Dolley

I have mixed feelings on Rita Mae Brown's Dolley. In the plus column, is that it's a fairly lighthearted work of historical fiction. Alternating between current action and dairy entries allows the story to be told from multiple angles. Certainly, there were echoes of Empire of Mud, with the references to streets so bad the British may break their ankles on the march into town, and the Congressmen gathered in, or possibly fleeing from, their boarding houses. All of which is to say, Brown has done a nice job of capturing the zeitgeist of the era.

In the minus column is that Dolley herself seemed to border occasionally on "whiny," (not a trait I've ever heard associated with her), and I wondered if the real individuals obsessed as much on Washington and Hamilton as the characters Brown created. In the balance, these are relatively minor flaws.

Certainly, this is no 1812: The War That Forged a Nation, but neither is that what Brown is looking to accomplish. If you're looking for a relatively mild, fictional account of the politics and presidency on the eve of the British laying waste to Washington, Dolley is your book. Just be forewarned: the more things change, the more they stay the same, in politics as in life...

Four stars.

What We Were Promised

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for great books (and the time to read them!), not least Lucy Tan's What We Were Promised. This novel is the story of a Chinese couple who has made good on the dream of American educations and American jobs and, finally, a triumphant return as expats to a China they discover they hardly know.

Wei, or Boss Zhen, is a highly successful marketing executive with a reality tv show that allows his estranged brother, Qiang, to contact him for the first time since he walked out of Wei's wedding 20-some years before. In the U.S., Lina was an energetic and popular Chinese teacher. In Shanghai she has devolved into the quintessential taitai; the book opens with her accusation of theft against a longtime maid that, coupled with Qiang's phone call seems to have sent the family, including 12-year-old, home-from-boarding-school-for-summers-only, Karen, into a tailspin. At the center of the action, and able to witness all of the jealousies, insecurities, and half-truths is maid Sunny.

Tan quietly tells their story from the alternating viewpoints of Wei, Lina, and Sunny, each of whom is trying to come to terms with past and present, obligations to family versus self, and the nature of incurring and canceling debts, especially the kinds that can't be counted in dollars and cents.

I absolutely loved this book. I was reminded frequently of Pachinko, particularly in regards to the nature of family dynamics and what is owed to the individual dream and the collective good.

Five stars.

The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan

The Underground Girls of Kabul is a fantastically informative, provocative, and depressing look at the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan. Author Jenny Nordberg begins with a quest to unravel the mysteries of those girls who are raised as honorary sons in boy-happy Afghanistan. The practice, which she traces across much of the former Zoroastrian empire, is hundreds (thousands?) of years old, and practiced by families from every ethnicity and income bracket. In fact, Nordberg first considers the issue when she learns that one of the female Parliamentarians has an honorary son - and was once one herself.

Nordberg approaches to her subject matter thoughtfully, delving into the historic, religious, and cultural origins of the practice, as well as the present day norms. Nordberg is also careful to consider how such fluid gender designations - accompanied by rigid gender roles - impact the identities of those who experience life as girl-boy-woman. (Perhaps not surprisingly, little if any attention has been paid to this issue in Afghanistan.)

Through this lens, Nordberg also provides a glimpse of daily life in Afghanistan - and, boy, is it depressing. Although, as long time Kabul resident and expat Carol le Duc observes to Nordberg, "This can be an awful place to be a woman. But it's not particularly good for a man, either." No matter: however rich, intelligent, or ambitious, the lot of an Afghan woman's life is unquestionably bleak; it's certainly a study in contrasts to those women profiled in All the Single Ladies. Such notions of independence are clearly many generations are away for All the Afghan Ladies.

Five stars.

The Dying of the Light

Diana Cooke was the last of a her line, a line unbroken back to Pocahontas. By the end of World War I, when Diana makes her much awaited debut, her beloved Saratoga is an albatross around her neck, one that compels her to marry a brash "Captain" whose greatest attribute is his bank account. Almost immediately they loath one another, seeking out new ways to exact cruelty one on the other, the only mutual interest being the unearthly love each possesses for their son, Ashton.

The Captain's death relieves Diana of the burden of being his wife, though leaves her again financially on the brink. Not until her grown son is sent down from Yale and returns home permanently, prep school and university roommate in tow, will her finances - and the state of Saratoga - be set right. Saratoga saved, every other aspect of Diana's life quickly spins away from her, resulting, we can only assume in the tragedy that opens the forward: Saratoga a fire-scarred ruins, the bones among the ash presumed to be those of the mistress.

So here's my take: So. Much. Melodrama. I alternated between enjoying the story Robert Goolrick was creating and feeling it was just too much. Like, too, too much. In the same way, the prose was frequently beautiful, but occasionally too overdone. Perhaps this was a tool Goolrick used to create an overwrought, melodramatic narrative. If this is how the reader is intended to feel, well done. If not, I could have gone in for just a little less drama and fewer beautiful words.

Three-and-a-half stars.

Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality

Jacob Tomsky's Heads in Beds purports to be a tell-all on the hotel industry. Instead I found it mostly recounted Tomsky's personal exploits, frequently involving alcohol, often a hustle, and almost always some choice expletives, most commonly beginning with the letter F. So, no, it didn't really appeal...which is unfortunate, because it had potential, especially in the early chapters.

Tomsky more or less lost me when he got tired of his job and packed off to the Europe to live a backpacker's lifestyle until the money ran out. Returning to the States, he settled on New York and, out of options, returned to the hotel industry where he learned the real tricks of the hustle (aka scam). He did confirm for me others bits of hotel lore I've heard over the years, such as never, ever, ever drink from a glass in a guest room and the do not disturb sign is a very good friend. Also, valet parking: not a good idea.

As rapidly as the travel industry is changing, I'm curious how much some of the "advice" in Heads in Beds holds true a decade on. Certainly, I would expect that as the industry consolidates (think Marriott-Starwood merger), front desk staff have less autonomy than they did in the early 2000s, particularly at the mid-tier properties. (I also assume that hotels track individual guests more closely than in the past. Try Tomsky's mini-bar hustle on multiple properties in the same chain and I bet they catch on pretty quickly.)

Two-and-a-half stars.

The Story of Arthur Truluv

Elizabeth Berg's The Story of Arthur Truluv is a sweet enough story. The elderly, recently-widowed Arthur meets lonely, teenaged Maddy at the cemetery where he eats lunch with his late wife and she escapes the bullying and tedium of high school. Perhaps improbably, they forge a friendship, first with one another and then - individually and jointly - with Lucille, Arthur's equally-elderly neighbor. All of them are grappling with grief and with change, and loss is an elemental part of the story and their relationships with one another

Overall, I liked the story, although I am growing a bit weary of the genre. Glancing through reviews on Amazon, it's clear I'm not the only one who sees similarities with Ove, Hendrik Groen, and that other widower Arthur, Mr. Pepper. Too, I was bothered by the timing of the closing chapters; I simply couldn't make the dates add up in a way that made sense and seemed true to the rest of the story.

I was especially fond of Arthur, though, as well as his neighbor Lucille. On more than one occasion I was reminded of my great-grandfather, a widower who lived around the corner from his brother's widow, but would only rarely visit with her lest the neighbors notice. I am grateful for any book that offers an opportunity to reminisce about my grandfather, but such sentimentality can only take me so far.

Four stars.