Sea Wife by Amity Gaige

A super-exciting story about a couple with two young children who go away to sea on a sailboat. You know from page 1 that things come to a bad end. The story is mainly told back-and-forth between Juliet’s hindsight perspective and Michael’s daily log entries. The bold print and indentation for Michael’s entries makes it clear who’s speaking; but even so, the switching could be very rapid, and it sometimes took a slight effort to reposition one’s mind into the right character at the right time.

I don’t know anything about boats and I do terrible at following action sequences under the best of circumstances; so in a lot of the most gripping moments, I could only skim helplessly in a “jib mainsail yada yada halyard keep yada yada” kind of way; and yet the book still delivered a 4-star experience for me.

The plot: with lots and lots of foreboding, we follow the family’s story from the different perspectives, wondering exactly how things will go south. Not only do we know there’s going to be a death: we soon have the possibility of foul play mixed in.

The conclusion: very satisfying.

The characters: While Juliet had many annoying traits – tendencies toward martyrdom, self-pity, self-absorption, and wanting to be a poet for Pete’s sake – it was OK, because I didn’t feel I was necessarily supposed to like her, not all the time. Michael in his personal log betrays an idealistic libertarian streak, but never goes off the nutso deep end – then again, he did take his whole young family away to Central America to live on a sailboat for a year, so what am I saying? Sybil, the 7-year-old is really charming – I don’t think I’ve ever come across a more likeable child in a modern novel before, not one who gets this much screen time. She never seems to get bratty. In fact, towards the end, I started to wonder – why does this kid never get bratty; is that realistic? George, the 2-year-old – also well played.

Rhetorical question: why do female protagonists in modern novels always have to be gorgeous? Can’t we have someone who’s a little dumpy-looking after having two children? (  )

Addendum: I own this book in hardcover and am happy to lend.

The Tea girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

It was grating, then kind of funny, the way things were always spelled out. For example, it’s really handy when a part of a culture’s traditions includes reciting exactly what that culture’s traditions are, as they perform the traditions, don’t you think? I also appreciated letters and therapy transcripts stating exactly what characters were feeling.

So, it’s OK that it’s not meant to be great literature – I accept that. What really kept the book from elevating, for me, was the number of wacky tangents. All of the following are spoilers.

She’s into education, she’s going to pursue higher schooling, that will be her way out – no, wait, she got distracted becoming a tea expert; the education thing is not happening anymore.

She’s in love, her lover goes away to earn money then returns for her – they can start their life together, though it will be hard – no, wait, that’s not happening, he’s a drug addict.

She’ll leave him and deal with the consequences of being a woman who left her husband – oh way, he just got killed by a tiger!

She goes out into the world and becomes a successful, independent businesswoman – oh wait, now she’s the pampered wife a gazillionaire.

And to tie it all up, the adopted child – birth mother reunion thread. Their paths finally manage to meet up in China. And everything is beautiful and magical and right, because that’s exactly how adopted child – birth mother search & reunion stories always turn out in life, aren’t they? ( )

Sunny Days by David Kamp

I bought this book without even doing my usual sampling preview, once I discovered it was not only about all of my favorite childhood TV shows, but was also written by the same author of THE UNITED STATED OF ARUGULA, one of my favorite metafood books.

It’s about the wild creative atmosphere around educational children’s programming in the late 60s and early 70s. Sesame Street, of course… Roosevelt Franklin… some Mr. Rogers… but I really liked all the coverage of the lesser-known local favorite, Magic Garden. And the shout-out to Joya’s Fun School! I really liked Joya.

This book really pushed a lot of my memory buttons, but I think the weirdest trigger memory of all was when they covered “Berna-dette’s” Zoom intro. Honestly whenever I hear the name “Bernadette” I tend to flash back to that intro; all I remembered was she did something with her arms while they played a kind of celeste-sounding musical bit. I didn’t remember her being Chinese, or that the arm thing was supposed to give the illusion that she had no elbow joints or something. But they really spent a lot of time on it in the book, and now I know ALL about it. And it sent me back to watch some of the original Zoom show intro numbers, and OMG were they bad.

Speaking of bad, then there was the New Zoo Revue. I was very, very little when I used to watch and enjoy this show; and while probably none of the kiddie shows that I watched were true favorites with the parents and older brother in the house, I remember everyone PARTICULARLY hating on the New Zoo Revue. “They can’t even sing,” my mother protested, and I was little enough that this puzzled me. “They CAN sing,” I argued. They were right there on the TV singing. But even in my memory I remember some really awful singing, something along the lines of “With Doug, and Emmy Jo, every day’s a different shooooooow!” half-shouted and half-sung in a monotone.

Good times! Oh wait, I guess GOOD TIMES will be a different book altogether. ( )

Doxology by Nell Zink

Pam is born the same year as me and spends her young adulthood in gritty downtown NYC, working in the financial district as a programmer and living in Chinatown. So forgive me if I liked this book right off the bat.

She does live a much more hardscrabble life than me, running away from home and arriving in NYC young and anonymous. She does much more interesting programming than I ever did, too.

Joe has a fictional neurological syndrome that manifests something like a mild Down’s Syndrome in some ways, with Joe always happy and optimistic and trusting; yet fully functioning, if quirky, and tremendously creative and talented as a songwriter.

Daniel lives in an illegal apartment over a video store in the heart of Chinatown; its only entrance and egress being through the store, Daniel must be home every night by 1 AM when the metal gate comes down, else he has to stay out till 6 AM when it comes back up. He falls for Pam, and she’s into him enough to move in with him into this crazy place.

Flora is their unexpected offspring. She grows up fast. She’s precocious and smart. She’s a child when 9/11 happens, and her parents relocate her to her grandparents’ place in the DC suburbs, where she spends the remains of her childhood. She wants to save the world from climate change. She does a semester abroad in Chad and becomes a soil expert, but never can figure out quite how to channel her energy and enthusiasm to go about actually saving the world.

And that’s it. It’s the life story of these four people from the late 80s to the present moment. I was riveted. ( )