Fire Sale, by Sara Paretsky

Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had tried reading Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky several years ago. At that time, I didn't get far with the book.

Fast forward to this year when I decided to give it another try; I'm glad I did.

When the girls' high school coach at her old high school has to retire due to illness, V.I. agrees to coach the team. This, in turn, leads her to retail conglomerate By-Smart's headquarters in the hopes of getting funding for her team.

It doesn't take long for Vic to stumble upon shady dealings and dirty actions by the family running By-Smart, causing the family's grandson to go into hiding with one of V.I.'s basketball players.

The twists, turns and backstabbing contribute to the deaths of several people, including the father of one of the players, and putting Marcie Love, Vic's lover ex-lover, in the hospital. Vic also nearly meets her end to keep her silent.

With more twists and turns than a Slinky (or a country road), Fire Sale is definitely must read.

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Burn Marks, by Sara Paretsky

Burn Marks by Sara Paretsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Most of us who love reading have favorite authors we gravitate towards, writers whose works leave us wanting more. For me, Sara Paretsky is one of those writers, especially with her V.I. Warshawski series.

I'd bought most of the series, reading books out of order. But a while back (maybe a year or two ago), I decided to start at the beginning and read each V.I. Warshawski book in order. (Unfortunately, I'm still missing the very first in the series, Indemnity Only. I'll eventually have to pick up a copy.)

Burn Marks is memorable is its intensity, as well as pure V.I. When Vic's aunt Elena arrives at Vic's doorstep at 3 A.M. after a fire at the SRO where Elena stayed, V.I. is less than happy. To say that aunt Elena is not the easiest person to get along with is an understatement. But family is family.

Reluctantly, V.I. goes about trying to uncover the arsonist, while trying to find another place for her aunt. Of course, this puts V.I.'s life in danger while trying to tie up all the loose ends.

While Burn Marks is a book that can stand on its own, it's also one that any V.I. Warshawski fan should read.

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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While many Americans consider the U.S. to be a classless society, wanting to believe that one merely has to work harder to leave poverty for the ranks of the rich, this is not always the case. Much of the twentieth century, as well as the twenty-first thus far, has seen a definite class-based society, consisting of working class, middle class, and the rich. On either end are the working-poor and the ultra-rich, but these, too, fit into the class-based society.

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich explores how those in the working class get by (or not).

When Barbara began her trek into research for this book (1998) "it took, on average nationwide, an hourly wage of $8.89 to afford a one bedroom apartment," according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Keep in mind, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 hour, and hasn't budged since 2009 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/30/business/minimum-wage-2021-states/index.html). To afford a larger apartment or a house, especially in 2021, would take quite a bit more.

There are several ways that one could research Nickel and Dimed: book research (good enough for possibly a term paper or for background from years earlier); interviewing those who work at menial jobs (better); or, the way Ehrenreich worked: by deciding "to get out there and get my hands dirty (p.4)."

During her research time (1998-2000), Ehrenreich worked as a waitress in Florida, a house cleaner and nursing-home aid in Maine, worked as a Wal-Mart associate in Minnesota, all as a way to see what menial, low-paid workers go through to put a roof over their heads, pay their utilities, and food on their tables. While she could have bailed at any time, heading back to her comfortable home and life-style, she stayed the course and gives a good, true glimpse on what the working-class goes through to get by.

One thing that I found disconcerting was that yes, she could have bailed at any time, that she was playing the part of someone eking out a living on minimum wages. But the flip side is that she was able to pick up the nuances of what a low-wage worker goes through from first-hand knowledge, as well as through interviewing her coworkers.

I highly recommend this book. If one wants to get a good beginning knowledge on what a minimum wage worker goes through, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America is a great place to start.

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Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach

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; it's almost always the first book I read at the beginning of the year.

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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.