The French Braid by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler has concocted a beautiful metaphor about just what a family is: The French Braid. The explanation comes late in the book, but it is so on target. This is a funny and a poignant novel, just what is expected in a Tyler work.

Readers meet the Garretts, and their story starts unfolding in the summer of 1959. No surprises that they live in Baltimore, but as the children grow up, they branch out to other parts of the Northeast.

The parents Robin and Mercy have similar but diverging goals in life. Robin wants a home; Mercy wants a second life after raising her family. Daughters Alice and Lily are complete opposites in personalities. Son David wants to distance himself from family for reasons the parents and sisters do not understand.

As life goes on through the decades, the shape of the Garrett family changes, grows, backs up, starts anew. Parents grow old, marriages come and go, children are added to the family, and they grow up as well.

The novel has it all: humor, heartache, success, failure…an imitation of life for sure. It has been called “classic Anne Tyler,” while I would call it Anne Tyler at her very best.

Anne Tyler won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 with the novel Breathing Lesson. Her books, always witty and engaging, never disappoint.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting December 22, 2021.

I would like to thank Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group  and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

 

Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun by Charles J. Shields

While Lorraine Hansberry lived only  34 years, her play A Raisin in The Sun has had a lasting impact on the American theatre. In Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun by Charles J. Shields, the author chronicles the life of the playwright and activist. Called “the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage,” students across America were led to believe that Hansberry based her famous play on her own life. Well, she did, kind of.

Actually, her father Carl Hansberry was a bit of a scoundrel. Yes, the Hansberrys were not welcome in a white neighborhood, but they had their real home in a black neighborhood, while they masqueraded in this second home.  This episode was part of a scheme to drive whites away so Carl could purchase property cheaply and  could start chopping up floors, turning apartments into one-room “kitchenettes” to make more money for the landlord, which eventually he became. About 10% of the book covers his moneymaking slumlord schemes, which projected the Hansberrys into the middle class. He also became so enamored with suing other folks that the Chicago branch of the NAACP began backing away from him after he threatened to sue Goldblatt’s department stores.

No doubt legitimate Raisin stories happened due to restrictive covenants designed to keep black homeowners out of white neighborhoods, but Raisin was not truly the Hansberry situation. The wealth generated with Hansberry Sr.’s property speculation schemes enabled the lifestyle that Lorraine was able to enjoy including some college attendance and a regular check from her widowed mother to help support Lorraine’s New York City lifestyle. Besides playwriting, she kept her day job writing for and performed a number of other duties for a newspaper called Freedom.

The biography broadens the scope of Lorraine’s life from the sliver as playwright that students in America learned when studying Raisin to all her activities in social causes. She campaigned for Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace and  had close Communist ties, which caused J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to keep an eye on her for fear she would become, “in the language of counterintelligence, a ‘present danger.’” By the end of her short life, Lorraine would have thousands of pages in her FBI dossier.

Regarding her personal life, Shields takes a hard look at the man Lorraine married, Bobby Nemiroff, a Jewish-Russian activist, a Communist card-carrying one. Shields described their marriage as a codependency. He was Lorraine’s best friend, her critic, and her promoter. They would remain tied even after their divorce, and he went on to manage her estate after her death.

Charles J. Shields is the author of two biographies about Harper Lee, one for adults, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, and for young readers, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee. He is known for his well-documented biographies.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting December 16, 2021.

I would like to thank Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Nine Lives by Peter Swanson

 Imagine getting a list of nine names, one being your own. Just names. Nothing else. You might toss it. You might set it aside. But you might not jump to the conclusion that these are Nine Lives to be ended. The latest psychological thriller by Peter Swanson includes one FBI agent on the list, Jessica Winslow, and before long, she starts putting clues together.

The first to die is an old man who retains an aging family inn, which he uses as his personal watering hole. Once a heralded vacation spot for families, the inn is a shell of what it used to be, but it is on the beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine, which is handy for the killer who drowns the first victim.

Since the list of nine is found near the body, the investigation begins, with the FBI getting involved, deeply involved since one of their own is on the list. Meanwhile, another person on the list is shot in the back. So far, investigators have learned from the listees that none of them even  know each other.

What is the connection then? Is it a perfectly random list? Is there some connecting thread all the detectives are missing? Are they looking for a crazed serial killer? Per usual, the author keeps everyone guessing before planting the twist he has come to be known for.

Peter Swanson writes novels, short stories, poetry, and features. His work has been printed in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Atlantic Monthly, Measure, The Guardian, The Strand Magazine, and Yankee Magazine. The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, his debut novel, is still my personal favorite. Swanson lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his wife and their cat.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting December 10, 2021.

I’d like to thank William Morrow and Custom House and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.