The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker

The hidden palace is just one item of many that is hidden in Helene Wecker’s new novel of the same name (Harper Collins, June 8).  Appearances, thoughts, motivations, lives, and constructions are among the many secret things in this altogether engaging read with its captivating and beautifully designed cover featuring the former Penn Station.

The story here is big and bold—in plot, characterizations, setting, and tone—and it creates a culturally rich view of New York in the early part of the 20th century and particularly in the Syrian and Jewish communities.  Woven into this portrait is the story of two mythological creatures—Chava, a golem from Jewish folklore who is made of clay and is highly attuned to the thoughts of others, and Ahmad, a jinni from Arabian mythology with the ability to fly, change shape, and lead men astray.  Both create human lives for themselves, where Chava works as a baker and a laundress while longing for more, while Ahmad has partnered with a Syrian metal worker.

There are also multiple human characters in a series of storylines that eventually converge:  Sophia Winston, a beautiful young socialite who needs to travel to the Middle East to find a cure after her short affair with the jinni causes a mysterious illness; young Kreindel, the orphaned daughter of a mystical rabbi who tries to negotiate her time in an orphanage with her big secret hidden in a disused school alcove; Toby, a messenger boy who is puzzled by the odd occurrences related to his mother’s friend Chava; Maryam Fadool who owns a cafe in Little Syria and oversees the welfare of the jinni from a distance; Dima, an unreliable and injured jinniyeh who may be Sophia’s only hope for a cure.

How these characters and major events of the time period come together, including the Titanic, the Lusitania, the war, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, is an involving story told with suspense and beautiful writing that is often poetic.  Here, Ahmad (the jinni’s) metalworking is described: “He worked in midair, upon a slender iron scaffold, a five-story drop at his back.  Days and nights went uncounted, unnoticed.  The filtered sunlight entered first one set of windows, then another.  His life was heat and movement; his thoughts were in the sounds of flame and wind as much as human words.  The forge sustained him, it was his companion and his storyteller, whispering to him from the past.”

Although the mythological creatures may be off-putting to some who like straight historical fiction, they provide a special interest and depth to the story and stand in as foils to the human characters.  Chava and Ahmad both have special abilities due to their natures, but they are also limited in ways that humans aren’t, particularly in relation to their emotional capacity.  Their view into human life as well as their interaction with it produce some wonderfully intense observations about the human condition and the state of the world during this time period.  

From Sidney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family (1951) to Elizabeth Acevedo’s Clap When You Land (2020), the immigrant story in New York City is an endlessly fascinating one, and few provide the depth that Helene Wecker does in The Hidden Palace, a follow-up to her novel
The Golem and the Jinni. The novel can be read on its own, although the first one provides more understanding of these characters and is another entertaining read.  Highly recommended.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy.

For the love of books and bookstores

 As I list all the things that I want to do as we get back to a more normal life, visiting a bookstore is near the top of my list.  I’ve been to a bookstore once since the pandemic started, and although I was there to make a quick pick-up of Christmas orders, I took a few minutes to look around while the store was quiet.  There is nothing like meandering through the aisles, admiring the shiny new covers, picking up books to rifle through the pages and smell their particular aroma.

The pure enjoyment I find in bookstores came across in two new books that are publishing this spring.  The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin (Harlequin, April 6) and The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser (Random House, May 4) are quite different in many ways, but they share some important characteristics.  

Both novels feature women accidentally employed in local bookstores whose proprietors are somewhat difficult men who are not keen to hire either one of them.  Thanks to women who stand up to them (a mother figure in The Last Bookshop and the protagonist in The Bookshop of Second Chances), both find themselves in jobs that hold no particular interest to them in the beginning but which increasingly take their attention.  These shops both need some tender loving care in terms of arrangement, stock and displays, and both women succeed in those things, while also promoting the shops in specific and successful ways for their time periods.   And finally, and best of all, each vividly portrays the atmosphere within the store and the great joy of reading and connecting with others through books.

In The Last Bookshop in London, young Grace Bennett moves to the city where she rents a room with a childhood friend of her late mother’s.  Grace works in the bookshop nearby with elderly owner Mr. Evans and starts making improvements to the dusty and disorganized interior, partly because her interest in reading is sparked by a handsome young airman whose own extensive reading helps her see books and reading in a new ways and partly by her visits to famous bookshops in London’s Paternoster Row.  Although this work is satisfying, Grace also is inspired to help in the war effort, and she becomes an ARP warden ushering people to safety in air raids.  One night in a dark and damp shelter, she starts reading to the people there, beginning a tradition and creating new relationships with the appreciative listeners.  This novel is in a long line of recent stories about World War II, but it is set apart by its intense descriptions of blackouts and air raids and the lovely descriptions of the enjoyment of reading.

In The Bookshop of Second Chances, forty-something Thea Mottram, devastated by the worst kind of betrayal in her marriage and a redundancy at work, discovers that she has inherited a Scottish "lodge" from her great uncle. Thinking that a change of scene will help her move on with her life, she goes north with a friend to check it out and see what do with the house and the library of rare and valuable books inside.  When friend Xanthe leaves, Thea remains in the village on her own, getting to know her neighbors and starting a job in the second hand bookstore, where owner Edward Maltraver’s prickly nature doesn’t put her off at all but simply amuses her.  She becomes fascinated with this type of business and suggests ways to make it more attractive to visitors and begins to promote it using her Instagram skills.  

This novel might be considered a romance or women's fiction, but its depth of understanding of grief following major life catastrophes and then how well that is portrayed through the first person narration (really, a conversation), kind of defies categorization. It feels so authentic and Thea is such a believable and quirky character that the plot is really compelling.

Both women, through their work in the bookshops and their friendships made through books, find themselves and become confident women after their early hardships.  I enjoyed these books about books and the stories of hope and community from reading, and it was a fun way to immerse myself in the bookshop experience until I can do so again!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for advance copies.

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin

This thoroughly engaging second novel by author Uzma Jalaluddin channels "You’ve Got Mail" for the story of Hana Khan, a young woman pursuing her career in radio broadcasting while also anonymously producing a popular podcast about her own life as a South Asian Muslim woman called Ana’s Brown Girl Rambles.  As Ana BGR, she has an ongoing and interesting DM conversation with one of her listeners, only known to her as StanleyP.  Like their movie predecessors who hide in anonymity through AOL e-mail, their connection is very strong.  

In the real world of Hana’s Golden Crescent neighborhood in the east end of Toronto, things aren’t so rosy.  Hana’s father is still suffering from the effects of a car accident some years before, and Hana’s mother works long hours at their halal restaurant Three Sisters Biryani Poutine that is is now being threatened by a fancy new eatery being built across the road.  The owners are a wealthy entrepreneur and his handsome but conceited son Aydin, who gets off on the wrong foot with Hana when he compliments her mother’s cooking but criticizes the faded decor of Three Sisters.  Hana is having none of that, and the conflict begins.

In another part of Hana’s life, she is interning at a prominent Toronto radio station and trying to make a name for herself for her future career.  When a radio show about Muslims is proposed by her white supervisor and a station owner, she suggests some changes in the content that wouldn’t promote stereotyping and hate-filled responses.  She finds herself in a major dilemma as she is competing with another intern, dealing with the station managers’ ill-conceived ideas, and offering another path that would shed light on Muslim life in a series of compelling stories about family secrets.  

As Hana tries to wend her way through the various difficulties of her life, she creates some questionable ideas of her own, begins to see some circumstances in new ways, and relies on her online friendship with StanleyP to work a whole lot of her life out.  Through it all—good and bad—Hana Khan carries on!

The cast of characters is loads of fun and include Hana’s sister Fazeela and her husband Fahim and their little “cantaloupe” (Fazeela’s pregnancy), Hana’s irrepressible young cousin Rashid from India, Hana’s childhood friends Lily and Yusuf, Big J from the radio station who mentors her, her loving and supportive father, and her newly discovered and non-conformist aunt from India.

Uzma’s first novel, Ayesha at Last, inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is one of my favorite adaptations because she captures the essence of the story while creating something completely new.  She has done the same thing here with her second book, and layered over the challenges and misunderstandings is some heartfelt and serious looks at community and neighborhoods, family secrets, Muslim life, and being true to yourself.  

Many thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an advance copy.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

Any American who is not convinced that racism has severely impacted the economics and financial standing of the black community needs to read this book; but, further, all Americans should read this thoroughly researched, readable, and very necessary study to understand how racist policies ended up hurting the vast majority of the American populace regardless of race.

In a chapter called “Racism Drained the Pool,” author Heather McGhee shows how the integration of public pools starting in the late 1950s led many communities to work around allowing black people to use the pools, including by privatizing them, charging memberships, or closing them altogether.  These decisions affected all families who were working or middle class who couldn’t afford memberships or who lost all access to safe public swimming areas.  She uses the metaphor of “pools” to describe many other aspects of economic life that shut out—by closing down or by making things unattainable to—average Americans, including banking, health care, education, housing and wages.  These seemed to be explained in logical ways but often relied on false narratives about the ability of certain groups (namely the black community) to participate.  

Banking is a prime example.  Banking was historically difficult for black Americans beginning after the Civil War when they weren’t allowed to bank in white institutions.  Years down the road, they were not given access to life-changing GI loans after World War II that helped white veterans establish wealth through home ownership, their homes were undervalued because of redlining, and they were the earliest victims of predatory lending by such banks as Wells Fargo, a decade ahead of the subprime mortgages that ultimately lead to the economic collapse and wave of foreclosures on homes starting in 2008 and financial ruin of many Americans.

McGhee thoroughly rebuts the notion of the zero-sum equation, the idea that the benefits given to one group of people mean that another group loses out. (I’m hearing the common cry of “They’re coming to take our jobs.”)  In fact, stories of successful communities show that economically disadvantaged people  who work together for the benefit of all see a success for all—what she calls the Solidarity Dividend.  Working together to fight the “rules” that determine various economic decisions, such as wages that don’t offer an actual living, is the way that is going to make significant change.  Another big part of this change is through governmental policy that takes into account the different circumstances of the groups involved.

You may think that you are uninterested in economics and that it doesn’t pertain to you, but the devastation of these policies is coming into greater detail today as we watch the impact of the coronavirus on American life.  Numerous situations based on systemic racism led to black, brown, and Indigenous populations being affected far worse than the white population, but the entire effect has been to lay bare a crisis in public health that fans out into many other areas of our lives, including everything from childcare to education to unemployment to infrastructure.  

If you would like to get an idea how she explains her economic ideas, consider watching her recent TED Talk, “Racism has a cost for everyone.”  https://www.ted.com/talks/heather_c_mcghee_racism_has_a_cost_for_everyone?language=en

I have barely covered the tip of the iceberg here in this book that contains such big ideas.  I highly recommend it for its findings and for the way the author has combined economic research from a vast array of places with stories of the individuals whose lives have borne the brunt of unequal economic practices. 

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Random House One World for an advance copy. 

Better Luck Next Time by Julia Claiborne Johnson

Ward Bennett, young, good looking, and quick witted, works as a cowboy on dude ranch catering to divorcing women.  The year is 1938, the place is Reno, Nevada, and the wealthy women who visit the ranch must stay for six weeks to establish residency in order to divorce at the end of that time.  Ward, and Sam, the other cowboy, chauffeur the ladies around on shopping trips and to and from the airport as well as to lawyer’s appointments.  They provide trail rides and fishing expeditions and generally cater to the ladies’ needs—but with the utmost propriety as overseen by ranch owners Margaret and Max.

Some of the visitors at the Flying Leap are repeat customers; others are there for the first time; all are trying to work out the mysteries of marriage and seem determined to keep on trying until they have it right.  Ward, from a stable and loving family, has spent a year in college and a couple years in other jobs and thinks that his understanding of the world is pretty much under control.  When an aviatrix from St. Louis and an heiress from San Francisco come to the ranch that idea is upended as they unintentionally they wreak havoc in his life.  

The story is told in first person by Ward as he reminisces many years later about his time at the ranch, and although it’s almost completely focused on a particular time at the Flying Leap, it gradually reveals his life in later years.  The story is hilarious in many spots, touching in others, and it’s punctuated with cowboy philosophy,  malapropisms and asides that are a hoot.  

The audiobook is narrated by David Aaron Baker and perfectly captures the elderly retiree and the young cowboy he once was.  (Available from your local independent book store through Libro.fm.)

Julia Claiborne Johnson’s first novel, Be Frank with Me, is one of the most engaging books I’ve ever read, so it isn’t surprising that her second one would be as well.  And even though both are so humorous and have such perceptive observations on the human condition, they are very different stories.  I highly recommend them both.  

(Wm. Morrow, 2021; audio by Harper Audio)

Favorite quotes:

Ward on Jell-O:    Would you like some of this Jell-O? No? I don’t blame you .  They keep trying to pass this stuff off as dessert, but it just isn’t. Jell-O always makes me think of death.  Every time I attend a funeral for a patient, I look over at the widowed partner or bereft children and think, “Hoo boy, I hope you like a Jell-O salad, because several dozen will be wiggling your way in the next week or two.” How congealed salads jazzed up with marshmallows and pineapple tidbits got to be the go-to dish for the bereaved I’ll never know.  Of course, it’s not the gift that matters.  What matters is the impulse to give.  

Conversation at the ranch:    “Gambling is throwing money away,” Emily said.  “Spending hundreds of dollars on cloths you’ll never wear is throwing money away.  Buying books is an investment in the future.”
    “Emily’s right,” Nina said.  “Where there are books, there’s hope.  I have stacks of novels I haven’t gotten to yet.  It’s the best reason to go on living I can think of.”

Our Darkest Night by Jennifer Robson

In a literary field filled with fiction on World War II, is there room for one more book?  If it’s Jennifer Robson’s new novel, the answer is a resounding yes.

By mid-war in Italy, the Jewish residents of Venice were still fairly insulated from the brutalities faced by other Jews in Europe, but Dr. Gabriele Mazin was keenly aware that his family’s life was in imminent danger.   His wife, who lived in a casa di riposo, a nursing home, was too ill to leave the city, and he would never leave her and his patients, but he was determined that his only child, his daughter Antonina in her early 20s, would go to a safe place to live out the war.  

One of Dr. Mazin’s oldest friends, Father Bernardi from the little town of Mezzo Ciel in northern Italy, suggests that Antonina come with him and live as a farm wife to a young man he knew.  Antonina is heartsick about leaving her beloved parents, sad about leaving behind her medical studies with her father, and terrified to enter a world she knows nothing about.  

From farm chores to attending mass to living in a room with Nico Gerardi, the man she meets the day he takes her away, is a trial to Antonina—now Nina Gerardi.  Work in the house and the fields is long and hard, and Nico’s sister Rosa doesn’t intend to make it any easier for Nina, whose appearance was a total surprise to the family and assured a complete halt to Nico’s interrupted seminary studies to enter the priesthood.  

Although danger lurks in many places, Nina manages to navigate them through her growing friendship with Nico.  When Nico’s former adversary in seminary, now the German officer Obersturmfurhrer Zwerger, arrives in the village to taunt and bully Nico, he is immediately suspicious of his bride and puts Nina to many ongoing tests.

Our Darkest Night is told in third person in Nina’s point of view.  Its chronological telling adds suspense to the story, in part because the reader understands certain things about the war, including the import of being herded onto a train.  

The fact that the author was able to interview people from her husband’s family and village about their war experiences and everyday life adds a deep authenticity to the story.  Never a rote recitation, everyday life is beautifully described, and the hardships are not sugar coated.  The language is often poetic, even in the harshest circumstances.  Descriptions, character development, language, pacing all add up to an engrossing and memorable novel.  

(Wm. Morrow, January 5, 2021)

My advance copy came from a Goodreads giveaway. 

Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig

One little known story from World War I is brought to life in Lauren Willig’s excellent novel about a group of Smith College alumnae who volunteer for the war effort by assisting French villagers in the war zone.  Based on a voluminous collection of letters and diaries housed at Smith, every event in the novel actually took place although the characters are wholly or partially creations of the author.

It is captivating stuff.  This one small group of women pulled together in a few short months to pack their bags and travel to France to give social, educational, medical, and agricultural support to the people left in devastated villages—with little training, a lot of skepticism on the part of the Red Cross and the British army, and certainly without much knowledge of what the war was like and the horrific casualties and injuries it was producing.  

Stationed very near the front lines, they set up a base in one village and traveled out in various conveyances to the surrounding countryside.  Their work proceeded in fits and starts, hampered by personality conflicts, language barriers, lack of supplies, and sometimes, the hilarious consequences of not knowing the difference between roosters and hens.

Much of the interest comes from watching these characters develop a camaraderie based on necessity and on friendship, but for the three main characters, it means overcoming longstanding misunderstandings: Kate Moran for being a scholarship student from a lower social class; Emmy Van Alden for being overshadowed by her activist mother; Julia Prine, for family financial problems and difficulties of being a female medical doctor.  

Letters home frame the action of the story and reveal much about the war, and the author’s description of daily life and the women’s attempts to improve it are an excellent addition to WWI literature.  The growing crescendo of an advancing army is both well-written and plotted to provide a narrative arc that keeps the story moving.  This is a long book but never slow!

The audio version is well worth listening to and narrator Julia Whelan wonderfully portrays the various characters.

Many thanks to the publisher and to Libro.fm for an advance audio copy.  Band of Sisters will be published on March 2.