Marburg’s lonely, desperate characters struggle to find human connection

Louise Marburg’s new short story collection presents snapshots of twelve women at difficult and painful turning points. Written during the pandemic lock-down, “You Have Reached Your Destination,” due out Nov. 10, exudes the anxiety, fear, and sometimes despair that many were feeling at that time.

The youngest of these women is just 12 years old and struggling to understand and accept her father’s suicide while tiptoeing around her alcoholic and abusive mother. Her one ally, her sister, who is 10 years older, inexplicably turns on her, adhering instead to an alcoholic and abusive boyfriend. Not even a teenager yet, Katie realizes she is utterly alone, with only herself to trust and depend on.

At 91, June is the oldest of Marburg’s protagonists. June lives alone in New York City, “an easy place to be old.” She can take a taxi wherever she wants to go and have her groceries delivered, and she has a best friend in her building. However, June’s friend dies suddenly while having tea with her.

When newlyweds move in next door, she is happy to find the young wife is friendly and even offers to pick up items for June on her shopping trip. It is not long before June hears loud noises coming from her new neighbors’ apartment: loud voices, thumps, and crashes. The next day she sees the young wife with a bruise on her face. June, having escaped an abusive first husband, tries to help her neighbor, but the woman becomes angry. June confides in her daughter, who never knew about her mother’s first marriage. The daughter doesn’t believe her and implies that June is becoming senile. June misses her best friend and feels abandoned by her daughter.

The other ten stories feature young women desperate for family, middle aged women desperate for love, and older women desperate to be seen. Many are orphaned or come from abusive homes. One is so ashamed of her parents, she tells everyone they are dead.

Marburg’s stories of loneliness are not without humor and hope. Matronly, 60-something Lydia finds an obscene and threatening note on her desk. Her patronizing boss promises to find out who left it although he never intends to do anything about it at all. Then Lydia’s duplicitous and self-involved best friend accuses Lydia of leaving it herself for attention. To console herself, Lydia takes an all-afternoon lunch at a downtown bar, not realizing it is a gay bar, even after meeting a woman named Dade who actually turns out to be David.

In “Next of Kin,” a 41-year-old freelancer who has been “actively wooing” a rare-book dealer “despite his obvious lack of interest” finally makes her move on him only to discover that he’s gay. Neither of them can understand how she missed this. Although they don’t make love, they do become close friends, and he promises to be her next-of-kin.

Marburg’s protagonists are searching for human connection, something that was painfully missing for many people during 2020. They are looking for friends, allies, lovers, or children. They are realistically drawn characters struggling with their very human needs in a cold and chaotic world. This fourth collection of shorts stories cements Marburg’s place as an important and compelling voice in contemporary literature as she captures American angst and loneliness as few have done since Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

Magickal mystery arrives in time for Halloween

Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, with a heavy dose of magical realism, “River Woman, River Demon” by Jennifer Givhan is an entertaining page-turner ahead of Halloween.

Eva, Chicana/indigenous artist and mother of two, lives on a dusty ranch near Albuquerque with her college professor/magickian husband, Jericho. Eva is also a practitioner of brujería and curanderisma.

Just a couple of weeks before Halloween, or Hallows as Eva and Jericho call it, Eva is drowsing at her kitchen table when she awakens to a woman’s screams coming from the direction of the river. She runs barefoot across the scrubby grasses, cactus, and rocks to find Jericho in the water with their friend Cecilia. Cecilia is beaten bloody and drowned.

Cecilia’s blood is found both in her car and Jericho’s, and the police find intimate photos of Cecilia in the glovebox of Jericho’s car. Eva, still traumatized by the drowning death of her best childhood friend, Karma, is now re-traumatized by both Cecilia’s murder and her husband’s betrayal.

Where before she was haunted just by Karma’s memory and her fragmented recollections of her death, Eva is now also haunted by Cecilia, sometimes in the form of an owl. And someone—or something—is cursing her with unexplained bruises, statues running blood, fainting, and paralysis.

Then suddenly, people from Eva’s past begin appearing. First the boyfriend that abandoned her in San Diego shows up at Cecilia’s funeral. He and Eva rekindle their relationship. Then the girl, now woman, that had accused Eva of drowning Karma arrives at Eva’s house offering to help her. Although Karma’s death was eventually ruled an accident, Eva had come under suspicion because of the girl’s accusations.

Not knowing who she can trust, Eva has to rely on herself and her magick to make sense of the tragic events of her life and keep herself and her children from danger.

Although Cecilia’s murder and the climax of the story are the only parts of intense action, the author uses short chapters to keep the story from dragging, even the passages that are just Eva dreaming or talking with her sister.

Eva’s memory gaps and fainting spells make her a somewhat unreliable narrator, suggesting to the reader, and to Eva herself, that perhaps she is responsible for the deaths of her two friends. The suspense builds even further at the end when the reader realizes before Eva who the killer is.

“River Woman, River Demon” releases Oct. 4, just in time for Hallows. It is a fun, quick read that will entertain and intrigue.

Imagery and mystery make debut novel enjoyable read

Virginia Hartman’s debut novel, “The Marsh Queen” is a treasure trove of birds, swamps, moss, and herbs. Add to that family secrets, stalkers, and murderous bad guys and the result is an interesting read.

Smithsonian bird artist Loni Murrow returns to her Florida pan-handle hometown after her mother suffers a fall and starts displaying signs of dementia. Her relationship with her mother has always been tense. In addition, returning home dredges up painful memories of Loni’s father’s suicide when Loni was 12 years old.

Officially recorded as an accident, Loni keeps the facts of her father’s death from her brother, who was an infant when Boyd died. But as she is going through her mother’s things, she finds a cryptic note from Henrietta saying it’s time that they talk about what really happened to Boyd. Loni begins searching for this Henrietta, whom everyone in town denies knowing.

As Loni spends week after week in Florida, she takes long canoe trips through the swamp looking for models for her free-lance work. Hartman’s precise and beautiful detail put the reader in the quiet swamp, the only sounds the oar’s dip in the water and the occasional bird calling its mate.

Although the mystery of Henrietta and her note drive the plot, the narrative does drag a bit. At least 100 pages could have been cut from the book’s 384. After the third canoe trip through the swamp, we have the idea. And Loni has lots of breakfasts and lunches with her brother where she learns a little bit more to aid her search for the truth about her dad. Several of these conversations could have been combined.

However, readers looking for beautiful prose, well-drawn characters, and intriguing mystery will enjoy “The Marsh Queen.”

Unique memoir describes the power of story

Elisa Bernick’s new book, “Departure Stories,” is unique among the many memoirs—from Mary Karr to Julia Child to Stephen King—that I’ve read.

Out Oct. 4, the book is seasoned with history, statistics, science, philosophy, jokes, and recipes. The first half is primarily Elisa’s story growing up Jewish in “Minneapolis…the most antisemitic city in the country” with an abusive mother and an emotionally absent father. The second half of the book is a thoughtful treatise on how what we remember and what we forget shapes us and our lives.

Arlene, Elisa’s mother, is verbally and physically abusive and views her children as impediments to her happiness. Arlene constantly harangues her husband as a cheapskate who never gives her enough money to feed the family and run the home.

Elisa endures the chaos at home and antisemitic taunts at school and in the neighborhood. She comes home one day and asks her parents if their family killed Christ. And who is Christ, by the way?

In 1964, Arlene enters the Mrs. Minnesota contest. When she finishes ninth, her mother tells her “I told you they’d never let a Jew win.”

In 1969, Elisa’s parents divorce and a couple of years later Arlene takes three of her children and moves to California where her boyfriend, Bernie, moves in with them. Things do not improve. Bernie is also physically, and possibly sexually, abusive to Elisa.

In addition to telling the story of her childhood, Bernick also gives the historical context that explains her mother’s behavior. She discusses the history of trauma of the Jewish people, the limited opportunities afforded women in the mid-20^th century, the “divorce revolution” of the 1970s, as well as the dysfunctional family that Arlene grew up in.

Bernick also explains how humans remember and mis-remember events and how they remember events they were not even witness to. Like Tim O’Brien in “The Things They Carried,” Bernick posits that stories don’t have to be factual to be “true”; that there is “truth” and “Truth.” More important that facts, capital-T Truth, relates a truth about human nature, experience, emotion, or the world in general.

However, the most interesting part of Bernick’s work is her explanation about the power of storytelling. According to Bernick, the words we choose and how we tell our stories determine how we see ourselves and how we live our lives, that “As we shape our stories, they shape us.”

Just as many people who experience crime or violence describe themselves as “survivors” instead of “victims,” people who shape their stories of trauma into stories of resilience become the authors of their own stories. They overcome their trauma instead of living each day inside of it. This is how Bernick describes herself.

In addition to being a unique way to present her life, “Departure Stories” is an informative, moving, and uplifting story of resilience and forgiveness—and the power of storytelling.

Psychological thriller questions perception, mortality

Best-selling author Iain Reid’s newest, “We Spread,” is a riveting, disturbing examination of the isolation and decrepitude of old age. Some believe that death, and our foreknowledge of it, are the worst part of the human experience, but Reid’s latest novel shows us that there could be worse things.

Penny is an elderly woman living alone in a large city. Her long-time partner is dead. She goes for days or weeks without speaking to another human being and doesn’t seem to have any family. There is nothing about her existence that she enjoys.

The first part of the novel is quite difficult to read. Penny’s first person narration emphasizes her miserable marking of time without love or companionship. Even her cat has died. Then weird things begin happening.

She begins hearing voices coming from the next apartment, which is unoccupied. One day, standing at the window she sees a mysterious stranger staring up at her from the street. After she suffers a fall in her apartment, her landlord packs her up and deposits her at Six Cedars, an assisted living residence.

However, strange things continue to happen once she is at Six Cedars. There are only four residents. The only staff are Shelley, the director, and Jack, an assistant. At first, Penny is happy to find that she sleeps soundly at night and that her appetite has returned. However, when she’s been there just four days, she is told she has been there for three years.

And there are mysterious gaps in her memory. She wakes from naps she doesn’t remember lying down for. She looks out a window briefly to find that hours have passed. Her slippers fit fine one day but are too small the next and too large the day after that.

Penny suspects that Shelley is up to something nefarious. Her conversations with Jack convince her of it. Shelley tells Penny that everyone wants more time. More time to live, to work. However, Penny comes to realize that immortality comes at a price, one that is perhaps too high.

Although Penny is suspicious of Shelley and mourns the loss of her memories, she does find human connection that renews her energy and appreciation of life. Hilbert, another resident, becomes a particular friend to Penny. She quickly comes to care for him and tries to protect him.

Hilbert explains to her about Pando, as aspen tree colony that is actually one organism with a massive, connected root system. Pando, Latin for “I spread,” becomes the primary metaphor of the novel. It’s suggested that Shelley, a former biologist, is trying to prove that a similar interconnectedness among people will give them infinite time on Earth. Penny concludes that interconnectedness is what gives our lives meaning and purpose but that infinite time is too much.

Penny’s narration and limited point of view ask the reader to wonder if Shelley is up to no good, or if Penny is merely suffering from dementia. The novel’s ending gives no clear answers. However, this psychological thriller, out Sept. 27, will certainly leave the reader thinking about how we live our lives, especially how we end them, and how much we should rely on our own perceptions. Certainly not light reading, the novel is rewarding for those who appreciate an unreliable narrator and an ambiguous ending.

Best wartime reads focus on areas other than battles

As a child, I recall my brother and father watching WWII movies, “The Big Red One” being one of their favorites. They liked to jokingly call it “The Big RED One,” instead of the “Big Red ONE.” I couldn’t have been less interested.

The war movies of my childhood were primarily about men. If there were any women characters at all, they were merely “skirts” or “broads” to chase. The films were violent and, frankly, simplistic. There was an emphasis on the physical conflict between armies, and none of the characters or events were nuanced in any way. There were “good guys” (the Allies) and “bad guys” (the Axis powers). No thank you.

But something changed. For me, it started with “Das Boot” in 1981. This film depicts sailors aboard a German U-boat patrolling the Atlantic in 1941. Although the characters are “the enemy,” they are portrayed as human, complex, and sympathetic. The film shows not only tense scenes of battle, but also the mundane and tedious lulls between battles.

Most good movies are based on excellent books. This is true of most popular WWII movies. Fortunately, many of the titles from the last decade that are set during the war feature aspects of the war other than battles and some with female protagonists.

One highly acclaimed title is Erik Larson’s “The Splendid and the Vile,” which focuses on Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister and the effects the war has on his family as well as the British people. The book opens on Churchill’s first day as Prime Minister and recounts the devastating year that follows.

As with all of Larson’s immensely readable works, “The Splendid and the Vile” recreates both public and private scenes based on meticulous research and interviews. This particular book details not only Churchill’s incredible leadership, but also the importance and influence of the women around him, specifically his wife, Clemmy, and his daughter Mary.

Larson’s “In the Garden of the Beasts” recounts the rise of the Third Reich and the build-up to the war from inside Berlin. The book focuses on the first US ambassador to Nazi Germany and his party- and uniform-loving daughter.

One of my favorite wartime stories is “The Woman Who Smashed Codes” by Jason Fagone. Elizebeth Friedman, the mother of modern cryptography and cryptoanalysis, first became indispensable to the government when she went to work breaking codes used by smugglers during Prohibition. When the war broke out, she went to work decoding enemy messages, including those produced by the “unbreakable” Nazi code machine, Enigma—using just pencil and paper.

Friedman’s work was forgotten for decades because J. Edgar Hoover claimed her accomplishments for his own agents, and Friedman herself often allowed her work to be attributed to her cryptologist husband, William.

“The Girls of Atomic City” by Denise Kiernan focuses not on just one person, but on many of the women who helped create a community in a secret government facility set on a muddy clearing in a Tennessee forest. They had dangerous and dirty jobs, and although they weren’t told what exactly they were working on, many of them figured it out themselves. They were helping to create the uranium that would go into the world’s first nuclear weapons.

My most recent wartime read is “A Covert Affair” by Jennet Conant. The cover features Julia and Paul Child and suggests that the book is about their time in the OSS—the precursor to the CIA—and the FBI investigation of Paul. However, the book is primarily about Jane Foster, a socialite heiress and artist from California.

The book is a fascinating account of Foster’s bohemian life and her wartime work for the OSS. She was in the propaganda division. She made friends with Julia and Paul while they were all stationed in Ceylon and later in China. She also lived in Paris at the same time as the Childs and socialized with them.

It was because of this long friendship that Paul came under suspicion as Jane had been accused of spying by another American spy. The book does go into detail about how Paul responded to the investigation and fought to have his name cleared, eventually succeeding.

Although the book is not really what is advertised either on the cover or on Amazon, it is still an interesting read. It gives a detailed look at the work of the OSS during the war and a cogent explanation of how Europe’s insistence on returning to colonial dominance of Asia after the war led to the expansion of communism in the region and the conflicts that followed.

John Wayne and “The Big Red One” notwithstanding, I am now a fan of books and movies about WWII.

Ishiguro defies genre labels

Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my newest favorite authors not only because his prose is perfect, his characters complex and sympathetic, his plots compelling, and his themes thought-provoking, but also because he defies genre distinctions. I was first introduced to Ishiguro in 1993 with the film version of ‘Remains of the Day.’ I didn’t feel moved to read the book because the story was so sad.

A few months ago my book club selected ‘Klara and the Sun,’ Ishiguro’s latest novel. I think it may be his best so far.

Klara is an AF (artificial friend) waiting to be chosen when 14-year-old Josie sees her in a store window. Klara waits expectantly for Josie to return and take her home. When she does, Klara believes that things will be wonderful for the two of them. However, Josie has bouts of a mysterious illness that keep her bedridden for weeks at a time. Klara concludes that if she asks in just the right way, the Sun will use his special nourishment to cure Josie and save her life.

The themes of this novel have to do with love and mortality, but the secondary issues--pollution, consumerism, gene editing, economic displacement, and distrust of others--left me hoping for sequels in the coming years.

‘Klara’ was labeled Young Adult, but like any good YA book, it is just as appealing to adult readers. Some might label ‘Klara’ as science fiction since it is set in some undetermined future and includes not-yet-invented technology.

Since I loved ‘Klara’ so much, I then read some of Ishiguro’s earlier works, including ‘Never Let Me Go,’ which also might be labeled sci-fi. And it, too, has been adapted to the screen, although I’ve not seen the movie.

The story opens when Kathy is ending her unusually long career as a carer after attending her childhood friends, Tommy and Ruth, through "completion." She recalls their childhoods in Hailsham, and later at the Cottages. Their "guardians" at Hailsham teach them that they are special, but outsiders shun them, even seem afraid of them.

Although Kathy and her friends are doomed to a pretty grim fate, they do nothing to escape it. They are not imprisoned and can simply run away, but they don’t. They accept their fate with dignity and compassion. Ishiguro’s insightful portrayal of people resigned to a hopeless future demonstrate his keen understanding of human nature and human failings.

Like ‘Remains of the Day,’ ‘When We Were Orphans’ is ostensibly “mainstream literary fiction.” Famous London detective Christopher Banks recalls his childhood in Shanghai and the disappearances of his parents when he was nine years old. He spends 20 years researching his most pressing case and finally returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery and rescue his parents.

The narrator's voice is objective, sometimes detached, as you would expect from a detective. However, the mystery of his parents is secondary. This novel is really an examination of the fallibility of memory and how people delude themselves.

‘The Buried Giant,’ which might be labeled fantasy, is the strangest and perhaps the darkest of Ishiguro’s novels.

Iron-age Britons Axl and Beatrice leave their village to visit their grown son in another village, a three-day walk from them. On the way they encounter ogres, pixies, King Arthur’s knight Sir Gawain, and other strange and mysterious creatures and people. They lament that they cannot really remember their son because of a “dense mist which hung over the marshes” that clouds everyone’s mind so that they cannot recall things that happened even a few days or hours ago.

This strange and entrancing story offers interesting characters, plot twists, and an exploration of importance and purpose of memory and of forgetting. The dark and ambiguous ending will make readers reevaluate the strength of their relationships.

Moreover, Ishiguro has two other novels that might be called historical, ‘A Pale View of Hills,’ and ‘An Artist of the Floating World.’

But what is the difference between genre fiction and literary fiction? Can’t any genre novel (say, horror, romance, sci-fi) be elevated to literary fiction? Ishiguro’s works illustrate that it’s a matter of quality not subject or setting as demonstrated by the author’s ease at using the tropes and trappings of genre to create literary masterpieces.