“The Tower”, by Andrew O’Hagan

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I subscribed to the London Review of Books for the book reviews. I liked that they were longer than the couple of paragraphs usually allotted to a book review, and that they often placed the book in the context of the author’s oeuvre. Sometimes the long-form reviews told too much of the story, but that wasn’t a deterrence if I was truly interested in the book. I also became adept at skipping over those parts.

Over the couple of decades I’ve been reading the LRB, I’ve been a little dismayed at the increasing number of political essays they’ve been including. Sometimes I skip over them, but others have been useful in delivering in-depth portraits and histories of what is going on in the rest of the world, sadly neglected these days in U.S. news sources.

Still, I was surprised to find that an entire issue (Volume 40, Number 11, 7 June 2018) was devoted to Andrew O’Hagan’s piece on the Grenfell Tower fire.

I’d heard of the fire, of course. Managed by the local council, London’s Grenfell Tower provided high-rise low-income housing. On 14 June 2017, safety measures intended to isolate fire failed, and a fire in one apartment quickly spread through the 24-story tower. Firefighters were unable to contain the blaze, and 72 people died.

Accusations came thick and fast. Most people blamed the council, saying that they only cared about the predominantly wealthy neighborhood and not the poorer people, especially those in the tower. Some residents had been complaining for years about various problems and, as a result, the council had conducted a major renovation, completed the previous year, 2016, that among other things installed new windows and a new composite cladding on the exterior of the building.

In England, local councils provide some of the functions of local government. Elected councilors are responsible for overseeing things like education, libraries, social services, waste collection, and housing; but hire contractors to actually perform the work.

O’Hagan’s piece, researched intensively for a year, tells the story of some of the people who lived there. With six flats on 23 of the floors, you would think people would be strangers to each other, but as resident Alison Moses says, “‘It’s a funny little community . . . Everybody knows everybody, at least by sight.’” It was also a remarkably multicultural community. O’Hagan says, “There was scarcely any floor on which more than two families were born in the same country.”

I found the individual stories which make up the bulk of the article fascinating: their backgrounds, their joy and pride in their homes in Grenfell. But what really struck me about this piece was the political fallout.

Activist groups immediately blamed the council, claiming that they had cut costs by having defective cladding installed; they hadn’t responded to tenant complaints, and they did nothing to help tenants during and after the fire. These cries were taken up by the media swarming the site and quickly became the dominant story about the fire. However, when O’Hagan interviewed these activists, they provided pages of accusations, but no actual proof.

When he interviewed council members, he found that they were on the ground immediately and in force, setting up shelters and getting people there. As one council officer said,

We were organising food, transport, data and donations, as well as accommodation. Our staff were in all day. And we had all gone home that Wednesday night exhausted and switched on the television news to learn that we hadn’t done anything.

The problem was that they hadn’t identified themselves as council, their philosophy being to just get the job done and not make a fuss about it. As a result, no one realised who they were. A senior council officer said,

The first full day after the fire, a survivor was being interviewed by somebody in the media, sitting beside one of our social workers who had been with her since she escaped The media were keen to press her about the council. “The council don’t care,” the woman said. “They’re not doing anything.”

And at the end of the interview the social worker turned and looked at her. “Why did you say that?” she asked. “I’ve been with you since the beginning.”

“Oh,” the woman said. “But you’re not from the council, are you?”

Similarly, the issue of the cladding—the culprit in the spread of the fire—was hardly the council’s fault. It is not their job to verify it met safety standards; that had been privatised to a company that “both recommends the standards and tests them in the marketplace, while also being entwined with many of the companies whose products they are testing.” The blame lies with the lack of industry regulations, the lack of independent testing, and the contractor’s omission of a fire safety inspection—it turns out the cladding had been tested “on a desktop, but never properly in situ.” Also, this cladding was already in common use, installed on many other low-income housing around the country.

The government, eager to distance themselves from the catastrophe, put the blame on the council as well. They made things worse by promising the public things that they knew the council couldn’t deliver.

I could go on, but the chilling thing for me, in this era of fake news and hollowed-out journalism, is how quickly a false story can become “the truth”, not just among the chanting crowds who ignore right-wing politicians’ lies, but among progressives as well. We need responsible journalism more than ever. And we need to attend to our social reputation, the only thing the council neglected. Your reputation is everything, as my mother used to say.

How can we best manage our reputation in this age of social media and devolved journalism?

Hawke’s Discovery, by Mark Willen

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Last week I described Erica Bauermeister’s The School of Essential Ingredients, as a restorative read, much needed after a series of books with unpleasant and untrustworthy protagonists. This week I’ve struck gold again.

Jonas Hawke, a retired lawyer in Beacon Junction, Vermont, finds himself in a moral and ethical dilemma when his son Nathan, editor of the local paper, begins investigating one of Jonas’s old cases. Nathan is intrigued by the possibility of a coverup involving the leading contender for governor in the upcoming election. A big scoop like that could lead to a job offer from a large city paper, something Nathan has been seeking for a while.

However, Jonas’s client confidentiality severely limits how far he can go in answering Nathan’s questions, much to his son’s frustration. Nathan points out Jonas’s responsibility to his fellow citizens: what if Martha Bennett wins the gubernatorial election and then is indicted for obstruction of justice?

This is just the sort of story I needed right now. I love to see ordinary people with a strong sense of integrity navigate the tricky waters of an ethical dilemma. Nathan and Jonas are not the only ones in this story with competing personal and professional responsibilities.

The mystery of what happened in that long-ago case and the various interpersonal conflicts provide tension, but the real suspense is about the characters. What course will they choose? What will the outcome be?

What I like most about this book is its subtlety. All of the characters mean well. They want to do the right thing, if they could only be sure what that is. They seem like people I know. You don’t need a villain in a story like this. We are our own worst antagonists, drifting in the dark without a map.

I recently participated in a book dissection of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. My fellow authors and I couldn’t understand why it became such a big bestseller. There were things we appreciated: a quirky and charming cast of characters and an unusual real-life setting, for example. There were things we didn’t like: such as the misleading title and the epistolary format that made all the action happen off-stage.

What we finally concluded was that it was the heart of the book that made it appeal to so many people. To quote from John J. Kelley’s summary of our discussion, while “the novel never shies away from the tragedies of life” it has “an enduring optimism that many in the group found refreshing in these uncertain times. It was an unexpected charm that surprised many of us.”

Mark Willen’s novel has the same sort of heart. While exploring the murky regions where integrity is put to the test and competing responsibilities rend us, Hawke’s Discovery gives us characters who despite their flaws are essentially good. If you’re suffering from too many stories of sociopaths, serial killers and rapists, pick up this novel. It will refresh you with its enduring optimism.

What books have you read that feature characters who seem like people you know?

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book free from the author. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The School of Essential Ingredients, by Erica Bauermeister

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I’ve had a string of books filled with unpleasant and untrustworthy characters. Likeability is not a requirement for me as a reader. Stories of people from whom I’d run screaming in real life can yield psychological insights, an engaging puzzle, or the sheer pleasure of nuanced characterisation. However, sometimes I need a break.

This gentle book, by an author recommended by my friend Christine, fit the bill.

Lillian taught herself to cook at a young age when her mother, shocked by her husband’s departure, disappeared into books. Proceeding by trial and error, eschewing cookbooks, Lillian became adept at assessing what sort of food a person needs and providing it.

The school of the title is a class Lillian teaches regularly at her restaurant on Monday nights when the restaurant is closed. As she gets to know her students, she is able to concoct lessons suited to their individual needs.

They range in age from a girl with heavy black eyeliner to a “fragile-looking” elderly woman. In between are an older couple, a young stay-at-home mother, a man clouded with sadness, a computer scientist, and a gorgeous Italian woman.

Each chapter takes one student, exploring their background, their wounds and gifts, through the particular dish or dishes being prepared that night. For example, Antonia is a kitchen designer, stumped by her current task. Her clients are restoring a beautiful old house, but their vision of a sleek modern kitchen with concrete floors and black cabinets fills Antonia with dismay. Not only is it wrong for the house, but it would mean destroying everything that is lovely about the room now.

For Antonia, the scarred wooden table, the window seat overlooking a kitchen garden, and the warm and welcoming open fireplace remind her of grandmother’s kitchen. So Lillian has the class make Thanksgiving dinner that night. At first that seems cruelly calculated to drive home the distance between that Italian village where Antonia’s grandmother lives and this new country with its baffling custom of celebrating by stuffing themselves and then falling asleep.

However, the menu is not a traditional one. While keeping traditional Thanksgiving foods such as turkey, cranberries, corn, and green beans, Lillian’s dishes rearrange and combine them with ingredients Antonia’s grandmother would use: rosemary, pancetta, gorgonzola, pine nuts.

More than these portraits, which make the book seem more like a connected series of short stories, what I loved was the sensuality of the writing. Not surprising, I guess, when you’re writing about food, but Bauermeister truly had me smelling the rosemary, tasting the heirloom tomato, feeling for the pieces of crabmeat in their tiny shell chambers.

It’s a lovely book, and one I highly recommend if you need a restorative break.

What book do you turn to when you need a rest?

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

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This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was my book club’s selection this month. What’s it about? Well, imagine Eat, Pray, Love with an insecure gay man, an author who visits double the number of countries trying to outrun his anxieties.

Arthur Less—no subtlety there, so I should have been warned—is our protagonist. About to turn 50, his latest book has been rejected by his publisher, and the much-younger man who has been his occasional bedfellow is about to get married.

Less is a sad, colorless person. Alone, he’s still riding on the fame of his long-ago first novel and memories of his early long affair with a much older famous poet. In those days, he was the youngster staying quietly in the background while his lover and his famous friends carried on.

Sounds a lot like Franny in Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth. As in that novel, the characters here are unpleasant—especially needy, insecure Less—and are played for laughs. His bumbling missteps and failures, together with random blows of fate, leave him suffering even more anxiety. It is all meant to be funny, but it’s still not a kind of humor that appeals to me.

Normally I’d have stopped reading, but was looking forward to meeting with my book club. Also, I kept wondering why in the world it won the Pulitzer. Some members of my book club found it amusing and agreeable, but all found it light-weight and definitely not worth a Pulitzer. One person suggested it was chick lit for gay men.

Certainly it’s well-written. Greer’s sentences are terrific, and the story is clear and consistent. Also, the descriptions of the various countries are superb. A device Greer uses is a narrator who seems to know Less. The narrator isn’t identified till the end, but it’s pretty obvious long before that. One person pointed out the clever allusions in the text to other books. We thought there must be more we didn’t recognise, but certainly enjoyed the ones we found.

So, not a bad book if this sort of character and this sort of humor appeal to you. Most of the reviews I saw were positive. It might be a book you’d enjoy. Just don’t expect there to be much to it.

When choosing your next read, are you influenced by prizes it’s won, the endorsements on the cover, or by reviews?