While the rest of the country is suffering from the heat dome, here in Texas we have had a fairly mild summer compared to last year - it's only been in the low 90s most of June. We've been enjoying the pool, getting up earlyish to exercise, taking a dip in the pool before bedtime to lower our core temperature, and eating lots of popsicles and ice cream.
Yesterday was one of the first days I have had to sit by the pool and read. Not that the summer has been all busy, but when I haven't been busy, I've been social or working on things like finding new homeowner's insurance and planning summer travel and taking an online course for teaching religion. Not really work, but tied to a laptop.
So what have I been reading? I finished Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry yesterday. I've never seen the movie but I pictured Shirley Maclaine as Aurora Greenway the whole time I was reading. She doesn't entirely match the image of Aurora as described in the book. Aurora is supposed to be full figured, maybe plump, and taller than average. She is bossy and flirtatious and unpredictable, qualities MacLaine might have succeeded in representing. Just looking at the cast online reveals that the movie doesn't follow the book closely. The first two thirds of the book are about Aurora romancing four "mature" lovers as she enters her 50s. The last third features her daughter Emma another decade later, just prior to her cancer diagnosis. It sounds like the movie focuses on or combines Emma's tragedy with Aurora's adventures.
I picked up this book because I have never read anything by Larry McMurtry, and I'm trying to read books by Texas writers, most of which are westerns, unsurprisingly. Terms is an unusual book, relatively light on plot. In fact, I kept wondering exactly what the conflict is - Aurora's inability to choose a suitor? Her struggle to redefine herself in late middle age? The challenge of relationships in late middle age? Even having completed the book, I am a little muddled about the themes - maybe because I knew a cancer diagnosis was coming, which should have been the central conflict but really comes late in the novel. While I was reading, I was anticipating Aurora discovering she has cancer and that would precipitate some change in her relationships. I kept waiting for her to reform/educate Vernon Dalhart so that he becomes her chosen suitor, but she just sort of decides one night after a failed dinner party to stick with the General. I would need to reread that section to decipher if she really has an epiphany of sorts - maybe a decision to be loyal to someone? It's more of two books in one, and I can't decide if I liked it or not. It kept me reading and wanting to find out what happened, but I didn't really care for any of the characters. The most likable was Vernon, but he gets sort of set aside after featuring largely early on. Aurora's choice of the General, who is jealous and self-centered, over Vernon, who is kind and generous, is baffling - a statement about the inscrutability of attraction? Some of the language betrays its 1970s origins.
While on vacation in Michigan, I read Ann Patchett's newest novel Tom Lake, which is set in Michigan at a summer theater remarkably similar to Interlochen, which isn't far from where we stay on Crystal Lake, about 45 minutes from Traverse City. Reading a novel set in a place you particularly love is always intriguing. In my imagination, the cherry orchard that Joe Nelson inherits from his aunt and uncle seemed remarkably like a cherry orchard we used to hike to. Of course, it can't be the same since the one I vaguely remember has a view of Crystal, not Lake Michigan, and it didn't have a little cemetery, but it did curve up a hill and smell sweetly of cherry blossoms and clover, laced with the scent of cedar and sand that pervades upper Michigan. I hadn't been back to that orchard in years and years, so I biked by it only to discover it doesn't really exist anymore. Most of the trees are gone or no longer being cared for, so the orchard looks half wild. I had forgotten - or never really absorbed - that the property belonged to Bruce Catton, the historian, so that house is not a small farmhouse like the one in the novel, but a larger tudor style dwelling. In my memory, we hiked up the hillside behind the cottage where we used to stay, but I no longer know where the path is, and public access to the path is probably limited now by the newer homes that have sprouted up along the shore road.
This pleasant blend of memory and imagination endeared the book to me, and the ending provides a sense of promise, but I was hoping for a little more from it. Perhaps my expectations were too high. The premise of novel explores the relationships between mothers and daughters, and adults and their past, as the story centers around a mother in middle age, Lara, revisiting the past as she tells her adult daughters about a love affair she had with a famous actor one summer before he became famous. The mother had a shortlived acting career that ended because she really could only play one character, Emily from Our Town. (In the notes, Patchett writes that she hoped the book would inspire people to go back and read Thornton Wilder's play, which I am inspired to do, so it is a success in that regard. My memory of Wilder's play is dim in regard to details.)
Patchett's novel moves back and forth between the present, which is set during the Covid pandemic, and that summer when Lara met the famous actor during a run of Our Town at the summer theater. They live like camp counselors - visiting each other's cabins and sneaking out to swim in the lake. The love affair doesn't outlive the summer. Lara gets hurt and is replaced by her understudy on the stage and in the arms of the famous actor, Peter Duke.
While I loved reading about Michigan, this book had a couple quirks that prevented it from being a favorite by Patchett, although I did appreciate how she portrayed the way that children get the past wrong - they misunderstand and create stories about their parents based on patched together stories that are missing information. Lara's story is supposed to fill in the gaps for her girls, even though the idea that a mother shares as much about a past love affair with her adult children is perhaps a stretch. At times it is a little unclear whether she is sharing or just remembering. In the end some holes in the familiy history are filled in with a few surprises. The relationship between the girls and their mother improves perhaps somewhat, but doesn't change much as a result of learning about her past. Lara's relationship with her husband seems strong, but her deep dive into the past seems to make her realize how much passion she experienced with the actor, who ends up an alcoholic. That isn't really a spoiler because you know in the beginning he is both famous and a drunk. On the other hand, her marriage seems deeply satisfying and healthy, despite it being something of a rebound relationship. It seems a testament to how much love for a place keeps the family united and people grounded. Even the famous actor loved the orchard more than perhaps he ever loved any person besides himself.
Other fast reads: Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid and James by Percival Everett which is one of the hot books of the summer. Reid's book is the story of a professional tennis player making a comeback after years on the sidelines. Carrie Soto retired from professional tennis after reaching a goal of winning a Grand Slam, but when her record is threatened by a younger player, she returns to the court. This book may not appeal to everyone because much of the novel is spent describing Carrie's training and games, and of course, Carrie makes some bad choices during her famous years. She does reconcile with her father and achieve some self-awareness over the years about how single minded and rude she was. It was interesting to reflect on what it takes to rise to the top - and is it possible to do so without using and abusing others. The question of whether genius requires a little monomania is an interesting one.
James, Percival Everett's novel about the slave Jim from Mark Twain's books, has garnered a lot of media attention and accolades. It moves fast - James falls from one misadventure into another in an episodic plot harkening to the structure of Twain's book, and others of that time. It also employs both the irony and sarcasm present in Twain's voice. I need to go back and reread Huck Finn - it's been a long time, and I forget a lot of the details. I considered reading Tom Sawyer with my 8th graders, but the language was an issue. Twain is a writer I have never really loved, although I appreciate his talent. Percival Everett's book has some of Twain's biting humor, but is lighter on descriptions and heavier on both action and commentary about the use of langauge. The premise is that James, known to Twain's readers and to white people in Everett's book as Jim, escapes and meets up with Huck and then gets separated and has his own adventures before crossing paths with Huck again near the end of the novel. Everett revises Twain's story quite a bit, especially at the end, adding events that suggest "this is what I wish was could have happened." In Everett's book, slaves have two languages - a grammatically correct and linguistically advanced English that they speak with each other, and a slave dialect that they speak in the presence of white people. Perhaps this is inspired by the literate work of Black writers like Phylis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass. James is a teacher who instructs children in when and how to use the slave language to give white people what they want. He also tells the children that there is no God, Who is another fabrication by whites to maintain power and oppress others. James runs away because he is going to be sold, but he doesn't want to go far because he is motivated to free his wife and daughter, whom I don't remember in Twain's book.
The book is more of a mediation on the use of language to get and maintain power than a plot driven story like Twain's Huck Finn, although Twain's book also contains its share of biting satire, although the plot of James moved quickly. Occasionally, I'd have to backtrack to figure out just how the action shifted to a new location - but maybe that was because I was reading late at night. The book is complex and mashes contemporary ideas about identity and language with a setting 180 years in the past. I can see why it is a source of conversation.
I've also just finished rereads of Anne of Green Gables adn Anne of Avonlea with my daughter and started Anne of the Island. The sequels lack the endearing escapades that Anne experienced in the first novel, but are escapist retreats into the flowery descriptions of Prince Edward Island and the friendships and light romances Anne finds herself engaged in. That style of writing has been out of favor for a long time, but I love it, and happily my daughter seems to love it too - reading it out loud to her perhaps is an aid to appreciation.
Finally, I skimmed a self-help book, How Not to Age by Dr. Michael Greger, the type of book you can usually just read the intro or a review and know what the book has to say. I actually checked this one out to get myself to be more motivated to go to bed earlier and to read to my husband a little bit to convince him of the virtues of eating more vegetables and less meat and carbs. And it provides a great defense of wheat germ, my long ago favorite additive, for brain health. I am not a fad diet person, but lately aches and pains and poor sleep have me fearing that age is catching up more quickly than I'd like, so I need to be more intentional about turning out the lights earlier and getting more fruits and vegetables into my body. All the things you know are good for you, but books and junk food are just more enticing...
