Nevermore: Paris Agent, Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Lincoln Highway, Great Lakes

Prepared by Rita

This is an experiment with a new program.  Please comment and let us know what you think!

 

Nevermore: Worst Hard Time, Frog with Self-Cleaning Feet, Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember, Codename Villanelle

Reported by Lauren

            Natural disasters, international spies, and funny animals are just a few of things our Nevermore members discussed at the last meeting. 

            One reader shared her review of The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan, a study of what has been called “the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land.” This nonfiction book describes the perils of living in the High Plains during the Great Depression while dust storms decimated crops causing residents to starve.  These stoic, hard-working farmers refused to abandon their homesteads, surviving on little to nothing.  Our reader declared it was so much worse than she had ever imagined or been taught. She strongly encouraged everyone read to it, as the threat of natural disasters brought on by climate change due to technological advances is still timely. 

Our next reviewer shared The Frog with Self-Cleaning Feet by Michael Bright. Another nonfiction work, this book highlights fun facts about various animals in the wild, including what they eat, how they camouflage and defend themselves from predators, and even how they bathe and use medicinal plants and herbs to heal themselves. Our reader remarked, “Humans are so boring! We only know how to use our two hands, while these fantastic animals are so creative.” She wished she could read and discuss it with a friend, as she caught herself laughing out loud and saying, “This is unbelievable!” She highly recommended we all check it out.

Two of our members had read Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life Forever by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee. Ironically neither of them could remember the full title! Author Christine had a stroke at just 33 years old. Her doctor recommended that she keep a diary or journal to help rebuild her memory. This memoir is the result. One reader loved the book, saying that it was really like being inside the mind of stroke victim. The writer jumps around in time, repeats things, and doesn’t always remember details. She found this realistic and endearing; however our other reader disagreed. She didn’t like the time jumps and memory lapses, and found the whole thing repetitive and unnecessary in some places. It was tough for her to even finish. We were all amused to see how two people could interpret the same book so differently.

On a fictional note, one reader is currently engrossed in Codename Villanelle by Luke Jennings, the first in the series of novels on which the award-winning BBC America mystery series Killing Eve is based. Villanelle is a Russian orphan turned assassin; Eve is a British Intelligence Agent assigned to track down a killer (Villanelle). The cat-and-mouse game between the two women is extremely interesting so far – our reader promised to keep us posted! She also took the sequel, Killing Eve: No Tomorrow.

To wrap up our meeting, we discussed one of the latest titles in the self-help genre, Girl Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis. Hollis is a successful blogger, author, motivational speaker, and mom. In this novel, she presents strategies other like-minded women can use to reach their own goals and find success, whatever that looks like to them. Her main point is to stop apologizing for your dreams, and do whatever you need to do to reach your goals. Through funny anecdotes and various lists, she advises women to stop allowing others’ doubts to keep you from living your best life. While our reviewer didn’t find any of the information new or ground-breaking, it was a nice reminder to be yourself and stay the course, even when daily life seems overwhelming. Three out of five stars!

The Nevermore Book Club meets every Tuesday at 11:00 am in the Frances Kegley Meeting Room at Bristol Public Library.  New members welcome!

Nevermore: Mother of Rain, Mary's Monster, George Orwell, Manhattan Beach, Perfect Mother

Reported by Jeanne

Nevermore’s first book was Mother of Rain by Karen Spears Zacharias. As the book opens, a family tragedy has sent ten year old Maizee  to live with an aunt and her husband in Christian Bend, Tennessee.  The story follows Maizee as she struggles with the voices she hears in her head.  She marries, and gives birth to a boy she names Rain. Her life gets more complicated when her husband is drafted into the Army to fight overseas in World War II.  Our reader saw part of the book’s theme as being about the impact a mother’s life and death can have on a child.  The book is written in Appalachian dialect but was easy to understand.  One member wondered if there really is a Christian Bend, and the answer is yes:  it’s a small unincorporated community in Hawkins County.

The mother/child influence theme was also a component of the next book, Mary’s Monster by Lita Judge. It is a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly told in free verse with illustrations.  Every member who has read it has praised the book for its power and beauty.  There are copies in both adult and YA, and Nevermore proves that Mary’s Monster has definite crossover appeal because it has been making the rounds of the entire Nevermore Book Club, and earning rave reviews from all who have read it. It was quickly taken up by another reader this time as well. It's also timely:  2018 is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein.

Before he became famous for such novels as Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell wrote a memoir entitled Down and Out in Paris and London. In it, he details the travails of living poor in a large city.  In Paris, he worked as at a hotel, gave English lessons, and worked as a dishwasher.  He also pawned his clothes.  Finally exhausted with working 17 hour days without a break, he seeks employment back in London.  He obtains a position teaching and caring for a child with challenges, but he arrives back in London to find the family gone abroad and he is left to scrounge a living as well as find a place to sleep.  Our reviewer thought it was extremely interesting, and painted a vivid picture of the underclass in both cities during the 20s and 30s.  While parts of his account were challenged, Orwell said that while he may not have included events chronologically, all that he recorded actually happened at one time or another.

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan is another historical novel which moves forward and backward in time, and Nevermore members have read a lot of those lately.  Part of the story is set during the Great Depression, when eleven year old Anna meets Dexter, her father’s employer, at Manhattan Beach.  Anna senses that Dexter is something more than what she’s been told but is uncertain what it means. Years later, during WW II, Anna fights to become a diver repairing warships and seeking to find out what became of her father who has gone missing and whom Anna thinks is dead.  Our reviewer said it was a good book and well-written, but the current fashion for having books move back and forth in time is getting a bit old.

The same comment was made about the next book, The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy. The May Mothers are a social group of women who all had babies in May.  They meet in the park each week for a bit of socializing with their babies, but one week they decide to have a “Mom’s Night” and get together at a bar without babies in tow.  What should have been a fun occasion takes a terrifying turn when one of the mothers has her three month old child kidnapped. The investigation reveals that every mother has secrets.  Our reader said it was pretty good, but the technique of going back in time to reveal each character’s history is becoming boring.

Nevermore: Charming Billy, Manhattan Beach, Midnight Sun, Astrophysics, Coal Miners' Wives, Vonnegut

Reported by Kristin

Nevermore kicked off the week with Charming Billy by Alice McDermott. The 1998 fiction National Book Award Winner, this novel takes readers on a journey through Billy’s life, albeit beginning with the stories people are telling about him at his funeral.  Billy was a thoughtful and giving man, but tortured by his own alcoholism.  Our reader said that there was no better title for this book, as Billy certainly was charming.

A new bestselling novel, Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan was enjoyed next.  Set in the 1930s and World War II, Anna Kerrigan becomes the first female diver to repair American war ships.  Anna is also devoted to her beautiful younger sister, who is an invalid due to injuries at birth.  The story is told from alternating points of view: Anna, her father Eddie, and night club owner Dexter Styles.  Their lives intertwine through the years, forever changing the lives of the Kerrigan family.

Another reader enjoyed Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo.  The author is well known for his Harry Hole novels, but this story features Jon Hansen, a drug dealer and hit man who has fled Oslo for a tiny village, and calls himself Ulf.  Wanting to avoid his bosses, Jon befriends a local who allows him to stay in her family hunting cabin.  Our reader said that this was a very fun book, and she particularly liked that there wasn’t as much violence as in a typical Nesbo book.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson keeps showing up periodically at Nevermore.  This reader enthused that Tyson included it “all” in here: black holes, dark matter, quarks, cosmic background noise, the Kelvin temperature scale, and so much more. Tyson has a reputation for being the best known figure we have today who makes science understandable.

Carol A. B. Giesen interviewed eighteen West Virginian women for the collection of stories that makes up Coal Miners’ Wives: Portraits of Endurance.  These women varied in age, from under twenty to over eighty, but all had moving stories of what it was like to be living under constant awareness of the dangers faced by their coal miner husbands.  The women shouldered much stress, but had no ability to change their lives.  Our reader found it a very grim story, but very important to read.

Wrapping up with what was termed a “really fun book,” God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut is a series of “interviews” of the dearly departed, as posed by a public radio reporter.  Originally broadcast as ninety second spots on a New York radio station, Vonnegut asks questions of such varied people as Adolf Hitler, Isaac Asimov, William Shakespeare and Eugene Debs.  The kicker is that in order to do these do these interviews, Vonnegut needed a round trip ticket (via Dr. Kevorkian) to and from the pearly gates in order to speak to those beyond the grave.