The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989) is a book I have been meaning to read for a long time.  Not sure what held me back.  I did see the film which I really liked and maybe I figured the novel would be pretty much more of the same and therefore uneccessary.  But now I have read The Joy Luck Club and I am glad I did.  

The Joy Luck Club is set in 1980's San Francisco and China during the 1930's and 1940's.  When the novel begins Jing Mae-Woo's mother, Suyuan Woo, has passed away and Jing Mae's father asks if she would like to take her mother's place as a member of the Joy Luck Club.  It's a club her mother and three friends started in 1949 when they were young Chinese immigrant women recently arrived in America.  Every week the four would meet at each other's homes, bring food, sit down to a game of Mahjong and tell each other stories about their lives in China, the hopes for their children and their fears as well.  

Fast forward to the 1980's and these women are now in their sixties and their daughters are in their 30's. The lives of the four daughters have hit a rough patch, each in a different way.  The mothers are worried and feel their daughters have become too American and have forgotten what they have tried to teach them about Chinese culture and tradition.  How are their daughters going to navigate the world if they don't know what their mothers have been through?  It's a universal regret.  We often don't ask our parents about their lives when they were young and when they are gone we wish we could.

But in the Joy Luck Club we hear the mothers' stories and for me the story that stood out was that of An-mei Hsu and her daughter Rose Hsu Jordan.  When An-mei Hsu was a young girl in China her mother, who was forced into the life of a concubine, committed suicide.  Rose Hsu Jordan is also trapped in a bad marriage to a husband who does not respect her and who is not faithful.  Rose is afraid to leave him and her mother An-mei Hsu says: 

"I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl .... That was what people did back then. They had no choice. They could not speak up. They could not run away. That was their fate. But now they can do something else"

I also liked the story of Suyuan Woo and her twin baby daughters that she was forced to leave behind in China when the Japanese invaded.  As in the movie this story has a very touching ending forty years later.  

But the two remaining mothers, Ying-Ying St Clair and Lindo Jong are more problematic as role models.  Not every mother is a fount of wisdom and sometimes you have to unlearn from your parents as well.   So I am glad I read The Joy Luck Club.  It's one of those books that new readers will be discovering fifty years from now and not many novels have that distinction.

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder: Surviving America In The Twenty-First Century

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder has been on my TBR list for some time now but I have stayed away because the subject matter scared me a bit.  Normally I love books about  people who hit the road in their vans and discover what they want in life. 

But that is contingent upon the van dweller having had a choice with regard to living in their van.  The men and women profiled in Nomadland had no such choice.  As to how it could get to that point, Jessica Bruder explains it well:

"Among the people I met, some had their personal savings wiped out by bad investments or saw their 401(k)s evaporate in the 2008 market crash. Some hadn’t been able to create enough of a safety net to withstand otherwise survivable traumas: divorce, illness, injury. Others had been laid off or owned small businesses that folded in the recession. And though workers under fifty were a minority, I met them too ... problems compounded by student debt and degrees that turned out to have little practical value. Many hoped life on the road would be an escape from an otherwise empty future"

In another part of the book Jessica tells us that vandwellers may seem similar to the hobos and Hoovervilles of the 1930's but there is a key difference:

"For the nomadic Dust Bowl–era refugees who were once snubbed as “Okies,” self-worth meant keeping alive the embers of one precious hope: that someday the status quo would return, moving them back into traditional housing, restoring at least an iota of stability. Along with many of the wayfarers he came to inspire, Bob saw things differently. He envisioned a future where economic and environmental upheavals had become the new American normal".

As I began Nomadland I was concerned it would be a grim read. But I found it to be a thought-provoking and fascinating book about an off the grid and growing subculture here in the US.  Vandwellers have their own blogs, stores, meeting places. They have created cities like Quartzsite, Arizona, a ghost town during the summer but full of life every winter as hundreds of thousands of people arrive in cars, vans and RV's to set up camp, socialize, find work and help each other out.  

Non-fiction books come and go but I predict Nomadland will last because of the excellent journalistic job Jessica Bruder did, living and researching the vandwelling life for two years. But also because social security, salaries and savings accounts are increasingly not keeping up with the skyrocketing cost of apartment dwelling even if all you require is a studio.  This problem is not going away and Nomadland will be relevant for many years to come.

20 Books of Summer Challenge

This year I have been slow in the number of books I have read.  Maybe a dozen since the year started.  And so Cathy at 746 Books hosts a yearly Summer Challenge.  The goal is to read 20 books between June 1 through Sept 1. But it's a no pressure challenge and so I have decided on 10 books to be read this Summer.  All from my TBR list:

Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Road Not Taken by Rona Jaffe

The Maid by Nita Prose

Emma by Jane Austen

Outcasts by Sarah Stegall

Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder

Changing Tides by Michael Thomas Ford

Tourist Season by Carl Hiassen

I am excited about this challenge and I hope everyone is having a great summer and happy reading!

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

In Bury Your Dead, book six of Louise Penny's excellent Three Pines mystery series, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Surete du Quebec is on leave from the Police Department.  He is trying to recover emotionally and physically in the aftermath of a tragic police raid that went very wrong.  Gamache in an effort to recover is staying in Quebec City spending his time at the Literary and Historical Society doing research and trying to forget.

But then a murder happens.  Augustin Renaud, a historian obsessed with finding the burial site of Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec, turns up dead in the basement of the Literary and Historical Society.  Gamache realizes he will have to begin iinvestigating who killed Renaud since the Literary and Historical Society is an old English institution and tensions are high in Quebec between the French and English populations.

There is also a separate investigation involving Gamache's second in command, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir.  He is in Three Pines trying to discover whether Olivier Brule, who runs the local bistro with his partner Gabri, really did kill the reclusive antique collector he was convicted of killing.  Gamache is having doubts and wants Beauvoir to look into it.

And so in Bury Your Dead, Louise Penny juggles three separate story lines: who killed Augustin Renaud, the guilt or innocence of Olivier Brule and finally the police raid that continues to haunt Gamache.  Louise Penny handles all three of these stories beautifully.  Bury Your Dead won the Agatha and Anthony Awards in 2010 and 2011 for best mystery novel and I have to agree.  I have really enjoyed all of the books I have read in this series and Bury Your Dead is the best yet.

1940 Club: - The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich

Simon at Stuck In A Book has an interesting challenge where he picks a year and then readers are encouraged to read a book published during that year.  This year Simon chose 1940 and so I decided to go with The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich which has been gathering dust in my kindle for some time now.

The Bride Wore Black begins in the 1930's and in the prologue we meet a young woman named Julie who has suffered a tragedy of some kind that we are not told about.  Julie lets her family know that she needs to get away and sort things out and so she boards a train to Chicago.  But Julie gets off the train at the next stop and remains in NYC.   Her family is unaware of this.

The novel then switches to a different scene in which a wealthy young man named Bliss is celebrating at his engagement party.   A beautiful mysterious woman shows up at the party and is able to get Bliss alone on the balcony of the high rise where the party is taking place.  She pushes him off the balcony to his death.  The young woman leaves the party before any of the guests find out what has happened.

It's the beginning of a killing spree that will span over two years in which four men turn up dead in NYC and always a young woman is reported as having been around the scene at the time.  But who is this woman and who are these men since they don't appear to have known each other and have led very different lives?  There is Bliss, the wealthy young man who is engaged.  There is Mitchell who is down on his luck and living in a dingy apartment.  Moran a businessman with a wife and young son and Ferguson a successful artist.

A detective named Wagner is assigned to the case and he is pretty sure that the same woman is responsible for all of these killings.  His supervisors are not so sure since witnesses describe the woman at each crime scene in different ways but Wagner knows its not hard to change one's appearance after each killing.  Wagner is sure that somehow these four men must have been connected in the past.  Some event must have happened involving all four and once he finds out what that event was it will lead him to the killer.  

The Bride Wore Black is a gripping novel but disturbing and I had a problem with the ending which I can't go into without revealing too much.  But now having read a prior short story by Cornell Woolrich and The Bride Wore Black I plan to continue with this writer.  

Crime noir novelists like Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis, Dorothy Hughes, Chester Himes etc were popular in their day.  They wrote in a similar vein about betrayal, bad breaks, alienation, guilt and settling scores.  And though a steady diet of their books is probably a mistake, I do plan to read more by these authors.  They are talented and had important things to say about life and I am glad to see that their novels are having a revival. 

Later - I did it!  I finally figured out how to paste the cover of the book I am reviewing onto my blog!  Now the trick is to remember how I did this when I post my next review.

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

"When we wish to decide upon the merits of a governess, we naturally look at the young ladies she professes to have educated, and judge accordingly.  The judicious governess knows this: she knows that, while she lives in obscurity herself, her pupils’ virtues and defects will be open to every eye; and that, unless she loses sight of herself in their cultivation, she need not hope for success.  You see, Miss Grey, it is just the same as any other trade or profession: they that wish to prosper must devote themselves body and soul to their calling; and if they begin to yield to indolence or self-indulgence they are speedily distanced by wiser competitors"  

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte (1847) is a reread.  I must have read it over twenty years ago and I was uderwhelmed at the time possibly because I had just finished Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights which is brilliant and Agnes Grey is not in that league.  But since then I have read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Anne Bronte's The Tennant of Wildfell Hall and I have become a big Broute fan not only in terms of their writing but the courage these three sisters had in living their lives with death all around them and yet never giving up on their dreams.  

So with that in mind it was time for a reread of Agnes Grey and I was pleasantly suprised.  I liked the book the second time around.   I found Agnes Grey to be a good first start to a novelist's career.  Anne Bronte had talent and promise and she was ahead of her time in dealing with issues like what being a governess was really like and it was not an easy job.

Agnes Grey takes place in the North of England during the mid-nineteenth century where Agnes lives with her parents and sister Mary.  It's a happy family but poor and when Agnes's father loses money in a bad business deal Agnes offers to apply for a governess  position.  She is excited about the idea.  How wonderful to earn one's own money and be with children and teach them what they need to know.

The first family Agnes goes to work for are the Bloomfields.  The children are a nightmare and the oldest son enjoys torturing small animals.  Agnes soon leaves that situation and gets a new job working for the wealthy Murray family. They have two daughters, Rosalie and Matilda.  These young women are not the terrors the Bloomfield children were but they are spoiled young ladies who are used to getting their own way. 

Rosalie is beautiful but vain and a flirt.  She is set on marrying Sir Thomas Ashbury but in the meantime why not have fun with other suitors, particularly the rector Mr. Hatfield who Rosalie actually cares about.  Agnes tries to tell Rosalie that toying with the feelings of Mr. Hatfield is not a good thing to do.  And Agnes has worries that Rosalie is making a mistake with Sir Thomas Ashbury who she senses is not a great catch.  But Rosalie is set on marrying him and being the mistress of his great estate.  

As for Agnes there is a love interest as well, the local curate Edward Weston.  Agnes meets him when she is visiting Nancy Brown, a poor elderly woman with failing eyesight.  Agnes enjoys talking with Nancy and Edward regularly checks in on Nancy as well.  As Bronte heroes go Edward Weston is different.  He is not violent like Heathcliffe or brooding and hiding a secret like Mr. Rochester.  He's a good man, smart and he knows that religion is not simply words but deeds.  

And so I am glad I reread Agnes Grey and a bit sad too because I have no further Anne Bronte novels to read and it's clear had she lived she would have had alot to say about Victorian society, religion and the role of women.  But I am grateful for all of the Bronte novels we do have.

Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry

"I don’t write all this so anyone will feel sorry for me—I write these words because they are true. I write them because someone else may be confused by the fact that they know they should stop drinking—like me, they have all the information, and they understand the consequences—but they still can’t stop drinking. You are not alone, my brothers and sisters. (In the dictionary under the word “addict,” there should be a picture of me looking around, very confused.) - Matthew Perry

I have never been a regular viewer of Friends but on those occasions when I did watch the show the character that always stood out for me was Chandler. I found Chandler handsome, charming, funny and I felt the same for Matthew Perry who portrayed him. I've been aware of the decades long drug and alcohol addiction problems Matthew Perry has had and when his memoir Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing (2022) came out to critical praise I wanted to read what he had to say. I was curious why Perry's addiction to drugs and alcohol started and what he has learned along the way.

And so when Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing begins we are at a crisis moment in Matthew Perry's life. It was 2018 and as he tells us his colon exploded due to years of opioid use. It was a life threatening situation and after this dramatic opening some readers may decide they've had enough. But that would be a mistake.

I know for myself that I learned alot not only about Perry's struggles with substance abuse which is the major part of the book but also about his childhood growing up in Ottawa and Los Angeles. He had plans as a teenager to become a tennis pro but realized he was good but would never be great. And so following in his father's footsteps he decided to give acting a try. He loved it and was great at it. We learn about Perry's audition for Friends and he continues to be extremely grateful for his time on the show and remains close with the cast and crew to this day.

And that is what is so admirable about this memoir because as hard as Matthew Perry can be on himself, he is very generous when talking about his parents, siblings, friends, girlfriends, co-stars. This is a serious memoir about addiction and I finished the book wanting the best for Matthew Perry and if a reader is a fan of Chandler I think knowing about the actor who portrayed him will not disappoint. I recommend Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing and I believe its a book that will help people.

Later - I decided to shorten the above review from my original post.  I felt the first review was a bit too long and that I gave away too much detail.  It's always better for the reader to discover what's in the book themselves.  But I stand by my initial thoughts which are that Friends Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing is a brave and very honest memoir and well worth your time.