friend Ethan; Dickie's younger brother Frank and father Maurice; Dickie's college friend Willie; and a mysterious dark-haired stranger named Ryszard who enters both Cass and Dickie's orbit.

Written with creative narration (one section has no punctuation, another is told in 2nd person), The Bee Sting is a special book with memorable characters and stories that will stay with me. The novel was short-listed for the Booker Prize. His previous novel Skippy Dies was long-listed for the Booker prize in 2010.

My Side of the River by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez, 2024

A memoir of the impacts of the United State's immigration policy, Guiterrez writes about growing up in Tuscon, Arizona. Her Mexican parents are forced to live life in the shadows as they lack paperwork. They avoid the police, work jobs that do not require paperwork, and live in spare rooms/shacks of family members as housing can not be in their names.

When Gutierrez's parents' tourist visas are set to expire, they move back to Mexico to handle the renewal process. Guitierrez and her brother, both born in the United States and therefore citizens, are left with a family friend. 

Her parents' visa requests are eventually denied and Gutierrez is forced to make a decision: to stay in the United States to finish high school or to live with her family in Mexico. Ranked No. 1 in her class, Gutierrez is a bright, talented and hard-working student. Gutierrez realizes that her future is in attending college in America. That her parents sacrificed their youth and marriage so that she and her brother could be educated in the States. 

Still a child at 16, she makes the decision to return to the States by herself to finish high school. She stays with a teacher who is kind enough to take her in, but not kind enough to give her her own room or to feed her. With support form other teachers and school social workers, she applies for aid for homeless children and learns about the food pantry so she no longer needs to go hungry.

Gutierrez's hard work pays off when she is accepted into many of the colleges she has applied to. The hard work does not taper off though when she starts college. She experiences culture shock at the frivolity of her fellow University of Pennsylvania students. At how they carelessly treat their $900 Canada Goose jackets when $900 would have been a fortune for her her family.

She remains focused as she she feels guilty for leaving her younger brother in Mexico. She knows that she is the only one who can bring him to the States to finish his high school education and get a college education in the States. 

After graduating college, Gutierrez searches for an apartment not just for herself, but also for her brother, who will move in with her. 

While her co-workers are going to happy hour, she is returning home to help her brother with homework and college applications. She manages his high school education and pays for his living expenses, while also supporting her parents in Mexico.

The sacrifices that Gutierrez make and the drive that she has to succeed is incredible. To take financial and emotional responsibility for her entire family as a teenager is remarkable.

While managing school and then work, supporting her family, taking care of her brother, she even does a Ted Talk on the American immigrant experience!

Writing the Breakout Novel: Insider advice for taking your fiction to the next level by Donald Maass, 2001

As I'm starting to learn more about the craft of writing (structuring plots, character development, etc.), this book provided a good overview of how stories should be crafted. 

It talks about tension and says how writing a novel is not like a movie, where each action is played out. (This was a mistake I made in one of my drafts where the protagonist was going to work. I detailed each step and bored myself terribly...)

Some take-aways that I got from the book was digging deeper with the characters. Throw the worst at them. That characters need to be sympathetic, even if there is an amazing plot. The reader needs to care. I have had some ideas that seem pretty unplausible, like a protagonist that murders people as a hobby, but why not? Stakes should be raised to get the characters at their worst, and the tension at its best.

The book also poses the question of, as a writer, what am I trying to say? What is the theme of my story? Themes can be trope, but to be profound and dig deeper emotionally. What new perspective am I bringing?

There needs to be tension on every page for a breakout novel. This idea of tension is what keeps the reader going and something I think about now when I am writing.

Maass outlines plotting in five stages:

1. Sympathetic character introduced
2. Conflict arises
3. Conflict deepens, twists
4. Climax
5. Resolution

The Good, The Bad, and The Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto, 2024

The final trilogy of Sutanto's Auntie series, The Good, The Bad, and the Aunties delivers on the Asian woman of a certain age (over 50) zaniness. From the constant need to 'save face' and dish out blatant advice in broken English, the Aunties travel back to Jakarta with their niece, protagonist Meddy and her new husband Nathan.

Hijinks ensue. None are plausible and the emotional interiority of Meddy towards Nathan becomes eye-rolling at times, but the Aunties provide for good fun. From Big Aunt, to 2nd Aunt, Meddy's mom, and 4th Aunt, Meddy appreciates her ferocious Aunties and realizes that she is becoming like them...

I find the novels very enjoyable as I relate to Meddy in how she sees her Aunts as she narrates the story. The Aunts, collectively, steal the show.

March Books

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, 2018

The novel alternates between the 21st and 18th Century, residents of a house in Vineland, New Jersey. Based on historic figures from the 18th Century, fictional Thatcher Greenwood befriends Mary Treat, naturalist and professional corespondent to Charles Darwin and Asa Gray. 

Willa Knox, the modern resident of Vineland, struggles with her husband's ailing father, two adult children who have fled back home due to tragedies, and a home that is literally falling apart.

As the story progresses, the stories come together and are cleverly tied together by the last words of the chapters resulting in the name of the following cross-century chapter. The story of Willa Knox struggling with financial challenges, even from her Harvard-educated son, was compelling; while the 18th Century chapters I found a bit tedious, despite the real events of a cult leader and murder.

I took this book with me to a vacation to Hollywood, Florida and despite being more than halfway through the book, did not finish the book during the vacation. I fell asleep twice while reading about the story unfolding during the 18th Century...

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng, 2023

Taking place in Cassowary House in Penang, Malaysia, The House of Doors is based on historical events, centering around the visit of Somerset Maugham. The story revolves around Leslie Hamlyn, an angmoh (Malay for white person), who is married to Robert, an old friend of Maugham.

There are secrets and scandals (affairs galore!) that unfold during the visit, including remembrances of the time when revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat Sen, leader of the Tongmenghui party, lived in Penang in the 1910 while fleeing from his Chinese countrymen. 

Having spent time in Bali, reading the novel transported me back to Malaysia. It provides the context of the Chinese, as well as the English, in Malaysia as well as piquing my interest in Maugham. I had heard of the famous writer, but was not familiar with his life or works. Now, I look forward to learning more about him through his novels (I don't tend to read plays) and biographies.

A lovely story filled with twists, The House of Doors is an enjoyable read that effortlessly transported me to another place and time. Similar to Eng's previous works, The House of Doors was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.

Trust by Hernan Diaz, 2022

With a unique story-telling format, Trust captivated me from the beginning. While reading the second part of the novel, I was a bit confused as to where the narrative was going. Unfortunately, I let this distract me.  However, the third part managed to tie all the pieces together.

Mainly set in the the 1920s, Trust is the story of the great wealth created by financiers moving money around through buying and selling of stocks. Along with great wealth, comes notoriety, secrecy and gossip. The book starts off with a fictionalized version of Andrew Bevel, who is driven to correct accounts of his and his late wife Mildred's life story with an autobiography.

Ida Partenza is hired to help Bevel write his autobiography. She represents the third voice in the story. Along with the reader, Partenza works to puzzle out the true story of the mysterious Bevels.

When the truth is uncovered and a new light is presented, it will make you want to re-read the novel to put the pieces together as you realize that assumptions that are made are misleading. 

Trust is the 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner, along with Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead.

The Things We Didn't Know by Elba Iris Pérez, 2024

I stayed up until midnight to finish this book. The Things We Didn't Know is a story of Puerto Rican siblings who grow up in a western Massachusetts town called Woronoco, where their father works at a paper plant. Based on a true town, Woronoco is an isolated community where Andrea and Pablo grow up and struggle to fit in.

They deal with the prejucides of being Puerto Rican and not 'American' (despite the fact that they are Americans), and struggles with idenity and racism.

Part of the novel takes place in Puerto Rico, where Andrea and Pablo's mother takes them after suffocating in the isolation of Woronoco and the strict confines of their traditional Puerto Rican father Don Louis.

From memorable family members (Tia Machi, Tia Florencia, Socorro, Tia Perfecta) and friends (Tito, Hannah, Emily, Frankie, Donnie), we follow Andrea and Pablo from childhood to adulthood.

The chapters in Puerto Rico are so rich and full of emotion. I do wish that Pérez delved more into the serious topics that occurs in the book: identity, racism, abuse, and mental illness.

I'm Baaacckk

Five years later (wow....), it's me again. I have always been reading, but work and life has taken me away from this blog. It is a new year and a new decade for me, so I am back at it.

I started the year finishing Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead after reading Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain and becoming obsessed with the opiod epedimic and the Sackler family's role in it. 

I have been turned back onto Zadie Smith after discussing the author with some friends. I remember becoming enthralled with White Teeth when it was first published in 2000 (although I cannot recall what it is about...) and then being disappointed with her follow-up. Since her seminal work, she has become a prolific writer and I enjoyed both Swing Time and On Beauty The latter was especially fun to read given that the novel takes place in Boston and what looks to be Cambridge, reflecting Smith's tenure as a Resident Fellow at Radcliffe.

Over time, I have come to appreciate and even prefer female writer. The voice tends to be different and something that resonates with me more. As I have matured, I realize certain truths about reading that reflect me. In my 20s and part of my 30s, I finished every book I started. No matter how tedious. I suppose it was a matter of principal. No books life behind! I let go of that and now have no problem closing a book and leaving the characters forever, fate unknown, even after investing 80 pages into their lives.

I have always noticed the difference in voices, including along gender lines. I relate more to a woman's voice. Not that I will only read books by female authors, but I am more true to what I read (versus what I should read) and the books I have read reflect this.