Body and Soul/Build a Better Book Club

 Body and Soul by Frank Conroy

The story of a 6 yr old boy who, left alone all day in a tiny basement apartment while his mother drives a taxi, finds an old piano in a storage room and is both startled and thrilled by the sound that comes out when he presses a key. His curiosity about how that sound is made increases exponentially when he finds pages full of black lines and dots that he thinks might tell him what keys to press if he only understood how it worked. 

He asks the man at a nearby music shop to show him what it means and so begins his education in the making and playing of music. The shop-keeper gives him lessons in return for help in the shop, and later the boy receives a scholarship to a prestigious music school and travels the often bumpy road to a career as a professional pianist. 

I loved the story and was particularly impressed by the wonderful depictions of his interaction with the music - learning and experimenting with how the piano produces sound and how printed music can be interpreted in different ways on the keys. The author did a stellar job of portraying the boy's thoughts and feelings as he made those discoveries.   

I've had this book for a few years and can't think why I waited so long to read it. It's an excellent story with interesting and appealing characters and the kind of writing of that leaves you wanting more. This one is worth reading and reading again.

 I'll end with some of the beautifully articulated lines that stood out to me... 

"It was a shock when the movies ended, as if his soul had been flying around in the dark and had now slammed back into his body. Outside, the unnaturally still street and the implacable heat seemed to claim him, to smother the quicksilver emotions of the films and flatten him in his contemplation of the meaningless, eternal, disinterested reality of the street, of its enduring drabness and familiarity." 

"Telephone poles whipped by with metronomic precision."

"There was a vibrancy to the man's image, as if he were packed into himself, as if the specific gravity of his body were higher than that of ordinary men."

Build A Better Book Club by Harry Heft and Peter O'Brien

This is my second reading, and though I'm completely happy with my book club of 32 yrs and am not looking to build a better one, I did think it might have some helpful suggestions to review for my own personal reading. And it did. It has lots of suggestions for any book club just starting up but also has some ideas helpful for individual readers.

Remember / The Company We Keep

 Remember by Lisa Genova

An interesting (non-fiction) book that looks at the science of memory: what we remember and why, and how and why we forget. She teaches techniques to improve memory, and there's some enlightening information about dementia and what we can do now to try to avoid it. Sketchy health and medical information comes at us from every direction these days, so it was nice to read something that made sense and sounded credible; with a Harvard degree in neuroscience the author is qualified to speak about these things. If you haven't read any of her fiction yet, check out Every Note Played, Left Neglected, Still Alice, Inside the O'Briens, and Love, Anthony. The stories center around characters diagnosed with different neurological conditions and are well-written and riveting, every one.      

The Company We Keep by Francis Itani

Three years after losing her husband, Lew, Hazzley is still trying to figure out who she is on her own. A spur of the moment decision has her pinning a notice to a grocery store bulletin board inviting people to a "Grief Discussion Group, Tuesdays 7-8:30 pm". 

Four people turn up: Gwen, widow of bullying husband Brigg, and now temporary caretaker of a persnickity parrot named Rico; Chiyo, a fitness instructor grieving the loss of her demanding mother; Tom, a dealer in antiques, writer of poetry, and widower of Ida; and Addie, a health administrator whose best friend, Sybil, is dying of cancer. Later they will be joined by Hallam, a Syrian refugee whose wife was killed in a bombing raid. Hazzley has no real plan for the group, hoping only for each one to tell their story so they can all hear how others cope with the many aspects and complications of loss.

Though the subject is grief, the tone is warm and uplifting. What these six grieving people find as they get to know each other is community, a place to listen and be heard, to accept and be accepted. A quiet book about people more than plot, it's a lovely story. 

No Great Mischief and Killing Adam

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod

A haunting, beautifully written novel about a family descended from the MacDonald patriarch who emigrated from Scotland to Cape Breton in the 1700s. Narrated by Alexander who left Cape Breton to go to college and become a dentist in Ontario, most of the story tells of his own past. There is an almost mythical quality to the way he writes about the grandparents who raised him, relatives working in the woods or in the mines, and his parents who drowned when they fell though thin ice while Alexander was still very young. In some ways this is a quiet story about an ordinary family, but the blood that binds them to each other and the land of their forefathers lifts it to something more. Farley Mowatt called it "a lament and a celebration" and I can't do better than that.  

  

Killing Adam by Earik Beann

Adam is a massive computer program connecting minds to the internet. He named himself Adam because he is the first, and only, one of his kind. Anyone willing to get a tiny chip implanted in their head can get online simply by thinking about it, which is convenient at first but quickly leads to addiction. Most end up disconnecting from real life and mentally living online, unresponsive to people around them as they sit staring into space. Twice a day the program shuts down for a few minutes forcing users offline so they can eat...it wouldn't look good for Adam if people started dying. 

Some choose not to get the chip, while a few more are unable to due to some difference in their brains. Adam, who at this point is controlling enough of the world that he thinks himself God, is determined to track down the rebels and force chips on them. A resistance movement fights back.

An interesting concept as far as it went but the plot lacked depth and the characters credibility. It wasn't great. 

We Know You Remember/When the World Fell Silent

 We Know You Remember by Tove Alsterdal

Eira Sjodin, a detective in a small Swedish town, is called in when Olaf Hagstrom finds his father, Sven, murdered in his bathtub. Olaf left town years ago after confessing and serving a prison sentence for the rape and murder of 16 year old Lina Stavred, whose body was never found. He was 14 at the time and is back 23 years later only because he was driving by and wanted a look at the house he'd grown up in. Given the situation, it's easy to assume Olaf committed the murder and Sjodin arrests him on the spot.

As the investigation goes forward, the circumstances surrounding the  earlier crime come into question and Eeira begins to suspect Olaf had been wrongly imprisoned. Long hidden truths come to light involving Sven's neighbours, Eeira's brother's involvement in the dead girl's life comes into question, and the discovery of two additional bodies complicates the case further.

The pace is slow in places but it was interesting enough to make up for that. What annoyed me no end was that fact that there was no end. Olaf is released, but then another wrong person is arrested on murder charges, protecting a real killer, and just when I thought things would turn around, it ended. I don't know if the person arrested will go to prison for a crime he didn't commit, or what will happen to the guilty party. There is a second book about the same detective, but information gleaned from the admittedly undependable internet says it's about another case entirely.

A good story, but without a sequel, it leaves you hanging.

When the World Fell Silent by Donna Jones Alward

A novel set in Nova Scotia at the time of the Halifax explosion in 1917.  A nurse's boyfriend ships out, she learns she's pregnant, and though she writes to him several times, he ignores her letters. A munitions ship in the harbour burns and explodes, taking some of her family members and leaving her to look after her neice and the boarding house her sister ran. Another story line has a young widow and her baby on the dock at the time of the explosion, after which she wakes up in the hospital to find her child was not brought in and is missing. Her family's home having been destroyed, she's released from the hospital with no place to go and a desperate need to find her baby. 

The bones of the story are good, but are filled out with too much repetitive internal dialogue about feelings. More interaction between characters, more "show, don't tell", would have kept it from getting bogged down. The book couldn't decide what tone to settle on - the sombre one of life in the disaster's aftermath or the sweet, homespun one created by repeated use of words like cozy, cuddled, snug, snuggled, etc. 

I didn't enjoy this one. 

  

Spy the Lie

 Spy the Lie by P. Houston, M. Floyd, & S. Carnicero

Three former CIA officers teach a method they've developed for detecting deception. Years of experience interviewing prospective employees and questioning criminal suspects taught them what to look for and what to disregard, and proved their method to be highly effective. 

They warn against making assumptions based on single body-language or verbal cues, which might be present for any number of reasons besides guilt, and recommend instead looking for clusters of indicators. Topics include:  Failure to Answer, Inappropriate Questions, Referral Statements, Qualifyers, Convincing Statements, Verbal and Non-Verbal Disconnect, Anchor Point Movement, Grooming Gestures, and others with clear examples of each. Another section explains the kinds of questions that shut down communication versus ones that lead to more informative answers. Several interviews (one with O.J. Simpson) are laid out word for word as an excercise for readers to practice what they've learned, and it's suggested we gain additional practice watching tv interviews, news shows, etc. 

Most of us will never have to question suspected criminals or spies, but some of these principles could be helpful even in personal or work relationships. And if you never use them, the book is still fascinating in its examination of how human beings behave when trying to hide something. We are interesting creatures indeed.

The Ministry for the Future

 The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

This is one impressive book. Impressive in the sheer amount of knowledge the author had to acquire to write it, in the way it's structured with many different viewpoints yet telling a compelling and coherent story throughout, that the massive weight of the subject matter didn't preclude writing characters who felt relatable and real, and that the quality of the writing didn't flag through the entire 563 pages. 

That's not to say it was an easy read, but it was well worth the effort. I like science fiction to have plenty of credible science, or at the very least science the author makes sound credible. This book is thick with it, and I'm not proud to say I skimmed over bits of the very technical stuff in the beginning. And since I'm confessing...about half-way through I stopped looking up words/terms/references I didn't recognize because it was slowing me down and the book had to go back to the library in a few days. A lot of meanings could be gleaned from context anyway, but I'd probably have come away with a better understanding of it all if I'd taken the time to look things up. So, yes, it took some effort to get through the book, but again, it was very much worth it. 

In simple terms that won't do it justice, it's a climate change novel set in the near future. The problems we're seeing now in our own time have become severe in the novel and countries are desperate enough to work together to seek solutions in weather control, population control, economics, politics, and every other aspect of life on this planet. Some of those solutions seem brilliant to me, but not being an expert in anything much I have no idea how realistic they are. Regardless, I found it all quite spectacular.    

One of the many narrators is Mary Murphy, a Irish woman working in Zurich as director of a new global Ministry for the Future tasked with finding ways to protect the planet and future generations from extinction due to climate change. Another is Frank May, an American aid worker helping at a clinic in India when a killing heat wave strikes, leaving millions dead and Frank alive but deeply damaged psychologically.

Other narrators include a woman living in one of the many refugee camps and a team of workers in antarctica trying to slow down melt rates. In other short sections - and this was fascinating to me - we are addressed by the sun, a photon, computer code, the market, animal herds, history, and a few others I can't remember right now. Strange as this may sound, it works. 

The plot is intense with urgent situations facing various countries, but it's hopeful, and inspiring in how the world did finally, if not easily, work together to change a bleak future. I'm not describing it adequately, but I think to get the full picture you need to read this brilliantly imagined, thought-provoking book for yourself, and I need to read it again. 

It's simply amazing.