by Yael Van Der Wouden

440 reviews

I have to admit through most of this book I was slogging. Then came the “a-ha” moment, which should have been obvious all along, but I’m not a perceptive reader. I feel like anything I say would be a spoiler.

by Stephanie Sy-Quia

Fantastic story. The main characters are Father David Fletcher, a forward-thinking Catholic priest serving in his home county in England; and Margaret Bendelow, a progressive laywoman who studied in Rome and teaches theology – radical theology. The time period is the 60s during Vatican II. Our protagonists are hopeful for real change in the Roman Catholic church – married clergy, contraception. All such hopes are of course disappointed, and all the more disappointing because Vatican II seemed to come so close to delivering real change.

Though the title is “A Private Man” and it’s David’s story which first takes center stage, Margaret ends up being the beating heart and razor-sharp mind of the book. She’s brilliant and articulate, sexually forward and comfortable with contraceptives, free with her knowledge and opinions, such that the Holy Spirit was meant to be female.

Not a spoiler, but David ends up leaving the church to marry her. They end up with a daughter and a grandson; Margaret outlives David and the story of the two lovers in the 1960s and beyond intersperses with the story of Margaret in her old age being cared for by her grandson, Adrian. She is sinking into dementia, but Adrian probes her for more info about his grandparents’ past – it was something of a family secret that David was a former Catholic priest, and Adrian’s only learned that fact recently.

The chapters about Margaret’s decline were a bit hard for me, giving what I am anticipating with my mother-in-law. Adrian spends a lot of time on his bicycle visiting with her, and a lot of time shedding tears.

The chapters where young David and young Margaret each pursue their vocations and studies in Rome were beautiful, extremely evocative of the beauty of Italy.

But it’s a sad story, really. Interesting to note it was based on some true facts about the author’s grandparents.

by Thomas Waintree

I’m not sure IBS is exactly what I have, but I wanted to learn more about the mind-GI connection. This book really delivers on the title; it’s very science-based. I was surprised to learn about the high success rate of hypnotherapy for IBS symptoms and that may be something I pursue. The book really emphasizes that the mind and the “gut” are one thing, connected by the vagus nerve, and problems can be tackled from either end.

Definitely kept me reading. Has obvious parallels to WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN; but Lionel Shriver this writer is not. We spend half the chapters in the head of mother Suzette, and the other half inside the mind of the evil child, Hanna. Hanna is sadistic, or psychopathic or something, and hates her mother (but loves her father). Hanna is 7, and acts young, except when she’s plotting her revenge on Suzette. Then she seems to have the mentality of an adult. Suzette alternates between melting down at Hanna’s poor behavior, and giving hate back for hate. Dad is oblivious. When Hanna finally succeeds at inflicting real injury on Suzette, I don’t understand why the family didn’t have her institutionalized right then and there. We can all see where things are going.

Before picking this up, I was starting to read a book about a Vermont shepherd, which was extremely mother-y with a 3-year-old falling asleep peacefully on a hay bale while mom is assisting a ewe with a difficult birth. I tossed that book aside and picked up this one, said, Oh yeah, bring on the mother-hate!

The mother in this novel suffers from Crohn’s disease, which I am super grateful not to have. But I do have abdominal pain and felt a special affinity whenever she talked about her symptoms (which was almost all the time… not sure why this was part of the plot, but it did awake empathy in me at least).

by Alvaro Enrigue

I read this on someone’s recommendation and against my initial reluctance after a brief sample. It’s a retelling of Cortez and Montezuma mostly from the perspective of several powerful Aztecs and various Spanish soldiers and translators. I was gripped through most of it, waiting for the big finish. Things went a little off the rails at the end. I feel like certain plot points were unsatisfied. I could be wrong – this book was very hard to follow. Normally I ignore “cast of characters” lists in a book, and challenge the author to engage me enough to keep track of who’s who. But everyone here had several different names, and some of the Aztec names were a mouthful and too similar to each other. So I had to bookmark the cast of characters. I’d say I was thoroughly hooked on the story through 90% of it, so overall “enjoyed” the book. But the ending really wasn’t satisfying.

by Judith & Neil Morgan

Ted Geisel seemed a fun guy. I kept picturing him as Groucho Marx. This was a good bio that stayed interesting.

by George Loewenstein

“Misery is inescapable. It is not some malfunction or bug in the system. It IS the system.”

by Lisa See

I’m glad I read it to the end, because I did like the resolution and ended up respecting her ability to craft a plot. However, I did not enjoy the majority of the time I spent slogging through this. A lot of horrible things happened. And it felt like we were always flittering from one plot point to another with little change in tone. Drownings at sea, young girls’ flirtations – it all kind of came across in the same monotonous way.

by Kathryn Jezer-Morton

“The stories told on social media are all, in one way or another, stories that support … a regime of neoliberal selfhood: a way of accounting for oneself that emphasizes resilience & individuality… Individuals seek to improve their access to opportunities through the demonstration of various types of fitness. In telling stories like this, we disenchant our lives. We suck all the shading & feeling out of our own experiences.”

I’ve been looking for ways to verbalize this for a long time. The myth of self-improvement. Fooling ourselves that we’re getting better all the time, when really we haven’t fundamentally changed one iota since age 4. “Believe we’re gliding down the highway when in fact we’re slip-sliding away” (Paul Simon).

“It felt ironic to be looking for a redemptive chord on which to conclude a book all about the limitations of telling one’s life story as a series of victories.” To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, “Life is not a victory march.”