This American Woman - A One-in-a-Billion Memoir

 Zarna Garg is truly entertaining. I found her memoir, This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir, to be a fun and fast read. For someone so different from myself, she is very relatable. Things like motherhood, womanhood, not wanting to take the expected, established route. Zarna is heartwarming and astounding. She shows the drive and effort that it takes to succeed. And she's funny!

Page 110:  People will remind you every day that you are less than ideal. Don't make it easier for them by pointing out your own flaws. 

Page 147:  If becoming an Indian wife gave me back my security, becoming a mother gave me back my worth. Because of Zoya, I felt tethered to the rest of humanity for the first time. My daughter was clearly human; therefore I must be too. 

Page 154:  It took me years to realize that fixating on being "the perfect mother" is such a waste of talent that could be better used to solve real problems, like creating a robot babysitter that absorbs vomit.

The Frozen People

The first book of an Elly Griffiths series, The Frozen People, is a fun romp into time travel crime solving. Set in England, it's a thoroughly-built world of dimensional characters with interesting conversations. I liked how visceral it felt to be back in time, through Griffiths' carefully chosen details. It was fun that the main protagonist is in her 50s! The genre is mystery but didn't feel formulaic. Not all the murders/disappearances get resolved, but we were warned of this on the cover: "Some murders can't be solved in just one lifetime." It's well-positioned to be a successful series. Here are some quotes: 

Page 35:  "Isaac mentioned you the other day." 
        "Did he?" Ali fills their wine glasses while telling herself to be careful. 
        "Yes. He remembered meeting you at that reception. He was asking about your job. I said you were a police officer and he asked if I ever worried about you being in danger. I said that you were only working on cold cases." 
        "So cold they're frozen." Ali finishes the line. 

Page 121:  "Objects can have strange powers," says Templeton. "Don't you think? One has heard of cursed mirrors, of books that will kill you if read in a certain light. I suppose it's natural that one invests inanimate things with life. If a man sits in a chair all his life, will that seat not retain something of him?"

Raising Hare

Chloe Dalton's memoir, Raising Hare, is a dear account of a busy journalist's unexpected relationship with a wild hare. Their bond was made possible by the pandemic. Thoughtfully conveyed and certainly well-researched, Dalton shows how much one can learn from being open and listening to the natural world. I loved how respectful of the hare she was, and the introspection it inspired. 

Page 74:  The leveret would invite me to chase it, by coming close and jumping playfully. Then it would accelerate away from me, change direction mid-stride, and zoom back tantalisingly close before pulling away again, showing off its dazzling fleetness while I attempted to keep up, an ungainly figure trailing ridiculously in its wake. 

Page 95-96:  Maybe the hare's dubious reputation, I thought, has less to do with the hare itself than our habit as humans of persecuting that we do not understand, and our own conflicted natures. 

Page 262:  Since that first day when I found her it has felt as if a spell was cast over this corner of the earth, and me within it. I have stepped out of my usual life and had the privilege of an experience out of the ordinary. 

Crow Talk

Local to me is the setting of Crow Talk, by Eileen Garvin, which made for enjoyable reading. This tender fiction novel is thick with research and well-developed characters spending a summer at a lake, wrestling with loss and grief. Such lovely writing. 

Page 11:  Listening to the bird chorus almost made her want to get to work - a feeling that had eluded her for some time now. Work, which had been her mainstay, had disappeared with everything else. But she was tired, just so tired. She stayed where she was, listening to the familiar avian symphony around the little house. 

Page 56:  He'd taken his fingers out of his ears and was twisting them together, braiding and unbraiding them. She could feel his small animal energy fluttering about the room like a trapped bird. 

Page 178:  The mist was breaking up over the water and moving into the trees like a dream retreating from wakefulness. 

Harriet the Spy

This one's a re-read. I was going through some things and found my favorite book from childhood, Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. It was published in 1964. Looking back, this book inspired me in more ways than I'd remembered, and not all of them good. From playing Town and doing science experiments to observing (spying on) neighbors. I could certainly relate to feeling like everyone hated me. Harriet wrestles with figuring out the world, her place in it, how to think about things, and how to treat others. She wants to be a writer and so "works" at noticing details about people, and she fills notebooks with her observations and musings. Harriet's nurse is always quoting books. Mr. Withers named his twenty-six cats after writers and story characters, like Puck and Faulkner. Kids at school get a hold of her notebook, and Harriet has to deal with the consequences of her words. This story is a gem. 

Page 30:  Ole Golly says there is as many ways to live as there are people on the earth and I shouldn't go round with blinders but should see every way I can. Then I'll know what way I want to live and not just live like my family. 

Page 43:  "Writers don't care what they eat. They just care what you think of them..." 

Page 44:  "... Writers have a lot of bad dreams." 

Page 56:  The Robinsons were sitting, as they always were, staring into space. They never worked, and what was worse, they never even read anything. They bought things and brought them home and then they had people in to look at them. Otherwise they didn't seem to do a blessed thing. 

Page 106-7:  "I mean, what does it feel like to have somebody ask you?" Harriet was getting very impatient. 
            Ole Golly looked toward the window, folding something absently. "It feels... it feels-- you jump all over inside... you... as though doors were opening all over the world... It's bigger, somehow, the world." 
            "That doesn't make any sense," said Harriet sensibly. She sat down with a plop on the bed. 
            "Well, nonetheless, that's what you feel. Feeling never makes any sense anyway, Harriet; you should know that by now," Ole Golly said pleasantly. 
            "Maybe--" Harriet knew as she said it that it was a baby thing to say but she couldn't help it-- "maybe there's a lot of things I don't know." 

Playground

Richard Powers' most recent novel, Playground, is an ambitious tale of themes as grand as planetary survival and as intimate as trust and friendship. I found it complex and lovely, and quite quotable.  

Page 6:  The world with all its bright and surprising contents was created out of boredom and emptiness. Everything started by holding still and waiting. 

Page 44:  Power, the mayor decided, was an isolating thing, especially when power was powerless. 

Page 59:  Play was evolution's way of building brains, and any creature with a brain as developed as a giant oceanic manta sure used it. If you want to make something smarter, teach it to play. 

Page 138:  I've started to wander and not just at night. I'll materialize in the kitchen without having gone there. Or out in the garage. Or in the park two blocks down the street... I'm going to need an ID bracelet. 

Page 155:  Of all the things we humans excel at, moving the goal posts may be our best trick. 

Page 200:  "Decisions are rarely made by reason but almost always by temperament, and that doesn't change much as people get older." 

Page 214:  "... People are like sculptures. You can mold them a little when they start out, but not much. A body wants to be what a body wants to be. ..."

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is a formidable force. I'll admit that her novel, To the Lighthouse, was not an easy read, but the rumination of it, after, was delicious. It read as a stream-of consciousness, the point of view flitting from one character to another. Flitting emotions as well. This was dizzying and yet satisfying. Absolutely worth it. 

Consider this delightful exchange between husband and wife:

Page 23:  There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ramsey snapped out irascibly. 

                How did he know, she asked. The wind often changed. 

                The extraordinary rationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. 'Damn you,' he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine tomorrow. So it might. 

                Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west. 

                To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said. 

                He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that he would step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked. 

                There was nobody whom she reverenced as she reverenced him.