WHAT A HORRIBLE WEEK!
American life and U.S. politics hit a new low this past week. Aside from the continuing dire news about the pandemic, there was the brutal Minneapolis killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer, followed by nights of violence in that city and mass demonstrations in others around the country. Add in the president’s smear of respected news host, Joe Scarborough, and his tweets about looting and shooting, and it seems that absolutely anything goes. As Florida opens up some, we here feel a bit in a bubble. We read the depressing news, are angry and upset by it, but are fortunate to be well and safe. Strange, weird times.
ESCAPES—READING AND VIEWING
NEW NOVEL
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
At first, I was mystified as to where this novel was going. Was Vincent male or female and what was her/his relationship to the Paul of the next chapter? Skipping around in time and place (Vancouver, Dubai, Manhattan), Mandel creates a circle of characters who revolve around or otherwise intersect with Jonathan Alkaitis, investor and Ponzi scheme creator. Vincent, decades younger, is Jonathan’s pretend wife; artist Olivia Collins invested with Alkaitis and seeks his attention; while Oskar and Harvey who work for him, both know, and not know, what they are doing on the Seventeenth Floor. Paul, Vincent’s brother, initially works at the same glass hotel as Vincent, but then mostly disappears to take up composing and performing.
It’s a high life for a while, and Alkaitis is Bernie Madoff writ large. We follow Alkaitis to prison where he invents an interior life, his counterlife, which increasingly becomes entwined with, to the point of replacing, what is real. And we hear from his colleagues and how they each fare after the fragile bubble bursts. Mandel concentrates on the shifting lives and changing personas of individuals as they find and lose money, friends, and love. This is my first experience of Ms. Mandel’s writing and I loved it! (~JWFarrington)
WARHORSE?
War and Peace (Prime Video $)
This BBC adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel was written by Andrew Davies and produced in 2016. There are eight episodes and it stars, among others, James Norton (of Grantchester fame) and Lily James (Lady Rose in Downton Abbey). Set before and during the battles led by Napoleon against the Russians, it’s a grand spectacle about the lives of several young Russian elites. There are beautiful women in lavishly decorated ballrooms, gruesome and gory battle scenes, and soul-stirring Russian songs; all against the glorious architecture of St. Petersburg and Moscow in the snow.
Somehow, I escaped to adulthood without having read this masterwork, so I found the beginning a bit confusing with so many counts, countesses and princes to keep straight. Shortly after, I became absorbed in their lives, loves and lusts.
Note: Header photo of Florida sunrise ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).
