I had another great month of reading all sorts of books!
→ THE MINISTRY OF TIME by Kaliane Bradley: After the British government discovers time travel, a newly formed Ministry decides to test for safety by pulling a few individuals out of the past when they're on the brink of certain death, so their removal won't alter any timelines. Each "expat," as the unwilling time travelers are called, is assigned to live with a ministry agent called a "bridge" who will help them adjust to modern London while watching for any signs of physical or psychological deterioration. The novel's unnamed narrator is the bridge for a (real) Royal Navy explorer, Commander Graham Gore, taken in 1847 from a doomed Arctic expedition. The bridge finds her new housemate charming and quicker to acclimate to the twenty-first century than some of the other expats, and their cohabitation goes well, despite his reservations about living with an unmarried woman. But as she delivers her reports to the Ministry and carries out her duties, she starts to suspect there is more to the time travel project than the bridges have been told.
This novel starts off fun and mostly light-hearted, focusing on the amusing antics of Gore learning about the modern world and the bridge's increasing attraction to him. But the plot soon becomes more complicated, darker, and unpredictable. I really liked the story in both modes, and the way all the pieces worked together. Bradley fully imagines every character and writes Gore and the other expats with reactions and manners of speech that match their eras. The writing is funny and clever, the story unfolds in a satisfying way, and the book was a pleasure to read.
→ SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A PARENT by S. Bear Bergman, illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson: The subtitle to this book of advice promises "A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way," and from the first page, Bergman is humble and honest about those difficult lessons. "I was a perfect parent before I had actual children," he writes, in an opening chapter that goes on to describe the contrast between his tidy imaginary children and the chaotic real ones. Freedman-Lawson's delightful and detailed illustrations bring both versions to life and establish the visual language of the guide. From then on, it's always clear Bergman is drawing on his real life experiences and has put great thought into deriving lessons that might be useful for other parents.
The guide covers a range of topics, from everyday matters like getting everyone out of the house on time to weighty issues such as bullying. There's advice on introducing kids to new foods, and on introducing them to the concepts of diversity and differences between people. One lovely chapter offers the idea of replacing family trees with family gardens, presenting many possible ways to make use of this metaphor. For anyone who's part of a child's garden, I heartily recommend this book.
Check out photos of a few sample pages here. And to every flavor of human, I also recommend Bergman and Freedman-Lawson's first collaboration, SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A HUMAN.
→ DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver: Damon is born to an addict mother in a trailer home in the southwestern Virginia mountains. Though he soon acquires the nickname Demon, he's actually a good kid who helps his mother keep her act together after she gets clean. His best friend is part of the kind family next door who provide a second home for Demon, and despite a rocky start, his early life is pretty good. But when Demon's mom marries a hateful, abusive man, there's only so much the neighbors can do, and soon Demon is shunted into a terrible foster situation where he's used as free labor on a tobacco farm. From there, Demon's childhood is a string of miseries, until he finds his way back to some happiness—for a while. More tragedies lie ahead, but Demon remains a good kid with people who care about him, and he'll make it through.
Demon narrates his story with a voice that's vibrant, funny, and insightful about both his childhood thoughts and the adult perspective he's writing from. Kingsolver's masterful handling of the narration kept me absorbed in the novel for many hundreds of pages, and while I do think some episodes could have been trimmed, my attention rarely flagged. I was always caught up in caring about what would happen to Demon, and I appreciated getting his view of his world.
Kingsolver reimagined Charles Dickens' DAVID COPPERFIELD to create this novel, and while I knew nothing specific about that story before reading, I could recognize the Dickensian nature of Demon's hardships, the colorful characters, and the occasional commentaries on social problems. It was interesting to read a summary of COPPERFIELD afterward to see how Kingsolver transposed the plot and people into modern Appalachia and used them to examine the region's poverty and the opioid crisis.
→ SLOW DANCE by Rainbow Rowell: When Shiloh attends the second wedding of one of her oldest friends, she's anxious about whether their other oldest friend will be there. Shiloh has been out of touch with Cary almost since they graduated from high school fifteen years ago, so on the one hand she's eager to see him. On the other hand, Shiloh has been married, had two kids, and divorced since then, and she isn't sure about being seen. Cary is at the wedding, and it's wonderful to reconnect, but also strange, because they have a lot of history together. A lot, and it's complicated. Everyone always thought the two of them were dating, though that wasn't what they were to each other, despite being inseparable. Now romantic possibilities are surfacing, but Shiloh has the kids and ex-husband, and Cary has a career in the Navy and is only back in Omaha briefly. So it's even more complicated, and it's definitely a lot.
This is a compelling novel about characters trying to bridge the gaps between each other, between imagined versions and reality, and between their teenage and adult selves. As I expect from a Rainbow Rowell book, the story is sweet and romantic at the same time it deals with emotional turmoil and difficult family situations. Also on brand: the characters have long, deep conversations as well as witty banter. At times, some of the angsting felt like too much to me, but I was happy to spend time with Shiloh and Cary and to watch their relationship develop.
→ THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters: Joe's whole life has been shaped by his sister Ruthie's disappearance when the two of them were young. She vanished in 1962 from the side of a road in Maine, where their family went every summer along with other Mi'kmaq Indians from Nova Scotia to work as blueberry pickers. Fifty years later, Joe is dying, surrounded by what's left of his family, his memories of the past, and the consequences of his life choices. Elsewhere, Norma is starting to make sense of a lifetime of confusing experiences, including childhood dreams of a different mother than the anxious, overbearing one she grew up with. Norma has always been aware that she's browner than her parents and that something doesn't add up in their story of a fire that destroyed all her baby pictures. But it takes fifty years for her to find the explanations she's long sought.
The end of the novel is clearly established at the beginning: Norma is Ruthie, and before Joe dies, she will find her way back to the family she was taken from. It makes sense not to withhold this information that would be easy to guess, but I was disappointed that by the middle of the book, almost every other piece of the story was already revealed, and I was losing interest. Though I felt for the characters, they never really came to life for me. Many other readers loved the story and the writing, but I wanted more from it.
Good Stuff Out There:
→ Ed Yong offers a writing case study from his own work: "The start of any piece is known in journalism jargon as the lede. It should be a lure that entices readers and makes them want to read the rest of the story. It should be a trailer, which gives an accurate reflection of the content and tone to come. And it should be a flex, which demonstrates that the writer knows what they're doing. It's perhaps the single most important part of any piece of writing, and the part I spend the most time on. This paragraph took three fucking hours."
