Recent read
My book club selected “Disappearing Earth” by Julia Phillips
recently. We found the title on the New York Times list of best books of 2019.
This first novel was nominated for the National Book Award, a well-earned
accolade.
The novel begins with the disappearance of two little girls in
Petropavlovsk on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. However, the focus is on the
people who were directly or indirectly affected by their disappearance. It is a
study in loss, regret, and desperation.
The isolated, wild setting creates a lonely, gray mood for
the novel similar to that found in Nordic Noir, such as the Wallander books and
the Millennium series. Located near the Arctic Circle and dotted with
volcanoes, the Kamchatka is both beautiful and terrible. Phillips’s imagery
contrasts the natural beauty of the setting with the horror of the crime:
“In the sunset, the pebbles on the
shore shifted their color from black and gray to honey. Amber. They were
brightening. Soon the stones would glow, and the water in the bay was going to
turn pink and orange. Spectacular in the city center, where people feared to
have their pretty daughters go.” (31)
One character, whose dog goes missing, crystalizes the theme
of loss and responsibility in the realization that “[i]t hurts too much to
break your own heart out of stupidity, to leave a door unlocked or a child
untended and return to discover that whatever you value most has disappeared.
No. You want to be intentional about the destruction. Be a witness. You want to
watch how your life will shatter.” (205)
A quick read, “Disappearing Earth” will draw you in and keep
you thinking about it long after you’ve finished.
My own weird
obsession: Julia Child
I fell in love with French cuisine on a trip to France in
2015. I set out to learn to cook some French dishes, so I naturally turned to
“Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child, et. al. Last year, my
daughter gave me a copy of “Dearie” (2013) by Bob Spitz. It is a huge and
comprehensive biography of Julia Child, beginning with the birth of her
grandparents, and ending with her death in August 2004, two days before her
ninety-second birthday.
Child’s life was about so much more than cooking. She worked
for the OSS—the precursor to the CIA—during WWII, where she met her husband
Paul. Some have referred to her as a spy or spy-master, but her job was to
catalog and dole out secret information to covert agents based on what they
needed to know. She referred to herself as a “file clerk.”
I recently read “My Life in France” (2006), a book that Child
wanted to write for many years. It wasn’t until at the end of her life that her
grandnephew, Alex Prud’homme, finally convinced her to allow him to help her
with the project. The result is a beautifully readable and entertaining account
of what Child referred to as the best years of her life. I enjoyed reading it
tremendously and was quite sad when I finished it. However, I can console
myself with “A Covert Affair” by Jennet Conant, and “An Appetite for Life” by
Noël
Riley Fitch, two more Child biographies that I received this year.
Just finished
I just finished “The Night Tiger” by Yangsze Choo. A book
club member selected it because it has “tiger” in the title and we loved “The
Tiger’s Wife.” Well, she nailed it. Ji Lin is a dressmaker’s apprentice in
colonial Malaya, who comes to possess a mysterious object that is said to bring
good luck. Ren is a ten-year-old house boy on a mission to recover the item and
return it to its owner, his recently deceased employer. An example of magical
realism, this novel has multiple complex plotlines, ghosts, mythical man-eating
beasts, and mysterious deaths. I highly recommend this one.
