Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

Hurricane Katrina occurred when I was pretty young. My hometown in the Southern United States was lightly affected by the hurricane, but the effects of Hurricane Ivan the year prior were much worse where I lived. I vividly remember taking my dog out during the storm and feeling the wind switch directions over and over, the rain bombarding me from all sides. A while later the eye of the storm seemed to pass over my home, bringing an hour or two of clear blue skies before the bad weather returned.

The personal impact of Ivan in my childhood is a likely explanation for why my memories of Katrina are so fragmentary. I knew that the events were a national tragedy, but I didn’t understand exactly what transpired or what the residents of New Orleans lived through during and after the storm. Ms. Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital fills that mental gap, describing the crisis in vivid detail through the experiences of patients and staff at a single medical facility.

Some readers may already be familiar with the happenings at Memorial Medical Center (now called Oschner Baptist Medical Center and formerly known as Southern Baptist Hospital). The hospital became the center of a national controversy late in 2005 after allegations arose that healthcare staff had participated in mercy killings during Hurricane Katrina. A doctor and two nurses were charged with multiple counts of second-degree murder stemming from their conduct during the storm, though a grand jury later declined to indict any healthcare professionals.

Five Days at Memorial does not push any viewpoints regarding the healthcare professionals’ guilt or innocence, serving instead as a definitive account of events, with any contradictions between individual parties noted without comment. The reader is left to formulate his/her own opinion on whether what happened is morally right or wrong. What struck me the most, personally, was the cascade of mistakes and miscommunications which piled on top of one another to cause a disaster of the scale which is depicted. Would anything have been different if the medical staff had allowed rescue helicopters to land on their helipad at night? What if rescuers had been fully briefed on the existence of a separately owned, long-term acute care unit within the hospital?

As a former caregiver of a family member with advanced dementia, I found that my position changed multiple times as I read. I would never want my family member to be euthanized without consent. On the other hand, I also would not want him to be trapped in a flooded neighborhood for days, in a building with no electricity or air conditioning and dwindling stocks of medical supplies, medicine, and even food. I think it is difficult to judge the staff’s decision making processes without having experienced the conditions oneself.

I recommend Five Days at Memorial to readers interested in the history of Hurricane Katrina, as well as those interested in medical ethics. It has certainly provided me with a lot of food for thought.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

I purchased Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty in 2017, I believe, after being intrigued by ads for the HBO miniseries based on the book. (I’m the type of reader who prefers to read the book before viewing any adaptations.) It’s been sitting on my shelf ever since, but with the premiere of season 2 on HBO this month, I decided that it was time to read the book so I could finally start watching.

Big Little Lies defies categorization, with attributes of dark comedy, mystery, and family drama woven into an exciting page-turner. Ms. Moriarty’s novel follows three Australian mothers as their children begin kindergarten together. Each woman faces her own personal demons, including domestic violence and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stemming from rape. The women support one another over the course of the school year as all three endeavor to meet societal expectations as wives, mothers, and daughters. The work also plays out as a murder-mystery in reverse, with the opening chapters revealing that someone has died at the school’s trivia-themed fundraising event, but failing to disclose who or how until the book’s climax.

Although Ms. Moriarty’s work is certainly hard to put down, I will confess that I was able to guess a few of the “plot twists” revealed in the last third or so of the novel. The book proved to be slightly predictable in this regard, but this criticism is largely overcome by the insightful narration and dialogue found throughout. Big Little Lies employs “unreliable narrator”-style storytelling to showcase each character’s insecurities and personality flaws; while Madeline sees Jane as “pretty” and “slim,” Jane sees herself as “ugly” and “fat.” The narrative technique accurately captures the way that many women in our society critique themselves harshly while reserving judgment of others.

I cannot compare Big Little Lies the novel to its TV adaptation as I have not yet watched it. I can, however, recommend the book to avid readers of mysteries and family dramas. I plan to watch the TV show soon enough and will most likely add further works by Ms. Moriarty to my “to-read” list moving forward.

A Paris Year: My Day-to-Day Adventures in the Most Romantic City in the World by Janice MacLeod

If I remember correctly, A Paris Year: My Day-to-Day Adventures in the Most Romantic City in the World was recommended to me by Amazon.com while I was browsing travelogues. I eventually received the book as a gift from my mother-in-law back in 2017, although I only had the opportunity to read it this month during a medical leave of absence from my job.

Ms. Janice MacLeod is an Etsy artist who sells handwritten letters (most with accompanying watercolors) depicting her daily life in Paris, France. A Paris Year is a bit different from my usual fare as a result, a combination art book and memoir which I finished reading in an afternoon. The work is presented in the form of a diary, with approximately one entry per day over the course of a year. Ms. MacLeod ornaments the entries with calligraphy, art, and photographs to present a lovely impression of the people, places, and sights of the city.

I would recommend A Paris Year as a coffee-table book or a quick vacation read. There is no “plot” of which to speak, but the work nonetheless contains plenty of charm, complemented by a sense of place that makes it well worth the read.

The Run of His Life: The People vs. O.J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin

I purchased The Run of His Life: The People vs. O.J. Simpson back in 2016, around the same time that the TV show based on the book premiered on FX. Although I was interested in seeing the TV show, I typically make an effort to read the source material prior to viewing any derivative adaptations. (This also explains why I never watched Game of Thrones, as I hoped to wait until the entire series of novels was released.) In the intervening years I listened to an analysis of the case on the podcast Real Crime Profile, further piquing my interest. Finishing my graduate studies finally afforded me the opportunity to return to the book, and I hope to watch the TV show before too much longer.

The Run of His Life is a nonfiction account of the murders of Ms. Nicole Brown Simpson and Mr. Ronald Goldman, and the subsequent criminal trial of Mr. Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson, Nicole’s ex-husband. Mr. Jeffrey Toobin wrote the book contemporaneous to the trial, compiling notes and interviews via his work with The New Yorker magazine. Mr. Toobin’s proximity to the principal players for the duration of the case is clear, as (for example) he was the first journalist to report on the defense’s strategy of employing the so-called “race card.” This journalistic viewpoint translates to an intimate experience for readers of the book that followed.

As I read The Run of His Life, I could not help but think that Mr. Simpson’s acquittal stemmed from “death by a thousand cuts” – in other words, a series of oversights/errors that while innocuous alone, proved devastating when combined together. For example, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office conducted research into the viewpoints of potential jurors prior to the trial. Deputy District Attorney Ms. Marcia Clark learned that African American jurors, especially women, tended to sympathize with Mr. Simpson and deride Ms. Simpson as a lowlife. Instead of capitalizing on this acquired knowledge during jury selection, Ms. Clark operated in court according to her own intuition. A majority of jurors turned out to be African American women, many of whom responded to the evidence just as the preliminary research had suggested.

My one criticism of the work is that although Toobin dedicated some pages to Mr. and Ms. Simpson’s abusive marriage, this underlying motive seemed underrepresented compared to discussion of media coverage and legal antics. Ms. Laura Richards, a criminal behavioral analyst specializing in stalking behavior, stated on the Real Crime Profile podcast that the attention endlessly paid to Mr. Simpson detracted attention from Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman, the actual victims of homicide. I tend to agree with Ms. Richards’ assessment of the case, and even Toobin himself makes mention of how the victims’ murders “got lost” in the public consciousness compared to Mr. Simpson himself.

Despite this critique, I recognize that the work provides an authoritative, generally impartial account of the criminal trial of Mr. Simpson, including extensive insight into the states of mind of both the prosecution and defense teams. I would recommend the book to any reader interested in learning more about the case and its impact on the American psyche.

Beach Reads: They All Fall Down by Roxanne St. Claire & The Dinner by Herman Koch

I recently returned from a beach vacation where, among other activities, I indulged in summer reading from the comfort of our bed and breakfast. I purposely selected a couple of “light reading” novels for this trip, deciding without hesitation that the book I’m currently reading (The Mueller Report, as published by The Washington Post) was not quite vacation material. My choice led me to take along two fiction works which had long been consigned to my “to read” pile: They All Fall Down by Roxanne St. Claire, and The Dinner by Herman Koch.

They All Fall Down by Roxanne St. Claire is a young adult novel which I purchased due to Amazon.com’s recommendation concerning its similarity to Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard. (I will confess that Pretty Little Liars is a guilty pleasure of mine, as I have read all sixteen books in the series.) The premise concerns a “list” composed by high school boys in which female classmates are ranked by attractiveness. The “list” takes on heightened significance when the young women it contains begin to be murdered in numerical order.

Unfortunately, in my view They All Fall Down cannot be favorably compared to Shepard’s series. The explanation for the students’ murders turns out to be absolutely preposterous. This is coming from a reader who sat through sixteen books of A’s blackmail (in PLL), so please be assured that it was even less plausible/reasonable than the narrative leaps that take place in that series. To add insult to injury, the work is poorly written (and I do hate to say this), with repeated mentions of “sexy eyes” and one character’s ridiculous nickname (“Fifth” – what teenager would call someone “Fifth?”).

The Dinner by Herman Koch proved much more palatable than its companion. Deft usage of the “unreliable narrator” device produces a suspense novel with a distinctly Scandinavian flavor. The novel takes place over a single meal between two couples whose relationship is contextualized by frequent flashbacks. The couples’ relationship is tense, and their sons have jointly committed a hate crime for which they have not been apprehended. I did take a bit of offense at the author’s implication that one protagonist’s apparent sociopathy stemmed from an autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, the illness was never specifically named, so I tried not to get too caught up in this detail. I ultimately enjoyed the work and agree with the comparisons to Gone Girl (another book I have reviewed here) found in the novel’s jacket.

I would not consider either of the two books to be the next great American novel. I nonetheless found them to be enjoyable enough, even if I did end up hate-reading the last section of They All Fall Down. All in all, the two books fulfilled their purpose as “beach reading” – but if you are at the bookstore and selecting between them, be sure to pick up The Dinner.

The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes

I originally cultivated an interest in genetics in high school freshman biology, a course which introduced me to Gregor Mendel’s experimentation with cross breeding pea plants, Punnett squares, and the genetics of blood types, all at the hands of an overzealous teacher who probably would have been better off teaching at the collegiate level (I’m looking at you, Mr. Rickard!!).  Although Mr. R pushed his students to our academic and personal limits, he became a favorite teacher of mine, and one day about a year after graduation when I was visiting campus, I saw The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes sitting on his desk.  Mr. R told me about the book’s premise and recommended it to me way back then, but it was only earlier this year that I finally purchased it and managed to cross it off my list.

Sykes is an Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, and he establishes his credibility with the reader from page one, when he explains his involvement in finding verifiable living relatives of Otzi the Iceman, a preserved human male found in the Italian Alps who died c. 3300 BCE (more information available here).  From this astonishing introduction, Sykes rapidly moves on to introduce Seven Daughters’ main thesis — namely, that all humans of European descent alive today are descended from only seven ancient women who lend the book its title.

To back up his thesis, Sykes spends a significant portion of Seven Daughters explaining the background of research in the field of human genetics, beginning with very basic information such as the function of mitochondria in the cell.  Although a lot of the facts in this section were disappointingly “old hat” to me, I did enjoy reading about the way that Sykes and his research team were able to apply this information as knowledge about genetics expanded.  For example, the scientists were able to track genetic variation in the mitochondrial DNA of Polynesians and Pacific Islanders to definitely prove that that region of the world had been colonized from mainland Asia, and not from the Americas as had been previously claimed.  Approximately the final third of the book is devoted to fictionalized accounts of the lives of the “Seven Daughters,” whom Sykes has nicknamed, as can be best determined based on available genetic and anthropological data.

I very much enjoyed The Seven Daughters of Eve, but I will say that it may not be a great read for someone who is not scientifically-minded or who does not have a desire to take a deep dive into human genetics.  Although the book is not dry, per se, it does dish out a ton of information in a condensed amount of space, and readers looking for something a bit lighter may be disappointed.  That being said, I was very happy with the book and will be on the lookout for other works by Sykes next time I am in the mood to expand my horizons within this subject area.

 

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

I don’t know about you, but I tend to go through phases in terms of the books I purchase.  For a couple years I pretty much exclusively bought and consumed Japanese fiction, and before that I read detective thrillers by authors like Lincoln Child and Brad Meltzer.  When I bought Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, I would tentatively describe my buying habits as “Gone Girl-inspired.”  Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl had already made a literary splash, and although I had not read it (and still have not, for that matter, though it’s on my to-read shelf now), I was very interested in the crop of mysterious chick-lit-esque books that were published in its wake.  This interest combined with my aforementioned affection for Asian literature led me Everything I Never Told You.

Everything grips the reader from the very first lines: “Lydia is dead.  But they don’t know this yet.”  Lydia, as the reader soon comes to know, has been found drowned in a lake, the victim of an apparent suicide.  But what could cause a seemingly happy, popular and ambitious high school student with dreams of becoming a doctor to commit suicide?  It is in attempting to answer this question that Ng commences her examination of interactions of Lydia’s family, a Chinese history professor, his white American wife and their mixed-race children, among whom Lydia is the beloved and highly favored golden child.  It quickly becomes apparent that family relations are not as placid as they originally appeared, and that Lydia was not the person her parents believed her to be.  More information is slowly revealed as each family member copes with Lydia’s passing, from little sister Hannah, who has always been ignored in light of her elder siblings’ accomplishments, to mother Marilyn, who may have foisted her own dreams of higher education onto her daughter’s shoulders.

I expected this novel to play out structurally more like The Lovely Bones (a favorite of mine, link to Amazon here), with the reader knowing all details of Lydia’s death from the start and watching the family struggle to accept their own limited understanding.  While this did hold true to some extent, Ng did a remarkable job of revealing information about Lydia’s life in a slow and deliberate fashion.  Even though Lydia’s death looked like a suicide from the start, she was able to keep me guessing until the end: could someone else have been at the pier that night?  Why would she jump in the water?  I will not spoil the ending, but I appreciated Ng’s ability to retain an element of suspense amid the familial drama that lay at the heart of the novel.

I would recommend Everything I Never Told You to readers who enjoy novels with a lot of emotional depth.  The story was less of a thriller than I expected, instead turning out to be more a family drama, but still elicited a range of emotions, and also had some of the same “unreliable narrator” qualities that I have heard were so beloved in Gone Girl.  I think that readers who enjoy Asian American fiction would like this story for its portrayal of an Asian American family, and for that matter, readers who enjoy realistic depictions of multi-ethnic families would also find something to love in this book.

PSA:  I am currently reading a classic split into four volumes, which I plan to review as a whole upon its completion.  Bonus points if you can guess what it is, but it’s not from the English-language literary tradition!  At any rate, please be patient for my next post.

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

I believe I first read about Alan Turing in one of those jumbo-sized children’s books that are available on all sorts of topics and are often given as birthday gifts to people like me, who love to read.  The topic of this book was espionage, and my young mind was thrilled to be reading about Turing’s role as a code breaker at Bletchley Park during World War II.  I rediscovered Turing in high school and was fascinated to learn more about his life, including his tragic suicide after being convicted of the “crime” of homosexuality by the British government and chemically castrated as punishment.

It was around this time that I first heard of Andrew Hodges’ Alan Turing: The Enigma, widely regarded as the definitive Turing biography.  Unfortunately, the book was not currently in print in the U.S., and it was impossible for me to get my hands on a copy in good condition.  All of that changed in 2012, which was designated Alan Turing Year in the UK as a celebration of the mathematician’s life and successes.  Not only was The Enigma republished in the U.S., but Turing himself was pardoned by the Queen in 2013 and The Imitation Game, a biopic of Turing starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, premiered in 2014 (see the trailer here).

You may be wondering, if I bought Alan Turing: The Enigma in 2012, why did it take me five years to finally read it?  The main reason is that I was applying to colleges that same year, and wanted both to focus on my academic coursework, and to stick to books in my free time that required less “reading comprehension.”  By the time I felt ready to pick up the book, as any bibliophile can attest, I had so many other books on the shelf competing for my attention that time simply got away from me.

Unfortunately, the very concern that made me hesitant to pick up The Enigma in 2012 is the very reason that, in 2017, I was forced to put it down unfinished.  In the prologue I learned that Andrew Hodges, the biographer, is an Oxford mathematician who has contributed to the field through his work in “twister theory,” a subject whose Wikipedia page I didn’t even try to understand.  Of course, this makes Hodges the perfect match for writing about a genius like Turing, but it also makes the work quite difficult for the layman to read.  I greatly enjoyed reading the passages about Turing’s childhood and school days — for example, I learned that he had trouble discerning left from right as a boy, and always put a mark on his left thumb to tell the difference — but once I started entering the chapters about his work, I was totally lost.

I attended school for liberal arts, and while I did well in high school algebra and calculus and even took a statistics class in college, math has never been something I retained well or enjoyed.  While reading Hodges’ explanations, I found myself reading the same paragraphs over again in an attempt to grasp the meaning.  If I skipped a math-heavy section in an attempt to rejoin the saga of Turing’s life, however, the biography did not make as much sense, as it was missing the most crucial element.  Regrettably, it seemed that this book and I were ill-matched.

I would recommend Alan Turing: The Enigma to anyone who wants to learn more about the life of this underappreciated, truly remarkable man, someone who has been largely forgotten by history outside of his native country and who was oppressed during his lifetime for being who he was.  HOWEVER, I think a necessary prerequisite of reading this text may also be a good grasp of higher-level mathematics and some basic computer hardware terminology.  For myself, I hope to be back with you at some point in the future with a Turing biography that is more accessible to me.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

I had just finished reading The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon last weekend when my SO and I went to see The Belko Experiment.  During the previews, I was absolutely shocked to see a trailer for a film adaptation of Z starring Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson.  (Check out the trailers for The Belko Experiment and The Lost City of Z here and here, as I enjoyed the former and will be looking forward to the latter.)  I had no idea that a film of The Lost City of Z would be coming out when I began reading the book.  Rather, I had recently picked it up used at a favorite secondhand bookstore on the recommendation of my dad, who read it years ago when it first came out.  Dad is one of my main influences when it comes to my love of literature — he still reads voraciously despite his current battle with a terminal neurodegenerative illness.  At any rate, I was glad to give a book that he loved a try.

The Lost City of Z is nonfiction and reads part-biography, part travelogue, and part mystery.  The main text tells the life story of Colonel Percy Fawcett, one of the “last great explorers” of the Victorian Era who, along with his colleagues of the UK’s Royal Geographical Society, made it their mission to complete Britain’s map of the world.  While other explorers conquered the polar regions or the savannahs of Africa, Fawcett set his sights on the Amazonian rainforest, achieving great renown for his contributions to geographical understanding at the time.

As Fawcett reached middle age, however, he developed an interest in local legends of a great ancient civilization that was said to have once dwelt in the rainforest.  These folk tales flew in the face of prevailing scientific theories of the day, which not only held that the rainforests were inhospitable to the development of agriculture and large cities, but also that the indigenous American peoples were intellectually incapable of forming complex societies.  Fawcett gradually became obsessed with discovering the fabled civilization, which he nicknamed “Z,” and eventually mounted an expedition into the Amazonian interior with his eldest son and his son’s best friend.  The three entered the jungle in 1925 and were never seen again.

Grann skillfully interweaves this biography of Fawcett with efforts to find the Fawcett party in the years after their disappearance.  The rescue efforts read like a suspense thriller in places, with one group being held for ransom by a hostile tribe, for example, and another driven out of the jungle in an ambush with locals armed with poison-tipped arrowheads.  The author is even drawn into an expedition of his own, leading to a “twist ending” that even I did not expect, but which I found much more satisfying than any other outcome I could have expected from a book with this premise.

Reading The Lost City of Z, it is clear that Grann is a journalist by trade, as he is masterly at pacing and maintaining the reader’s interest.  More than many other books I have read recently, I found this one hard to put down and was eager to find out what happened next, a rarity when it comes to nonfiction.  I also appreciated Grann’s willingness to share his own humanity with the audience.  We learn through the course of the text about Fawcett’s unhealthy obsession with Z, and likewise about the way that countless explorers became obsessed with finding Fawcett once he vanished.  Grann is candid with the reader in explaining that while at first this was “just another article” for him, as he continued to investigate the story, he too felt the pull of obsession drawing him into the search for Fawcett and Z.  This connection between Grann and Fawcett added another level of authenticity to the novel that was well appreciated.

In conclusion, I would recommend The Lost City of Z to those who are interested in trying nonfiction, as this is a good example of accessible nonfiction that reads like a page-turner.  Z is also an excellent read for people who have an interest in The Age of Exploration, as it alludes to many other explorers of the day and has extensive annotations that can give you a jump-start.

Hello World!

So today I created this book review site in an effort to share my literary tastes with you all.  Unfortunately, I won’t be posting a review this evening because it’s already a little late and I have work in the morning.  (I was originally planning on it but setting up a WordPress is more time consuming than I thought, haha.)  I just wanted to let you all know that I am here and hope to be back soon with a review of my first book of 2017.