Monthly Archives: April 2022

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Miss Benson’s Beetle, by Rachel Joyce

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London in 1950 is still recovering from World War II, with food rationed, ruined buildings being cleared, another generation of men wiped out, and women chucked out of their wartime jobs. Middle-aged spinster Margery Benson finally cracks and quits her job teaching domestic science in an elementary school with out-of-control children. She decides to set out on the adventure of a lifetime: an expedition to New Caledonia to find a mythical golden beetle.

She became fascinated with the golden beetle in 1914 when she was 10, and her father showed her a book of unknown creatures, meaning those referenced in ancient books but not yet found in real life. Later she met an entomologist at the Natural History Museum who taught her about beetles and collecting, making her long for the kind of journey she now has the training for.

Advertising for a French-speaking assistant, Margery gets only four responses, one an ex-POW still suffering from physical and psychological wounds, and two women who drop out, leaving her with the most unlikely assistant of all. Enid Pretty is a bleached blond woman in a pink suit and pompom sandals who never stops talking. Her French is limited to a mangled bonjour; her knowledge of entomology is nil, and she has no passport.

With much finagling and last-minute surprises, the odd couple manages to make it onto the ship to New Patagonia. Margery is not sure she can bear even one day in Enid’s company, much less weeks on the boat and months in the field. What she doesn’t know is that they are being followed by Enid’s shady past and the ex-POW who believes he should be leading the mission.

This book was the vacation I didn’t know I needed. Sure, there were moments that strained my credulity, but I was happy to go along for the ride.

Much as I enjoyed the scene setting, whether in a crowded ship stateroom, a British consulate tea party, or a remote jungle village, what fascinated me most was how the author managed to bring together the most incongruous elements. We have a dangerous adventure that’s also a madcap comedy. We have a woman with no credentials trying to mount an independent scientific mission, while beset with lost luggage, visas held up by recalcitrant bureaucrats, and tropical illnesses. Most of all, we have an unlikely friendship that grows organically throughout the book.

I also appreciated the way the author respects the voice of even the minor characters, such as the wife of the consul and the mousy woman who stands up to her, the French police and the native storeowner, not to mention the ex-POW himself. These could easily have been sketched in as stock characters, but Joyce presents them with care and insight.

If you’re looking for a break, join Margery and Enid on the adventure of a lifetime. You’ll find thrills and chills and a lot of laughs.

What books do you read when you want a virtual vacation?

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Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead

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While all Colson Whitehead’s novels are well-written, their subjects and genres vary widely, much as Graham Greene wrote literary novels like The Power and the Glory and what he called “entertainments.” After The Underground Railroad and the wrenching Nickel Boys, Whitehead seems ready for something a bit lighter. Harlem Shuffle is entertaining, for sure, with serious undertones.

Ray owns a used furniture store in late 1950s and early 1960s Harlem. He’s always on the alert for an angle, milking his network of friends and contacts for deals like trading an outdated radio for a used television. The son of a legendary gang leader, Ray wants to play it straight; as we learn in the book’s first line: “Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked.”

So he turns away the serious capers he’s offered a part in and concentrates on making his business a success, hard as that is for a Black man in mid-twentieth century America. He wants a better life for his wife and children and that takes money. And it means he has to keep his nose clean, not be like his father. Adding to the stakes for Ray, his in-laws never let him forget that he is not good enough for their daughter.

But he has this nephew. Ray feels responsible for Freddie who keeps getting into trouble, finally getting in deep enough to call on Ray for help, endangering both of them. Thanks to his father, though, Ray knows who to call on for backup. He’s also adept at navigating the treacherous waters of Harlem’s dual economy, the one that’s above-board and the one that isn’t. Of course, as in any life, race is always a factor in Ray’s dealings with others, explicitly or implicitly.

It’s a light story on a serious theme: Is breaking the law the only way to lift yourself and your family out of poverty? One thing that struck me, reading Ray’s story, was just how easy it is to slip into a pattern of minor grift, no matter what your race or socio-economic status. Do a favor for a friend, bend the rules a little to help someone out, and there you are: on the other side of the line. You may say, I’d never fence stolen goods, but it’s only a matter of degree.

While some in my book club were disappointed that the story wasn’t as weighty as The Nickel Boys, we were all entertained. We liked the elaborate schemes Ray comes up with to get Freddie and himself out of trouble or to revenge a slight. I was especially amused by Ray’s rhapsodies about furniture: memorising the ad copy for a new line of furniture or appreciating the details of a particular recliner.

One person noted that we get to see the softer side of people who in other stories might just be stereotypical thugs or prostitutes. One assassin-for-hire dreams of owning a farm someday, while a kept woman turns out to have an extraordinary sense of drama and design. I appreciated the care taken to fill in even the minor characters, though several of us still had trouble keeping them straight. The few women play very minor roles in the book; I guess that too is true for someone like Ray in that time and place.

Through the three time periods of the novel, we see Ray drawn deeper into the life he’d sworn to avoid, betrayed by his love for his family and his loyalty to Freddie. I admire the structure of the novel: the three sections, the pacing, the well-spaced turning points, and the resonance between the heists at the beginning and at the end.

One member of my book club was surprised that the “heist” parts weren’t more suspenseful, as in some of the heist movies we’ve seen. I, on the other hand, enjoyed the measured unfolding of Ray’s plans, his ingenuity and resilience. In this “entertainment,” Whitehead has given us a slice of life: realistic characters responding to real-life challenges.

What is your reaction when a favorite writer switches between genres from one book to another?

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Wrecks and Ruins, by Eric Goodman

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The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi values the beauty of things that are imperfect, unfinished or ephemeral. Drawing on Buddhist concepts of the fleeting nature of this world and life’s inescapable suffering, the wabi-sabi aesthetic differs from Western ideals of beauty and perfection, based on those of ancient Greece.

In this engaging story, Stuart goes beyond wabi-sabi. Having decided that “some items held more weight—more meaning—when distressed or damaged,” he collects shards of brick from torn-down buildings and twisted scraps of metal from car crashes. As a young man, Stu has experienced enough loss to recognise the impermanence and sadness that come with living.

He finds the ideal job for someone who collects broken things: a claims adjuster in an insurance office, doing inspections and appraisals. Through his work, he begins taking photographs of the broken or ruined things he encounters. With the camera he explores how isolating something we might consider trash from its context forces the viewer to appreciate the purity of its shape, and perhaps reevaluate what we consider art.

Believing that everything eventually breaks makes him wary of commitment, at least when it comes to romance. He wants to continue hanging out with his three lifelong friends, but with women he prefers playing the field. Then he meets Tiffany.

The characters are well-drawn, especially the three friends whose different paths provide a contrast to Stu’s. When one friend drops out of high school to marry his pregnant girlfriend, Stu’s reaction is “‘Don’t you guys realize we’re too young for a life sentence?’”

Through Stu’s story, Goodman gently probes the way identity is formed and its fluidity. As Stu navigates the currents of his life, his turning points seem to occur when the Brood X cicadas appear every 17 years. Whenever the cicadas sing again, he finds himself reevaluating his decisions. He returns again and again to the identity he forged when young, an identity that rests on his determination to live in the moment because nothing lasts.

Part romantic comedy and part coming-of-age story—as long as you understand that we are coming of age throughout our lives—this is a story that is particuliarly apt for our time. The COVID pandemic brought many unexpected changes to our lives, and as we emerge from it, many of us debate what we will keep and what we will discard, or if we have a choice about it. We ponder whether it is time to change the way we live or even if it is possible to do so.

As the world changes around us, have you been thinking about what to keep and what to leave behind?

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.

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Another Country, by James Baldwin

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Baldwin’s third novel starts with Rufus Scott, a jazz musician, standing near Times Square, broke with nowhere to go. We don’t need to be told he is Black; Baldwin accomplishes that with a simple, economical sentence: “The policeman passed him, giving him a look.”

Once well-known with many friends, a loving family, and numerous lovers, now he is “one of the fallen—for the weight of this city was murderous.” He believes he has only one friend left, Vivaldo, a writer laboring over his first novel.

With lyricism and passion, Baldwin indicts the city’s inhabitants, always hurrying somewhere, careless of themselves and others. And then there are the artists, like Rufus’s friends who are writers, actors, musicians, singers. Divided into three parts, this novel immerses us in their world: their ambitions and weaknesses, their kaleidoscope of lovers, their fallible selves.

We learn that they know little of themselves, much less of others. Several, including Rufus, are bitterly confused about their sexuality: identifying as heterosexual while occasionally giving in to overwhelming attraction to other men. For the main characters, the ones whom we get to know, are all men. There are women but they are just devices to drive the men’s plot lines. Which are deeply painful.

Set in the U.S. and France, there are countries within countries: Harlem, Greenwich Village, Riverside Drive, various locations in the Deep South. And each person is a country unto themselves, ultimately unknowable. The story shifts between Rufus, Vivaldo, and several other characters, each trying to find their footing after unimaginable loss, sometimes driven to sex work and other degrading activities in order to survive.

The shifting relationships between them drive this long novel, as the characters make connections and then destroy them in a desperate fight for power. Perhaps a kinder word is control; they try to assert control over the other to shore up the crumbling relationship. “But it was only love which could accomplish the miracle of making a life bearable—only love, and love itself mostly failed.”

Coming to this book from the two earlier novels, I found new power and resonance in Baldwin’s use of language. Passionate, yes, and often lyrical, each sentence is weighted with meaning, pulling us ever deeper into these characters. Here is Vivaldo:

He walked out of the phone booth into the bar, which was a workingman’s bar, and there was a wrestling match on the TV screen. He ordered a double shot and leaned on the bar. He was surrounded by precisely those men he had know from his childhood, from his earliest youth. It was as though, hideously, after a long and fruitless voyage, he had come home, to find that he had become a stranger. They did not look at him—or did not seem to look at him; but, then, that was the style of these men; and if they usually saw less than was present, they also, often, saw more than one guessed.

Baldwin needs only two details to set the scene. Then there’s the quick one-two: we think Vivaldo is comfortable among men he has know all his life, and then—boom—we get the one word “hideously” to show us how dreadfully wrong we are. The next sentence gives us the synthesis: his knowledge of them helps him interpret their actions, or inaction in this case, and regain his footing after the terrible blow of feeling alone, not just a stranger but someone who has lost what once supported him.

The characters’ actions and interactions testify to Baldwin’s shrewd understanding of the human heart. Each flawed character, each cruel or selfish act is treated with love and compassion. As one character says, “‘…what can we really do for each other except—just love each other and be each other’s witness?’”

Which book by James Baldwin is your favorite?