Everything I Never Told You by Celeste NG

Leo Tolstoy wrote that, “…each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Lee family, living in a small town in Ohio during the 1970s, is a good example of this. Their unhappiness, which had driven middle child Lydia to disappear on a summer night, involved none of the usual components of the dysfunctional family. There was no alcoholism, drug abuse, physical violence, mental illness, poverty or infidelity. There was simply a lack of communication.

The parents, James and Marilyn, were disappointed with their lives. Marilyn had planned to defy her mother’s expectations for her, perfect wife and homemaker, by becoming one of the few women of the 1950’s to qualify for medical school. James, the son of Chinese immigrants, striving to be accepted as a true American, became a professor who taught a class focusing on the American cowboy. Unfortunately, Marilyn’s plans for medical school were disrupted by an unexpected pregnancy. And the academic community put little value on James’ area of expertise. He was viewed as odd and was offered only one teaching position.

So they transferred their ambitions to their children, particularly Lydia. Marilyn, making the same mistake her own mother had made, assumed that Lydia wanted what she had wanted, medical school. And James pushed her into a tortured social life which had her lurking at the edges of the gym at school dances and pretending to talk to friends on the telephone. Meanwhile they ignored their other two children, Nath and Hannah, whose real interests and abilities seemed insignificant in comparison to those imagined for Lydia.

The family imploded after Lydia’s disappearance, shortly after her sixteenth birthday. Rage and recrimination from past slights and injuries came to the surface and drove the family members apart. It seemed a point of no return had been reached. Only quiet and observant Hannah, who knew some of Lydia’s secrets, could help the others come to terms with what had happened.

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The Sound of Music Story by Tom Santopietro

Given the fact that the critically acclaimed, beloved movie The Sound of Music turns fifty years old this month, the timing of Santopietro's new book couldn't have been timed any better. For the avid Sound of Music fan, this book provides lots of "new" details about the real life von Trapp family, Rogers and Hammerstein's productions (both on Broadway and in theater), filming in Austria, and the cast. Though there are often a lot of details, it is fun to read this book, especially with chapter titles like "A Captain with Seven Children: What's So Fearsome About That" and "Let's Start at the Very Beginning..."

Find out all about how Julie Andrews almost missed being the infamous Maria and how Christopher Plummer really felt about the idea of seven children. While all of the movie facts are sure to teach even the biggest Sound of Music fan a thing or two, perhaps the most interesting part of this book is when Santopietro talks about the real von Trapp family. It's interesting to compare the real von Trapps to the characters we've all grown to love in this classic movie.

Read this book and then watch the movie. You'll notice all sorts of things you didn't realize before.

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Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson

The rural Montana depicted in Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson is a rough, hard-scrabble place and not an easy place to be a social worker. Pete Snow is a Montana social worker based in the small town of Tenmile. He is a decent man who has too much empathy for his own good. He often takes chances and breaks rules to keep dysfunctional families together, knowing that a foster home or institution might be a more damaging, dangerous place for children than a home headed by a drug-addicted parent. So when a young boy from a survivalist family wanders into town from the mountains, Pete buys him some clothes, food and medicine and escorts him back into the wilderness. There he meets the boy’s father, Jeremiah Pearl. Over time, Pete befriends Jeremiah and his son, Benjamin. He learns that Benjamin is just one child in a large family but, mysteriously, he never encounters any of the others. At the same time, Pete must continue to tend to the needs of his other difficult clients. Further, when his own family, having its own problems, disintegrates, he loses his wife and daughter.

Fourth of July Creek is set in the very early 1980’s after President Reagan is shot, the Pearls and other survivalists come under closer scrutiny by agents of the Federal Government. Mistrust and ignorance on both sides complicate matters and violence erupts in town and in the mountains. Pete Snow is a man caught in the middle—a government agent who has compassion for those with anti-government inclinations. Fanaticism and violence can only end in tragedy even though a good man, Pete Snow, does his futile best to prevent it. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Published in the age of Ebola, SARS, swine flu, bird flu and measles, Station Eleven is a book in step with the current fears of reasonable people. Emily St. John Mandel has written a thoughtful and plausible dystopia in which nearly the entire population of the world is wiped out by a flu pandemic.   

The story begins in present day Toronto, where an unsuspecting audience watches an unsuspecting cast in a production of King Lear. When these people leave the shelter of the theater, they unknowingly enter a world that has been ravaged by the Georgian Flu in the space of a few hours, a world where people die suddenly -- in their cars, in planes, buses and trains, on sidewalks and streets. The few pockets of survivors are those who are sheltered in isolation at home for weeks until the televised news went off the air and they exhausted their supply of food and water. Then they start walking, for what purpose they are unsure. Some twenty years later, many of the survivors have banded into widely scattered tribes, troupes, communities and cults. The Traveling Symphony is a group of musicians and actors who travel up and down the eastern coast of Lake Michigan performing Shakespeare and classical music. One of their members, Kirsten, was a child actress in the King Lear production. She carries with her some possessions from her previous life, including a few graphic novels entitled Station Eleven. As the story toggles between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic times, the books and some other objects connect the past to the present. The new world is dangerous and filled with hardships. People survive by scavenging from abandoned houses and stores, hunting wildlife and stealing from one another. Mistrust is the prevailing attitude and with good reason. The Georgian flu, like flus and plagues before it, was an equal opportunity disease, striking down rich and poor, young and old alike.  But in the post-pandemic world, survival of the fittest is the rule of life. After a particularly difficult journey, the Symphony reaches its destination and finds a small glimmer of hope for the future.  Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is ultimately a tale of the survival of ordinary people who adapt to extraordinary circumstances. 

The Book of Words by Jenny Erpenbeck

The Book of Words by Jenny Erpenbeck is a very short book that bears reading twice. A second reading reveals many subtle clues missed during the first. The story takes place in an unnamed South American country where a young girl is raised by loving parents in a well-to-do household. She is surrounded by servants and given the many advantages of a privileged life. An observant and thoughtful girl, she often ponders the meaning of words and events she cannot fully comprehend. Her parents exert great effort to shelter her but they cannot hide from her the dangers of living in a totalitarian country. Shops she frequents close and people she knows disappear. Although she hears reports of and even witnesses acts of outright violence, for the most part, she accepts her parents’ explanations of these events as vacations, illnesses and lovers’ quarrels. Eventually, the violence grows too pervasive to ignore. She and her family must face the truth about their country and its government. Author Jenny Erpenbeck was born and raised in East Germany and, while it was not a South American country, it was a true totalitarian state. Therefore, she knows whereof she writes. 

American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny by Christopher Miller

 

Not the foolish joke book or bathroom reader suggested by the title, American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny  is rather a thoughtful and detailed study of the history of humor in America. Using jokes, cartoons, postcards, movies, and radio and television shows, this book gives the reader a clear picture of the ordinary American’s sense of humor and how it has changed. The boarding houses and leftover hash that were a staple of humor during financial hard times are now non-existent, nor are there many vacuum cleaner salesmen or icemen still knocking on doors. Broad changes in the American way of life can be seen through the decades of jokes and cartoons in this book: the husband who washes dishes is no longer a laughingstock, although his frilly apron might be; men still ogle women but it is no longer their ankles that catch the eye; the Irish, who once bore the brunt of American ethnic humor, are now upstanding and successful citizens. Other nationalities have replaced them as butts of jokes. Hillbilly jokes still abound but now they are red-neck jokes. The author digs into the minutiae of humor: which middle initials are considered funny; why is the husband’s mother-in-law is funnier than the wife’s; is the trombone or tuba the funnier musical instrument? Some things never change, such as the speed with which anvils fall off a cliff or the incomprehensibility of modern art. Many formerly funny jokes would now be considered cruel and offensive. This book clearly explains why, in their own time, they were widely appreciated. And, after you read Christopher Miller’s examination of a psychologist’s five-page study on why children find the “moron throws a clock out the window” joke funny, you’ll realize (if you hadn’t before) that some jokes are best left unexamined.

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Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan

The first in this historical fiction trilogy by Kate Kerrigan follows young Ellie Hogan as she comes of age, goes to boarding school, and marries her first love. Set in the 1920s, Ellis Island tells the tale of a young couple, so in love, trying to live their lives amid war torn Ireland as the Irish battle the British for Hole Rule (or the right to rule Ireland by the Irish). When Ellie's husband is injured in battle, and times get exceptionally tough, Ellie receives a letter from a friend in New York offering her a job as a lady's maid for a wealthy woman.

Promising to send money back to Ireland to pay for her husband's medical care, Ellie takes the job, setting sail for New York. After seeing the beckoning Statue of Liberty and making it through Ellis Island, Ellie realized just how different New York is. Having never been this far away from home before, Ellie starts to miss home, her "normal" life, and her husband, John.

Once she's finally settled into life in New York, this book follows the story of what it was like to be a young woman in the 1920s. Filled with 1920s fashion and cultural references, read along as Ellie encounters all of the new, exciting, and often overwhelming things that are changing in her life. While she starts to assimilate in New York, she can't help but feel like a piece of who she is was left behind in Ireland.

Kate Kerrigan writes this book in a way that makes you feel as if you're living in lush, green Ireland and traveling aboard the crowded RMS Celtic with Ellie. When she finally makes it to New York you can't help but relate to the awe-inspiring sight of  Statue of Liberty and the great hall of Ellis Island (especially if you've been there to see such an amazing, humbling historical sight). Be sure to read Ellis Island and the other books in this trilogy.

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