Nevermore: Fair and Tender Ladies, Boy Who Talked to Dogs, Dollbaby, Librarian of Burned Books

 Reported by Garry

 

Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith. “I used to be a scandal myself. Now I am an institution.” Ivy Crow is a firecracker - raised in the mountains of Appalachia at the turn of the last century, she is the daughter of a down-on-their-luck family and one of nine siblings whose lives are upended when their father dies. Ivy and her family scrape by through the years, documented by Ivy in a series of letters that recount a life of adventure, poverty, struggles, opportunity, and love. First published in 1988, this novel is now considered one of Smith’s best, and holds a place in the heart of many of our Nevermore readers.  MH

 

The Boy Who Talked to Dogs: A Memoir by Martin McKenna. Part memoir, part guide to the strange inner world of dogs, this non-fiction book tells McKenna’s story from the time he was growing up bullied and alone in Garryowen, Ireland. Living with ADHD that was poorly (at best) understood by those around him, at age thirteen he ran away from home and lived on the streets (and in barns, fields, etc.) with a gang of six dogs who taught him self-reliance, the value of family, and self-respect. Touching and eye-opening, this comes highly recommended by our reader, especially to anyone who has known the love of a dog.  CD

 

Dollbaby by Laura Lane McNeal. Ibby Bell’s father has just died unexpectedly. Her mother can’t cope, and drops off Ibby and her father’s urn with her eccentric grandmother in New Orleans, thousands of miles and an entire world away from her home in Olympia, Washington. Grandma Fannie is one who ends up in the nearby mental institution on a semi-regular basis, and so Ibby is taken under the wing of Queenie and Dollbaby – Fannie’s Black household helpers. Queenie and Dollbaby educate Ibby on the ways of the South in the era of Civil Rights struggles. Our reader, who grew up in the deep South, found this to be an uplifting, funny, and poignant historical novel and absolutely loved it, recommending it to anyone who has a love for Southern culture.  KN

 

The Librarian of Burned Books by Brianna Labuskes. Loosely based on the story behind the real-life Council of Books in Wartime, this historical novel follows the fates of three women whose professional and private lives are guided by the power of books. In 1933 Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels to participate in a cultural exchange program. Once she is in Berlin, Althea begins to realize that the propaganda by her hosts does not match the reality of what is happening in Germany. Three years later in Paris, Hanna Brecht has escaped from Berlin, and is working at the German Library of Burned Books, only to find that there is no safe harbor in France. In 1944 Vivian Childs is fighting a powerful US senator over censorship and the banning of books. Vivian’s battle will bring the three women’s worlds together and expose the secrets of the recent past.  WJ

 

Also mentioned:

 

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

The Inmate by Freida McFadden

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside by Nick Offerman

Last Things by C.P. Snow

My Dream of You by Nuala O’Faolain

Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals by Laurie Zaleski

The Girls in the Snow by Stacy Green

The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson

Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created by Nick Tabor

The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jack Bittle

Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction by Lynn Olson

Nevermore: Lee Smith, Country Doctor Writes, Alexander Hamilton, Affairs of Honor, Matters of Choice, Anne Tyler, Soul Full of Coal Dust, The Switch

 

Nevermore reviewed a wide range of books ranging from presidential honor to small town Appalachia.

First up was the locally set Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith. Our reader was prepared to like this book but ended up loving it. In particular, she cites the wonderful description of the dynamics of the family who are at the center of the story. This is a sweet, intimate look at the details of a difficult life. Set in the local coalfields with locations both fictional and real, this book is easy to read and gets into the details of peoples’ lives.

The small-town America theme continues with A Country Doctor Writes:  Conditions: Diseases and Other Life Circumstances by Hans Duvefelt. This memoir by the Swedish born, Maine based doctor really captured the attention of our reader. She was particularly struck by his candor – he does not hesitate to write about his mistakes and the things that he puzzles over and learns from other people. Dr. Duvefelt lives in northern Maine, almost into Canada, and this book of one hundred short essays chronicles his life and work in a small, northern American town. Our reader was fascinated by this book, and highly recommends it.

 

The next book reviewed was Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic by Joanne Freeman.  This political history book examines how the idea of honor guided the Founding Fathers. They knew that because the country was so new, if it was not respected and honored, that it would not succeed. Their honor was wrapped up in their reputations, but the honor of the country came first and foremost. Some of the ways they dealt with honor was through gossip, or ghost written columns. More shocking to modern audiences was the fact that you could physically beat, or cane someone if you were senior to them in Congress. Duels were reserved for the elite, but if you turned one down your reputation would be hurt as you were considered a coward. The honorable way out was to negotiate an apology by using a Second, or emissary. One of the most famous duels in American history is the Hamilton/Burr duel. The author agrees with the historical consensus that Burr was the one who was truly defeated in that duel, because while Hamilton was killed, Burr’s reputation was destroyed forever. Hamilton got the honor; he had the biggest funeral that the country had ever seen, and Burr had to flee to the American West and then to Europe. The emphasis of the book is about how much the founding fathers relied on honor, well above their personal reputations.  Nevermore agreed that would be a nice thing to have today (besides the caning and the duels.)

 

The same reader recommends both Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, which clocks in at a hefty 800 pages, and Richard Brookhiser’s Alexander Hamilton:  American – a shorter book at 217 pages, but packed with plenty of details about the Founding Father and his legacy.

Our next reader tackled Matters of Choice, the third book in the Cole Trilogy by Noah Gordon. Set closer to present day than the first two books, this story weaves women’s rights in as a central theme. The book is set in Boston where the main character is a woman physician performing abortions, and being chased by antiabortionists.  In the midst of getting a divorce, and reeling from professional rejection, she goes to her country house in the mountains of Western Massachusetts to get away from it all, and finds an unexpectedly rich life in the small town. The doctor does not like abortion, but feels that she must be involved to save women’s lives. This book was not the reader’s favorite, but it does wrap up the trilogy, which she highly recommends, beautifully.

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler has been passed around and enjoyed by several readers. This charming, witty book is about a man named Micah who is very set in his ways. He does everything perfectly – he cleans something every day and feels that he is a failure if there is even a spot of grime on something that he has just cleaned. Every day he has his specific things that he does and follows his routine strictly. In contrast, his sisters all have normal families and households. Micah has a woman-friend who is gently trying to get Micah to marry her, to which Micah is clueless. Micah’s vision is also bad and he keeps seeing things that aren’t there. On top of that, one day a teenager shows up at the house claiming that Micah is his father. Overall, our reader thought this is a great book and recommends it highly.

 

Our next reader took on Soul Full of Coal Dust by Chris Hamby.  This investigative journalism book was reviewed by another reader a few weeks ago, and like that reader, this one recommends the book highly. What she was taken with was the story of how the coal companies had found lawyers and doctors loyal to the company and stacked the decks against the miners. The coal companies were undermining the laws passed to keep the miners safe, even gaming the air quality readings. They had taken this tenet of the law to mean that they should do whatever they should do to win, which included choosing only the reports that support their viewpoint. The lawyer at the center of the book put in for discovery which the coal companies fought as it would force them to divulge all of the information that they had. The story is about how gradually the laws changed over years, and in particular how the litigation by the miner, Gary Fox, became a rallying point for change. In the end legislation was introduced that made mandatory air quality monitoring black boxes that were harder to tamper with.  The Labor Department also passed a regulation that everyone on both sides of black lung cases had to release all of their reports/documents. After these changes, many of the cases started to go in favor of the miners. Our reader was struck in particular by the quality and depth of the research that went into this book. She found it was incredible. 

 

On a lighter note, the same reader breezed through The Switch by Beth O’Leary. The main character is Leena Cotton, a young, London based professional whose sister has just died of cancer. Leena is overworking herself in order to forget the tragedy until she is forced by her employer to take time off. Leena’s mother and grandmother, Eileen, live in the small Yorkshire town of Hambly and Leena decides to go there, and soon becomes friends with the surly neighbor. Eileen decides that she would like to take another stab at the single life, and takes Leena’s place in London. Grandma teaches her young roommates how to cook, while at the same time learning about the single life in a big city. Our reader found this novel to be light and fluffy, but rather fun.

 

Nevermore: Winspear, Possibility Dogs, Atwood, Lee Smith, Erik Larson

Reported by Kristin

Maisie Dobbs is a favorite character of a few Nevermore readers, and this time she showed up in An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear. This series takes place after the Great War in England, as Maisie undertakes criminal investigations with a psychological bent. This outing has her researching a small village in Kent, and is full of the historical detail that readers of the series enjoy. Our reader recommends starting at the beginning with the first book, simply titled Maisie Dobbs.

Returning to non-fiction, another Nevermore member read and enjoyed The Possibility Dogs: What I Learned from Second-Chance Rescues about Service, Hope, and Healing by Susannah Charleston. The author was involved in search-and-rescue operations and began to find shelter dogs who had the potential to be of service to people with disabilities. Our reader found that she was amazed at how much the dogs have to learn to do, and found their capabilities heartwarming.

Graphic novels pop up in the group once in a while, and today it was Angel CatBird by Margaret Atwood. The author of the well-known The Handmaid's Tale and the more recent sequel The Testaments, Atwood wrote this fantasy novel of genetic engineer Strig Feleedus who ends up as part of his own science experiment based on cat and owl DNA. Strig becomes a superhero in this first part of a trilogy. Our reader noted that Atwood wrote this book as a bit of an apology to birds as she realized that her indoor-outdoor cats over the years had been stalking and killing avian prey. This book comes recommended if you would like something just a little different.

Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith has been passed around to several book club members, and is usually praised highly. Ivy Rowe was born in the Virginia mountains and never ventures far, but tells her tale of Appalachia through a series of letters. Written using local dialogue, this novel is touching and very identifiable to those who live in this region.

Finally, a reader discussed Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. With two interwoven stories of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the telegraph, and Hawley Crippen, a man who probably would have gotten away with murder if he just hadn't chopped up his wife. As news was able to be communicated more quickly due to the telegraph, the murder investigation travelled across the Atlantic faster than the sailing ships could. This strange juxtaposition of stories sounds odd, but it works as Larson is skilled at telling the tales of quirky people.