 HIGHLY RECOMMEND! My husband gave me this book for my birthday, since he knew I’d fallen in love with octopi after watching My Octopus Teacher (Netflix Original documentary). I loved this book. (I realize, looking at my prior review posts, that I always say I love the books, but that’s because I don’t generally persist with a book I don’t love going into it. Life is Too Short.) I strongly identified with the two protagonists – an older woman who cleans an aquarium at night and the octopus she meets while working. There’s an intriguing mystery, but I would have gone on reading it just to hear the octopus’ internal dialogue, which entranced me. I wish I could get to know one, but a. I live near the ocean but not THAT near, and b. my son tells me I’m “too old” to scuba dive. Ha! What does he know? The book was a good blend of very un-scary suspense, low-key drama and elderly romance – the woman’s son died under somewhat mysterious circumstances as a young man, another man is looking for his real father, a barkeep finds his soulmate but is too shy to tell her so, the octopus yearns for freedom. I couldn’t stop reading it, and stayed up until 3am, for which I paid dearly the next day, but it was worth it. I won’t give away the ending, of course, but I can say that I found it satisfying, the straggling ends tucked in neatly and convincingly. I hope you enjoy it too! Buy it on Amazon by clicking here. #RemarkablyBrightCreatures #ShelbyVanPelt #MyOctopusTeacher
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 HIGHLY RECOMMEND! I just finished Girl, Woman, Other and though I’d planned to write this week’s review about another book, couldn’t resist substituting this one instead. I had nominated the book for our book club, mainly because Bernadine Evaristo won the Booker Prize for it, and that’s always been a reliable bellwether for me.
And I’m very glad I did - I really enjoyed it, although I did struggle initially with the way it’s written, very eecummings, almost no punctuation, sentences don’t start with a capital letter and sometimes aren’t sentences. I also felt embarrassingly un-woke during a lot of it, so am considerably more humbled than when I started reading. It presents the intertwined stories of twelve black British women, who span the spectrum of blackness as well as feminism and even gender. Each of their voices are vivid, unique, compelling, all with very different, interesting, relatable lives (even for me, a 62-year-old white woman who identifies as a woman but retains most of her feminist ideals, albeit more muted since I was in college a million years ago). I was struck about halfway through to realize I wasn’t sure if the current strand was about a black or a white person - though the book was about black women and their often-horrific struggles, the universal similarities were pronounced: people struggling with their marriages, their careers, their parents, their children, how they see themselves, how they age. So though it was sobering and humbling, I’m very glad I read it. Buy it on Amazon by clicking here. #GirlWomanOther #BernardineEvaristo  HIGHLY RECOMMEND! I loved Shanghai when we visited it right after Tiananmen Square, and so really enjoyed reading this magical book about what it was like as the Chinese republic emerged.
The book is about a young Eurasian orphan whose courtesan mother abandons her in the courtyard of a large estate, in which she and her mother had lived in the now-decaying Western Residence. It was a fascinating glimpse into how common it was for Chinese men to have multiple wives and mistresses and concubines then, how ruthlessly the children of foreigners with Chinese women were discriminated against, but mostly, how the spirit world was incorporated into day to day life. The girl, Jialing, survives because the family that buys the property after her mother and the other mysterious residents decamp, agree to take her on as a bond servant, so the grandmother can earn credit for her next life. The story follows Jialing’s childhood, befriended by the Fox spirit who lives under a hydrangea bush, the eldest daughter of the new family that has moved in, and a young English girl who ends up vanishing. As she grows up, she is consumed by the need to find her mother, and understand why she was abandoned, and it is only her determination and the occasional protection of her Fox spirit that keep her safe. She eventually finds herself caught up in a mystery and the cauldron of political intrigue that gripped Shanghai as the regime changed, then being torn between a life of safety and comfort and the man she realizes she loves. Buy it on Amazon by clicking here. #DragonSpringsRoad #JanieChang  HIGHLY RECOMMEND! I saw the title of this book and laughed out loud. As a 62-year-old mom who had her children in her late 30’s, my own nest-emptying process is still a work in progress, but it has caused me a lot of heartache – nay, anxiety!
I really enjoyed Separation Anxiety – the book, not the feeling… ;) It’s about a mom whose career as a writer has stalled, whose marriage is teetering, whose teenage son has started freezing her out and whose best friend is dying. By accident, she tries wearing her dog in her son’s baby sling, and then she finds she can’t stop. Her first children’s book did spectacularly well, but not so the next two, and now, ironically, she writes pieces for a self-help website. Her husband’s career as a musician never took off, so he turned to pot and has a job stocking high-end snacks. Their initial chemistry has been subsumed into her caretaking, so they are separated but don’t have enough money to live separately. Her son has just crashed into adolescence and pushes her away at every opportunity, growing moodier and more silent with each passing day. She’s exhausted and lonely, and the dog in the sling is her only comfort. Slowly, though, she climbs out of the hole, and the story is about accepting ourselves and the onslaught of life with as much grace and compassion as we can muster. Buy it on Amazon by clicking here. #Separation Anxiety #LauraZigman |
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