I mention all of this because Lewis, a former sports reporter who covered the Dallas Cowboys, has presented Wilson as the assistant principal of Brownwood High School who takes on the head coaching job when the previous head coach is killed in the war. The novel ends shortly after the team's first game - with Stephenville High School, in the town where I work. So naturally I wanted to see if any of this was true.
Supposedly Tylene coached at the high school, too, but there's no proof - the school's records were destroyed in a 1960 fire. Lewis originally intended to write a biography, but there were gaps in potential sources during the war years (no yearbook for Daniel Baker College for 1944-45, for example). And, oddly, very little coverage of this supposedly unique and newsworthy item in Texas newspapers in that era. So Lewis enrolled in a MFA writing program and turned the truths she had into fiction. I just wish it was more clear that it's more fiction than truth.
A Spark of Life by Jodi Picoult - Jodi Picoult is known for taking on newsworthy topics - suicide, school shootings, etc. - in her realistic fiction, and in this case she's also taken on a controversial one - abortion. The action occurs in one day, starting with the five o'clock hour and the pre-climatic scene - and then goes backwards, hour by hour, to eight a.m., followed by an epilogue at six p.m. The setting is Jackson, Mississippi, primarily in a women's clinic there that is the only place in the state providing abortions - although they also offer gynecological exams and birth control, which is what 15-year-old Wren McElroy is seeking. When George Goddard arrives at the clinic and starts shooting, it's Wren's negotiating-expert cop dad, Hugh, who's trying to get Wren and the other hostages released.
As the book moves back in time, the reader learns more about the backgrounds and stories of each of ten main characters: Wren, Hugh, and his sister Bex; George; Louis Ward, a traveling doctor at the clinic; nurse Izzy; patient Joy; anti-choice protestor Janice (in the clinic pretending to be a patient to obtain evidence that abortions are forced, she becomes another hostage); Olive, an older lesbian; and Beth - who has just been arrested while in a hospital three hours north in Mississippi for performing an illegal medication abortion on herself.
It's pretty easy to figure out how Beth fits into this story. While the resolutions are pretty clear for the other characters by the end of the book, I was left wondering what ultimately happens to Beth.
The meaning behind the title is not so obvious but is explained later in the book. I won't spoil that, nor another surprise in the 8 a.m. hour.
I really liked this book a lot as it presents different viewpoints on the abortion issue and makes the reader think. I re-read it in chronological order and found the book not quite as compelling as reading it in the order written. Picoult interviewed pro-life activists as well as numerous women who'd had abortions, medical professionals, abortion clinic staff, lawyers, and police hostage negotiaters. She cites various laws and cases related to abortion in different states, and also includes a three-page (in the large print version) bibliography.
Some quotes that stuck out for me (all from the large print version):
Page 78 (end of 5 p.m. hour): "We are all drowning slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths." From the author's note at the end of the book, written in March 2018, I have to wonder if she was talking about our current illustrious president.
Page 224 (about halfway through the noon hour): "'All that legal protection you want for the unborn,' Joy said [to Janine]. 'Great, Give it to them. But only if you can find a way to not take it away from me.'"
Page 464 (near the end of the 10 a.m. hour): "Whether or not you believed a fetus was a human being, there was no question in anyone's mind that a grown woman was one. Even if you placed moral value on that fetus, you couldn't give it rights unless they were stripped away from the woman carrying it. Perhaps the question wasn't When does a fetus become a person? but When does a woman stop being one?"
Bruno's Hat, written and colorfully illustrated by Canizales, is a cute book about bullying and standing up for your friends, told from a child's point of view. A downloadable discussion and activity guide for parents and educators is available at the publisher's website.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris - historical fiction - a more-or-less true story originally written as a screenplay and later converted to a novel. Lale [Eisenberg /] Sokolov, a 26-year-old Slovakian Jew, has the ability to speak multiple languages, and that gets him chosen to tattoo ID numbers on the arms of new arrivals at Auschwitz and Birkenau. This job brings with it some priveleges (more food and privacy, a better bed, etc.) and Lale's own - sorry, I have to describe it as smarminess - gets him to sweet-talk other prisoners to bring him jewels and money they find in a building sorting though prisoners' belongings (what? I find it hard the women working in the building could get away with this), which he uses to pay construction workers from the outside for more food and treats (like chocolate), some of the latter he uses to bribe the guards.
Lale falls in love with a Slovakian teenager he tattoos named Gita. I found that the giggling of her girlfriends and all the opportunities Lale and Gita have to see each other seemed unrealistic to me. I'm not sure if it was because I found Lale to be rather unlikeable, or because Morris' writing is so bad, but the story didn't grab me. Morris interviewed Lale for three years, after Gita's death in 2003 and before his in 2006. Perhaps the story was embellished by Lale over the years, perhaps age affected his memory.
On page 156-157, Lale tells Gita, "I have been given the choice of participating in the destruction of our people, and I have chosen to do so in order to survive. I can only hope I am not one day judged a perpetrator or a collaborator." Well, it probably helped that Lale and Gita moved to Australia after the war.
Also page 188: "Lale is largely immune to the camp disputes. Working with Leon and only a handful of other prisoners alongside the SS, he is removed from the plight of the thousands of starving men who must work and fight and live and die together. Living among the Romany also gives him a sense of security and belonging. He realizes he has settled into a pattern of life that is comfortable relative to the conditions of the majority. He works when he has to, spends whatever time he can steal with Gita, plays with the Romany children, and talks to their parents..." So Lale himself admits his experience was not that of the usual prisoner. I guess it bothered me to see Auschwitz portrayed as not so bad.
One reviewer said, "This book could have been set in a summer camp for all its accuracy and authenticity. Between the giggling between the campers (I mean inmates), the friendly conversations with the counselors (I mean guards), the sneaking around the bunks (I mean barracks), I had to put this book down and not finish it."
My cover had a view of the backs of a nondescript couple; I liked the cover with the tattooed arms holding hands better - even though, as it turns out, one of the tattoos is wrong (see links below).
Unbelievable book, full of inaccuracies. Yes, it says it's a novel on the cover, but it also says, "based on the powerful true story of love and survival." See:
‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ and the History in Historical Fiction, The New York Times, November 8, 2018.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz controversy: Author in clash with holocaust survivor's son over 'mistakes' in international bestseller, The Daily Mail, November 30, 2018.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz attacked as inauthentic by camp memorial centre, The Guardian, December 7, 2018.
Auschwitz researchers dismiss book about camp tattooist due to ‘factual errors’, The Jewish News, December 11, 2018.
Circe by Madeline Miller, read by Perdita Weeks - historical fiction - or is it fantasy? - based on the Greek mythological character, who was the daughter of the Titan sun god Helios, and Perse, one of the three thousand Oceanid nymphs. Her brothers were Aeëtes, keeper of the Golden Fleece, and Perses. Her sister was Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos of Crete and mother of the Minotaur. Miller expands upon the tale of Circe in Homer's Odyssey to work in her early life, her interactions with her family and other Titans, and what happened to her after Odysseus left her island. Totally fascinating book; now I have to read Miller's Song of Achilles. Love the cover of the print book, with its reflective copper/gold image, but the image on the audiobook is quite cool too. Perdita Weeks (who plays Higgins on the Magnum P. I. reboot) was a fabulous reader - as the story is told in first person from Circe's point of view, I definitely felt she defined Circe.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - historical fiction retelling the story of Achilles, in first person from the point of view of his companion Patroclus. The novel starts with Patroclus' early life, through his boyhood with Achilles, up to the events of the Iliad (which I have never read). Miller, who has bachelor's and master's degrees in Latin and Ancient Greek, comes up with different interpretations of events and plausible reasons for Achilles' actions in the Iliad.
And there's no heel story - the author explains why here. This debut novel won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. The cover image is of a Greek helmet, only of reflective bronze/gold.
American Duchess by Karen Harper - historical fiction, early reviewer, ARC - This is a biographical novel about Consuelo Vanderbilt Spencer-Churchill Balsan. A member of the wealthy American Vanderbilt family, she was married off by her ambitious mother to the Duke of Marlborough in England in 1895. I have a hard time getting interested in the first world problems of the incredibly wealthy, although the section about the escape by Consuelo and her second husband from France during World War II was exciting. And that is where this book ends. It would be interesting to see how Consuelo's 1953 autobiography, The Glitter and the Gold, compares with this book.
Madame Flora is based on a real Seattle madam, Lou Graham, and Flora's establishment, the Tenderloin, is a building that still exists in Seattle's Pioneer Square. (More history here.) Fahn's character is based on Yamada Waka.
I like this cover with the younger couple walking and the fair in the background better than that of the copy I borrowed.
The Shadow Queen, by Sandra Gulland, read by Meredith Mitchell - historical fiction, audiobook. The title is a little misleading, as the book is not about
Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise of Montespan, better known as Madame de Montespan, an official mistress of King Louis XIV of France, called by some the "true Queen of France" or the "shadow queen" because of her influence at court. Athénaïs is a character in the book, but it is really about her companion, Claude de Vin des Œillets, the daughter of two actors. The most interesting parts of the book are those depicting 17th century French theater, and it's clear that author Sandra Gulland did a lot of research on this topic. Meredith Mitchell was an adequate reader with a youthful voice, although she had a bit of a lisp that I found distracting at times.
© Amanda Pape - 2019
