Demon Copperhead: Kingsolver Always Delivers

 

I know I promised to share highlights of my 2022 reading, but I finished Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, on New Year's Day, and I am still thinking about it.

The title (and the author's notes) invite comparison to David Copperfield, but in anything but a derivative way. Set in a poor town in what had been Virginia coal mining country in modern day, the title character is one of the most compelling narrators I've read in awhile.  I wouldn't go so far as to call Demon a naive narrator, though his  youthful perspective is part of the attraction. I'm tempted to listen to the audiobook to see how that voice translates.

I've long been a fan of Kingsolver's novels. I've read everything she's written, including her poetry, starting with The Bean Trees. Reading her novels always led me to slow down and pay attention to her writing chops. Unlike some books I read when the author's process gets in the way of the story, Kingsolver's novels make me just a bit envious of how she uses literary elements in a way that seems so effortless and natural.

The protagonist was born to a teenage mom and named Damon, which naturally was changed to the nickname Demon by the time he got to school (as his best friend was stuck with the nickname Maggot.) In a series of misfortunes, he experiences abuse and neglect by his mother and stepfather, leading to a years or rejection and loss. Demon shows the dark side of foster care abuse and pitfalls of the systems intended to protect children.

This is also a story of drug and alcohol abuse, which is often so rampant in areas of economic decline. I recently read Margo Price's memoir Maybe We'll Make It, in which she writes candidly of some of the similar patterns of addiction she fell into. 

While Demon Copperhead is a hard read, it is not without hope. A number of caring, though flawed, people offer him surrogate family, encouragement, and opportunity. Two of his teachers, a mixed-race couple with whom he maintains contact, are examples of the power of educators who not only see their students but are willing to be seen as people. And who can't love characters who name their dog Hazel Dickens?

As I made my list of books I read last year, I was struck again how some slip away right after I read them, and others stick with me. I think I'll be thinking about Demon Copperhead for a long time, and I can't wait to have the opportunity to talk about it with my reading friends.

Demon Copperhead: Kingsolver Always Delivers

Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson: A Novel I Never Expected Her to Write

I've been reading Southern author Joshilyn Jackson's novels since I discovered Gods in Alabama with my book club. The Florida native, educated in Georgia, knows the South. Her writing is pitch perfect whether she is discussing football, scandal, or church dinners.

I recently read (and wrote about) Almost Sisters, but didn't even know Never Have I Ever had been published until I got a recommendation from a friend who pointed out that it was not like anything Jackson had written. Still firmly set in the South, this book is more of a suspense novel that a Southern family story.

Amy Whey, the protagonist of the novel, is hosting the monthly neighborhood book club, organized and run by her best friend Charlotte, when a new nearby renter Roux floats in and takes over, generously raiding Amy's liquor cabinet to serve the book club members while introducing her game: What's the worst thing you've done today...this week...this year...ever.

Readers then travel by flashback to Amy's past when, as an overweight, unhappy outsider in high school, she is involved in a fatal accident. She eventually transforms her life, has a new husband, baby, and a stepdaughter she loves, but she keeps her secrets.

Roux's handsome son pays more attention to Amy's stepdaughter than she finds comfortable. Then when Roux turns her game into a blackmail scheme, Amy has to decide how to extricate herself while protecting herself, her friends, and especially her family.

Amy's own transformation came when she learned to dive, a hobby she has turned into a teaching career. While I know almost nothing about scuba diving, Jackson's details are convincing as she takes readers along on a dive into a shipwreck off the Florida coast. Just as realistic is her psychological exploration of a woman who has much to lose and must rely on her wits to win against a diabolical woman.

Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson: A Novel I Never Expected Her to Write

Tales of Second Wives: Rebecca and Varina

 With such a backlog of books waiting to be read, I am often reluctant to re-read anything, even books I loved. Sometimes, as recently for me, the motivation is external. When my book club decided to choose a classic as we prepared our 2019 reading list, we opted for Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, a book that had kept me on the D shelf in the fiction section of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library back in junior high.

I loved the book so much that I read everything I could find by DuMaurier--Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, and a personal favorite, The House on the Strand.  I knew that Alfred Hitchcock had loved her works too, adapting this novel for the big screen, as

well as her short story "The Birds," which became one of Hitchcock's best-known film. (Who doesn't think of it whenever spying a flock of blackbirds?)

When we decided to read Rebecca, a first read for some members of the group, I wondered if it would hold up. I remembered so many vivid memories--the first glimpse of flames, appearing like the sunset on the wrong side of the sky, the opening line: Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again. Every time I approach a majestic house at the end of a long drive, I recite them.

I'm still amused to recall that the narrator was never given a name other than Mrs. deWinter, one already used when she took it over. I still imagine the sight of Rebecca's signature in book dedications and household documents. I remember practicing writing that slanting R myself, even though I didn't have an R in my name.

A more recent re-reading experience brought me back to Charles Frazier's Varina, the fictionalized story of Jefferson Davis's wife. Long a fan of Frazier's writing, particularly his first novel Cold Mountain, I had selected Varina as our book club read when I hosted. Since only two of us are Southerners and several members have origins outside the United States, I was eager to lead a discussion that centered on the complicated history during and after the Civil War.

Frazier's novel, inspired by historical details of the wife of the only president of the Confederacy, took a minor character, a black boy taken in by the Davises and raised along side of their children. Pictures still remain of young Jimmy, and little is known after he was taken from the family upon their arrest after the war. Frazier took the liberties to imagine a grown-up Jimmy, having his own childhood memories reawakened upon reading a book mentioning his existence in the Davis household. He seeks out Varina, called V throughout the novel, and has her recount his life and her own.

My experience reading Frazier for a second time recalled the same experience with Cold Mountain. I read both novels straight through for the story, shortly after publication. A second reading made me more aware of Frazier's use of language and detail, his ability to explore the gray areas and the ambiguities.

Only upon reflection did I realize that both novels centered on the lives of second wives, living in the shadow of their husbands' first wives. Jefferson Davis had been married to Knoxie Taylor, whose father went on to serve as President of the United States. She died quickly of an illness shortly after their marriage and he only relinquished his mourning clothes in time to court Varina, many years his junior. If Frazier's details are accurate, he stopped by her grave with Varina on their honeymoon. In the novel, she speculates on his happy reunion with his first wife in the afterlife.

While the narrator of Rebecca spends much of her early marriage under the mistaken belief that her husband had adored Rebecca as much as everyone else did, only late in the story does she learn how wrong she was. On this second reading, I was particularly struck by her easy acceptance of how Rebecca died. Even Hitchcock had to make some revisions to the screenplay to minimize Max's culpability in his wife's death.

Now I'm happily moving on to my stack of new books, but I'm reminded that a second--or third or fourth--reading of a favorite book is seldom a waste of time.

Tales of Second Wives: Rebecca and Varina

Killers of the Flower Moon

Today I'm full. My book club met at my house to discuss David Grann's nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In this book club, we try to serve food to fit the book. (We decided no more books about prison because bread and water make for boring book club meals.) I tried to do my research, so we had bison patties, "three sisters" salad with beans, corn, and squash, wild rice and cranberries, and fry bread with wojapi (blueberry gravy). 

With this group of readers, though, the food (or the drink) isn't the main point. We have spirited discussions of the books each month. The big question we all addressed this time was "Why didn't we know about this?"  David Grann used journalistic research to tell the story of outright murder and suspicious deaths among members of the Osage tribe in the 1920s. At the time, members of the tribe had great wealth because of "head rights" for oil on their property. Many of them lived ostentatiously with big cars, fine houses, and other extravagance.  

Grann begins with the death of Anna Brown and follows the subsequent life of her sister Molly Burkhart, married to a white man. In addition to Brown's brutal murder and other similar cases, more and more members of the community were dying from what appeared to be poison. 

Tom White, one of the early agents of the FBI and a former Texas Ranger, is brought to the investigation after a great deal of bungling, handpicked evidently by J. Edgar Hoover. At this time, the bureau was relatively new. Americans had been resistant to anything that appeared to be a national police force, but some crimes had a federal nature requiring law enforcement with a larger jurisdiction. What White uncovers is an extensive network of greed and murder for gain. 

When the Osage came into the fortune, the powers that be didn't deem them capable of handling the financial responsibility and assigned guardians--white men in the community. While some acted in the best interest of their wards, the evidence is clear that far too many acted systematically to deprive them of their wealth and their lives. Since the perpetrators were highly placed members of the community, they were able to cover up the crime during the pretense of investigating. While some served time, many walked free.

In the last chapters of the book, Grann tells his own story of digging deeper into records decades after the crimes were laid to rest. He found the records of guardianships with a disproportionate number of wards listed as "dead."

While this story has unique characteristics, it's far too similar to other wrongdoing that has occurred throughout history--and still occurs--when one group is able to see another as inferior, even less than human. 

Grann writes that "history is a merciless judge"; in the telling of this story, he helps citizens to be more aware. And as G. I. Joe always said, "Knowing is half the battle."

Killers of the Flower Moon

New Year Tradition: My 2017 Reading List

I've been keeping a list of the books I read for years now. I have heard that Art Garfunkel has kept a similar list since he was sixteen, and I am envious that I didn't think to do this sooner. I record my finished books on my kitchen calendar and then transfer the list to my Book Woman notebook (and share here) at year's end.

In the coming days, I want to give some "best of" details--novels, poetry, and nonfiction, but for now, I'll share my list. I hope some of my reading friends will reciprocate.

1. Wally Lamb, I'll Take You There
2. Jessie Burton, The Muse
3. Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
4. Regina Calcaterra, Etched in Sand
5. Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
6. Ruth Ware, The Woman in Cabin 10
7. John Lewis, et al., The March (Book 1)
8. Lauren Wolk, Wolf Hollow
9. Julia Glass, And the Dark Sacred Night
10. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
11. Paulette Jiles, News of the World
12. Ruth Reichel, Delicious
13. Kelly Demaegd, Wish and Spit (poetry)
14. Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star
15. Marie Semple, Today Will Be Different
16. E. L. Doctorow, Andrew's Brain
17. Susan Perabo, The Fall of Lisa Bellow
18. Lauren Dave, Hello, Sunshine
19. Camron Wright, The Orphan Keeper
20. Nancy Peacock, The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson
21. Archibald MacLeish, JB
22. J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy
23. Zadie Smith, Swing Time
24. Peter Cooper, Johnny's Cash and Charley's Pride
25. Amy Greene, Long Man
26. Marie Howe, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (poetry)
27. Tiana Clark, Equilibrium (poetry)
28. Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things
29. Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper's Wife
30. Frank Conroy, Body and Soul
31. Bill Browder, Red Notice
32. Lisa See, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
33. Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Unaccountable Weather (poetry)
34. Cathy Smith Bower, The Candle I Hold up to See You (poetry)
35. Noah Hawley, Before the Fall
36. Lily King, Euphoria
37. John Grisham, Camino Island
38. William Kuhn, Mrs. Queen Takes the Train
39. Ron Rash, Eureka Mill (poetry)
40. Hanna Tintt, The Twelve Live of Samuel Hawley
41. Elizabeth Strout, Anything Is Possible
42. Kathleen Rooney, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
43. Graeme Simsion, The Best of Adam Sharpe
44. Carl Hiassen, Razon Girl
45. Nicole Yoon, Everything, Everything
46. Christine Baker Kline, A Piece of the World
47. Colum McCann, Letter to a Young Writer
48. Stephanie Powell Watts, No One Is Coming to Save Us
49. Joy Jordan-Lake, Tangled Mercy
50. Gin Phillips, Fierce Kingdom
51. Taylor Mali, The Whetting Stone (poetry)
52. Linda Sue Park, A Long Walk to Water
53. R.J. Palacio, Wonder
54. Beth Ann Fennelly, Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
55. Thomas Mullen, Last Town on Earth
56. Trevor Noah, Born a Crime
57. Anne LaMott, Hallelujah Anyway
58. Natalia Burian, Welcome to the Slipstream
59. Brian Selznick, Wonder Struck
60. Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior
61. Ann Hood, The Book That Mattered Most
62. Ben Winters, Underground Airlines
63. Gabriel Zevon, Young Jane Young
64. Greg Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart
65. Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere
66. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
67. Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
68. Joseph Bathanti, Restoring Sacred Art

Some of the books were unforgettable, while others like Chinese food didn't stick. I took the time to re-read a few I love, and I picked up a couple of older books I had been waiting to read, and I was so glad I did. Many of the choices were dictated by my book groups. As a result, I discovered some thought-provoking books I might have missed otherwise.

As the year ended, I've been reading Walter Isaacson's biography Leonardo da Vinci with only about 400 page to go), and I'm listening to Ken Follett's Column of Fire, the third in the series that started many years ago with Pillars of the Earth, on my all-time favorites list. My to-read list is long, almost overwhelming, but I'm comforted to know I could be iced in and not lack for something good to read.

May 2018 bring many good books your way.

New Year Tradition: My 2017 Reading List

Fiction for Foodies

 There's no coincidence that the expression "Whatcha got cookin'?" is often metaphorical. In literature, as in life, the kitchen is where the action is. Two of my recent reading adventures have centered around the bigger world of cooking. First, I read Delicious! by Ruth Reichl, famous for her food writing. In this story, her main character Billie Breslin gets a job as executive assistant at a food magazine (Think Gourmet or Bon Appetit) whose offices are located in a gorgeous historic home.  For reasons not quite clear at first, readers learn she has culinary talents but she's reluctant to use them. As she works to survive, taking a second job at a local family-owned delicatessen, she sees the owners pull the plug on the magazine production. In order to keep the magazine's long term promise to subscribers, Billie is left to answer the phone for a duration, responding to readers' questions--particularly those of one particularly disagreeable cook who fails to follow recipes then complains about failed results.

Reichl builds a second story line when Billie discovers in a secret compartment in the house a hidden stash of letters between a young girl Lulu and chef James Beard written throughout World War II. An unlikely romance develops between Billie and one of the deli customers (also cantankerous). She submits to a makeover (a plot device that's a little too  soap opera for me). She also discovers underlying truths about her sister's tragic death and goes on a journey to solve the Lulu-Beard mystery as well.

Billie's recipe for her mother's gingerbread, included in the volume, may be worth the price of the book.

In another twist on the culinary world, Laura Dave's protagonist in Hello, Sunshine--whose parents really named her Sunshine--and her sister Rain--is an online sensation celebrity chef with fans, best-selling cookbooks,  and a television show in the works until her online account is hacked and someone starts leaking the truth to her public: she isn't really the cook at all but a front for her producer's wife. The hacker isn't content to stop there, though, and spills the story of Sunshine's one-time indiscretion, costing her marriage as well as her career and sending her back to her childhood home where she must make peace with her sister and land a wait staff job with a demanding chef as she tries to regain her authentic identity.

Both books weave food and family into a plot full of twists. While both are lightweight reads, they're not only entertaining, but they may send readers in to the kitchen to see what they might whip up.

Fiction for Foodies