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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande

January 23, 2015

We are mortal: we’re born and, ultimately, we die. We resist the notion, we defy it, and eventually we succumb. What happens in the penultimate period, whether it’s weeks or months, is the topic of Atul Gawande’s very timely and useful new book “Being Mortal.”

Gawande begins with the twentieth century, whose medical advances in the development of antibiotics, early cancer detection and improved treatments of a wide range of medical issues that would almost certainly have resulted in death only a few decades earlier resulted in many more people living into old age. In traditional societies, families took in the few elderly and treated them as founts of wisdom. Now there are many elderly, and as many baby boomers are learning, the elderly–their parents–are frequently frail in body or mind. Several other societal trends have coalesced: we live in independent rather than multi-generational households; the Internet has allowed huge areas of knowledge to be more widely available faster than an elderly person can impart it; and we regard aging to be a medical issue that can be treated. We live on our own; then, sometimes suddenly, we can’t. Too often, our elderly family relatives wind up in nursing homes, isolated and over-treated.

But old age isn’t necessarily something that can be treated. In earlier times, as people got sick, they declined steeply and died quickly. Old age, writes Gawande, is slow: it’s “the accumulated crumbling of one’s bodily systems while medicine carries out its maintenance measures and patch jobs.” It’s not clear why humans age-Gawande touches on two theories, one based on wear and tear, and the other in genetics-but we are embarrassed by aging, and, as a society, not coping well: we don’t want to face the fact that the falls and other byproducts of old age can be managed though not cured.

We value our independence and fear the coming frailty, Gawande writes. So we deny it, and although many of us will live through a dependent old age we fail to prepare for it. Eventually living at home becomes unsafe, yet the alternatives are unappealing. Children may be scattered across the whole country; their homes may be small, and they have careers and children to worry about. Companionship and health care are expensive; nursing homes, Gawande write, can be “frightening, desolate, even odious places to spend the last phase of one’s life.” They have become “a facsimile of home” where an elderly person is kept safe – but not stimulated, appreciated, or enjoyed.

What can we do to plan better? The medicalization of aging is a failed approach, and we are still searching for ways to ensure privacy and community even for people who are also dependent. Gawande points out that if we plan we can manage the decline without having to choose between neglect and institutionalization. Existing alternatives include family, though since so many households require two incomes, there are fewer daughters (and they are usually daughters) available to care for an aging parent. Good assisted living residences, which often have step ups to increased medical care centers, are emerging, but are expensive and not all operators are committed to providing all the services as the people who developed assisted living residences. Other options include making nursing homes better places,and Gawande devotes a chapter to ways to do so, including the use of birds, dogs and cats that give residents something to devote their lives to. Gawande offers no fixes here, though his vivid descriptions are thought-provoking.

But managing the decline is only part of the story Gawande tells. There comes a point at which we can no longer repair body parts and systems that are breaking down. Improving care and what Gawande calls maintenance at the end of life is Gawande’s deep interest. Gawande is not one to shy away from tough questions, and he addresses the issue of when to continue medical care and when to move to palliative care.

These days, swift catastrophic illness is the exception. For most people, death comes only after long medical struggle with an ultimately unstoppable condition . . . . In all such cases, death is certain, but the timing isn’t. So everyone struggles with this uncertainty — with how, and when, to accept that the battle is lost.

A move to hospice care is one possibility, but past policies have invested hospice with the notion that one is giving up. That, Gawande says, is a poor standard – there’s almost always something else to try. It’s important, he says, for doctors to have a substantive conversation about end of life care – a conversation in which it’s as important to listen and interpret as it is to speak and explain. The role of the doctor is to guide the patient – the consumer, after all – into making clear what he or she wants. These talks are difficult, and they end in death – but are worth it, Gawande tells us, because they improve quality of life in the last few weeks or months of life. (If you didn’t see it already, the New York Times published an essay adapted from the book describing the final weeks of one patient’s life.)

What are the questions? They are simple to ask with answers that are hard to hear. What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and hopes? What do you want, and what will you give up to get it? Medicine cannot always cure, and Gawande’s cogent argument is that it’s the person’s life, not the medicine, that’s important in the end.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Paying Guests” by Sarah Waters

January 16, 2015

Honesty is the best policy, we’re often told, and the story (possibly apocryphal) about George Washington and the cherry tree is a story of virtue. What happens when we fail to be honest, with ourselves and with others is a central theme of Sarah Waters’ novel “The Paying Guests.” Frances Wray and her mother, Emily, live in a southern suburb of London. The time is the early 1920s. Frances’ two brothers, one older, one younger, died in the Great War. Her father died soon after, and Frances and her mother rapidly learned that he had indulged in some unsuccessful speculations. They are deeply unprepared to earn their living, but they do own a large house in a good neighborhood. So, despite their desperate attempts to cling to gentility, they must take in lodgers.

 It’s a good thing they do, because the rent the lodgers, a young couple called Leonard and Lilian Barber, pay is not enough to cover the upkeep of the house. At least the rent means that Frances and her mother will have enough to eat. Frances spends her days cleaning and generally trying to keep the decay at bay, and her clothes are worn out. The initial encounters between the Wrays and the Barbers are awkward and uncomfortable, as there are shared common spaces and only one lavatory – in the garden. Eventually everyone becomes a little more accustomed to each other, and then friendship blooms: first between Frances and both Barbers, and then, with increasing intensity, between Frances and Lilian.

 It seems to Frances that something is wrong between the Barbers, though she can never quite identify what. Then, one evening, she joins them for drinks, and games, and experiences some cruel and humiliating behavior by Leonard. Frances is not interested, particularly, in Leonard. Frances is a lesbian who was forced out of a relationship by her parents; her mother still hopes she will marry. Frances has no interest in doing so – her interest is consumed more and more by Lilian, who returns her passion. They start to plan a life together, until, midway through the novel, a tragedy occurs.

 From this point on, the novel becomes partly a police procedural, and partly an extended meditation on the risks, and benefits, of dishonesty. Frances has been lying to her mother about her sexuality; Lilian has been lying to herself; and Emily probably has too. Frances and Lilian must face the extremely difficult consequences of their actions, and the ramifications that stretch far beyond what they expect: there are immediate effects on their families, and friends, but then others are affected as well. If they own up, they may save an innocent man from the gallows; if they do not, they save their own skins. Both pay the cost of an unconsidered decision.

The novel is more than 500 pages long, with a great deal of internalization, and vividly drawn characters who generally act convincingly. “The Paying Guests” is told almost entirely from Frances’ point of view. Waters captures the tensions between two families from different classes sharing a house through an accumulation of telling details; her descriptions of female sexuality and lovemaking are similarly convincing. Despite the length, the link between Frances and Lilian – what impels them toward each other and lets them overcome the barriers of class and societal disapproval – was missing. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “How to Think About Exercise” by Damon Young

January 9, 2015

Exercise: you know it’s good for you, often you do it, and usually you acknowledge how good you feel afterwards. It’s mindless, or you take your mind off it by watching TV or listening to “Serial.” But thinking about it? Why read a book about making exercise mindful? Would it surprise you to learn that the answer, at least as far as Damon Young’s well-written and delightful book goes, is that, well, it’s good for you? Or rather, as Young might say, thinking about your exercise is good for the exercise, and that is good for you.

Young begins with brief review of the mind/body problem – you know it from introductory Philosophy – are we minds, or bodies, and if we are both how can something as fantastic as the mind come from something as earthy as the body? Modern neurology research has shown us the biological underpinnings of thought (if you haven’t yet read it, “In Search of Memory” by Eric Kandel is a great introduction) and taking care of the mind entails taking care of the body. But the book is more than that. As Young puts it, it’s not a manual but a companion, “which shows how our minds can thrive as we sweat and strain.”

Young starts out with a chapter on the importance of reverie. Reverie is not just daydreaming. Young takes as his example Charles Darwin, who went out for a walk nearly every day of his life. The walks were exercise, and they were more; in Young’s words they were “a kind of moving meditation.” Exercise, when we are in the midst of a difficult problem, is not just a break, it’s a chance to let the intellect free to roam as well as the body. As Young puts it:

Busy with pounding legs and pumping arms, the intellect’s walls come down, and previously parted ideas and impressions can freely mingle . . . [e]xactly what a trailblazing scientist needed in order to develop a new theory of species marked by constant, purposeless change.

Walking, and running, are easy to do in the city or country. They are relatively slow-paced, and give lots of opportunities for noticing new things while letting the mind wander (especially if you’re not listening to something distracting on your headphones). But humans compete, too – and we do other exercises.

Young follows the initial chapter with chapters on other emotions we have about exercise. There’s one about pride, and the good feeling that can result from competing, against others or against ourselves. Yes, it’s one of the deadly sins, but pride can also be a virtue, or at least an incentive, Young says:

In the pride of sprinting, powerlifting or pedalling, we rightly celebrate ourselves for our committed exertion; for the willingness to move as hard and fast as we possibly can, instead of watching others do so on television. We are, in short, exerting ourselves when we might equally not.

Other chapters, discussing sacrifice (tennis), humility (everything), pain (ditto) and oneness (yoga) follow. Whatever your sport is, the thoughtful reader will find something of interest in this book, one in a series called “The School of Life.” Let us know your favorite in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com.

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Summer House” by Alice Thomas Ellis

December 19, 2014

Margaret is to be married to Syl. Margaret is quite young, perhaps 20, and Syl is rather older, in his forties, about the age of Margaret’s mother Monica. Syl lives with his own mother, Mrs. Monro (or, often, old Mrs. Monro) in the same private housing estate as Margaret and Monica. Monica’s husband Derek left her for a much younger woman, Cynthia, years ago, and Monica received significant assets, including the house, in the divorce. Derek and Cynthia are coming to the wedding. It will be a small wedding, with only 50 guests. Two of them have arrived early: Monica’s old school friend Lili, and Lili’s husband Robert, an artist, who is to have an exhibition in London around the time of the wedding.

A little more background. There’s a suggestion that Monica is not unhappy with the failure of her marriage, though she does wish Margaret were a little less quiet. Lili is half-Egyptian, and Monica and Lili have another school friend, Marie Claire, who lives in Egypt. Margaret had spent a few months with Marie Claire in Egypt before coming back and becoming engaged to Syl. Syl has some history of his own: he’s something of a ladies’ man, and while he has been engaged several times each time the engagement was broken off. Lili knows something about that.

So there are the characters, and there is some of the history. The rest, including a bit of mystery about Margaret, is revealed gradually, though steadily, in this extraordinary novel. The language is terrific, the inner lives of women well rendered. The characters are strikingly different. The book is in fact a trilogy of novellas, each told in the first person. “The Clothes in the Wardrobe” tells the story from Margaret’s point of view. Margaret is irritated by her mother, annoyed by Syl and especially his mother, moons over something that happened in Egypt, and finds Lili fascinating.

In “The Skeleton in the Cupboard” old Mrs. Monro recounts the events of the same period, the couple of months leading up to the wedding. Older people have pasts, and Mrs. Monro’s is surprisingly interesting, especially in contrast to the dour brooding presence Margaret ascribes to her. Mrs. Monro and Lili have a history, as do Lili and the late Mr. Monro. They negotiate their way around these potentially awkward moments gracefully and with increasing humor. It helps that they are both equally irritated by the somewhat dim and usually decorous Monica.

“The Fly in the Ointment” is Lili’s version of events. Lili is carefree about life, but also a bit too casual in her approach to it – she and Robert frequently freeload, which Lili pays for in charm. She is willing, occasionally, to entertain men, art dealers for example, who might help her husband’s career advance. She’s sensible and funny and aware of her contradictions. It’s Lili, along with Marie Claire – who remains offstage – who provides the key to the mystery and the very satisfying resolution to the story the three women have told.

The artifice is invisible, but each story adds to and builds on the previous narratives. The successive revelations make you laugh or smile in recognition. There are many hilarious moments in this book – let us know your favorite in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com.

See you in the New Year!

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel” by Ari Shavit

December 12, 2014

A key component to growing up is to consider, and come to terms with, the compromises one must make with one’s life: most of us will be ordinary, productive citizens, not major league ballplayers or celebrated actors. Over the course of a human lifetime, that still leaves plenty of time, and room, for drama. The scope is considerably broader when it’s a country that’s the subject of the exercise. The articles Ari Shavit collects in his engrossing book “My Promised Land” together form a kind of biography of Israel. This deeply affecting book provides an analysis of the existential crises that still challenge the state of Israel. It’s a deeply felt, conflicted, judgmental, and compelling look at the country over the century and a quarter from the arrival of the first European immigrants. Shavit outlines the crises Israel has overcome, including the influx of non-European Jews and the wars for its existence fought in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and shows how those events shape Israel’s response to the difficult issues it faces — Arab nationalism, Muslim fundamentalism, the increase in the population of Orthodox Jews among them — in the twenty-first century.

Each chapter focuses on a particular period, starting with Shavit’s great-grandfather’s first trip to what would become Israel but was then called Palestine, in 1897. Herbert Bentwich was a bourgeois Victorian who toured the country, fell in love with it, and eventually settled there. In the early days, the Zionist pioneers bought land and cooperated with their Arab and Bedouin neighbors. They also had a vision: the Herzl Zionists, Shavit says, knew they were “faced with a radical problem: the coming extinction of the Jews.” Not that they foresaw the Holocaust; rather, says Shavit. Rather, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, knew that in Eastern Europe life was “intolerable and that in the West, assimilation is unavoidable; in the East, Jews are in danger, while in the West, Judaism is in trouble.”

Shavit follows this chapter with descriptions of the establishment of the collectivist kibbutz and moshav systems and the beginnings of irrigated agriculture, focusing on the development of orange groves. Throughout, Shavit recognizes, remembers, and describes the impact of the work on the people already there: the Arabs and Bedouin. Sometimes Jews and Arabs worked side by side in neighboring fields; sometimes Jews hired Arabs; other times, Arabs picked up and left. In the 1930s, when the British were still governing Palestine, the Arabs rebelled. The Arab Revolt was put down, but many were killed, and the scars go deep on both sides.

Shavit goes on to describe the absorption of the survivors of World War II, housing construction, and the development of potent symbols including Masada. There’s a chapter on Israel’s decision and hard work to acquire the bomb. Others describe the impact of the influx of Sephardic Jews, the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Shavit faces the many difficult questions: the logic behind the settlements in the West Bank, the intifada, the Palestinians. The entire world has played a role in the Middle East, and every player – Europe, the United States, the non-Arab Muslims, the Arabs, the Jews – has failed to grapple with the possibility of a moral or strategic compromise. Yet the vision of Zionism was impressive, Shavit says, “ambitious but not mad,” and persistent. It hasn’t failed, quite, he argues, yet its premises – feeble Arab resistance to mass immigration of Eastern European Jews – did not in fact arise. So Zionism, Shavit writes,

became an unruly process of improvising imperfect solutions to acute challenges, addressing new needs, adjusting to new conditions and creating new realities. It reinvented itself again and again, dealing in different ways with what is basically an impossible situation. This is how Zionism wended its way through the twentieth century and this is how it shaped the land.

There’s hope for Israel in the 21st Century, Shavit argues, but it will take a lot of work, and strong leadership, and moral clarity. Shavit believes that it’s imperative for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, though he does not believe that doing so will result in peace. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Shavit’s thoughtful book is an important contribution to the debate about the future of the Middle East. Anyone with an interest or opinion needs to read it. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com.

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Barracuda” A Novel by Christos Tsiolkas

December 5, 2014

Find your passion, we’re told, and set a goal in life. What can happen if you don’t reach that goal is the theme that Christos Tsiolkas sets out to explore in his compelling and occasionally disturbing new novel “Barracuda.” Danny Kelly is a teenaged swimming champion in Melbourne, Australia, so good that a private school in a rich suburb offers him a full scholarship for so he can train and compete, and get an education. Danny is completely dedicated to nurturing his talent, training four hours a day before and after school, but comes from a working class family – his father is a truck driver, his mother a hairdresser – and feels out of place. Danny also has two other areas of difference – his mother is Greek, and he has inherited some of her dark coloring, and she comes from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses – her family has virtually disowned her since she left the religion to marry Danny’s father.

Danny struggles with school work, and he struggles with his relationships: at the new school, he is able to maintain some of his old friendships, but they are strained. His new ones are based on intimidation and hard work – but the qualities that serve him well in the pool do not work so well out of it. School, parents, coach: everyone is proud of his successes, and Danny is able to skimp on his schoolwork for a while, and his time in the pool and traveling to swim meets means that it doesn’t matter that his relationships with his family deteriorate. Danny feels unsupported by his father, who resents all the time Danny’s training demands, and Danny grows apart from his younger sister, Regan, and brother, Theo. But when success doesn’t happen Danny falls apart quite publicly.

Much of the story is told from Danny’s viewpoint – Tsiolkas switches in and out of a first person narrative – and Danny’s inner life is richly detailed, both in the pool and out of it. Danny grows and changes and eventually figures out two things that he knows he should have learned in school: the importance of words, and the importance in life of structure. The book is not all about Danny – Tsiolkas uses Danny’s very bitter reaction to explore a variety of themes, including Australia’s isolation from much of the rest of the world, its history both as colonized and colonizer, its issues of class and color, and its occasional complacency. These come to a head when Sydney hosts the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, long after Danny’s swimming days are done. Danny’s crushing sense of failure because he does not represent his country at those games meets the rest of the country’s joy that it has performed well on the world stage.

There are many ways to read this book. Danny’s surname hints at an allegory about rebellion during Australia’s growth and development. There’s a story of growth and redemption in two generations. What do you think you’ll remember best? Let us know in the comments.

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Books, Events

Tracing the Transit System, 1940-1968 – an evening with Andrew Sparberg

December 3, 2014

Ever wonder how the IRT, BMT, and IND were molded into the subway system? How they were joined by bus, trolley, suburban train lines and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and became the MTA? Andrew J. Sparberg, transit historian and author of the new book here, are recommended. You can buy the book in advance at a discount ($27 for members/$30 for non-members); it will also be available for sale at the event ($31.50 for members/$35 for non-members).

The Transit Museum is located at the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn.

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “How to Be a Good Wife” a novel by Emma Chapman

November 21, 2014

Fears, and our response to them, can be logical and constructive. Other times, perversely, we respond irrationally – sometimes we’re deluded, sometimes shocked or traumatized. Or we might be suffering from mental illness. Exploring the boundaries of her characters’ fears provides the structure and themes of Emma Chapman’s engrossing new novel “How to Be a Good Wife.”

Marta Bjornstad married Hector, a teacher, when she was about 20 and he was about 40. Almost immediately they had a son, Kylan, who is grown, so now Marta is a housewife with an empty nest. She’s a caregiver, but she’s limited – she doesn’t go into the faraway big city, because “it’s not good for her.” She resists the pink pills she is supposed to take, and lately Hector has tried to make sure she takes them. She has no one other than Hector and his mother, because her parents died years ago in a car accident. Hector’s mother Matilda is something of a problem – she lives nearby, and of course she cared for Hector until Marta married him. Matilda inspects and comments, and Marta consistently fails to live up to Matilda’s standards. Besides her fault-finding, Matilda has given Marta a small book full of small old-fashioned advice called “How to be a Good Wife.”

Marta and Hector have many shared memories, and while they occasionally go for long wintry tramps in the woods they also spend a lot of time apart. With Kylan home, Marta was content, if a little anxious. Now that he’s grown and away, she’s troubled. Without her pills she has – it’s not clear whether she is remembering events or whether they are visions or hallucinations. They are certainly disruptive, and Hector, Kylan, and Kylan’s girlfriend become deeply concerned.

Textures and materials are palpable in this story: Marta puts on a wool nightgown, throws Hector’s heavy woolen jacket over light clothes. You feel the weight of them. Food and drink are also important – Marta cooks, drinks, and sometimes does both at once. All the time, she’s talking with – is it herself? Is she recovering memories? She’s afraid to go forward and afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t.

Chapman sets her story in a quiet village on a fjord; the names suggest we are in Scandinavia, but we could just as easily be in New Zealand. It’s remote, often cold, and Chapman uses the atmosphere to deepen the mystery. She builds the story slowly, day by day, in uninflected prose. Marta’s tension ratchets higher and higher – and so does the reader’s. To be fair, so does Hector’s, and his behavior leaves some room for interpretation. He admits to deceiving his wife – he’s been let go from the school on suspicion of an affair with a student. That’s not a small thing. But Marta’s fears go much deeper than that.

Has he deceived her? Is she mentally ill? Chapman’s compelling, complex novel resolves itself nicely while never completely revealing whose version of the past is true. “How to Be a Good Wife” is a good tale for a cold winter’s day – sad, spellbinding, fully realized. It’s a perfect book for a long plane ride (and got this reader through a day of the flu).

Hallucinations or memory? Is anyone guilty here? What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: Graphics Pleasures: “Legends of the Tour” by Jan Cleijne and “Pen and Ink: Tattoos & the Stories Behind Them” by Isaac Fitzgerald and Wendy MacNaughton

November 14, 2014

Image via iTunes-books

It’s one of the world’s glorious sporting events, followed, literally, by many thousands, and in news reports by many more. Because it runs down small side roads (mostly) it’s quite accessible, despite a complicated team and points structure. It’s been run for over a hundred years, and the Lance Armstrong cheating scandal is,well, not the first. Jan Cleijne’s beautifully drawn graphic history, translated by Laura Watkinson and Michele Hutchinson, provides a wonderful and enlightening introduction to the Tour de France.

First run in 1903, the inaugural tour, devised by a newspaper publisher to boost sales of a sports newspaper, was won by Maurice Garin; his lead of 2 hours 59 minutes is still the largest margin of victory in Tour history. Cleijne describes the first day:

On 1 July . . . fifty-nine cyclists set off on the very first stage of the very first Tour de France, from Paris to Lyon, a distance of 467 kilometers. The winner finished the following day. It had taken him 17 hours and 45 minutes. His average speed was 26 kilometers per hour on a bike that weighed twenty kilos with no gears, no brakes, no escort, no soigneurs, and no spare bikes.

After three weeks, ten thousand spectators watched the final stage, then as now, into Paris. In subsequent years, riders cheated; spectators interfered; gears, mountains, and intermediate sprints were added; and the yellow jersey decorated the Tour leader. The book is illustrated with fantastic pen and ink drawings that start in sepia tones – particularly appropriate for the years around 1914-1918 when, Cleijne writes, many cyclists were called up but never returned. Two frames tell the story: in the first, a soldier looks back at his bike, leaning against a tree. In the next, the frame is empty of people, the bike snow-covered. Cleijne adds color slowly, but the final frames – the book concludes with the 2013 tour – are full color. Whether you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, or already follow the race, “Legends of the Tour” is a terrific portrait of what has been, let’s face it, an often ignoble but immensely human event.

“Pen & Ink” also has a story to tell, or rather, a lot of stories. I need hardly tell you that tattoos are popular now (according to the HuffPo, as many as a third of millennials have tattoos). Every tattoo, it appears has a story, and “Pen & Ink” has collected some of them.

They are stories of memory – Andrea de Francisco, a cafe owner, has an RV tattooed on the inside of her arm:

She belonged to my Aunt, Uncle and two cousins, Sam and Nica. Together they explored the country every chance they got . . . It was in Canada on July 22, 2011 that the were hit by an oncoming semi-trailer . . . A fourth of my family was gone.

They are stories of self-acceptance. Roxane Gay says:

I hardly remember not hating my body. I got most of my seven arm tattoos when I was nineteen. I wanted to be able to look at my body and see something I didn’t loathe, that was part of my body by my choosing entirely. Really, that’s all I ever wanted.

The rest of the stories are equally interesting, or moving. The tattoos, themselves, oddly enough, are not nearly as compelling (though they are often quirky) as the stories. Tell us what your tattoo means, or the best tattoo story you’ve heard, in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com.

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Benediction” by Kent Haruf

November 7, 2014

Kent Haruf’s meditative new novel “Benediction” is, like his previous books “Plainsong” and “Eventide,” set in the high plains farm country of eastern Colorado. “Benediction” follows four families in small-town America over the course of a summer. Dad Lewis, the owner of the hardware store still in business on Holt, Colorado’s Main Street, has been told his cancer is terminal. His wife, Mary, looks after him, and their daughter Lorraine comes to stay too. It’s unquestioned that he’ll die at home, and that the hospice nurse will look in every week or so.

Berta May from next door has taken in her 8-year-old granddaughter, Alice, because Alice’s mother is dead of breast cancer. Willa and Alene Johnson, mother and daughter, look in on Berta May and Alice, and on Mary and Dad Lewis, from time to time. All the women are interested in Alice, and help Berta May look after her. Everyone turns for spiritual succor to Robert Lyle, the new minister in town. He lives next to the church, with his wife and son John Wesley. Robert is feeling his way somewhat carefully, but not John Wesley, who is entering tenth grade and would much prefer to have remained in Denver. He is delighted when a girl entering her senior year spends her evenings with him.

Despite the touches of modernity – the regular trips to Denver, the TVs and computers – there’s a lot that has remained unchanged in Holt. Teenaged kids spend their evenings riding around in cars. Residents become upset when Minister Lyle suggests, in a Sunday sermon, that perhaps the US should not be at war in the Middle East and that not all the people there are our enemies. Boys think they know what kind of girl rides around at night with a boy. Men take matters into their own hands, or fists, to teach a lesson. And some kinds of sexual behavior can’t be tolerated, so gay men and lesbians tend to leave town.

Modern, and old-fashioned. Life, and loss. Dad Lewis looks back on his long life. He thinks, mostly, about the people he’s loved, his wife and daughter. His son Frank, who left town and hasn’t looked back. Dad’s thoughts often circle back to Frank, and through him to the many others he’s hurt, intentionally or not. The others, not dying, have less time for contemplation. Haruf’s flat, laconic sentences place the reader deep into this landscape that seems almost as far away in time as it does in distance from the fast-paced coastal cities. Haruf doesn’t use quotation marks to indicate speech, and that slows the pace down, pushing the reader further into the minds of the characters as she sorts what is spoken from what is thought.

When crisis comes, the four families turn to each other, because that’s what you do. The aching reconciliations – some people might call them compromises – give this lovely novel its life. Should their different beliefs stop them from acting neighborly? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com.

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