11/22/63, by Stephen King

Note: This was originally posted February 8, 2018. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For years, I wouldn't read anything by Stephen King, as I had never been a fan of horror stories. But after devouring King's Dolores Claiborne one rainy day, I learned what Stephen King fans have known for years: King is a wickedly good writer.

While 11/22/63 is not King's longest novel, by far, its 849-page length might put off readers. However, the only thing about this novel that one needs to fear is the inability to put the book down once started; it captivates the reader, holding one through its final paragraphs.

Thirty-five year old high school English teacher Jake Epping earns extra money teaching GED classes in the evening. An essay by student Harry Dunning describing the night his father killed his mother and siblings, and nearly killing Harry, leaves its mark Jake.

Shortly after Harry receives his GED, Jake gets a call from his friend Al, who owns a nearby diner. Turns out Harry was not the only one with secrets: Al insists on showing Jake the diner's storage room which has a portal to 1958.

Jake has wondered how Al has aged so rapidly in such a short period of time, until he learns that no matter how long someone is in the past, when that person comes back through the portal to Al's diner, only a few minutes have passed in the present time.

Al, who is now dying, has one request: for Jake to stop the assassination of President John Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald. Jake goes through the portal several times, sees how changing one or two lesser histories affect the present, then agrees to try to stop JFK's death.

The one thing that Al warns Jake about is that every time one goes through the portal to 1958, the previous changes are erased: a girl who was saved from a paralyzing gunshot in one trip is reinjured after Jake reenters 1958, as well as several other changes.

Jake spends five years in the past, manages to save JFK, but at a heavy cost to himself, as well as those around him. And the present he comes back to is drastically different from the one he left. Does he go back through the portal to reset history, or leave it as changed?

I highly recommend Stephen King's 11/22/63 to anyone looking for a good read. The book is sure to become one of King's fans' favorites; for those readers who have avoided King's works as I did for years, this book is sure to change one's mind into wanting to read more of King's work.

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The Girl in the Italian Bakery, by Kenneth Tingle

Note: This is a repost of January 1, 2014's post.

The Girl in the Italian Bakery by Kenneth Tingle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Memoirs are a funny thing: some tell about an idyllic life where the main person was born with the proverbial silver spoon and grew up to be a wonderful person who appreciated his or her life and status, while others tell of hardships that the person had to escape and crawl out of to become a productive and (preferably) happy member of society. The latter seems to make the better reading . Kenneth Tingle's The Girl In The Italian Bakery falls into this second category.

Tingle was the youngest of three brothers being raised by a single mother in poverty. While his mostly absent father does occasionally show up, he is seldom able to care for all three boys when they need him the most. Tingle's descriptions of living in the projects, of the disappearance of a young friend, of life in several foster homes are enough to make the reader wonder how he escaped his past. One brother has mental health issues and ends up institutionalized, while the middle brother blocks out much of what happens to the family, becoming part of the cycle of poverty/helplessness.

Throughout the first half of the book, the reader is left to wonder who the girl in the Italian bakery is and how she fits into Tingle's story. We finally see her as Tingle trudges home from a new high school one afternoon. While he never actually meets her, he falls in love with her - with the idea of her - and continues to walk home by the same route so that he can catch a glimpse of her. The one day he finally finds the courage to go in and speak with her, she disappears into the back of the bakery. Does he get to finally meet her?

The Girl In The Italian Bakery ends with Tingle and his wife living not the high-life, but rather a better life than he had grown up in. By the end, he has acknowledged that while he never officially met the girl - who he has seen several times since, but from a distance - he still has feelings for the memory of her, and how, in some way, he was helped want a better life because of her.

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Anna Quindlen: Black and Blue, One True Thing, Rise And Shine, Blessings, Every Last One

Note: This is a rerun from January 19, 2013.

After reading most of Anna Quindlen's books, I want to know this: How does Anna Quindlen do that?

Now, before you ask, "Do what?", here's the what: How does she managed to turn the most intense, earth-shattering experiences into a novel without making it earth-shattering to the world?

Huh?

Okay, let me clarify this. In each of her novels, the main characters are living their lives, flowing along like a gentle stream, when something suddenly, sometimes catastrophically, explodes their lives into a thousand pieces, while barely making a blip in the world around them. True, there are ripples in the water of their lives, as in real life: a car accident caused by a drunk driver doesn't affect simply the people in the other car who are hurt, it also affects the drunk driver's family, friends, and possibly coworkers. But in the overall scheme of things, these experiences and happenings don't have the larger scale impact of, say, the 9/11 attacks or the falling of the Berlin Wall.

I read my first Quindlen novel shortly after its release. In Black And Blue, Fran Benedetto is a nurse and battered wife, married to Bobby, a New York City police officer, and the mother of Robert, a boy who has learned to keep quiet. The book tells how Fran's life is normal, at least to those around her. Her secret is the horrific abuse Bobby puts her through, forcing her to leave her job, pack a scant few items, and, with Robert, go into hiding in Florida, changing their names in the process. Now Beth and Robert Crenshaw, they live in a rundown duplex. Fran/Beth is now forced to work as a home health aid, rather than as a nurse, in an effort to stay under the radar. Eventually, though, Bobby finds her, savagely beats her, takes Robert with him, then goes into hiding, himself.

Yet, throughout the book, with its horrible undertone of abuse, Quindlen is able to write Black And Blue as calmly as though writing about the weather. It is in the words she chooses to use and the way she has Fran Benedetto/Beth Crenshaw tell her story that we learn feel and experience the undercurrents of Fran, Bobby, and Robert's lives, as well as the lives effected by being in proximity.

In One True Thing, the Gulden family come across as a loving middle-class family, replete with college professor father, homemaker mother, a daughter, two younger sons. On the surface, the Guldens seem so normal, living normal lives: daughter Ellen, whose voice tells the story, has finished college and taken a job in New York City, while her brothers live at home and try to finish school.

The event that rips the Gulden family's life apart is a cancer diagnosis. Ellen comes home for a few days to find that her mother has been ill for quite some time. Her father, who has to work and is unable to care for Ellen's mother, demands that she quit her job and move back home to care for the family, which understandably causes tension throughout the entire household. When Mrs. Gulden dies, Ellen is suspected of murder; she suspects her father killed her mother, but in the end, suspects the truth.

One True Thing is also written in such a way that the reader feels like part of the action, part of the family; it is almost as if Ellen is telling the reader personally, "Remember when you and I came home? This is how I saw it." The reader is there, digging in, experiencing the roller-coaster ride without realizing, at first, how high or low the ride is going. It is simply life at its most basic.

Quindlen's book Rise And Shine details a morning show anchor and her social worker sister, the "fighting Fitzmaurices," as the former's soon-to-be ex-husband calls them. Meghan Fitzmaurice utters two words that get her into trouble from the network. Soon, she is without a job, her husband has decided to file for divorce (apparently the weekend before Meghan mutters "f#*king a**hole" under her breath - but loud enough for the mics to pick up), her sister Bridget is struggling with work and an unplanned pregnancy while in her early forties...But what really explodes is when Meghan's son Leo is shot and left paralyzed while volunteering for the group where Bridget works as a social worker.

In Blessings, a teen-aged couple drives onto Lydia Blessing's estate late one night and leave a box by the door of the garage apartment where estate caretaker, Skip Cuddy, stays. In the morning, Skip finds the infant and decides to care for the child. Soon, Lydia learns of the infant; the story tells how the baby changes the lives she touches, without being aware of it.

Finally, I found Every Last One to be Quindlen's most startling novel. Mary Beth Latham is a mother who owns her own landscape business. Mary Beth and her husband have three children: a daughter and twin sons, one of whom becomes depressed. Mary Beth focuses on this son, but is soon blindsided when a boy who has hung around her family breaks in and murders her husband, daughter, and one son before taking his own life. The other son had been away with friends on a weekend trip; at first, since he wasn't at the house, he is temporarily considered a suspect. Mary Beth, who was also brutally beaten in the attack, somehow manages to survive.

Eventually, Mary Beth and her remaining son move in with friends, then sell the house that their family was destroyed in so that they can get away from the horrible memories, or, rather, as much as one can.

As with her other novels, Quindlen has taken Every Last One, describes a normal family living the normal life before having a horrific act destroy their lives. The remaining characters are now left to try to carry on while dealing with so much: the horrors they've experienced; the murderer's mother who calls Mary Beth, blaming her for the horrors of her son's actions; knowing that, while others around them will go on with their own lives, she and her son will have to reinvent their family while trying to heal.

Most of us have learned in English and/or lit classes that a story must have some obstacle that needs to be dealt with to be worth telling and to keep the readers' interest. The best authors - the ones we continue to go back to time and again - have learned how to do this. Anna Quindlen is one of those authors who can slip that obstacle in the way it appears in real life: one moment, life is normal, the next moment, it isn't. A spouse if abusive and the other spouse goes into hiding; a daughter comes home for a weekend, only to discover a parent's terminal illness; a mic is left open a second too long and a bullet finds its target; a pregnancy; a murder. Yet, after that obstacle, Quindlen shows us how those left to deal with the aftermath deals with it.

I seriously hope Anna Quindlen is working on another novel; chances are, it'll be a keeper.

Revolutionary Letters, by Diane di Prima

Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A slim book of poetry should take a relatively short period of time to read, right?

Well, not always. Diane di Prima's Revolutionary Letters is a wonderfully slim volume of poems that, like a pan of rich fudge or fine music, should be savored, one at a time.

I began reading this volume in January, 2019, finishing it October 24, 2020, one day before di Prima's death at the age of 86. Why so long to finish this book, especially when I had it next to my seat at the dining room table (where I do much of my reading)? I'd pick it up when I only had several minutes to read, but wanted something relatively intense; these poems/letters were that. They were short, with only a few more than one or two pages long, but definitely full of nuances, intensity, and much to think about. The fact that most of the poems' sentence structure was a little disjointed made it so that a poem might have to be read two or three times for the reader to really begin to fully understand the poem. This might be a problem with a less gifted writer; in di Prima's hands, this is very do-able.

Diane di Prima spent the latter part of the 1950s and early '60s in Manhattan where she was involved in the Beat movement; from 1974 to 1997, she taught at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, along side Allen Ginsburg, William S. Burroughs, and others.

Revolutionary Letters is a book to be read, savored, and reread again.

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Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank

When Randy Bragg receives a telegram from his older brother ending with the words "Alas, Babylon," he knows disaster is near. The two words were Randy and Mark's code for impending disaster. In this case, Mark, an Air Force Intelligence officer, wants to meet up to explain his fears that World War III is imminent.

Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank (pen name of Harry Hart Frank), one of the "first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age" describes life in the fictional town of Fort Repose, Florida immediately following a full-scale nuclear strike on the United States. The people in Fort Repose must learn to come to grips with their new reality: store shelves that are soon empty, no gas for the cars, meds for diabetes (and later, typhoid fever), and a government breakdown, where each person, each town is an island.

A year after the devastation, the residents of River Road in Fort Repose are visited an Air Force helicopter, carrying family friend Paul Hart - now a colonel - along with his crew, bringing news from the outside. As Paul gets ready to leave, Randy asks the question on everyone's mind: "'Paul, there's one thing more. Who won the war?'

"Paul put his fists on his hips and his eyes narrowed. 'You're kidding! You mean you really don't know?...We won it. We really clobbered 'em!' Hear's eyes covered and his arms drooped. He said, 'Not that it matters.'

"The engine started and Randy turned away to face the thousand-year night."

Although Alas, Babylon was published in 1959, it is still every bit as relevant as it was when it was published, and well worth the read.

A Season of Delight, by Joanne Greenberg

Can a married, middle-aged woman find love in a much younger man, without physically cheating on her beloved husband, and then remain friends with the younger man?

In Joanne Greenberg's A Season of Delight, Grace Dowben, a middle-aged woman with two estranged children, helps her husband Saul with his store when not volunteering with the town's fire/rescue team, keeping house, and taking her mother-in-law, Riva, on periodic shopping trips. She is comfortable with her life, though not completely satisfied.

Enter Benjamin Sloan, who works with disturbed kids, and wants to volunteer with the fire/rescue team. Around the time he joins the team, Grace learns that Ben was born into a Jewish family, but lacks any form of religious tradition, something that Grace, Saul, and Riva value. Grace makes it her mission to include Ben in their weekly dinners, as her two children - Josh, now in a Hare-Krishna sect, and Miriam, a divorced feminist - are uninterested.

Between their time on the fire/rescue team and the teaching, Grace and Ben fall in love, but never quite get physical, which makes life a little less complicated, as Grace still loves Saul.

The book weaves Grace's story - rescue calls, her interactions with the team members, her work at Saul's side, her trips with Riva, her devotion to her Jewish faith, her house-keeping, the loss of friends - into a beautifully satisfying book, to be read again and again.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Note: This is a repeat of 2017's sole post. I'm back to writing here at a bi-weekly rate (hopefully)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

During the early 1970s, it seemed everyone read Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. I had read it several times, and had fond memories of it.

Several years ago, I received a copy of this slim book from two different people and decided to reread it to see how it stood up over the intervening years. Since then, I've reread it several times.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull tells of a seagull who doesn't quit fit in and is banned from his flock as a misfit. Jonathan's misdeed? He loves to fly, loves learning how to improve on flight, how to fly faster, and knows that such learning is, itself, what makes life worth living. The flock, however, has come to the understanding that flight should be merely to be used for food-gathering. Thus, since Jonathan can't comply with living beneath what he is capable of, he is labeled a misfit and cast out of the flock.

It doesn't take long for him to reach a higher consciousness, learning from those who have gone on before him. However, those gulls who teach him soon admit that Jonathan is higher than they are, and that the student has become a teacher.

Soon Jonathan realizes that he must go back to his previous flock and start teaching the newer out-casts, several of whom call him the Son of the Great Gull.

This novella, with its photos of seagulls, can be considered spiritual in nature without being preachy. It shows the reader that we all need to be the best we can be, that we should be our truest self, and while we are learning from those more knowledgeable than we are, we are also to teach those coming up after us.

This is one book that I feel has held up well over the years.

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