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.
