Gruesome as it may sound, I love the Borden mystery (and I wholly believe that Lizzie did, in fact, murder her father and stepmother.) I was really looking forward to this book; unfortunately it didn’t really convey any emotion or suspense. The writing is very stilted, and the characters very flat. I have no doubt Fanning did her research, there are plenty of confirmed references to the case included in the book, but it didn’t hold my interest at all.
Jen Schneider’s On (Pantry) Stock & (Kitchen) Timers is a unique collection of a stream-of-consciousness essays and poems that you wouldn’t think would work but does in an enchanting, eye-catching, made-you-look kind of way. Schneider’s words are a collage of thought that walks readers through a maze of sensation/emotion/confusion/questing. This collection deserves a re-read to fully take in what Schneider says, but even after a second reading I found myself pausing, starting a page over, considering what Schneider wrote, how to interpret her idea. Read this book and experience Schneider’s creative art for yourself.
Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh is an outstanding book. I was expecting a microhistory about oranges, or citrus fruit as a whole; I was not expecting an incredibly well-researched social history about culture, society, belonging, searching for one’s place in the world, biases, acceptance, food cultivation, and environmentalism (among other topics). Goh’s book takes readers from Ireland and Malaysa to China, Italy via the Silk Road, France, Russia, and the United States. Readers witness the destructive oppression of Dutch and British colonialism, Communist tyrants, and violent racism. I had never heard of the Los Angeles Riot of 1871, in which nineteen Chinese immigrants were murdered, and no one was held accountable.
Readers are also introduced to the wonders of citrus cultivation; I was also unaware that similar to apples, citrus seeds will not grow true to the parent plant: if you plant a clementine seed you will get some kind of variety of citrus, possibly even a clementine (but don’t count on it). Goh tells us of the origins of many of the citrus varieties we are familiar with today, how the fruit rose to such popularity (aside from being delicious), and its cultural significance in many cultures.
In a fashion similar to Crying in H Mart and My Berlin Kitchen, Goh describes a childhood of feeling like an outsider, growing up in Ireland as the child of an Irish mother and a Chinese-Malaysian father. Her love of her heritage is evident despite her inner struggle to see just where she fits in. Her descriptions of visits to her family in Malaysa are filled with warm childhood memories, and when she returns as an adult she is just as eager to embrace her culture and identity.
This book was a pleasure to read, engaging, informative, completely engrossing. I highly recommend this as a memoir, a microhistory, and as a study of society.
Murder Ballads by Katy Horan is a treat for fans of Dark Folklore and Gothic themes (that’s a gruesome way to begin a review, isn’t it?). I was already familiar with “The Death of Queen Jane” and “The Twa Swans” thanks to Loreena McKennitt. Horan included a list of recordings, so readers can immerse themselves fully into the eerie beauty of these lyrics. Horan includes some backstory to each of the selected ballads; this led me down a rabbit hole of reading the expanded stories behind these ballads. Katy Horan doesn’t just present her readers with a collection of songs, but a unique volume of true crime as well. Apart from the two songs McKennitt produced, I would say my favorite is the rendition of “Where the Wild Roses Grow” performed by Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue. I definitely recommend this darkly beautiful collection to anyone who loves folklore, poetry, and the Gothic and Romantic literature of the nineteenth century. You will absolutely love it. Be warned, though, you will spend hours looking up music videos.
Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder’s beautiful book Mother, Creature, Kin brings to mind the essays of Barbara Kingsolver and Rebecca Solnit, and Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses. Steinauer-Scudder explores such topics as climate change, motherhood, seeking (and finding) one’s center as well as one’s place in the world. She asks her readers to consider their roles within the world, reminding us that the greatest gift we can do for future generations is to leave the world a better place than we found it. She acknowledges the challenges in this, admitting her own failings while striving to do better. Mother, Creature, Kin is a book that everyone should read. It is illuminating and thought-provoking, at times heartbreaking, but pulsing with life.
Some of the poems in Alix Perry’s collection Tomatoes Beverly flow beautifully, creating scenes in the mind’s eye. Others are somewhat disjointed and difficult to follow. This may be intentional; poetry is art, interpreted differently by the creator and the reader. Perry opens with a sage reminder for their readers: “Things I should know by now:/ whether to take the news with/ a grain of salt or a spoonful of sugar;/ when to lie and when to brag;/ how to celebrate anything at all. […] Breathe/ shallow to whisper, deeper/ to take blame./ Onerous is the task/
of feigned restraint.”
“gravity is/ the weight of all the stories we don’t know/ how to tell,” Perry tells us. Their method of immersing themselves in music for each separate piece is a brilliant idea: by fully allowing themselves to be influences by what they hear, Perry creates unique pieces that retain their own identity while subtlety uniting the collection as a whole.
“unconditional love lets you cry flowers” ~Brianna Pastor
Brianna Pastor’s collection “Good Grief” is a jewel of a book. Her poems are deeply personal, but resonate with her readers, creating a sense of camaraderie, letting people know that while their pain is unique to them, they are not alone. Someone else has felt what you feel, someone else has lived your fears and sadness; your feelings are relevant. You matter.
“i loved my sadness because it was honest,” Pastor says. She reminds us that “sometimes you walk, and you won’t get there in time. sometimes you run, and it has already passed you, sometimes you get there at exactly the right time, and exactly the right speed, and it still does not happen. when it is for you, it will be for you.”
As someone who lives with major depressive disorder, I empathize with Pastor’s thought: “i dread the day these demons come back for me they have gone away to pursue better things but can never find what they’re looking for so here they come, back to me, a place where they are not wanted–for they always stop by unannounced and don’t understand the concept of manners in another person’s home”
Truly, I loved this book. Beautifully written, sensitive and moving, it shows the depth of a person’s soul, and the struggle to stay strong.
This read very much like a writer telling a story based on true events. The prose poems were thoughtfully written and had beautiful descriptive wording, but the overall feel of the book was somewhat contrived.
In Permission, memoirist Elissa Altman asks “Who has the right to tell a family’s story? Who “owns” a family’s history? Do we need permission to tell our story?”
Altman says, “The writing of memoir is often fraught; our friends, colleagues, families, entire cultures turn writers into pariahs for what we create, for who we are, for how we dare take ownership of our own stories.” She also writes “Beyond time, space, and money to write, permission is the single biggest hurdle that the creative—new or accomplished—faces, and often over the most mundane of issues.”
I am not a memoirist; most of what I write is completely made up, influenced by true events perhaps, but very loosely so. I do not feel the desire to tell true stories, and I have never considered what my family’s reaction would be if I chose to do so. I expect there would be anger, as Altman experienced. I am sure I would be told I was wrong, lying, or accused of fabricating everything for attention. Others would relish the attention it would bring, being of the mindset that adverse attention is better than lack of attention. I do not think I would be disowned as Altman was; I think I would be allowed to remain so people could be disgusted with me.
Altman reminds her students, “No one owns the right to craft our story but us, but we must remember that the complex work of memoir demands that we also write with clarity, compassion, and ambiguity, which allows the reader to determine their own response to the story.”
Elissa Altman’s Permission is an outstanding presentation of memoir, writing, self-exploration, and how one experiences (and suffers from) a family’s reaction to a secret that needs to be told. I will be supplementing my e-copy with a print edition for both reference and the reminder that sometimes being true to oneself means standing alone in the face of disapproval and still telling my story.
My sister and I are proud Muffin Wallopers and set aside time every Sunday to engage in pursuits associated with this title. “What is a Muffin Walloper?” you ask. Allow me to enlighten you.
Per WordGenius.com, “A “muffin-walloper” is an unmarried woman who gathers with friends to gossip. In the Victorian era, these conversations often happened over tea and cakes — hence the muffin part of the phrase.” Now, my sister and I are both happily married women. And we don’t actually gossip during these Sunday afternoon sessions. We brew ourselves cups of tea, make nice little snacks, and sit down with our phones, pens, notebooks, and a highlighter or two and discuss our current “Sister Read,” a book we have chosen to read together. We tried to host an online book group and invited other Muffin Wallopers to join us, but no one participated, so we decided to go solo (duo?). The phones are a necessity because I live in Western Massachusetts, and she lives in Coastal Maine.
Since summer, we have been reading Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History. This book has been both enlightening and absolutely infuriating. Spoiler alert: absolutely nothing has changed regarding women’s rights, roles, safety, or status in nine hundred friggin years. We are holding our final discussion for this book on Monday 12/9 after we wrap up the Afterword (postponed due to my daughter’s baby shower on 12/8…yay baby! My youngest grandson is due in January, and I cannot wait to meet him. In the meantime, I shall continue to spoil his brother and sister.)
We have agreed to take the rest of December off to work on our December TBRs. I shared mine in a previous post. (see the link here: https://nicolekperkins.com/2024/12/01/december-tbr/ if you are interested in taking a look) By an amusing consequence, we both decided to read The Old Magic of Christmas by Linda Raedisch. I expect we will have a phone call to discuss it once we have finished it. I’m currently reading it; I have no idea what Sister is reading at present. Besides Normal Women, that is.
January 1st will see us begin our next Sister Read, The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore. (Henceforth I shall refer to this book as TWTCNS because like all kickass titles it’s very long.) I have read Kate Moore’s incredible and horrifying book The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. My sister has not, and I did suggest this as our next book, but we both own a copy of TWTCNS because I forgot I had a Kindle copy and bought it in paperback. Guess who got a free paperback copy of TWTCNS?
The Woman They Could Not Silence tells the story of Elizabeth Packard, jailed in an insane asylum by her husband for being inconvenient. (Minor spoiler, Elizabeth Packard was not mentally ill.) From Goodreads:
“1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened – by Elizabeth’s intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.
The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they’ve been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line – conveniently labeled “crazy” so their voices are ignored.
No one is willing to fight for their freedom and, disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness, they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose.”
For the last few months my husband and brother-in-law have been watching Sunday afternoon football to the not-so-muffled sounds of their wives’ raging over topics discussed by Philippa Gregory in her book. I think by the time Sister and I are done reading TWTCNS our long-suffering husbands are going to hope we read something much lighter in topic, like True Crime.
I will post a review on Normal Women after Sister and I have our final discussion so I can share her thoughts on the books as well. For those of you who may have already looked it up, it is a monster of a book, covering a lot of material, some of it very hard to read.
Take care Friends, and I’ll be back soon.
This is the Mask 