Category: Books

JAUNT TO BIDDEFORD

Earlier this week, we headed south of Portland to visit friends on the outskirts of Biddeford.  This is a part of Maine we had not seen before, and we were struck by its quiet beauty.  Their house sits above Hills Beach bordered by rock with a view toward Basket Island.  There are homes there and the owners can drive their cars over the sand at low tide—quite amazing.  It being low tide we walked along the sand to the edge of the island.  

Lunch was at a general store cum deli counter near Biddeford Pool where we ordered salmon salad, pokes, and fish tacos.  Opting for a picnic table on the grass, we had a view of the placid water on this gloriously warm blue-sky day.

Later, Jill gave us a personal tour of downtown Biddeford.   An historic textile town (former home of Pepperell), Biddeford is having a bit of a renaissance with a weekly farmers’ market, a cozy café/used bookstore, live music on the street, weekday tours of the mill, and a selection of appealing restaurants and shops.  Definitely worth a return visit!

SUMMER READING

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

This is one of the best books I’ve read this summer.  Set mostly in Maine, it is not a simple read, and I puzzled over some of the family relationships (there are Evelyns in two generations, e.g.).  Initially, I found Blake’s prose choppy, with no smooth rhythm, but then I got into her groove. She excels at creating the atmosphere around Crockett’s Island and the hold the island with its big frame house, white, faded and worn, has on this, the third generation of upper crust cousins.  Especially Evie.  She is the principal character in the present day, a middle-aged academic, married to Paul, a Jew, and mother to teenager Seth.  

Evie and her cousins need to make a decision whether to sell or keep the island and house since the trust money for its upkeep is close to running out.  Grandfather Owen Milton and his wife Kitty bought the island decades ago.  The Miltons took great pride in being Miltons, being successful in business, and living life according to a certain set of mostly unwritten rules.  They were at the top of the societal heap and both proud of it and complacent.  In their world, one associated with members of one’s own class, one’s children attended only the best schools, and, of course, they married the right people.  

Joan, Evie’s recently deceased mother, had one dying wish— to be buried at the island, but not in the graveyard, instead by the picnic area.  Evie is unsettled since she doesn’t know why there, and she encounters objections from her cousins.  She is an historian whose life work has been uncovering the truths in letters, diaries and archives.  But, she feels she knows little about her mother who lived life in the shadows, not fully present to her.  

The novel is layered, replete with family secrets, and moves back and forth in time, mainly between the 1930’s, 1959, and the present day.  In the 30’s, Grandfather Owen has business dealings in Germany; in 1959, a pre-wedding gathering on the island ominously brings together family members with two outsiders; and in the present, Evie wrestles with a recurring dream about her mother, and with why she herself feels so tied to keeping the island and having nothing change.  

Issues of race, religion, and class surface in the characters of Len Levy, who works for Owen Milton, and Reg Pauling, a black man who is Len’s friend and former Harvard classmate.  How these two men intersect with the Miltons and how, together and separately, Len and Reg challenge various family members to examine their beliefs and actions make for a novel that I will ponder for some time to come.  Highly recommended!  For more about what shaped the work, check out this interview with Sarah Blake.  (~JWFarrington)

No Visible Bruises:  What We Don’t Know about Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder

This is a heavy book about an issue, really a crime, which is often misunderstood and occasionally overlooked.  Known familiarly as domestic violence, this author believes it should more appropriately be called something like  “intimate-partner violence” or “intimate-partner terrorism.”  The statistics on the number of incidents worldwide are staggering, and Snyder presents several case histories that ended in a woman’s death.  Death despite restraining orders, time in a shelter, interactions with the police, and the like.  For beat cops, domestic disputes have too frequently been viewed as nuisance calls rather than criminal behavior.  Added to that, women victims too often recant their testimony due to fear of greater consequences.

Snyder discusses a new tool called the Dangerousness Scale which, if used and heeded, can predict which women are likely to be killed by their partners.  One of the strongest predictors of death is if a woman has been strangled by her partner.  Violence against a woman escalates in a repeating pattern as her partner works to isolate her from family and friends and to strictly control both her behavior and her movements.  When there are children involved, the woman’s incentive to return to an unsafe home environment is largely because of fear of what the man might do to the children.  

Fortunately, there is room for hope with new research and with the creation of programs for violent men that educate them about the toxic aspects of their masculinity and prompt them to change their actions. Snyder’s book has added depth thanks to the innumerable hours of interviews she conducted with battered women and their families and with abusers; these interviews form the basis for the case histories.

 Recommended reading, but not for the beach.  For a short piece about the crux of the issue, see this Atlantic article by Snyder.  (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo shows Basket Island. All text ©JWFarrington; unattributed photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).