Nevermore: Waking Up White, Cloud Cuckoo Land, State of Terror, The Last Romantics

 

Reported by Garry

Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving was the first book mentioned this week, getting a conditional “thumbs up” from our reviewer. Our reader felt that while Irving was certainly honest about her experiences, her writing was on the “polite” side and never really delved deeply into the damage that racist thinking and processes do to society as a whole, and Black Americans in particular. Raised in a mainly White community in New England, Irving learned to avoid anything unpleasant, which included discussions of race and its socioeconomic effects on people of color. Our reader felt that Irving has done an admirable job of beginning to come to terms with her privilege and blind-spots, but still has a way to go.  SC

 

The latest novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land, encompasses three intertwined timelines spanning over five hundred years. The strings are tied together by the story of Aethon, a young man who wishes to become a bird to fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. Starting in Constantinople during the 15^th century with Anna, who lives in a house of women who embroider robes for priests; continuing with Zeno, an octogenarian in present time who is teaching children in Idaho the story of Aethon; and then Konstance, a young lady on a futuristic interstellar ship who is copying down the story of Aethon as told to her by her father. Our reader (who doesn’t usually like stories that jump around in time,) enjoyed this book immensely and found the writing to be especially notable for its clarity and imagination.  MH

 

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny have teamed up again to write another international thriller: State of Terror. Ellen Adams is the former head of a multinational media conglomerate who is appointed U.S. Secretary of State to a president whom she has harshly criticized. Anahita Dahir is a young Foreign Services Officer whose specialty is Pakistan and the Middle East. Dahir receives a coded warning via text of a series of imminent terrorist attacks. It is up to Dahir, Adams, and a dedicated journalist to unravel a web of nuclear bombs, terrorist organizations, and Russian mobsters. Our reader enjoyed this book and commented on not only how good the story was, but how easy it is to tell which author had written which parts, especially as she has been a Louise Penny fan for many years. ML

 

The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin is a novel about a family and the events that both tie them together and push them apart from one another. Renee, Caroline, Joe, and Fiona are all children when their father dies of a heart attack at the age of 30.  Their mother sinks into a three year long depression which the children call the “pause,” leaving the children to fend for themselves. The youngest, Fiona, grows up to be a world-renowned poet and writer, and this book is a “story within a story” of the four siblings and how their lives were shaped by their childhood traumas. Our reader explained that she was drawn into the book through the writing and premise, and strongly recommends this book to anyone who likes family dramas.  MR

 

Also mentioned:

The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

The Joy and Light Bus Company by Alexander McCall Smith

The Wartime Sisters by Lynda Cohen Loigman

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan

Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds by Huma Abedin

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

The Pure Land by Alan Spence

Watership Down by Richard Adams