Donna Decker's Blog: ANY GOOD BOOKS?

FATES AND FURIES (2015) by Lauren Groff is touted as the best book of 2015. I cannot say I agree. I wanted to agree. President Obama said it was his favorite book of the year. I love him; I wanted to love it. I got it in hardcover for Christmas and immediately jumped in. The book got compelling on page 206 of 390. That is too long to wait for compelling. I completely GET what Groff is doing by crafting the book this way. Everything you think is true in the first half of the book is countered by another perspective in the second. I like that technique, but I did not want to wade through 200 + pages about an egotistical husband; his wife was far more interesting. Yet – and here I am wavering, admittedly – her narration made me reflect back on his (first half of book) and re-think my judgment. This book has gotten a lot of hype, perhaps more than it deserves, and it makes me take on even bigger questions like why do some books get RAVE reviews, untold ATTENTION, when some of my favorites remain, well, somewhat obscure? No answers yet. On the whole, I liked the book because the wife’s narration and back story was just the thing to perk you up after being really sick of her husband. Is it too late to say this is a book about young marrieds Lotto and Mathilde and their odd and vexing life together, their dysfunctional families, their messed up friends? I am not recommending against this book and not only because most of the reading world loves it. But – I am cautioning readers to settle in for a long one, wait it out, practice patience, see what comes. So, I suppose, it really is like marriage in that – so hold onto your hats and take the ride.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is my newest hero, and her HALF OF A YELLOW SUN (2006) was an investment of time and heart. It is HUGE, delivering in heartbreaking detail Biafra’s struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria in the late 1960s. The characters are like family, as one wades through this war: Ugwu is the thirteen-year-old houseboy for Odenigbo, a university professor zealous in positing his revolutionary ideals; Olana is Odenigbo’s mistress, and her twin sister is the fierce Kainene. I could not look away as characters were tortured, starved, dehumanized because a string of love and loyalty is woven through out. I had to know the outcome. I am Team Adichie all the way. I am teaching WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS this semester. But this one took me in so thoroughly and for such a long ride that I had to seek out some sunshine and express gratitude for having been born in the United States, current politics aside. I don’t shy away from global realities, but living through this violent historical moment was rough reading for this privileged, white, American reader – not nearly so rough as it was for those who survived – and did not – this very real war. For them, for those like them, for those we may be someday – I read. I learn.

I bought Jane Hamilton’s THE EXCELLENT LOMBARDS (2016) in hard cover because I love her, particularly her earlier A MAP OF THE WORLD. Dare I say I did not love it. I wanted something to happen, wanted more than the pastoral, Bildungsroman she offered. How dare I want more from an author like Jane Hamilton? I am not sure how I come to dare such a thing, but I am sure I am daring to admit that I was not enamored of this latest book. I appreciate it. Just don’t love it. Cannot recommend it even unless you are a reader who laps up setting, loves a good apple-farm story, loves a Scout-like (Scout as in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD) protagonist (which typically I do). Alas…Jane has not won my heart this time, but I will not give up on her because that earlier novel and THE SHORT HISTORY OF A PRINCE are still among my favorites.

Such an important book is A MOTHER’S RECKONING: LIVING IN THE AFTERMATH OF TRAGEDY by Sue Klebold (2016). Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, infamous for his massacre of fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School in 1999. After the tragedy, polls indicated that the majority of Americans blamed the parents of the two shooters. Many law suits were levied against them. Sue Klebold understands this feeling, admits she would have felt the same way were her child killed in such a merciless fashion. Yet, she presents a sympathetic character. Readers empathize because Klebold takes us through her life in detail – the build up to the tragedy and the unbearable aftermath. She convinces readers she did not know, could not have seen such a horror coming. The boy who committed that crime, the boy who spewed hatred on the Basement Tapes (which she watched after the killings, when they were “released” to the families for viewing) was someone she had never known. Why is this book so important? Because we hunker down in “safety” by believing school shooters are monsters, that they can be spotted and that the spotters are at fault for not noticing. We feel “safe” because we can blame someone after. Klebold teaches us, with grace and generosity, that we are not safe, that there is no predicting, or that the “predicting” we are doing is not working. I admire her for this work. All proceeds from the book are going to advance mental health awareness. In the world of school-shootings literature, this is required reading.