Tag Archives: Friday Reads

Romania, 1989.  Cristian Florescu (17) and his family are barely surviving the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.  There are spies everywhere, and due to a small mistake, now Cristian is forced to spy on his neighbors and the family his mother cleans house for, an American who works for the American Embassy. 

Everyone is suspicious of everyone else, for good reason.  Only Cristian’s grandfather, called Bunu, is willing to speak out loud – but he is ill, and is taking a risk every time he talks.  There is some comedy relief – as Bunu and others delight in jokes about Ceaușescu and the regime.

Cristian finally comes up with an idea that may outsmart the spies – but it could cost him his life.  The horrible conditions – little food, little warmth in winter, suspicions, beatings, despair, the threat of wild dogs – are clearly portrayed.  Cristian wonders if anyone in the U.S. is aware of their circumstances and their level of need.  It has been so hard to visit the home of the American diplomat and know he cannot say anything to ask for help for his country.

The revolution began on Dec. 21, 1989. Cristian joins it.

Includes period photos, references, and an Author’s Note at the back of the book.  This title is fiction and is aimed at high school age readers.

Sepetys, Ruta. (2022). I Must Betray You. Philomel Books.

Gold. Coal. Fire. Water.

C Pam Zhang’s debut, highly acclaimed novel is set in the years following the ’49 Gold Rush. We are introduced to our small cast of characters — a Chinese family — as they choke on grief and coal dust: Ma is gone. Ba is gone, too; gone with her even before he dies in the coal-town shack, starved from life by alcohol and rage. Left behind is his twelve year old daughter, Lucy — our protagonist — and eleven year old Sam.

It is difficult to explain how wonderful this book is without spoiling its intricacies. Through lyrical prose that vacillates between golden and gritty, each carefully chosen word rich-full of marrow, sharp and hard as bones, we follow Lucy and Sam as they try to find footing in a world that does not want them. They are each their parents’ children: Lucy, so much like their mother, even with their father’s eyes, and Sam, so much like their father, even with their mother’s beauty. And, like their parents, they love each other. They hate each other, too. Lucy and Sam were born to this land, but they are treated as though they are strangers and unwelcome guests. The tension of being considered outsider, pushed to the margins of the already liminal territory of the West, is a reverberation that hums behind every page.

I started with the audiobook, first, and it was a challenge: Zhang’s writing is quick, succinct, dreamlike. Her brilliant prose flows through the story like a stream, varying from trickles to floods, and the shifts from scene to scene were dizzying. I borrowed the eBook from the public library and followed along with the narration. After I had read a few chapters in text, I got a sense of the book’s construction and was able to continue solely in audio. Catherine Ho’s voice is dynamic, fluid, haunting; she seems to savor every word, turns them over in her mouth, transforms them. I wasn’t expecting the narrator swap in the middle, but Joel de la Fuente was equally superb: his voice made the soliloquy of history shine, as his character turns the story on its head.

How Much of These Hills is Gold reads like a tale illustrated best by a campfire’s light. An oral history of winking secrets: what is inherited, what is not, what is stolen, what is owed, and what home means. It reads like the best kind of fairy-tale: grim, memorable, familiar, foreign, full of violence and injustice but never entirely devoid of hope.

Zhang, C. P. (2020). How much of these hills is gold. Riverhead Books.

This past weekend I listened to The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living, by Meik Wiking (duration: approximately three hours). Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, narrates with a delightful Danish accent.

You’ve probably heard at least a passing reference to the Danish word hygge (pronounced HOO-GA). According to a blurb on the back cover of the book’s print edition, hygge “loosely translates as a sense of comfort, togetherness, and well-being.” You may even have read an article about hygge—they proliferated during the pandemic when people were struggling with how to feel better about being stuck at home. But according to my new understanding, spending time consuming a whole book about hygge is definitely more hyggelig (the adjectival form of hygge) than spending 5 minutes scanning an article about it!

Wiking spends a lot of time talking about what is and isn’t hygge. Candles and low lighting are hygge. Wool socks and blankets are hygge. Cake, coffee, and chocolate are hygge. Cooking and eating a meal with friends at home is hygge. Bling and boastfulness, on the other hand, aren’t hygge. The idea that “bigger is better” isn’t hygge. And neither is champagne and oysters at a fancy restaurant.

At its most basic level, hygge is about relishing simple, everyday pleasures, especially in the company of close friends and family. The fact that this practice contributes to happiness isn’t an earthshattering revelation, so why do the Danes seem so much better at it than other nationalities? According to Wiking, “What might also be unique for Denmark when it comes to hygge is how much we talk about it, focus on it, and consider it as a defining feature of our cultural identity and an integral part of the national DNA. In other words, what freedom is to Americans, thoroughness to Germans, and the stiff upper lip to the British, hygge is to Danes.”

The intentionality with which Danes approach hygge is undoubtedly one reason Denmark consistently ranks among the happiest nations in the world. But Wiking also points to policy factors, including a good work-life balance and the welfare state, which “reduces uncertainty, worries, and stress in the population.”

Policy change, while worthwhile, is hard and takes time. Hygge, on the other hand, is easy and accessible to all of us if we are so inclined. So if you’ve been feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and unhappy, plan intentionally for a hyggelig evening sometime soon. And if you want to learn more about why Danes are among the happiest people in the world, consider reading or listening to The Little Book of Hygge.

Wiking, Meik. The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living. HarperAudio, 2017.

Looking for Scottish authors in preparation for an upcoming trip, Megan at Francie and Finch pointed me to Louise Welsh, a writer and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Both titles are 1 and 2 in a series that feature a promiscuous, gay auctioneer named Rilke, who works for a struggling auction house in Glasgow. For those who like to listen, Scottish actor Alan Cumming narrates this series to perfection. In both books, Rilke’s company is hired to expedite the sale of a considerable estate with complete discretion.

In The Cutting Room, Bowery Auctions liquidates the home of the wealthy and recently deceased Roddy McKindless. Rilke discovers a collection of snuff photographs hidden in an extensive pornography library. The woman featured in the photos is stuck in his memory. Is she alive or dead and how can he put his mind at ease? In The Second Cut, Rilke follows a tip for a questionable estate sale from his friend JoJo, who turns up dead a few days later. There are additional circumstances that create doubt about the legitimacy of the sale, including the missing matriarch, the intended beneficiary of the auction proceeds. Where do you begin to investigate snuff photography and even though JoJo was known to the police for various recreational activities, why is his death not being investigated as a murder? Rilke’s moral compass compels him to find answers.

Unlike busybody sleuths in cozy mysteries, Rilke moves through the seedy underbelly of Glasgow to investigate with more incentive than sheer nosiness. His professional reputation and livelihood are at stake. The deals he makes to barter information with various characters/criminals often put his life in danger.  The cast created by Welsh is colorful, gritty, and uniquely likeable.  Given the amount of time between the two books, I am hopeful Louise continues writing Rilke stories and that Alan continues narrating them.

Welsh, Louise, The Cutting Room. ‎ Canongate Books Ltd. 2003.
Welsh, Louise, The Second Cut. ‎ Canongate Books Ltd. 2022.

Asher (17) lost his mother a year ago in a car accident.  The semi driver was drunk and ran her off the road.  He did not receive the punishment Asher thinks he deserved, due to a technicality. 

Over the course of the book certain facts and Asher’s plans are revealed to the reader. Asher has started group therapy, in 2 different groups, since he has made no progress in accepting his loss.  He befriends an older gentleman, Henry, from his first group, and then he befriends Sloane and Will, close to his own age, from the second.

All three agree to travel with him from New Jersey to Memphis, so he can take his long-distance girlfriend to the prom.  That’s what he tells them but he really is planning to kill the man who killed his mother.

Believe it or not, this is an upbeat book, with the final plan lurking in the distance.  They accept and bond with each other as they travel.  There are jokes, laughing, supporting each other when needed.

They have fun.  Ultimately, what will Asher do?

This book was on my mind for several days after I finished reading it.  Something about how the characters interact and how they express themselves made it hard to forget.

Reilly, K. J. Four for the Road. Atheneum, 2022.

If I stand near the edge of anything, I think about stepping off.

(165)

It is called gastrointestinal stasis, and it is a common cause of death amongst rabbits.

To the untrained and inexperienced eye — for example, to children, who take on these complex creatures as pets, with no money of their own to provide the best quality of life — the rabbit, as it is phrased in the classic book Watership Down, just stops running. Suddenly. Frozen, with eyes open.

Her name was Pumpkin, and she was a very good rabbit. I picked her because she was soft and reddish-brown, and because her lop-ears had yet to lop. She was smart and gentle and friendly, and I loved her. She stopped running and was dead before I woke. To me, eleven years old and weeping, there didn’t seem to be a cause.

Pets are, if we are lucky, our first introduction to death. They are never our last.

Gilda — a nearly-thirty, atheist lesbian — has death anxiety. It probably started with the sudden death of her childhood pet rabbit, Flop. It doesn’t help that she has major depression, panic attacks, and suicidal thoughts. Or that her parents are ignoring her brother’s spiraling alcoholism, or that she has recently been fired. It also doesn’t help that, in an effort to find affordable mental health counseling, she finds herself accidentally interviewed and hired for a job as a secretary — in a Catholic church. It also doesn’t help that reason for the job opening was because Grace, a sweet and well-loved woman well into her 80s, died. Or that dear sweet Grace may have been murdered. Or that Gilda, in a comedy of errors, assumes Grace’s identity through emails to Grace’s old friend Rosemary — who doesn’t know that Grace is dead.

Everyone in this Room will Someday be Dead is a poignant study of what it means to be a functioning adult, the ennui of the end of young adulthood, and the wrenching agony of growth. Austin’s writing is sharp, concise, and emotional; although at times, Gilda as a character and narrator frustrated me. It is sometimes difficult to be at a further stage of healing and growth than a character, maybe because I cannot offer them any advice or reassurance; or, maybe, because Gilda’s story hits a little too close to home. At times, I was reminded of Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This. Both books offer the same blunt and cathartic exploration of mental health, death, and the grief that comes from both (the grief from loss of the self, of relationships, of experiences).

Going into the book, I sort of expected a dark comedy or a mystery story (I have been very interested in mysteries lately). Everyone in this Room was neither. True, there were bright and shining moments of comedy that pierced the dark morbidity of Gilda’s story, such as when, food rotten in her fridge at home, she steals a bag of crackers from the church — and finds out she has stolen and eaten a bag of communion wafers (49-50). The main plot in the book is ripe for comedy, and Austin plays with that without trivializing or overshadowing the novel’s very serious tone and subject matter. These (brief) moments of levity stand to make the unflinching look at all of our mortality that much more impactful. There is an old adage, “make them laugh before you make them cry” — Austin succeeds in this, whole-heartedly and unabashed. I cried more than I laughed, yes, but I did laugh. It was a catharsis.

I think that I will leave you with Mary Oliver’s poem, “When Death Comes.” May we all accept the inevitable with grace, and grow kinder for it.

Austin, Emily R. Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. Atria Books, 2021.