All the Light We Cannot See

I can't write much (anything?) about Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See that has not already been written. It is a truly fantastic book, worthy of the many commendations it has received, and the rave reviews others have posted (including Viola, who first encouraged me to read this months ago...I've been the time since on my library's waiting list!).

So, a bit of synopsis: Marie-Laure is a blind Parisian, the only daughter of a widower who makes it his mission to help her be as independent as possible. Through the construction of intricate models that include every tree, curb, and drain, she feels her way - first with her fingers, then with her cane - through their arrondissement. When Germany invades France, everything changes, not least because her father, as a longtime, loyal employee of the Museum of Natural History is changed with safeguarding a national treasure. They leave Paris for St-Malo, an ancient walled city surrounded by ocean. (As a side note, I must add here that St-Malo is truly stunning. If you every have the opportunity to visit, do so! And as you do, consider that everything you see is a reconstruction - the city was absolutely destroyed in the war, and the buildings rebuilt, literally from their same stones. It's an amazing experience. But I digress.)

Ultimately, from her great-uncle's house in St-Malo, Marie Laure crosses paths with the young German soldier, Werner, whose only happiness in an orphanage came when tinkering with radios. His skill leads him to become a top resistance tracker for the Nazis, although slowly his conscience begins to gnaw at him.

As I said at the beginning, All the Light We Cannot See is a truly fantastic novel. The characters are well developed and convincing, the story arcs are compelling, and the history - of Paris and St-Malo both - is superbly accurate. I was reminded time and again of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, another World War II historical fiction that I loved. (For what it's worth, you can actually take a ferry to Guernsey from St-Malo; I very much hope to do so one day.) Like Markus Zusak, Doerr provides a realistic glimpse of the German people during wartime, and the varied perspectives, motivations, and deprivations of life in Nazi Germany.

Having just read And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II, I wondered as I read to what extent Doerr drew inspiration from Jacques Lusseyran; his memoir is one of the first texts named in the acknowledgements.

If you haven't yet read this book, you should. Even if you have to wait months for your library's copy.

The Prize: Tales From a Revolution - Vermont

Caleb's father, Elijah, is off fighting the British, while he tends the farmstead and looks after his mother and younger brother. He also keeps a regular lookout on Lake Champlain, where he can watch the movements of the British and the American "rebels," the Green Mountain Boys among them. He meets an unlikely ally in the Frenchman, Captain Mallett, and together they forge a way through the early days of the American Revolution.

The Prize is one of a series of Revolution-era stories by Lars H. D. Hedbor, and it reminded me again that YA fiction is often underrated. (I had a similar thought when I read The Book Thief earlier this year.) I like YA because the story moves along briskly: one virtually never encounters page-after-page of finely written but ultimately unnecessary prose. Characters are developed, action commences, the story is resolved. Don't get me wrong, the prose can be nice, but at the same time, The Prize was a nice respite from my usual reading.

And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II

As the title suggest, Jacques Lusseyran was both blind and a hero of the French Resistance. He also had the misfortune of dying in a car crash at age 46. And so I feel an almost moral compunction to be gentle with his memoir. 

That said, I  did not finish it. I almost gave up before the Germans had even invaded Poland (which happens somewhere around one-third of the way into the book) and ultimately did give up before Lusseyran was betrayed by a member of his own network (and I quit more than two-thirds of the way through).

The difficulty for me lies in that fact that And There Was Light reads as much like a philosophy treatise as a wartime memoir. I might have been okay skimming the pages upon pages of musings on the meaning of life and light and love, were the passages on the nature of the resistance work and the war itself more compelling. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. In fact Lusseyran sometimes skips over large chunks of his wartime experience with a single "the next six months were a battle." 

No question, I admire Lusseyran's resilience and, yes, heroism. I wish that his story were told more clearly, however, and in a more focused manner. Readers of the Resistance will find these traits in The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944, which tells the broader story of the French Resistance.

Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain

Having previously read Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics (and enjoyed both) I jumped at the change to buy Think Like a Freak when it was a BookBub daily special.

I like this book. I like Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's style, and I find their ripped-from-the-headlines approach to thinking about economics-related matters engaging and fun. Eating contest? Check. School reform? Check. Nigerian email scams? Check, check, check. They provide new frameworks for thinking about old problems and breakdown concepts (such as incentives) in ways that make them accessible to the masses.

That said, likely the only true revelation for me in reading this book is that, when debating school reform, evidently most people never stop to consider the role that parents/caregivers play in a child's most formative years and, hence, the limits to said reform. For me the most surprising thing is that the vast majority of people don't account for this! Wherever one stands on education reform, it is hard to imagine many readers disagreeing with the description of the U.S. Congress behaving not as a serious legislative body, but as a "deranged flock of summer campers locked in an endless color war." This in the chapter on how to persuade those who don't want to be persuaded.

Ultimately, Levitt and Dubner write for a wide audience so that whether you're already well-versed in sunk costs vs. opportunity costs, the importance of effective incentives, and the costs of false positives or need a bit of a refresher on statistics and economics, Think Like a Freak is highly readable.

The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

Kate Andersen Brower was attending lunch at the White House when, after noticing the "obvious rapport" between the First Lady and one of the butlers, decided to write a book about the White House residence staff and their experiences. Thus was born The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House.

Although Brower has taken a bit of flak, to say nothing of those who spoke with her, The Residence is far from a juicy, tell-all. For the most part, the recollections focus on the very personal experiences of the staff, from learning of the death of JFK, to experiencing Nixon's resignation. With the exception of one or two Lewinsky-related stories, virtually all of the stories that cast a president or first lady in the least negative light pertain to the dearly departed. Lyndon Johnson, who drove the staff nuts with his very particular (and peculiar) plumbing demands, comes off the least well of the presidents, although his wife, Lady Bird, seems to have been especially beloved. In comparison, Ronald Reagan was deeply admired by the staff, while Nancy seems to have been the most difficult of first ladies. The favorites, though, clearly were the elder Bushes.

What The Residence offers as much as anything is glimpse of American history. Kennedy's assassination, Nixon's resignation, Clinton's impeachment, 9/11: for better or for worse (mostly worse!) these are all seminal moments in the history of the American presidency and in the country's history. Brower is offering readers a unique perspective on all of these events, as well as many smaller moments that influenced or were influenced by these. At no point did I feel she or her sources lacked the appropriate respect for the presidency or first family. She has captured stories that would have otherwise disappeared, and provides a bit of history about the physical structure itself (which makes for an interesting comparison to the details presented in Empire of Mud).

Anyone with an interest in 20th century American history should enjoy this. Although it can fairly be called a "serious book," it's also light enough to read at the beach.

1906

James Dalessandro's 1906 is a fictionalized account of the days leading up to and the aftermath of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Annalisa Passarelli, the music and arts reported for the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, leads readers through a rollicking recounting of the earthquake and subsequent fire - as well as her dealings with both the very cream of San Francisco society and its seedy underside of thugs and shanghaiers, pimps and prostitutes, and perhaps worst of all, politicians.

I really, really liked this book. It is well-written and fast paced; a chronicle of both disaster and corruption on the grandest scale. Murder and mystery seamlessly intersect with romance, and trust me, that's a rare quality. My only complaint, and it's a relatively minor one, is that the reader is introduced to a vast number of characters, some of whom simply disappear from the story. Although Annalisa offers a plausible explanation at the end - this is her first hand account of the earthquake, helped along by the occasional personal correspondence or diary - I felt a tad disappointed not to have a final glimpse at some of them, in particular the geology professor. This is but a minor quibble, though, when all is said and done.

While Passarelli, and her co-protagonist, Hunter Fallon, are Dalessandro's original creations, most of the other characters in his pages - from Enrico Caruso to Mayor Schmitz to Shanghai Kelly and Adam Rolf are either entirely true to form or based closely on real individuals from that time. Schmitz - who was indicted on corruption charges not long afterward (thank you, Wikipedia) - and his cronies fixed the death toll at 478, although the real toll was anywhere from 5,000-10,000. And if that weren't enough, the bad guys really did use the chaos and destruction of the disaster to exact revenge on their enemies, which is to say that Chicago in 1919 had nothing on San Francisco in 1906.

 Four stars.

The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic

Maggie Murphy is a 17-year-old orphan when she embarks on the Titanic with her aunt Kathleen and 12 others from Ballysheen, Ireland, bound for a new life in America. For Maggie, the departure is bittersweet: she longs to see her aunt's beloved Chicago, but her heart is in Ballysheen, and with one Séamus, in particular. One of very few steerage passengers to survive the sinking, Maggie vows never to speak of Titanic again, a vow she keeps until her 87th year when she shares her story with her grieving great-granddaughter, Grace.

Okay, so Hazel Gaynor's plot had potential, and the story isn't bad, but more than anything I tired of the dual narrative approach. I may have felt differently if I hadn't just encountered this device in The Sandcastle Girls, but even there I commented that I would have preferred more of the original/historical story and less of the modern intrusion. I will say for Gaynor that her approach did not feel as forced as that of Chris Bohjalian.

That said, I rather like Maggie. Gaynor gives her plenty of spirit and pluck, and succeeds in making her feel like the same person whether she is 17 or 87.I read this book quickly, although admittedly there were pages I skimmed - not many and not often - particularly when the dual narratives felt tiresome but I wanted to know how Maggie's story would end. Other than simply surviving the wreck, that is, since that part was rather obvious.

I believe this is the first fictional account I've read of the Titanic, and for that reason alone, was interesting to read. This is necessarily and entirely different accounting of the disaster than Steve Turner's very good but rather narrow, The Band that Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the 8 Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic. If you're in the mood for a good, quick, historical fiction with highly likeable characters - and can accept the occasional less-than-stellar prose or storytelling device - by all means, add this to your beach list.

Three stars.

Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film

Glenn Kurtz is rummaging around in his parents' closets when he discovers an old family video shot by his long-deceased grandfather in Poland in 1938. The entire video lasts roughly 14 minutes, but it is the three minutes that capture life in a Jewish community destroyed in World War II that capture his attention. Through painstaking detective work, that leads him to a number of immigrants as well as Holocaust survivors, he learns more about the film, the town, and the people in it.

I added Three Minutes in Poland to my reading list after it appeared on NPR's 2014 Best Books List (other fantastic books on the list include The Moor's Account and Lovers at the Chameleon Club, but I digress). Admittedly, it starts a bit slowly, as Kurtz explains the science behind restoring old film, for example. However, once he connects with the survivors or Nasielsk's Jewish community (no small feat given that out of a community of 3,000 fewer than 100 would survive, and that Kurtz did not begin his search for them until some 65 years after the war ended), the book transitions from rather dry scientific discourse to a testament of perseverance - that of Kurtz and of Nasielsk's survivors - and also to the strength of the human spirit.

Eighty-six-year-old Maurice Chandler, in particular, is the unsuspecting star of this book. His faculties fully in tact, he is able to recall not only the day when American visitors arrived in 1938, but so many facets of life, both large and small, about growing up in a strict religious household in the interwar years. In that sense, his experiences are often similar to those of Isaac Bashevis Singer in In My Father's Court. The context is different, of course, but the men certainly would have recognized one another's homes and experiences in their respective histories. As for Chandler's many narrow escapes from the Nazis: these are worthy of an entire book in their own right.

I would be remiss not to add that I also thought many times of anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff's formidable Number Our Days: A Tirumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto, which is still one of the best assigned readings I was given in many years of graduate school.

Overall, I would say Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film is best suited to lovers of histories, and of the many coincidences that occur across the years drawing otherwise unrelated ideas, events, or individuals together. This is not a light read, but it is a worthy one.

Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her

Ruth Handler was the daughter of Jewish immigrants, the tenth of ten children and one of the few born in the New Country. Raised by a sister old enough to be her mother, Ruth would marry her high school sweetheart, Elliott Handler, and together they would found an empire: Mattel. Their success at Mattel would span some twenty years, but the most famous creation would always be Barbie, named in fact for their daughter, Barbara. And then it all came apart, personally (a cancer diagnosis and mastectomy for Ruth, as well as the terminal illness of their son - Ken, of course!) and professionally (charges of fraud and false reporting brought against Ruth by the SEC, which led both Ruth and Elliott to leave Mattel). In her second career, she throws herself into a personal cause: creating more comfortable and more realistic breast forms for women who have undergone mastectomies.

Barbie and Ruth is a well-research and well-written biography of, honestly, both Ruth Handler and Barbie, one that reads quickly and easily. Robin Gerber depicts Ruth as a brash, brazen, busty broad who used her wits and wiles to get what she wanted, typically regardless of cost or consequence. She is both admirable and hard to like, which I imagine is how she was in person.

Oddly, I had the nagging feeling I'd encountered Ruth Handler before, and then it struck me: Lillian Dunkle (the fictional Jewish immigrant woman at the head of Dunkle's ice cream, who is also laid low by government charges) could have been - had to be? - based on Ruth Handler. Among other similarities, Ruth started a TV show around the Mattel toy lines that is certainly reminiscent of Dunkle's Sundae Morning Funhouse. Yes, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street could very well be Ruth Handler herself, fixated on sweet treats rather than dolls. And if she was the inspiration for Lillian Dunkle, it would be just one more accomplishment in a long and unlikely career.