The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, 2016
I totally judged a book by its cover, and I'm glad I did!
The Nest is about the Plumb family siblings who must deal with the fallout of their (emotionally) distant mother having spent their trust fund, dubbed the 'Nest' by the siblings, on eldest brother Leo's rehab and covering up an accident.
The setting is New York City, another reason I chose to read the book as I was heading to NYC for a family vacation.
Riveting and flawed characters, The Nest centers around the siblings are struggling and tired of living in the shadow of their charismatic and flashy brother Leo. There are also a cast of memorable characters in each of the sibling's orbit.
Instead of detracting from the story and becoming too confusing, each character becomes someone that you root for.
Leo has hit a crisis point, out of rehab and in the middle of a divorce from his wife Victoria, who has spent his fortune from the sale of an online literary magazine he founded. He will soon be penniless after the divorce, and ends up back in the arms with literary agent Stephanie (in Brooklyn to boot), who he has always had an on again and off again affair for years.
Leo's sibling Bea was a hot writer and part of the Glitterary Girls, a name dubbed for a set of talented young female writer and closest to Leo, with whom she worked for on his literary magazine. Unfortunately, Bea was never able to deliver on her book contract and has since been toiling away at Paper Fibres print magazine, run by Paul Underwood.
Jack is the younger brother, always in Leo's shadow and nicknamed Leo Lite as a child. He runs a not-successful antique shop and is hiding debt from his partner Walker. He is relying on his part of the the Nest to escape from the growing debt that is due.
Melody is the youngest child living a bland suburban life in a community that is too wealthy and judgmental for her and her modest technician husband Walter. She is relying on the Nest to pay for her twin daughter's college tuition.
Cast of characters include Francie Plumb, the Plumb matriarch who could never cope with so many children, much less remembering their birthdays. George Plumb is the attorney cousin who has protected the Nest and the family.
Matilda Rodriguez is the victim of Leo's frivolous actions and vices, while Coporal Vinnie Massuro is a fellow amputee who forces Matilda to accept her new reality resulting from the loss of her foot.
Nora and Louisa are Melody's twin daughters, who are forced to go to SAT prep class in the city, where they befriend the sophisticated and worldly Simone. Walter is her sensible husband, who like Jack's partner Walker, realize that Leo is not someone to rely on or look up to, as the Plumb siblings do.
Nathan Chowdhary is Leo's partner in founding SpeakEasy Magazine, leading to SpeakEasyMedia, the company Leo sold to make his fortune. Chowdhary was against the sale and would go on to find other successful businesses while Leo spent his fortune traveling and dabbling in different interests of his wife Victoria's.
Tommy O'Toole is an ex-firefighter at the Twin Towers during 9/11, where he lost his wife, who also worked in the building. He lives on the first floor of Stephanie's Brooklyn brownstone and is stuck mourning the loss of his wife. He crosses path with Jack, who recognizes the significance of the memento that O'Toole has kept from the Twin Towers falling and sees a way to escape his debt now that the Nest has been depleted.
A satisfying ending where the characters each show growth, even if it does not mean the traditional happy ending, The Nest is a enjoyable read with compelling characters. I have already reserved Sweeney's next novel from the library to add to my reading queue.
The Women by Kristen Hannah, 2024
After countless recommendations from online book sites & friends, The Women did not disappoint. This is storytelling at its best, transporting me into the heart of the Vietnam War.
Frances 'Frankie' McGrath decides to enlist in the Vietnam War as a nurse, in memory of her brother, who has been killed in action.
She meets fellow nurses Ethel and Barb, whom she forms life-long bonds as they witness first-hand the trauma of the war treating American soldiers and South Vietnamese villagers with body parts missing and intestines spilling out.
I could feel the heat, mud and desperation of Vietnam. Through the trauma, the soldiers and medical staff do their best to celebrate to stay sane. McGrath is soon promoted to OR nurse, where she works with surgeon Jamie Callahan.
There is an immediate attraction between McGrath and Callahan, but Callahan is married with a daughter. She meets Rye Walsh, a friend of her brother's from the Naval Academy who inspired McGrath to enlist as a nurse when he tells her that 'women can be heroes'.
Once Walsh has confirmed that he is not engaged, he and McGrath start a passionate affair. He flies in to support her after she witnesses a mother and child charred from Agent Orange.
McGrath completes her tour and goes home. Dressed in her military uniform, people spit at her, call her a baby killer and boo her. Her parents refuse to talk about her time in Vietnam, telling friends that she spent a semester in Florence.
She holds onto hope for Walsh's return in a few months after he completes his tour. Unfortunately, his plane is shot down and he is killed in action. McGrath spirals and attempts to integrate into society and accepts a job as a nurse.
Despite being a trauma nurse in the war, McGrath is relegated to changing bed pans, and when she does perform a procedural that saves a man's life, she is fired as being a wild card.
Her parents and the women she served with, Ethel and Barb, support and bolster her, but McGrath cannot cope with her recurring nightmares and inability to talk about Vietnam. When she attempts to join a support group for veterans, she is told that there were no women in Vietnam, and made to leave.
After so many false hopes, McGrath finally finds her path after hitting rock bottom. Her parents may not understand her service and who she has become, but they support her. She meets someone and becomes pregnant, but loses her baby.
Walsh, who was assumed to be KIA, returns to the US to a hero's welcome after being tortured at the Hanoi Hilton. Despite being broken so many times, McGrath survives and finally finds peace.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton, 2023
A heartfelt and (sometimes too) honest look at heartbreak, Good Material is an entertaining read about a comedian, Andy, who has just been dumped from his girlfriend Jen of four years.
In his mid-thirties, Andy's friends have young families and a lad's night out is not the same, with many looking to go home before 'last orders'.
The break-up is complicated by the fact that Andy met Jen through his best friend Avi, who is married to Jane, Jen's best friend.
Alderton does a good job capturing the seemingly endless emotional abyss of a break-up.
At one point, I was exhausted by Andy's continued fixation on the break-up, something acknowledged by Andy himself in the book, where he realizes there are 'tokens' he has to talk about the break-up before annoying his friends.
A fun read about British culture, Good Material is quite entertaining with one of the better endings I have read in a long time when we hear Jen's point of view.
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich, 2024
I just love Louise Erdrich. She is such a captivating writer. I started reading her to get a better understanding of Indians and Native American culture, but she writes people (not just Indians) so well.
Although
The Mighty Red started slow, it became a page turner mid-way through and I could not put the book down.
The Mighty Red takes place in a town in the Red River Valley in North Dakota where a young couple, Kismet Pao and Gary Geist, are to be married. They are seniors in high school.
Kismet's parents are Crystal and Martin, a night-time truck driver and actor respectively, cobbling together an existence. The Geist family own a sugar beet farm and are among the wealthier and privileged in Tabor, ND.
Gary leads a charmed and frivolous life as captain of the football team until an accident happens when he is with his football teammates.
Gary is not the same after, and decides that formerly goth and object of his ridicule Kismet is the one who can center and save him. Although Kismet is entangled with Hugh, who is bright and decides to enroll in an online program to work at the oil fields to make money and win Kismet.
Hugh's parents are Bev and Ichor, bookstore owner and country control weed officer respectively. As part of Bev's store, she hosts book club to encourage the purchase of her wares, as well as providing a good excuse for the women of the small time to convene.
A deep dive into the sugar beet and farming industry, and the repercussions of insecticides are weaved into the story as Kismet and Gary navigate their relationship, while Crystal needs to deal with the sudden disappearance of her husband.
Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa, 2024Continuing my curiosity in learning more about Indian history and experience in America, I picked up Whiskey Tender and was delighted to learn that Taffa was the Director of the Creative Writing Program MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
I regret not visiting the Institute when I was in Santa Fe in November, but do recall sitting on the doorsteps waiting for a restaurant reservation across the street. Since then, I've also learned that Tommy Orange teaches at the Institute, which deepens my regret. It will be a destination for the next time that I am in Santa Fe.
Taffa's memoir centers around growing up in the 70s, when her Quechan (Yuma) father signs up for the government program to train Indians in a trade (welding for her father) to find work in a city; in essence, removing them from their tribe and reservation. Yet another way America systemic works to weaken Indian tribes by removing young working men.
Taffa's father is hesitant to move away from his family and off the reservation, but after his mother made him promise to leave the reservation for a better life, he does.
The memoir centers around Taffa's struggle growing up in Farmington, New Mexico, where most of the inhabitants are white. There are some fellow Indian students, but with her Chicana mother, Taffa is light skinned and not thought of as Indian by either of her white or Indian classmates.
I relate to Taffa's struggle with identity as an Asian American growing up in the '80s. Assimilation was the driving force then, where individuality was frowned upon. Although I am fully Asian, it was still a struggle trying to find my way in an insensitive environment where any other ethnicity except Caucasian was considered weird and freakish.
With the focus on the future, Taffa's father does not talk much about his childhood and growing up on the reservation, similar to how my parents never talked much about China. I imagine there was a lot of trauma as well as an aching for their homelands.
Despite the family's move off the reservations, too much drinking and poor decisions haunt the Taffa family, but Taffa and her family do have more opportunities than if they had stayed on the reservation.
The memoir ends with Taffa graduating from High School and deciding to fully explore her Indian heritage and not going to college, a choice her parents did not support.
Thanks to social media and Taffa's Instagram account, she is thriving as Director of the MFA program with her children thriving, including one recently graduating from an Ivy League law school. This is what my Chinese-American parents worked so hard for - for their children and many generations after to have a better life through education. Her pictures include a picture of her proud father, Edmund Jackson.
No comments:
Post a Comment