The Gone Dead

Anticipointment.

That's a dumb word we use in TV news sometimes when a promo for a story gets you excited, then the story itself lets you down.

This book had a lot of promise, but not a lot of payoff.

I've read a lot of southern literature lately. Something feels good about books set in the deep south. I like the setting as character and there are a lot of incredible authors in the genre right now. So, I gravitated towards this book.

In it, a woman returns to the Mississippi Delta decades after her father's death. She hasn't been back since, but she inherited his old house and decides it's time to return, however briefly, to prepare the house for sale and maybe solve the mystery of  her father's death.

An up and coming black poet, Cliff was found dead in his yard in what the police declared as an accident or maybe even a suicide. Cliff's family and his daughter Billie never quite believed it and, given the racism of the 1970s when he died, she had good reason to doubt the official story. As she talks to people who knew her dad and meets up with a scholar who has written about his life, she also learns for the first time that she had gone missing the hours after her father's death. Why had no one mentioned it? Where did she go? And, who was covering it up now?

Are you anticipating? I was too. Then, I found myself anticipating and anticipating and never quite receiving the payout.

It's not that the story is not interesting. It is. But, it just takes too long to get to the good stuff. And, when it does, it follows the most obvious track.

I was anticipointed... And, wish I would have bailed out halfway through.

Three Women

This one. This is going to be hard to describe. But, I just shared with the woman who recommended it to me that this book was "so fascinating and so uncomfortable and I couldn't stop reading it."

I should probably explain.

First, a shout out to the woman who told me I should read this book. Kristi is crazy smart, well-read and wonderful. Her dad is one of three on one of the most popular radio shows in Spokane and I'm lucky enough to have met Kristi through him. She asked if I wanted to borrow it, then dropped it off at my house. But, she didn't just leave it on the porch in a plastic bag, which is what I would have done. She put it in a cute bag, added a card and included a candle - because she said she thought I would appreciate reading a book with a new candle burning. Isn't that wonderful? It really has nothing to do with the book, but I just wanted to say we should all be a little more like Kristi.

Anyway.

This book is billed as a revolutionary, groundbreaking, unflinching look at the concept of female desire. Over centuries, female desire has been misunderstood and dismissive. The author of Three Women actually set out to write a book about male desire, only to discover it was female desire that deserved more thoughtful exploration.

So, she dove in.

Taddeo followed the stories of three women in various parts of the country with complicated levels of desire. One woman is in a sexless marriage in which her husband won't even kiss her on the mouth. She aches to be desired and thinks she's found it in an old high school boyfriend. Another is a young woman who, as a teenager, had a sexual relationship with her high school teacher. The last is a beautiful, chic, successful woman whose husband likes to bring others into their relationship and likes to watch her have sex with other men. The book ping pongs between their stories and you feel yourself rise and fall as their emotions become intertwined with the desire they chase.

Guys, it's a lot. At first, it felt like you were reading someone else's diary. As the book continues, though, you feel like you're reading things most people wouldn't write down, let alone be able to admit about themselves. It's cringe-worthy, heartbreaking, fascinating... But, it can be really frustrating, too, and really hard to read.

Even Oprah said this book was groundbreaking feminism. I found what I learned disappointing. Not that the book was disappointing - not at all. But, what I took away was that women followed their sexual desire, couldn't detach from the emotional connections and found themselves in ashes while the men with the same desires simply walked away. The teacher, in fact, was named North Dakota Teacher of the Year. I found that - the reality of how female desire is portrayed and received - incredibly disheartening.

I may take away something completely different than you would. I feel like this book, more than most, is colored by a thick layer of your own personal experience. I also think there's a hell of a lot more that needs to be de-stigmatized about the way women satisfy their sexual desires.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

It's weird to be critical of a book based on such an incredible story of love and survival.

It's weird to be critical of a book that moves so quickly, you finish it on a single Phoenix to Spokane flight.

I'm about to do both.

Let's get weird.

I've seen this book for awhile now and never picked it up. I read and studied a lot about the Holocaust in college - fiction writing and historical - and something has to really stand out now to get me back to it. But, I was about to board a plane without a book and needed something to pass the time. This looked compelling enough and it was in paperback, so what did I have to lose?

The novel is based on the true story of a man imprisoned at Birkeneau who takes a job as the man who tattoos numbers on new prisoners at nearby Auschwitz. The job feels like cooperation with the SS, but it's a way to survive and even be given some "perks" in a truly horrific place. While carrying out his job, he meets and falls in love with a fellow prisoner. The rest of the book is their story of survival and a story of how they found love in the midst of human tragedy.

Is it powerful? In story, yes. But, for me, the pages simply flew by. It's not that I'm insensitive or even immune to the horrors that took place. But, the writing simply lacked the depth a story like this deserves. I can't explain why, but it left me wanting more. More lessons. More insight. More... depth.

A Holocaust novel should not be a quick read. But, I was uplifted (spoiler alert - but, it's written on the back cover, too) by the fact that their love did survive the camps.

Men We Reaped

I grew up white, middle class, in a city/state/region of the country that doesn't carry the burden of the history of slavery.

Jesmyn Ward's life and DNA couldn't be more different.

If you've read any of her fiction, you know Ward has the sins of the American South deep in her bloodline. If you've taken the time to anyone like her, you know that history is nearly impossible to shake.

Ward's memoir lays in all bare: the hate, the fear, the weight... I could never truly know what it's like to grow up black in the South. With Ward's book, you can't - and, shouldn't - look away.

Her story is about the deaths of four young black men. Men she knew, men she loved, even her own brother. They die from violence and from circumstance - and, what they have in common is that their deaths feel inevitable. Ward intertwines the stories of their deaths with the story of her life. It's heartbreaking and heavy. The weight of that history makes a relatively short book feel like it will never end.

"The land the community park is built on... is designated to be used as burial sites so the graveyard can expand as we die," she writes. "One day our graves will swallow our playground. Where we live becomes where we sleep."

It's a book about the scourge of poverty and of being black and poor in the South. About the things we know about and the things no one pays enough attention to. The percentage of black men and women who receive care for mental health is half that of non-Hispanic whites. It's not that they don't experience it; they don't ask for help. And, it's killing them one generation after another.

Ward "escaped" that life in a way few others do. She went to California, went to Stanford, got an education and a glimpse of life away. But, the history of the men she lost and the responsibility to those still there was stronger. She now lives back in Mississippi and writes about it so that maybe the rest of us - even those of us in the opposite corner of the country/spectrum/circumstance - might understand and finally bring about real change.

A Gentleman in Moscow

I totally got it. Then, I didn't. Then, I kind of did at the end.

By "it" I mean I totally get why really brilliant people like Bill and Melinda Gates speak so highly of this book. But, a couple hundred pages in, I didn't get what the hype was about and I desperately wanted this book to end. When it finally did, I thought, "Oh, wow. That's really something."

This is a terribly explained review so far.

Let me elaborate.

A Gentleman in Moscow is about an aristocratic man who collides with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. He angers the leaders of this new way of life and while his life is spared, he is placed under house arrest in a Moscow hotel for the rest of his life. In a story that spans 30 years and even more lifetimes, we see how he shrinks his life into the walls around him. You sense not frustration, but hope, despite the world passing by outside his windows.

Early on, Count Alexander Rostov meets a young girl in the lobby of the hotel. Their sudden and unlikely friendship changes the course of both of their lives forever.

This book is beautifully, eloquently written. It's sad at times, but mostly hopeful. And Count Rostov is simply a lovely character.

But, y'all, it's SO BORING.

The first 200+ pages could be shrunk down to 100 or less and I swear that's just not the impatient TV journalist in me. There's so much unnecessary background and detail. Still, the writing and the characters were too good to let go of. It wasn't really until the last 30 pages or so that I realized I would really enjoy the fact that I read this book -- but, the satisfaction wouldn't come for me until after it was over.