Sunday, March 31, 2019

Cluster Critiques



Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

When Kya was six, and barely old enough to remember, her mom walked away from their home tucked into the marshland of the North Carolina coast, and never returned. Kya and her three older siblings learned to stay out of the way of their violent alcoholic father, each growing up and leaving as soon as they could, until eventually the dad disappeared as well, leaving Kya, age 10, alone and on her own. By necessity, the earth, water, flora and fauna of the marsh became her companion, teacher, mother and savior. 

Although there were rumors in town about a “swamp girl,” and Kya even trying for a while to attend school, soon enough, she turned away from the foreign, complicated nature of society, and back to the comfortable, uncomplicated society of nature. The child welfare systems soon forgot about her, and she grew up with the marsh and its inhabitants her only trustworthy, knowable constant.

Where the Crawdads Singof course also includes a complex plot involving Kya’s sexual awakening, betrayal, true love, personal achievement, and even murder, but those are only side dishes (albeit fairly yummy ones) to the lovely, lyrical, relationship Kya had with the marsh that raised her, and the extraordinary persona she developed as a result of that isolated upbringing.

When author Delia Owens was a little girl, her nature-loving southern mother would encourage her to explore, saying “go way out yonder where the crawdads sing.” And Delia did, eventually becoming a wildlife scientist in Africa.  When my book club recently discussed this book, going around the room, picking one word to describe how this book made them feel, the word “jealous” came up several times – jealousy of Kya’s simple, quiet, satisfied existence. I too found myself wondering how peaceful and uncomplicated it would be to be Kya – way out yonder where the crawdads sing. Except for a few clichéd characters, this is a unique story, beautifully told. 

The Witch Elm by Tana French


I found myself loving this book, but anxious for it to end. I truly enjoy French’s exceptional writing, but in this case, she seemed to lose sight of “diminishing return” - when enough is enough and resolution is called for.

The Witch Elm is about Toby, a Dublin publicist for an art gallery, and his pastiche of friends and family members who discover a human skull in a tree on his Uncle Hugo's property – a place where they’ve all spend many summers and holidays together for decades. Who does the skull belong to? How did it get there? What role, by virtue of their lives and personas, did each of them play in the mysterious death.

French beautifully weaves a tapestry of suspicion, red herrings, hints and threats as she leads us through what Stephen King in his NY Times review described as a Thomas Hardy-like mystery, and which made me flash back on the many Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mystery books I read in my youth. 

The Which Elm characters twist you around their little fingers, making you sure you know what’s what, when in fact you do not, and you’re all the more grateful (literally speaking) for it. 

Good? Yes. Long? Yes. Worth it? Yes. 

Bad Blood, Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

If you watch TV you may have seen both the commercial and PBS versions of the story about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, the technology company dedicated to making multiple medical diagnosis through a single finger prick and one drop of blood – obviously, a revolution in medical science that would change the world. Unfortunately, over time, the facts surfaced that their technology was failing frequently and many of their claims were exaggerated and in some instances false. One might surmise what makes the very public crucifixion of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, a story seemingly even more compelling than their revolutionary ambition, is the “fake-it-till-you-make-it” methodology embraced since the beginning of time didn’t work for this invention because it endangered people. However, it feels more sinister to me. 

Yes, Theranos claims were misleading and produced inaccurate blood test results, but industry has been misleading the public and placing them in danger forever – cigarettes, alcohol, cars, birth control, food preservatives, sugar, you name it. But I don’t recall any of those being attributed to a single individual – but rather to the companies.  Elizabeth Holmes to be so publically shot down in flames and villainized - even to the point of criticizing the tone of her voice, her wardrobe choices, and her decision to drop out of college to found her company (although Steve Job, Michael Dell, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg all did as well). 

Could it be that Elizabeth Holmes, once named by Forbes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America, was getting a little too uppity in a world yet dominated by men? I do not know. Just as Elizabeth Holmes charmed the likes of her very high profile board members and investors (George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Bill Frist, Richard Kovacevich, Riley Bechtel, Tim Draper, Rupert Murdoch, Walmart, Betsy DeVos and others) she too sort of charmed me with her unflinching vision, fearlessness and ambition.  Alas, in March Elizabeth settled fraud allegations made by the Securities and Exchange Commission, agreeing to pay a $500,000 fine, give back a large portion of her Theranos shares, and be barred from acting as a public company's officer or director for a decade. 

Ronya Kozmetsky once told me the difference between the way women do business and men do business is that men fail and fail and fail, never looking back until they succeed, and that too often women fail and then spend years analyzing why and mourning their failure. I wonder which path Elizabeth Homes will take. Bad Blood is a fascinating look at what happens when theory and scientific discovery are driven by a culture that measures output in megabytes per second.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara


Author Michelle McNamara entered the world of unsolved crimes when, as a teenager, a girl was murdered near McNamara’s home, and her killer was never caught.I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is about the Golden State Killer (aka East Area Rapist, Original Night Stalker and Visalia Ransacker), a serial killer/rapist/kidnapper/burglar with whom our author was tragically obsessed until her death from an accidental drug overdose in 2018. 

Joseph DeAngelo, now 72 years old, was finally arrested last spring when a covert mission captured his DNA and matched it to crimes attributed to the Golden State Killer. Prosecutors believe DeAngelo killed 13 people and committed more than 50 rapes and 100 burglaries in six California counties in the 1970s and 1980s – a portion of which time he was a police officer. His trial in Sacramento County is expected to take as long as 10 years. 

With staggering detail and dozens of interviews with involved law enforcement and victims, this book sews together a patchwork of thousands of clues, revealing a profile of the seemingly unstoppable, undetectable predator who terrorized California for decade, and remained uncaptured for nearly 50 years. Sadly, it also profiles the torment of its writer, so consumed by her subject that it eventually contributes to her death. If you are interested in true crime, you won’t find a much more detailed study than this. Michelle McNamara literally gave her life to documenting and tracking down one of our generations most prolific and elusive serial killer/rapist. That level of commitment to writing doesn’t get more serious. 

One Second After by William R. Forstchen

Post-apocalyptical books tend to not bother me any more than movies about zombies, simply because there are much more evident pressing dangers to which we are exposed on a daily basis, like driving a car. But One Second After, about the challenges of surviving an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) did because unlike most books of this ilk, it didn’t focus on the bad guys or larger than life saviors and gross destruction, it focused on the very fundamental, small, real dangers, like infection and starvation. 

First, electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic radiation that theoretically can wipe out all electronics – including computers, phones, vehicles, anything that runs on electricity (which almost everything does). Which means no food, no medicines, and in some areas, no water. Your imagination can take you from there, but suffice it to say it will be dog-eat-dog as everyone strives to keep their families alive. 

So, in the book, there is a EMP in a small, rural, close-knit North Carolina town, which might seem safer, then say, a large city where relationships are much more disjointed. But as vehicles with electronic dependence shut down, and travelers wander into town looking for help, and as criminals’ sense opportunity and families become desperate to protect their own – chaos ensues.  
And soon enough marshal law is enacted with brutal outcomes, wars begin between cities fighting for water and food, and simple cuts without the advantage of antibiotics become deadly.  

Three things I drew from this book that I’d not thought about before:
1.    How vulnerable one becomes if one has resources other do not. For example, if you’re a “prepper” who has stocked up on supplies and planed for an “end-of world” scenario, you will immediately become a prime target for those who have not. 
2.    The need for coalition. Groups will overtake individuals, and larger groups will overtake smaller coalitions. 
3.    Individuals who know the old ways of living off the land and are not so dependent on modern technology will survive longer.

Human behavior is pretty predictable and self-preservation is hard-wired, so it is always interesting how writers portray their version of what happens when our social structure breaks down. It’s hard to judge right or wrong when survival is the motivation, but just as with most post-apocalyptic books, One Second After primarily focuses on individuals with integrity and a concern for the greater good, which is why we read them – they feed our need to believe that no matter what happens the good people will survive. Read it? Sure. It’s pretty well-written, but digresses towards the end when the author is scrambling for a believable ending. 

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

I never met a man worth fighting with another woman for.  If his intentions aren’t clear. You can have him. Good luck. You’ll need it.

But that’s seemingly not the case with Vanessa and Nelly. Two women in love with the same man – suave, sophisticated, financially secure, and handsome Richard. But Vanessa, the x-wife, who once had Richard and his money and his sophisticated lifestyle, can’t let Nelly, the new fiancé, marry him! She can’t! She must stop the wedding. Nelly should know the truth So, she stalks Richard and Nelly, plotting and planning. But who is the real predator? Who is the prey?

The writing is good. The plot is wicked. The ending is smashing. But, you will slog through a good bit of adolescent-feeling narrative to find the psychological-thriller aspect of this pretty good book.  

The Gay Place by Billy Lee Brammer

This book was the book choice for our March Very Smart Gals Book Club meeting, and since hostess Marcia Milam picked it, she kicked off the discussion, recalling so many captivating personal connections and memories, which were quickly added to by so many of the gals who were also mingling on the cusp of that 1950-60 political era, and the characters who evolved out of it. Cathy Casey brought with her a first edition hard-cover reprint of The Gay Place that her company, Texas Monthly, produced in the ’70. It even had some penciled-in marginalia. There were so many wonderful stories and discovered connections that came from that book discussion, bringing all us gals even closer. I certainly have some great memories of that political period, as it was during that era that my mother was attending graduate school at UT during the summers. And although I was very young, I still absorbed impressions and they did impact me. 

I did a little research on The Gay Placein anticipation of our March meeting and came across the below, very lovely description of this book. I couldn’t say it better, so I won’t. Thanks to Matthew for this critique:

“I certainly didn't expect a novel based on LBJ's political career in Texas to be chock-full of eroticism and complicated passions. Not that the Johnsonian character is involved in most of the hanky panky - he floats over all the proceedings spouting quotes from the Old Testament and Hill Country superlatives - strangely, he is the most aloof character and the one I identified with the most. This novel is largely concerned with young people involved in Texas Government in the late fifties - filled with Austin's rich and powerful pining for the innocence they never had - they just don't cough up beautifully-wrought prose about it anymore.”

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