The Nature of Things

I read Carolina De Robertis's previous book, The Gods of Tango , and liked it quite a lot and so I was eager to read her new offering.  The previous book was about a woman who was unable to fulfill her life's ambition to play the violin simply because she was a woman. So, after emigrating from her home country to Argentina and finding herself in difficult circumstances there, she ultimately made the choice to live as a man and play the violin for tango bands. The current book details forty years of the lives of five women beginning in Uraguay in 1977. These five women are lesbians who came together for friendship and support (and occasionally sex) in a hostile society. They were unable to be themselves, to live their lives openly and honestly. I think I am sensing a common theme in De Robertis's books.   As a queer woman herself, it is likely the De Robertis has faced some of the prejudice and discrimination that the women in her novels have faced. Thus, she is perhaps f...

I have to admit up front that I read this book in a state of fury. It's easy to see why it caused such a stir in South Korea when it was published there in 2016. No doubt it struck a chord with many Korean women, probably every one who read it and it soon became a best-seller, selling more than a million copies. The reviewer in The New York Times compared its effect there to Uncle Tom's Cabin in this country. It sparked a feminist wave in South Korea and I can certainly understand why. The book has now been translated into 18 different languages and is an international best-seller. And now we have the English version. The book tells the story of a young woman who suffers from dissociative episodes and is driven to psychosis because of the stresses of her life. She is the middle child of her parents. She has an older sister and the only reason they had another child was because they were trying for a son. They failed. After her birth, her mother got pregnant again and learned ...

Here's something for all the mothers, for all the women really, growing older. And maybe the men, too, could take it to heart and loosen up a bit. Maybe it's time that we just all be ourselves, rather than trying to be what we think others expect of us. For the most part, they don't care anyway. They are too busy worrying about what we think of them! Warning by Jenny Joseph When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells And run my stick along the public railings And make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain And pick flowers in other people's gardens And learn to spit. You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat And eat three pounds of sausages at a go Or on...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : White-winged Dove and a juvenile Common Grackle share a limb. These are two backyard species that can clean out your birdfeeder in a hurry. They mostly feed from the platform feeder or on the ground. As long as you have other feeders specifically designed for smaller birds - and both of these birds are fairly large - then they don't really present a problem. I enjoy having them around, even the grackles which some unenlightened people consider pests. *~*~*~* There is a fear that if one orangutan in the forest should be infected with the coronavirus then an entire population could be wiped out. In order to guard against that, the orangutans in Indonesia's rehabilitation centers are being kept there for now rather than returning them to the forest.  *~*~*~* The headlines in the environmental sections of news websites this week have all been screaming about the "murder hornet." These are Asian giant horne...

I decided to give Joe Ide another chance after being somewhat disappointed by Righteous which I read a couple of months ago. I'm glad I did. This one was a definite improvement. It had an interesting plot and well-developed characters and Ide's protagonist, Isaiah Quintabe (IQ), comes into clearer focus in this one. Angus Byrne is one of the biggest, maybe the biggest, dealers in illicit arms sales on the West Coast, and his right-hand man has just been murdered, mowed down while in Angus's daughter Christiana's boutique shop where he was having a suit fitted. There seem to be few clues and the police are focusing on Christiana as their number one suspect. This is an unacceptable situation for Angus for several reasons; first and foremost because she is his daughter. He is desperate to have her cleared and free of the police's gaze because she really could not withstand such investigation. Christiana was abused as a child and the result is that now she suffers from...

In Kate Elizabeth Russell's debut novel, My Dark Vanessa , she knocks it out of the park in so many ways. The book is a clever telling of a Lolita-like story. In this case, the girl is Vanessa Wye, a naive, yet precocious, fifteen-year-old student at a boarding school in Maine. The role of Humbert is played by her magnetic and manipulative forty-two-year-old English teacher, Jacob Strane. The action kicks off in 2000 when Vanessa is a sophomore at the school. Vanessa is lonely and friendless. Her former best friend and roommate from the previous year and Vanessa had fallen out over the friend's relationship with a boy. Vanessa felt isolated by the relationship and had reacted badly. Now the two are not on speaking terms and Vanessa has not found anyone to fill that void. The predator, Jacob, recognizes her isolation and "cuts her from the herd," so to speak. Jacob begins by telling her how special she is, how intelligent and talented. Vanessa writes poetry and her tea...

Alice Walker wrote this poem in honor of her mother and other African-American mothers of that generation who worked and struggled and fought to give their children opportunities that they had never had. But it could apply equally to mothers of any race, such as my own mother, who did everything they could to ensure that their children had a better, easier life than they had had. In the end, most mothers do the best they can to make their children's lives better than their own. Sometimes they succeed, but they almost never feel that it was enough. Mothers Day is coming up. Consider this a pre-Mothers Day bouquet for all of you mothers who do your best. Women by Alice Walker They were women then My mama's generation Husky of voice - stout of Step With fists as well as Hands How they battered down Doors And ironed Starched white Shirts How they led Armies Headragged generals Across mined Fields Booby-trapped Ditches To discover books Desks A place for us How they knew what we Mus...