Dear Exile - Hillary Liftin and Kate Montgomery

This was a little gem!  Two 20 something's exchange letters between one seeking a career and love in New York City and the other serving in the Peace Corps in Kenya.  They were college friends before striking out on different paths.  I loved their spirit and up beat outlook despite what life throws at them.  A great read.

Published:  1999  Read: August 2018  Genre: Fiction

The Clarks of Cooperstown - Nicholas Fox Weber

Sub-title: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune and their Great and Influential Art Collection and their Forty-Year Feud

The topic of this book fascinated me as I used to make all of my own clothes and loved sewing.  Edward Clark was the business person that partnered with Isaac Singer and ended up owning over half of the company. He had only one son, Alfred, who had four sons.  Two of Alfred's son's, Robert Sterling Clark and Stephen Clark were art collectors.  Sterling left a foundation that today is valued at $98 million.  His brother Stephen's descendants administer The Clark Foundation which is estimated to have funds in excess of $440 million.  The lives of people with those staggering sums at their disposal always seem to go astray in each succeeding generation, and this family was no exception. 

Unfortunately, the book is not about their lives as much as it is about the art they collected and left to museums, the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum in New York and Yale University's collection.

The author is a well-known art expert and describes the paintings they acquired and gave away.  I found it quite fawning, as if he was flattering the current generation for donations as he repeatedly described how wonderful it was for them to share their paintings - without mentioning the tax breaks they likely got for doing so.  

It was worth reading but I could have skipped large parts and I still feel I didn't really get to know the Clarks.

Published: 2007  Read: August 2018  Genre: biography

A Bridge for Passing - Pearl S Buck

Many times when reading older books (this one was published in 1961) the dated references make the story unreadable.  Not this one.  Buck wrote this memoir after the death of her second husband.  It's not stated, as it would be today, but it appears that he died of dementia, so she had lived through his decline and his death was expected.  At the time, she was in Japan working with the film crew for her first book, The Big Wave, about a tidal wave hitting a small fishing village in Japan.

In a gentle, soft voice she describes her feelings of grief, loss, and loneliness. She does not mention him by name only refers to him, wondering if he sees and hears her, missing his companionship.  So different from the direct, raw words that would be used in these times.

Some tidbits of information from this story:

• Obama is a city in Japan, about 6 to 7 hours from Tokyo.
• Mother Hubbard's are a style of dress with high yoke and collar and loosely flowing to the floor, intended to cover as much of the body as possible
• Homecoming is a book by Jiro Osaragi

Having been raised and lived until her early 40's in China, she brought a unique perspective to the American public on Asia.  Her writing was particularly enlightening after the horrors of WWII left bad impressions of Japanese.  She shed light on Chinese culture as the communist era was rising.

Her second husband, Richard Walsh, was her editor who had founded the John Day publishing company.  She describes them as finishing each other's sentences and hurrying home from work to share their day.  I noted this description of how she dealt with her grief:

"A desperate weariness was creeping into my bones, the weariness of acceptance, the acceptance of the inescapable, the conviction of the unchangeable.  From now on I must never again expect to share the great moments of my life.  There would be such moments as long as I was alive, moments of beauty, moments of excitement an exhilaration; above all, moments of achievement.  In such moments he and I had turned to each other as instinctively as we breathed.  That was no more to be...It is not true that one never walks alone.  There is an eternity where one walks alone and we do not know its end."

Sadly, her loneliness led her to seek companionship later in her life when she took up with a man many years her junior who took advantage of her, resulting in an argument over her will which left everything to him.

I'm glad I read this and learned more of this popular, Nobel prize winning author.

Published: 1961  Read: August 2018  Genre: Memoir

Digging to America - Ann Tyler

Two families adopt Korean baby girls and become friends after meeting at the airport as the children are delivered.  One family is American as apple pie; the other headed by an Iranian immigrant whose only American-born son and daughter-in-law embrace modern American ways.  The story is primarily about Maryam, grandmother to Suzanne, one of the girls.  The author uses a recurring celebration of the girls arrival anniversary to display the different feelings of her characters as they meld into the society.

I remember reading other books by Tyler and disliking her too tidy wrap up of story in a predictable ending--this one is no different.  When I was ready to yell at Maryam near the end, the author reverses course and puts a bow on the story. 

Since it was written in 2006 it is a perspective on immigration that is worth reading.

Published: 2006  Read: July 2018  Genre: Fiction

March - Geraldine Brooks

Now here's a book I could really sink my teeth into!

I have enjoyed other books by this author, most recently People of the Book and Year of Wonder.
This is the story of the father of the "little Women" book by Louis May Alcott.  Mr March, invisible mostly in Alcott's story, tells of his life, from a young man peddling wares in the South through his meeting and marrying Marmee, to his service as a chaplain during the Civil War.

What I truly admire about Brroks' writing is her extensive research and deft weaving of facts of the historical times she portrays into the lives of her fictional characters.

Her story draws inspiration from the life of Alcott's real life father, Bronson Alcott whose diaries and writings she read and researched as the basis for the March character.  I had read the biography of Louise and her father, Eden's Outcast and was delighted to see it as the framework for Mr March.  I don't think she ever gave him a first name.  Highly recommended.

Published: 2005  Read:  July 2018  Genre: historical fiction

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize

I picked this up as it was on my TBR list, though I don't have a record of how it go there; a book group perhaps.

It's a story of a 99 year old woman who has been in an asylum for over 60 years.  She is secretly recording her life history while a psychiatrist struggles to determine her suitability for release, as the hospital they have shared is to be demolished.

I felt the book went on and on with too many adjectives and flowery phrases that the author just enjoyed putting together. This style of writing is described as "lyrical" and "poetic prose" that I can only take in small doses and only when it moves the story along.  It was a powerful story of lives lost unnecessarily, to misjudgments with drastic consequences. 

Some quotes:

"We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach."

"Like many a man in authority, he was sublimely happy as long as he was presenting his ideas, and as long as his ideas were meeting with agreement." 

"It is one of the graces of married life that for some magical reason we always look the same to each other.  Even our friends never seem to grow old." 

I was really annoyed that the author presented a twist at the end that required very careful reading to "catch" the impact; he could have had the same twist without expecting the reader to remember the details required.  An "okay" read, but not my cup of tea.

Published:  2008  Read: July 2018  Genre: Fiction