A Feminist Take on Books, Movies, TV, and More
BOOK REVIEWS
Fallout
by: Sara Paretsky
Though I always enjoy spending time with V.I., this is an extra good installment of the series, taking the Chicago PI/social justice warrior out of her urban comfort zone to rural and university town Kansas--where Sara Paretsky grew up and went to college. The disappearance of two Chicagoans she's been hired to find leads Vic to Lawrence and to a fraught history of anti-nuclear protests in 1983, the year that "The Day After" was filmed there. I remember that movie, and I spent time in the anti-nuke movement in Chicago back in the '80s, so I found this story both interesting and nostalgic (though fortunately the violence that always accompanies Vic on her adventures was not part of my experience). In addition to the nuclear issues, we also get to learn a bit about chemical weapons and Kansas' history of race relations. An interesting cast of characters rounds the book out--though I could do without the bratty Northwestern hockey player from Montreal. She gets on my nerves even more than she does on V.I.'s.
LaRose
By: Louise Erdrich
A beautifully intricate story about what it can take to continue living, loving, and striving for some sense of spiritual wholeness in the midst of heart-breaking losses, betrayals, and the sometimes downright ugliness of life. I heard Erdrich speak about this novel in an interview/book-signing event I attended. When asked about the moral center of her books, she said that she chooses not to highlight the concept of "morality"--which, as she sees it, is too strongly tied to a sense of "righteousness" in our culture--but prefers to focus on "decency." Rather than on judgment, her focus is on the "kindness and compassion that are central to being human." I like the distinction between morality and decency. The theme of striving for decency plays out in complex, different ways for the large cast of intriguing, flawed, lovable (for some), infuriating (for others) characters that Erdrich has conjured for this wonderful book.
While the central story focuses on the Iron and Ravich families and what happens after Landreaux Iron kills the Raviches' young son in a hunting accident, Erdrich weaves in a long history of losses among generations of Ojibwe in the area, on this particular North Dakota reservation, and in the boarding schools that caused much heartache and social dislocation. As usual, she does it all in a compelling narrative that all seems seamless. I highly recommend the book.
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
By: Fredrik Backman
've got to love a child protagonist who's described early in the book as sitting "reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the iPad for about the twelfth time. It's the Harry Potter book she likes the least; that's why she's read it so few times" (22-3). Elsa and her Granny and the collection of characters who live in their building are wonderful to spend time with. While the novel is sad and moving in places--which I expected--it was also laugh-out-loud funny quite frequently; yet the existentialist themes of death, trauma, and loss were not diminished or minimized, but enhanced in rich ways. This story about the power of stories to help us understand ourselves, others, and complicated lives is--I think--my favorite book of 2016.
