February Books 2019 - rockspringucc.org...February Books 2019 My Sister, the Serial Killer: A Novel by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Covering up for a loved one is a common theme. Yet this

February Books 2019

My Sister, the Serial Killer: A Novel by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Covering up for a loved one is a common theme. Yet this novel is both dryly humorous and compelling to read. Korede, the plain older sister, is knowingly complicit in hiding the crimes of her lovely sister, Alooya. The book opena with the clean up of Alooya’s third murder. Korede muses, “It takes a whole lot longer to dispose of a body than to dispose of a soul.” Korede is a nurse, and a good one, and she is very interested in a handsome doctor, Tade. He, of course, becomes attracted to Alooya. This puts Korede into deep conflict. Yet the tone of the story matters. “Short of the occasional murder or two, this is Sense and Sensibility all over again…. Braithwaite . . . combines the comparatively lighter tropes of Jane Austen with a dark tale of murder, familial complication, and moral compromise, and thereby redefines both tropes. “i

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight. We know Douglass as an author “but in his own time Douglass was better known as an orator, a gift he discovered in his early 20s when, newly escaped from slavery and working in obscurity as a day laborer. . ., he began preaching occasional sermons in a small African American church.” Blight concentrates on Douglass’s understanding of his world as shown “in an uncanny gift for forecasting the future. In 1855, [Douglass] predicted the coming Civil War and emancipation . . . A decade later, with the war won and black freedom a legally established fact, . . . Douglass warned, again accurately, that the struggle was far from over” Douglass became a respected figure but continued to predict. “he wrote, ‘We have but one weapon unimpaired and it is that weapon of speech, and not to use it . . . is treason to the oppressed.’ ” Blight’s work is considered extraordinary and illuminating.ii

Nine Perfect Strangers by Lianne Moriarty. “Send a motley crew of hurting but comfortably heeled Aussies to a secluded resort for a pricey 10-day “Mind and Body Total Transformation Retreat” and what happens? In this cannily plotted, continually surprising, and frequently funny page-turner . . . nothing like the restorative reset they’re anticipating. . . . What they haven’t reckoned on is Tanquillum House’s messianic but precariously stable director, whose secret agenda could be dangerous to their health. Moriarty’s progressive revelations about them [all] contribute . . . toward making this such a deeply satisfying thriller.” iii

Enemy of the People: Trump's War on the Press, the New McCarthyism, and the Threat to American Democracy by Marvin Kalb. In his new book, Marvin Kalb writes that in attacking the press as the ‘enemy of the people,’ Trump undermines the very heart of American democracy. By using such a phrase, . . . Trump reveals the depth of his disdain for criticism—a necessary component of a healthy democracy. Kalb draws on his years of experience as an award-winning American journalist to voice his concerns about the future of American democracy and its relationship with the free press. The two are inextricably linked, Kalb writes. American democracy needs an independent press, . . . in order to flourish.” iv

Trinity: A Novel by Louisa Hall. “Hall’s ingeniously structured novel is a fictionalized biographical portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the controversial director of the Manhattan Project, as witnessed by seven individuals who came in contact with him at different points in his life . . Through their eyes, readers see Oppenheimer sneak a tryst in San Francisco in 1943, count down to the day of the Trinity Test, protest the development of the hydrogen bomb during the Red Scare, and try to repair his reputation after his security clearance is revoked. . . . [The author] excels at creating distinct characters whose voices illuminate their own lives and challenges, as well as the historical period . . . Taken together, they only burnish the endlessly fascinating enigma of the flawed genius who became known as the father of the atomic bomb.” v

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston. At the story’s center is Oluale Kossula, also known as Cudjo Lewis. He was one of the last survivors of the Clotilda, the last vessel to carry kidnapped Africans into a life of bondage in the United States — 50 years after the slave trade was officially abolished. . . At age 19, he was kidnapped from his village in West Africa and sold to European slavers . . . Kossula knew that he had been victimized by the Dahomey, whom he regarded as distinct from his own ethnic group. . . . Kossula recounts their cruelty . . . as he himself was soon sold away, never to see his home again. This, even more than the indignities of slavery, remained the core of his life’s terrible melancholy . . . he focuses on the life he lived in West Africa and his life in Africatown, a settlement of emancipated persons. his may be the most surprising aspect of his recounting. . . Kossula tells the story of his life as a free man.vi

The Long Take: A noir narrative by Robin Robertson. A poetry/prose narrative, this book is a nominee for the Man Booker prize. “Walker is a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder; he can’t return home to rural Nova Scotia, and looks instead to the city for freedom, anonymity and repair. As he moves from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco we witness a crucial period of fracture in American history, one that also allowed film noir to flourish. The Dream had gone sour but – as those dark, classic movies made clear – the country needed outsiders to study and dramatise its new anxieties. . . . The Long Take is about a good man, brutalised by war, haunted by violence and apparently doomed to return to it – yet resolved to find kindness again, in the world and in himself.” vii

Our House by Louise Candlish. “Fiona Lawson gets the shock of her life when she returns from a brief getaway to the beloved London townhouse where she alternates custody with her estranged husband, Bram, of their two children: another family seems to be moving in. Bram has apparently sold the home out from under her and the kids—and vanished, along with the £2 million payday. Even more devastating betrayals await the doughty Fi. Alternating narratives—one Fi’s, the other Bram’s—raise the tension. In a particularly inspired move, much of Fi’s account comes via her emotionally raw tale on a true crime podcast, The Victim, with tweets from the audience serving as a kind of Greek chorus. Movingly chronicling the decline of a marriage that once looked as solid as the couple’s stately red-brick residence, Candlish manages to stash a couple of trump cards, setting up a truly killer climax.” viii

Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution by Ben Fountain. The book opens, naturally, at the beginning of 2016, as the author chronicles his journeys among the presidential candidates as they participated in the Iowa primaries. . . Fountain provides useful context beyond each candidate’s campaign with relevant historical information and also by introducing each essay with a monthly “Book of Days” that summarizes global, national, and local news headlines.” The author suggests that there are “approximately 80-year cycles in which the United States reinvents itself through a cataclysmic event: the Civil War, the Great Depression, which spawned Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the … election of Donald Trump.” ix

Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity by Nick Bunker. "Bunker uses extensive original research from lesser-known sources to examine Franklin’s formative experiences, ancestors, immediate family, the patrons who helped him achieve success and the business competitors he battled along the way. Franklin had many friends and was a master at cultivating mentors who could help him. But he was not always the best judge of character in his youth, which led to numerous personal and financial difficulties. Franklin was brilliant, talented, complicated and intensely ambitious. But as a young man, Bunker asserts, he was also constantly afraid of failure. . . Bunker covers all the important events of his early life.” x

At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life by Samuel Harrington. “In At Peace, physician Harrington, who serves on the board of a nonprofit hospice in Washington, DC, describes the terminal patterns of the six most common diseases, then guides readers in end-of-life conversations and instructs them in how to minimize painful treatments. He speaks with experience and compassion as he discusses the biological and emotional factors of aging and outlines the practical aspects of planning for death. Chapters on dementia and advance directives conclude his work.”. xi

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire by Kurt Andersen. “Over the course of five centuries—from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials—our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we’ve never fully acknowledged. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies—every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. . . Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails.” xii

Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude by Stephanie Rosenbloom. The author is the staff columnist for the Travel section of The New York Times and gives us a “wise, passionate account of the pleasures of traveling solo. . . .In our increasingly frantic daily lives, many people are genuinely fearful of the prospect of solitude, but time alone can be both rich and restorative, especially when travelling. Through on-the-ground reporting and recounting the experiences of artists, writers, and innovators who cherished solitude, Stephanie Rosenbloom considers how being alone as a traveller–and even in one’s own city–is conducive to becoming acutely aware of the sensual details of the world–patterns, textures, colors, tastes, sounds–in ways that are difficult to do in the company of others.” xiii

Why Religion?: A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels. “The mystery undergirding lived reality — why we die, why we suffer, why we love — is at the heart of acclaimed historian Elaine Pagels’s new book, “Why Religion?: A Personal Story. . . . Pagels is a professor at Princeton; winner of the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships; and author of several books . . . In “Why Religion?,” an intimate, evocative memoir, Pagels turns her tools of analysis inward. She threads her own story of spiritual discovery, love and staggering loss with the subject of her life’s work: how we create religion and how religion, in turn, creates us.” She shows us how the people who supported her and the internal questions that plague and enlighten her, helped her continue living and recognize “religion as a tool for openness and interconnection” xiv

i Art Edwards. The Los Angeles Review of Books. Dec. 19, 2018. ii Adam Goodheart. The Washington Post. Jan. 4, 2019. iii Publisher’s Weekly Review, 09/24/2018. iv Claire Seaton, Pulitzer Center, Sept. 25, 2018. v Publisher’s Weekly Review, 08/06/2018. vi Tayari Jones. The Washington Post. May 7, 2018. vii themanbookerprize.com/books/long-take-by viii Publisher’s Weekly Review, 06/04/2018. ix Kirkus Reviews, Sept. 25, 2018. x Linda Killian. The Washington Post. November 29, 2018. xi Deborah Bigelow. LibraryJournal.com, Nov 30, 2017. xii www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/209776/fantasyland-by-kurt-andersen/9780812978902/ xiii www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534829/alone-time-by-stephanie-rosenbloom/9780399562303/ xiv Meara Sharma. The Washington Post. November 30, 2018.