The Book Whisperer: No Struggle With The Red Address Book!

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche says, “I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.” As I read The Red Address Book and learned Doris Alm’s story over her 96-years, I thought of Blanche’s statement. Doris, too, often depended upon the kindness of strangers.

Sofia Lundberg has created a sensation in her debut novel, The Red Address Book. Published in January 2019, the book is in 32 countries already.

Doris Alm receives an address book from her beloved father on her tenth birthday in 1928. Her pappa told her, “You can collect all your friends in it. Everyone you meet during your life. In all the exciting places you’ll visit. So you don’t forget.” Under A, he had already written his name: Eric Alm along with his address and phone number for his workshop.

Thus begins Doris’s collecting of names. The book begins when Doris is 96, living along in Stockholm in an apartment. Ulrika, a caregiver, visits once a day to help Doris. Unfortunately, Ulrika views her visits as a job, a chore, only. She is brusque and slapdash in her movements, upsetting Doris’s carefully placed items on the table and using a beautiful and fragile cup for her tea. Even the meal she prepares for Doris becomes a mashed-up slush from the microwave, completely unappetizing.

Doris does have a bright spot in her week: Skype visits with her great-niece Jenny who lives in San Francisco. A former caregiver had helped Doris get a laptop computer and taught her how to use Skype. These weekly conversations are a joy to both Doris and Jenny.

As Doris goes through the address book, she looks at names, drawing her finger across the names as if touching the people they represent. Sadly, next to each name is the word DEAD. Reading the names, starting with her father’s name, Doris remembers each person. Her idyllic childhood comes to an abrupt end shortly after her tenth birthday when her father dies in an accident.

When Doris is thirteen, her mother sends her to work for a woman known as Madame. Doris is bewildered. Her mother simply says, “You’re a big girl now, Doris. You have to understand. It’s a good job I’ve found for you. And as you can see, the address isn’t too far away. We’ll still be able to see each other.”

Upon entering Madame’s home, Doris knows she will be working for a wealthy woman, and she also recognizes that her work will be hard. Madame entertains each evening. As she works quietly in the background, gathering glasses and clearing up, Doris learns about equal pay for women, the right to education, philosophy, art, and literature. She must also protect herself from unwanted male attention.

Working for Madame, Doris meets Gosta, an artist whom Madame admires. Gosta becomes an important figure in Doris’s life over the years. He is gay, so their relationship is like father and daughter.

Madame, who is French, suddenly decides she is moving back to Paris. She dismisses all of the servants, but chooses Doris to go with her. Gosta remains in Stockholm; he and Doris correspond sporadically throughout their lives. After a long separation, Doris and Gosta are together again and Doris lives with him as his housekeeper in Stockholm until his death.

Before Doris leaves for Paris, she visits her mother and younger sister Agnes one more time, little realizing this is the last time she will see her mother. Her mother kisses Doris and whispers, “I wish you enough. Enough sun to light up your days, enough rain that you appreciate the sun. Enough joy to strengthen your soul, enough pain that you can appreciate life’s small moments of happiness. And enough friends that you can manage a farewell now and then.”

In Paris one day as she walks down a street, Doris is swept up by Jean Ponsard, a famous French designer. He is taken by her youth and beauty and makes her one of his models. Thus, Doris leaves Madame and begins her work as a model.

Much of her life continues in this manner: sudden change where she must depend upon the kindness of strangers.

While working as a model, she meets Allan Smith, an American. They fall in love and spend as much time together as they can. Then suddenly, Allan is gone without a word, leaving Doris heartbroken and confused.

As we readers learn about Doris’s past, we also learn about her present-day life. She falls in her home, breaking her hip which, of course, requires her to go to the hospital. She does manage after a few days to have her computer brought to her so she can Skype with Jenny. At 96, Doris knows she does not have much time left. Before she broke her hip, she had begun typing out her life’s story on the computer. She has printed some of the pages, but much the story remains on the computer.

Jenny becomes more and more alarmed about Doris’s condition, so she packs a bag for her and her two-year-old daughter and flies to Stockholm, leaving her husband to work and care for the two sons at home. Obviously, this unexpected journey leaves Willie and the boys a bit bewildered. Jenny convinces Willie the trip is more than necessary.

Doris lives a full life full of many changes. In encountering strangers, some are genuinely helpful and kind while others take advantage of her when she is helpless. Read the story to discover those who are kind and those who are not. Doris tells her story through the names in her red address book and carries her readers along for each adventure.

In an interview, Sofia Lundberg explains her own great-aunt Doris inspired her to write The Red Address Book. Her great-aunt Doris also had a red address book and she drew a line through the names of those who died and wrote DEAD next to the crossed-out names. Lundberg goes on to say, “It broke my heart to realize how lonely she must have felt.” See the picture below of Sofia Lundberg and her own great-aunt Doris.

Read The Red Address Book in order to learn Doris’s whole story. Discover what happens to Doris’s mother, sister Agnes, and how her relationship with her great-niece Jenny becomes so important to both of them. And perhaps most important of all, learn what happened to Allan.

For those readers who seek an Up Lit title, The Red Address Book will fit the bill.

The Book Whisperer Struggles With Reading The Orphan Master’s Son

David Ignatius in his book review for the Washington Post of The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson wrote: “A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That’s the genius of The Orphan Master’s Son. Adam Johnson has taken the paper-mache creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable.” Ignatius goes on to say “this is a novel worth getting excited about.”

Michiko Kakutani in writing for Books of the Times also praises The Orphan Master’s Son. In fact, readers can find any number of reviews recommending the book and commending Johnson for his insight into North Korea.

On the other hand, I have been struggling to get through the 450 pages of The Orphan Master’s Son. I am continuing to read because the book is for the Circle of Readers’ March discussion. Reviewers describe Johnson’s writing as vivid and with a comic sense.

The Orphan Master’s Son employs both the bildungsroman and picaresque techniques to move the story along. Jun Do, think John Doe, is driven by his quest to locate his beautiful mother. In order to fulfill his dream of finding his mother, he takes on the identity of another man, going so far as to live in his house. Jun Do is also a young man gaining his worldly education, another trait of bildungsroman stories.

Johnson’s novel falls into the picaresque category because of the episodic nature of Jun Do’s adventures. The picaresque novel features “a wandering individual of low standing who happens into a series of adventures among people of various higher classes, often relying on his wits and a little dishonesty to get by.”

The Orphan Master’s Son falls into two distinct parts. In the first, Jun Do who has grown up in an orphanage, but who reminds everyone that he is not an orphan. His father was the master at the orphanage, so he, Jun Do, is different from the other boys there. Jun Do becomes a soldier and is sent to language school where he learns English. He then is put on a ship with radio equipment to listen in to broadcasts and transmissions from ships at sea.

Jun Do’s adventures are numerous and most of them are vile. They include kidnapping, killing, and lying. He even makes a trip to Texas as part of a diplomatic delegation.

In the second part of the book, Jun Do becomes Commander Ga and “the replacement husband of Sun Moon, a famous actress.” Readers will hardly be able to believe how Sun Moon treats Jun Do, making him live in the dirt-floor basement for a time before allowing him to live in the house.

In researching the book, I discovered that Johnson intended the book to be a short story. I think he would have been wise to keep it that way instead of making it into a 450-page tome that wanders and loses many readers despite the high praise from the critics like David Ignatius who wrote: “I haven’t liked a new novel this much in years, and I want to share the simple pleasure of reading the book.” Sadly, I have not found that same pleasure.

This blog on The Orphan Master’s Son is the first one I have written when I had not read the entire novel. I have relied on reviews for information about Jun Do’s later adventures. Johnson has done his research and captures North Korea with all of its ills and he describes the terrors of a totalitarian regime well. I continue to strive to finish the novel.

Read more about Adam Johnson on his page at Stanford University: https://creativewriting.stanford.edu/people/adam-johnson. Johnson is the Phil and Penny Knight Professor in Creative Writing at Stanford. In addition to The Orphan Master’s Son which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, he has written for Esquire, GQ, Playboy, and Harper’s Magazine.

 

 

 

The Book Whisperer Explores a Novel About a Transgender Child

The Books Sandwiched In committee, part of the Friends of the Tulsa City-County Libraries Board, nominated 26 books to be considered for six review slots in the spring 2019 series. The committee members nominate books; members then read as many of those books as they can before voting on the six for the reviews. The books selected for the spring 2019 series are listed below along with the reviewers of each book.

March 4 – Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover; Reviewer: Krista Waldron, long-time TPS English teacher

March 11 – Lincoln’s Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency by Dan Abrams and David Fisher; Reviewer: Bill Kellough, former District Judge and retired lawyer

March 18 – This Is How It Always Is: A Novel by Laurie Frankel; Reviewer: Chaplain Steven L. Williams, All Souls Unitarian Church

March 25 – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari; Reviewer: Eldon Eisenach, retired political science professor and Friends board member

April 1 – The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow; Reviewer: John Hamill, his most recent book, co-authored with John Erling, is “Voices of Oklahoma”

April 8 – Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World-and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling; Reviewer: Rich Fisher, “Studio Tulsa” host, KWGS Public Radio 89.5

 This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel is the focus of the Book Whisperer’s review today. Frankel’s novel has received much praise and numerous awards including People Magazine’s Top 10 Books of 2017, BookBrowse’s The 20 Best Books of 2017, and Amazon’s Best Literature and Fiction of 2017. Reese Witherspoon chose This Is How It Always Is for her online book club.

Emily Dickinson wrote “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Clearly, Frankel’s book is a novel, not poetry, but Dickinson’s sentiment came to mind as I was reading This Is How It Always Is because Frankel writes with such honesty and strength about a difficult subject.

Reese Witherspoon describes the effect of Frankel’s book: “Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected.” I felt the same way as I read This Is How It Always Is since I had little experience in reading about transgender children.

After having four boys including identical twins, Rosie and Penn, but especially Rosie, hope for a girl. Rosie moves the bed to the middle of the room and puts a wooden spoon under the bed in order to enhance her chances of conceiving a girl.  Now, Rosie is a physician, so she knows these attempts are merely old wives’ tales, but she thinks it won’t hurt.

When Claude, the fifth boy, is born Rosie and Penn are glad to have another healthy child and give up on their dream of having a girl. Rosie has a name chosen for the girl who did not arrive: Poppy. Poppy was Rosie’s younger sister who died of cancer when she was ten and Rosie was twelve.

Life for Penn and Rosie is busy with five boisterous boys. While Rosie works in a local hospital ER at night, Penn stays home with the boys and works on his novel. Each night as he puts the boys to bed, they all gather in one room, varying from one boy’s room to another according to their moods, so that Penn can tell them a bedtime story. He creates Grumwald and each night tells fairy tales about Grumwald and his kingdom.

When Claude is five, he comes downstairs one morning, ready for kindergarten, but wearing a dress. Now, Claude and the other boys are all precocious, but Claude has a particularly large vocabulary for a young child; he can also cook with supervision. Claude’s brothers don’t mind that he is wearing a dress, but they do not want him to be ridiculed at school.

Finally, Claude is persuaded that he can wear whatever he wishes at home, but he has to be more circumspect outside the home. As the days go on, Rosie and Penn a well as Claude’s brothers realize that Claude is not playacting or playing dress-up: he feels he is a girl and wishes to dress like one.

Ben, oldest brother, says, “They [other kids] will make fun of him. It’s okay for him to wear what he wants at home, but you can’t send him out in the world like that. You don’t understand.”

Roo, the next brother chimes in with “you’re his parents. It’s your job to protect him.”

This issue of dressing like a girl is only the beginning of the questions all of the family will eventually have to address. What if Claude is not simply going through a phase, but genuinely sees himself as a girl; he even chooses Poppy as his name because he says that “I love Poppy even though I never met her.”

Poppy lets his hair grow out. Rosie and Penn talk with the teacher, principal, and Mr. Tongo, a counselor. They agree that Claude will now be Poppy; he will use the restroom in the nurse’s office, so that’s one hurdle crossed.

Rosie and Penn recognize the dangers that Poppy will face, especially when a young woman is brought to the ER when Rosie is on duty and the medical personnel discover the young woman has male genitalia and that is the likely cause of the attack she sustained.

Rosie becomes more and more frightened for Poppy. She and Penn decide to move the family from Milwaukee to Seattle where they will start fresh and everyone there will always know Poppy as Poppy. Obviously, readers can understand the family’s plan even with its flaws. Readers will also be astute enough to recognize that simply moving to another state far away will not solve all the problems.

We all know that families keep secrets. We also know that those secrets come back to haunt even those we hope most to protect. What will happen when Poppy’s secret is revealed?

Frankel has written a compelling story about a family with a child who knows that he has arrived as the wrong gender. How the family copes with that knowledge creates a story worth reading.

At the end of the story, Poppy, now ten, is talking with her friend and next-door neighbor Aggie, also ten. Aggie asks, “Are you a boy or a girl?”

Poppy responds, “I don’t know. Something else instead. I’m all of the above. And I’m more to come. It’s complicated. I guess I’m complicated. I’m hard to explain. I’m kind of a weirdo.”

Both Aggie and Poppy are smiling by this time and Aggie explains, “I’m the weirdo.”

They agree they are both weird and perhaps that’s why they are such good friends.

Laurie Frankel has written two other books: Goodbye For Now and The Atlas of Love. On her Web site, http://www.lauriefrankel.net/, readers will discover Frankel’s blog and a section titled “Bits and Pieces” which includes interviews and essays.

Frankel has a transgender child, but This Is How I Always Is is not autobiographical. She created a whole new family facing the difficulties and joys of raising a child who is different.

 

 

The Book Whisperer Enjoys Stories Set in Bookshops!

After reading and blogging about Up Lit, I searched for books in that category. I had already read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gale Honeyman, A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr by Frances Maynard, and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. All of these books are named along with many others as part of Up Lit: “novels and nonfiction that is optimistic rather than feelgood.”

Before I read The Lost for Words Bookshop, I read an interview with author Stephanie Butland. She started her writing career at 37 after being diagnosed with cancer. Butland explained that she has always wanted to write; the cancer diagnosis pushed her toward her longtime goal of writing. She first began blogging and then wrote two memoirs about her “dance with cancer”: How I Said Bah! To Cancer: A Guide to Thinking, Laughing, Living, and Dancing Your Way Through and Thrive: The Bah! Guide to Wellness After Cancer. Then she turned to fiction.

I was drawn to The Lost for Words Bookshop because I like to read stories set in bookstores. The story begins with Loveday, the main character, getting off the bus to go to work at the Lost for Words Bookshop in York. She spies a book of poetry by Brian Patten lying on the pavement. As a book lover and bookstore clerk, Loveday cannot allow the book to lie on the pavement and be trampled into dust. She picks it up and looks about her to see if anyone nearby has dropped the book.

Once she got to the Lost for Words Bookshop, Loveday made a sign that read as follows:” Found: Grinning Jack by Brian Patten. If you are the (neglectful) owner, come in and ask for Loveday.” Loveday posted the notice in the window and that was that.

Slowly, over the course of the story, readers learn about Loveday’s background. Bultand gives little bits and pieces until readers can understand the whole story. Loveland began working at the Lost for Words Bookshop as a teenager and has stayed on once she left school. She is a reader and a lover of books; her people skills are somewhat lacking. Is that because she is unsure of herself, just doesn’t like people, or she wishes to hide away?

Archie, the bookshop owner, is a kindly man who enjoys people and feels protective of Loveday. Archie is a larger-than-life character who owns a mansion and runs the bookstore as a hobby rather than a way to make a living. Loveday has created a Web site for the store and she and Archie use it to sell rare books, signed editions, and first editions. Although the bookshop is not a charity shop, people will leave boxes of books at the door, especially students of the nearby college who are leaving town at the end of a semester.

Loveday goes through the books and discards those which cannot be sold and puts the others on tables for sale. The fact that people leave books at the store creates a little mystery when some books from Loveday’s past begin showing up a few at a time. She cannot think who could be leaving the books and just the books themselves unsettle her because they are from her childhood home.

Loveday has a brief fling with Rob, a graduate student, who turns out to be violent and controlling. He also tells Loveday that he takes medication which makes the reader think he is bi-polar. Occasionally, Rob will tell Loveday that he has not taken his medicine or that he needs to take it, but readers can clearly see that Rob is a danger to Loveday. She quickly discovers that fact for herself and distances herself from Rob.

Then one day, Nathan Avebury enters the bookshop because he has seen the sign about the Brian Patten poetry book. He retrieves his book and invites Loveday to a poetry reading night at a nearby pub. She simply puts the notice he gives her on the bulletin board and ignores the invitation that Nathan clearly meant for her even though she writes poetry herself and has notebooks filled with her creativity.

After an especially nasty encounter with Rob as Loveday is locking up the shop for the day, she wheels her bike to the pub and goes upstairs to the poetry reading. Her main thought is to get away from Rob at that point. Nathan is glad to see her; he runs the poetry readings and assigns people their places in the roster. The two have a good time at the poetry reading, but Loveday continues to keep Nathan at arm’s length.

Over time and through various circumstances which readers need to discover for themselves, Loveday finds the courage to recite one of her poems at the pub. Loveday and Nathan’s relationship is deepening. Still, Loveday pulls back and keeps much of her early life a secret from Nathan as well as anyone else she knows, including Archie, or so she thinks.

Loveday is damaged and clings to her spare existence as a protective device. When she allows Nathan into her life, she begins to see that relationships do not have to be all one-sided or violent. Still, she is hesitant to share her secrets. She is suspicious that Rob has somehow found the books from her childhood home and is taunting her by leaving them at the store. Then she suspects Nathan of doing it. Readers can see the books are unsettling, especially the cookbook that also holds a postcard that she feels sure has a message written in her mother’s handwriting.

Loveday tells very little about herself; when others ask about her family, she simply states that her father is dead and she does not know where her mother is. She quickly turns the conversation back to the other person by redirecting questions to find out about that person, thus putting herself in the background again.

One reviewer on Amazon calls The Lost for Words Bookshop “a compelling, irresistible, and heart-rending novel, perfect for all book lovers.” The Book Whisperer agrees and recommends The Lost for Words Bookshop as a compelling story.

Find Stephanie Butland on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephaniebutlandauthor/.

 

The Book Whisperer Discovers a GEM!

In a recent blog post, the Book Whisperer addressed Up Lit, which the Guardian calls “novels and nonfiction that is optimistic rather than feelgood.” Harper Collins Publishers Australia identifies Up Lit as “books that give us hope.” When I read about Anne Youngson’s debut novel Meet me at the Museum and further read that it falls into the genre of Up Lit, I was intrigued. Then I read some reviewers compared Meet me at the Museum to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Other comparisons to Our Souls at Night and 84, Charing Cross Road sealed the deal for me and I immediately requested Meet me at the Museum from the library.

Luckily, I did not have to wait long for Meet me at the Museum to arrive at my branch library with my name emblazoned on the spine. On the same day that I checked out Youngson’s book, I also checked out six other books I had requested. Now, I knew I could not read all seven books in two weeks and several of them including Youngson’s book could not be rechecked since others were on the waiting list. Still, I optimistically checked them all out.

When I got home, I displayed the books on the dining table and looked them over so I could choose which one to begin first. I started with Paris by the Book and read thirty pages. Unfortunately, the story did not grab my attention even though the descriptions I had read interested me. I set the book aside and picked up Meet me at the Museum.

And I am glad I made the switch!

Anne Youngson retired early from working in the auto industry because she has always wanted to write. She chose to write an epistolary novel, exchanges of letters between Tina Hapgood, a British farmer’s wife, and Anders Larsen, a museum curator in Denmark. An unexpected pregnancy propels Tina into marriage to Edward Hapgood, farmer. In the 1960s, pressure from both sets of parents make Tina believe that marriage is the only option for a pregnant teen.

As a result, Tina ends up in a life not of her own choosing. Not only does Tina keep the house tidy and meals cooked, but she also steps in to help with all the farm work. Together, Tina and Edward raise three children: Tam, Andrew, and Mary, now adults themselves and working on the farm in one capacity or another. Tina does not stop to think about her life and how it has turned out until her lifelong friend Bella dies of cancer.

Bella and Tina have always planned to go to Denmark to see the Tollund Man. They learned about the Tollund Man in 1964 when Professor Glob wrote a book titled The Bog People and dedicated it to his daughter and thirteen of her classmates who included Bella and Tina. Bella and Tina tell each other that one day they will travel to Denmark to see the Tollund Man. Unfortunately, they never get in sync on when to go and then Bella falls ill and dies of cancer.

Bella’s death starts Tina on a new path, one of self-examination, something she has not done since her teenage years. The result is that she writes a letter to Professor Glob who would now be over 100 years old. Tina’s letter falls into the hands of Anders Larsen who replies to her rather curtly and signs the letter “The Curator.”

Oddly, Tina feels compelled to write “The Curator” again and so a correspondence begins. Letters that began formally with “Dear Mr. Curator” and ending with “Sincerely, Tina Hopgood” and “Dear Mrs. Hopgood ending with “Regards, Anders Larsen, Curator,” give way to less formal beginnings and endings on both their parts.

Through the letters, Tina and Anders begin to open up about their lives, including their sorrows, and their joys. Anders suggests after the two have exchanged letters through the post for a time that they still write the letters, but attach them in emails to make them more immediately accessible. After some thought, Tina agrees, but she also says if she has something to send him, she will put it into a letter through the post.

In describing Meet me at the Museum, I would rely on words like poignant, hopeful, curious, charm, hypnotic, and soothing. As Anders and Tina continue to exchange letters, but never actually meeting in person, I kept hoping they would meet and look at the Tollund Man together as Bella and Tina had planned to do for so many years.

Seamus Heaney wrote “The Tollund Man,” a poem which fits with Tina and Bella’s story since the first line is “Some day I will go to Aarhus….” Readers can see the poem in English and Danish at this link: http://tollundman.dk/heaney.asp.

“The Tollund Man” by Seamus Heaney

I Some day I will go to Aarhus To see his peat-brown head, The mild pods of his eye-lids, His pointed skin cap. In the flat country near by Where they dug him out, His last gruel of winter seeds Caked in his stomach, Naked except for The cap, noose and girdle, I will stand a long time. Bridegroom to the goddess, She tightened her torc on him And opened her fen, Those dark juices working Him to a saint’s kept body, Trove of the turfcutters’ Honeycombed workings. Now his stained face Reposes at Aarhus.

II I could risk blasphemy, Consecrate the cauldron bog Our holy ground and pray Him to make germinate The scattered, ambushed Flesh of labourers, Stockinged corpses Laid out in the farmyards, Tell-tale skin and teeth Flecking the sleepers Of four young brothers, trailed For miles along the lines. III Something of his sad freedom As he rode the tumbril Should come to me, driving, Saying the names Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard, Watching the pointing hands Of country people, Not knowing their tongue. Out here in Jutland In the old man-killing parishes I will feel lost, Unhappy and at home.

Readers will no doubt wonder if Tina and Anders meet and wonder too about the sorrows and joys both have experienced in their lives. Read Meet me at the Museum to discover the true beauty of Up Lit and to discover optimism still lives among the raspberries. I’ll leave readers with one of Ander’s reminders to Tina: “Please do not be angry with the circumstances of your life … nothing is so fixed it cannot be altered.”

I want everyone to read Meet me at the Museum!