Each June, I set myself the goal of reading a set list of books over the summer. Most years, I read some of them, but seldom all. Along the way, I purchase or borrow books, and they end up taking priority. This year’s list is a mix of notable books and bestsellers, both fiction and nonfiction.
I’ve read many of Verghese’s earlier works and almost all Toibin’s and Strout’s novels; they are favorite writers of mine! Years ago, I read Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips for my book group and then later her Quiet Dell.
Claire Keegan is a recent discovery, and as part of becoming a Tar Heel, I will read Wilmington’s Lie. Sadly, Jacqueline Winspear is giving up Maisie Dobbs, detective, and the title here is her last appearance. Overall, this list includes many writers whom I’ve read previously.
MY SUMMER READING LIST
The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear (#18, end of the Maisie Dobbs series)
Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
The Demon of Unrestby Eric Larson (Abraham Lincoln & the months before the Civil War)
Homecoming by Kate Morton
Long Island by Colm Toibin (return of Ellis Lacey of his earlier Brooklyn)
The Whitney Biennial is held every two years and brings together the works of contemporary painters, sculptors, video artists and the like. This year there are 70 artists represented and the works can be abstract, challenging, and occasionally accessible. I find the experience of viewing this exhibit interesting and yet somewhat off-putting. But I feel it’s a good exercise to be exposed to art I don’t necessarily like or understand. Here are several works from the Biennial. Luger’s inverted tipi echoes his Native American heritage while stating that the world is upside down.
from Future Ancestral Technologies by C. H. Luger
Philadelphia artist Karyn Olivier uses found objects as reference points for the past or loss. Anyone who’s spent time in Maine will recognize these lobster trappings.
How Many Ways Can You Disappear, 2021
We also spent time in a gallery of works from the Whitney’s permanent collection. Here are two pieces that spoke to me, one visually appealing, the other disturbing and powerful. I like the vibrancy and beauty of the Gullah woman in Dry Clean.
Dry Clean, Eldzier Cortor, c.1945-46
Norman Lewis’ stark black and white oil painting is chilling with its masks, skulls, and echoes of Klansmen and would easily have fit in the Biennial exhibit.
American Totem, Norman Lewis, 1960
DINING AROUND—THAI STREET FOOD
Up Thai (Upper East Side)
We had walked by Up Thai in the past, but never eaten here before. I read a recommendation for it and decided to book. It’s a very popular place and while an attractive space, it’s jammed packed with tables and there is very little space for the wait staff to navigate. Granted, we were here on a Friday night, but it was crowded with families with children as well as 30 and 40 somethings.
Our waitress was smilingly pleasant and efficient, and we loved what we ordered! UP spring rolls with shrimp and crabmeat with plum sauce to start.
UP spring rolls
Then a medium spicy green curry with chicken, string beans, bamboo shoots, bell pepper, and basil leaves, along with pad krapraw, an entrée of Thai chili, onion, peppers, shitake mushrooms, more basil leaves, and pork. Both dishes came with white rice.
On a return visit, we sampled the curry puffs and a vermicelli dish with shrimp. The vermicelli with ginger and other spices was especially good. In addition, we ordered pad krapraw, this time with chicken. We had more than enough to share. It was all so good that we will be regulars here!
GUT WRENCHING & HEARTRENDING NOVEL
In Memoriamby Alice Winn
Author Winn (theguardian.com)
In her first published novel, Alice Winn depicts the mostly unspoken love between two young men, schoolboys together, and then soldiers in the front lines in France. Ellwood (Elly or Sidney) and Gaunt (Henry) are classmates at an upper-class English boarding school. When Britain enters the World War, they and most of their classmates enthuse about joining up as soon as they are old enough. Their view of war is one of glory and excitement on the battlefield. Little do they envision the carnage and the gruesomeness they will experience in the trenches at Ypres, Loos, and the Somme.
The novel alternates in time and space between Ellwood and Gaunt and their experiences together and separately (Henry becomes a German prisoner of war) and those of their closest friends and classmates. Besides this group, Gaunt’s sister Maud is the other principal character. She serves as a nurse during the war years, giving her some perspective on what these young men have suffered. The years covered are 1913 to 1919.
The battle scenes are extremely graphic and some of the most gut wrenching I’ve ever read. Bodies are blasted apart and pile up. These scenes are contrasted with and redeemed by tenderness and shared forbidden love. Despite all the deaths that litter these pages, the reader is left with a sense of hope in the years after the war.
Inspired by war remembrances in the historical archives of her own college and enriched by extensive research, Winn has crafted a powerful, moving, and ultimately beautiful work of art. Highly recommended! (~JWFarrington)
In May, we typically spend the month in Manhattan. It’s a round robin of visits to great art museums, dining at favorite restaurants, sampling new eateries, people watching in the parks, discovering new titles from beloved bookstores, and spending lots of time with our delightful granddaughters—without being a drag on their busy schedules.
We have always enjoyed seeing tulips in bloom in Central Park, in the Jefferson Market Garden, and along Park Avenue. This year, we reveled in early spring in North Carolina—delicate redbud trees, daffodils, yellow snapdragons, and then the azaleas bursting out. We arrived here mid-week past the peak of the tulips, but there are still enough hanging on to attract our attention: robustly red ones, rosy pink blooms, and in Central Park, dark purple tulips verging on black against a backdrop of white azalea petals.
We’ve been here about three days and haven’t yet done much except walk, dine, and enjoy our granddaughters. Our new life in North Carolina is filled with so much activity that I believe we are in recovery mode, a winddown from our recent move and all the energy that required. Soon we will get back to touring the exhibits at the MoMA, the Met, and the Whitney. In the meantime, there are even “flowers” on 5th Avenue–thank you, Van Cleef & Arpels!
FUN HISTORICAL MYSTERY
The Lace Widow by Mollie Ann Cox
Eliza Hamilton, wife and then widow of Alexander Hamilton, was a formidable woman. Strong, smart, resilient, and determined to make a difference in the world, she outlived Alexander by 50 years.
In The Lace Widow, author Cox turns Eliza, or Mrs. General Hamilton as she is politely addressed, into a detective. It is a fact that Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. And it is true that some of Hamilton’s political enemies falsely accused him of misusing U.S. Treasury funds. After Hamilton’s untimely and unseemly death, Eliza desperately seeks to see Burr punished, but he has disappeared. She is also motivated to continue to protect Hamilton’s reputation and that of herself and her children.
When several of Hamilton’s close friends also die in suspicious circumstances, and her oldest son is fingered as a suspect, she begins her search for the culprits. In the process, secret societies and strange alliances are uncovered midst several false leads.
While the events here depicted after Hamilton’s death, including the several murders, are fiction, Cox crafts a good story and highlights the role of lace in a woman’s wardrobe and the skill and nimble hands required to make it. A fast read that believably combines fact and fiction!
I foresee a future Eliza Hamilton mystery. In the meantime, for an absorbing take on Eliza’s multi-faceted life, read My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie.
NORTH CAROLINA DINING
This entry is for my new cadre of local readers.
Peck & Plume (The Mayton)
The Mayton, Cary’s boutique inn a few doors from the downtown park, houses not only attractive rooms for overnight guests, but a welcoming and tasty restaurant. Peck & Plume is open for all three meals, and besides its inside dining room, boasts a lovely terrace. With fans and heaters, the terrace is comfortable most any time of year.
The Chief Penguin and I enjoyed lunch there recently. He had the sashimi tuna preparation along with a small Caesar salad. I took advantage of the soup sip (a demitasse cup of the daily soup for $2) and tucked into a Caesar salad with salmon. The salad greens were fresh and crisp, and the salmon was perfectly done.
We also sampled the specialty cocktails. I liked the sound of the lavender mule with ginger and lemon but found it overly perfumed. Service here can be a bit slow, but if you have the time, the food is worth the more leisurely pace!
This week I share a novel that deals with life in East Berlin before the Wall comes down and a chilling film about a Nazi Commandant who lives with his family just outside the camp at Auschwitz. For my local friends, thoughts on another Indian restaurant.
In 2015, the Chief Penguin and I spent a week in Berlin. We stayed in a hotel in what had been East Berlin. The entire visit was an amazing experience and a dive into WWII and Cold War history. Not that long ago, I read The Chancellor, a nonfiction work about Angela Merkel’s life and career by Kati Marton. Merkel grew up in East Germany and this book provided some further insights about the politics of the 1960’s and 70’s. I mention all this as background for approaching German author Jenny Erpenbeck’s latest novel, Kairos.
Opening in the late 1980’s in East Berlin, Kairos is both a turbulent love story and a political one about the denouement of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. A chance encounter on a bus between 19-year-old Katharina and mid-50’s writer and radio broadcaster Hans leads to long-running affair. Katharina is still a student, Hans is married to Ingrid, and their meetings are clandestine and eventually less frequent. It’s an affair marked by bitterness, tension, infidelity, and tenderness too. Simultaneously, life in East Berlin is changing as the governmental infrastructure fractures and cracks before breaking.
“Berlin will be wall-free”, August 1988 (theatlantic.com)
The lovers’ story is told through reflection, diaries, and Katharina’s listening to cassettes about them that Hans has recorded and given to her. Woven into their feelings and actions are references to literary figures (Bertolt Brecht, e.g.), mundane details about the topography of the city, and descriptions of political events. Throughout their affair, Katharina matures while still fantasizing about having a child with Hans someday. Meanwhile, he remains married to Ingrid and simultaneously castigates Katharina and makes her suffer for her infidelity.
I found Erpenbeck’s writing dense, and for me, reading this novel was very slow going. It’s been so highly praised and nominated for at least one award, that I was determined to finish it. Parts of it were wonderfully written, but I wished I had a richer background for some of the finer political points.
Kairos, the title, is a Greek word for “the right time” or “a time when the conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action.” Go, Went, Gone, Erpenbeck’s earlier novel, was also translated from the German. (~JWFarrington)
Nominated for five Academy Awards, the German film Zone of Interest won Best International Feature. It is a quiet horror film and an uncomfortable one to watch. The awfulness of what is happening the other side of the garden wall is known and is heard and seen with random gunshots, a constant rumble, and occasional flames. And yet, Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoss and his large family have an idyllic life just the outside the Auschwitz camp. Wife Hedwig has plenty of household help, and she takes great pleasure in tending the lush flower and vegetable garden she created. Their children romp and play in the sunshine and the pool, pretty much ignoring what’s happening close by.
All together, this family is building the perfect life in the Polish countryside while Hoss is implementing the Fuhrer’s heinous goals. Watching it is a chilling experience, but it’s so very well done, it’s worth the investment of time.
Continuing our sampling of Indian fare in Cary, we joined a group for lunch at Cilantro, a longtime local favorite. While Cilantro started more than ten years ago with sandwiches and then chicken tikka sold behind a gas station, today it boasts a two-level contemporary space with flowing white drapery.
The vibe is casual, and you order your meal at the counter and then it’s delivered to your table. Spice of some type is the name of the game in almost everything. The Chief Penguin and I sampled the vegetable samosa, tasty with a bite. He enjoyed the very spicy chicken tandoori while I tucked into the Bihari coconut chicken curry. Even my “medium” spicy curry was quite hot. Rice and naan and some form of chickpeas, usually Moroccan hummus, are the accompaniments. Many dishes are also made with lamb, and for those who want less spice, the pan seared fish looked equally tempting. Staff were welcoming and everything was delicious!
