What Jen's Been Reading

I read only fiction. A friend recently poked a book about nutrition at me, leaving me to wonder—doesn’t she know me at all? A well-written work of fiction can change your world view. It will stay with you for life. It also entertains. Some novels manage to do all three. Here’s what I’ve been reading:

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. A nonsensical title taken from an Aristophanes play concerning a fool who searches for the impossible rather than learn to live with reality. The blurb telling how the ancient text influences individuals throughout centuries left me skeptical. It seemed an unattainably lofty ambition and it sounded boring—Ancient text? Yawn. Also, this author wrote All the Light You Cannot See, one of so many overly lauded heart-rending World War Two dramas, which I’d found predictable and contrived, though it did win the Pulitzer Prize because, you know, WWII. In comparison, Cloud Cuckoo Land was a much better novel. And it delivered on its promise—the Aristophanes writings did indeed connect a young ox-driver from the fall of Troy, a POW in Vietnam, and a spaceship carrying pilgrims from a destroyed earth in search of a new home. The writing was flawless, the characters diverse and compelling. The imposing ambition fully met its promise. As outstanding literary works go, this one will still be on the must-read lists in fifty years. 

Go Tell the Bees That I am Gone by Diana Gabaldon; ninth in the Outlander saga. There’s really no point in my recommending it unless it’s to recommend the entire series, which I do, highly. If you’re my age and you’re just picking up the first book you’ll be happily occupied until you die. This installment is what’s expected—the continuation of the time-travel tale that began in Scotland right before the Battle of Culloden in 1745, through to this one, which finds the Frasers caught up in the American Revolutionary War in 1779. They’re all well-written and if anyone’s looking for a romping adventure with romance, pirates, and witches, well, there’s a reason why these books are so popular. However, this time I did get irritated because Gabaldon, working from timelines and family trees, brings back characters who last made an appearance several books ago; as a new book is only released every five or six years, continuity is lost. A swift reminder of who the character is and why he or she is pertinent should be included in the text, which is the way it’s usually done. At times I lost the thread because of not knowing who somebody was. While it’s my understanding that there’s a readers’ companion, I’m not going to consult an encyclopedia in order to read a book about time travel. That’s just silly. 

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. This won British Book of the Year five or six years ago. I read it then, but it recently came into my hands as a gift from a Master’s student at Exeter who knows my work well because she wrote her dissertation concerning my treatment of humankind’s relationship with material items. Her giving me this champion of a book told me that she saw the similarities in our work, in the wry first-person narrative, and in the contrast between tragedy and humor. If you enjoyed my work you’ll love Eleanor Oliphant; having received this book I remembered how great it was and I read it again. Eleanor is multi-layered and multi-flawed. Her sarcasm is harsh and her critical attitude is cringeworthy. She doesn’t grasp social norms, has poor communication skills, and has given up trying to do anything other than exist. Though her sharp wit appeals, she’s hardly likeable—but as her background is revealed, it begins to seem like the fault isn’t Eleanor’s, but every person who’s passed through her life, a communal guilt. Want a lesson in empathy? Want to root for an underdog? Juxtaposing tragedy and humor can be tricky, and Honeyman has a gift for it. I highly recommend Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and, come to think of it, I’m going to read it again in five years because every once in a while a person needs a lesson in how to see invisible people. 

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith—JK Rowling’s mystery series, although why the pseudonym when everybody who cares knows Galbraith’s identity? In this novel the characters, Cormoran Strike and Margot Bamborough, partners in a detective firm, seek to discover what happened to a woman who’s been missing for nearly thirty years. Due to solving several high-profile cases, the firm has expanded so that now our two sleuths have taken on an office manager and a couple of consultants. These mysteries are driven more by character than plot. Cormoran is the illegitimate son of a rock star, has a narcissistic bipolar ex-mistress, and is a war amputee. Margot is haunted by rape, has been betrayed by her husband, and is made to feel inadequate by her family. As a reader, I care more about what’s going on between Cormaran and Margot than I do about whichever case they’re working on, though the plots are always well-thought out, with plenty of clues and twists. What draws me is the sizzling unfulfilled attraction—will these two scarred people ever be brave another to take the first step? This question’s what keeps me coming back. 

The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles. Because I loved A Gentleman in Moscow, I was looking forward to reading this. In fact, I placed it at the bottom my list because I wanted to savor it. Oh dear; I meant for this list to be a list of recommendations, but I warn against spending your money on The Lincoln Highway. I know how reviews can wound an ego, so ordinarily I’m firmly disinclined to offer negative feedback. But shame on Penguin/Random House. This poorly written, poorly edited road trip tale is the result of a publisher pressuring an author to dig into his old files, because after A Gentleman in Moscow anything, anything with his name on it will sell. With work a gifted writer can make any situation seem magical, no matter how pedestrian; but there’s nothing brilliant about this, so I must conclude that the work was not done. About a third of the way through, Emmet describes his mother going to the attic to fetch the picnic basket down to the kitchen. There was no beauty in the phrasing or originality in the observations, no reason at all for this three-page ramble to and from the attic. At this point I had to put it down because this sort of tedious narrative makes me feel nauseated and woozy. Meandering, uninspired, callow, and disorganized. Disappointing.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last four months. What will I pick up next? Recommendations? 

Katrina Charlotte Haenisch, Rest in Peace

MARCH 3, 1969-MARCH 21, 2022

Trina was born when I was eleven and my older sister, Resi, was twelve. At those ages, it was like we’d been given a real live doll, and we were fascinated by her, cherished her; spoiled her actually. She was a happy baby—oh, you can bet we never let her cry. And then she became a fun child with no inhibitions. She skipped at full speed through stores, cartwheeled up and down the aisles at the movies, and sang with gusto in public places. Resi and I were quiet teenagers and we saw in Trina everything that we didn’t have the audacity to be. We adored her. 

Cute things I recall: She had a tiny turned-up nose and she longed for a big straight one so she could be like the rest of the family. And when she was about five she told me that if she had big soft boobs like mine, she’d let people play with them. 

She was such entertaining company that when Resi and I got old enough to drive, we argued about who got to take her on errands. She brought happiness to the whole family. Through her childhood and early teen years she was involved with friends from every strata. She was smart, she was a joiner, and she shared her smile with everyone. We were pleased for her when she was elected cheerleader in junior high. 

I can’t pinpoint when her joy fell away, or why. Resi got married and moved away. I moved to Cairo, and David and I started a life that would take us from one country to another for years. I was in The Hague when my mother, living in Houston, called and told me that Trina had moved to Dallas to live with some guy she thought she was in love with, and that he’d given her a black eye and split lip. Momma had driven to Dallas, packed Trina up, and moved her down to Houston.

Except for those few traumatic and wretched months in Dallas, Trina lived with our mother from then on. She wanted to marry and have kids, but that doesn’t happen for everybody, so she let that dream go, but didn’t ever replace it with another one. 

There were times when she was content. Having graduated from college in Houston, she had a good job in finance. She had a boyfriend who treated her well, but he wasn’t the type who believed in going to work every day and so they never got married. She made some good friends along the way, people who were more patient and less judgmental toward her than I ever was—and I’m ashamed of that. 

And then there came a tragic year in which our mother died. And her boyfriend died. And then her best friend got hit by a car and died. And Trina simply never recovered. She became a recluse, working from home long before the pandemic made recluses of us all. She also became bitter and accusatory, lashing out at others (me) because of her unhappiness. 

I hadn’t seen her for three years when word came through a cousin that she had cancer. I wasn’t surprised. She smoked constantly, ate only Cheetos and potato chips, and hadn’t exercised since she was on the swim team in high school. Her lifestyle had been killing her for years and I was reluctant to be a witness to her slow suicide.

When I heard she was sick I got to her as quickly as I could, and though I’d been told that if she’d fight she could conquer it, one look at her in that bed told me she was defeated. She’d had enough. The most frustrating and tormenting part of all of this is that I loved that girl; she’d had so much potential, yet she didn’t have the big life I wanted her to have. 

So when I think of her from now on, I will dwell on the giggling girl, not the dejected and disconsolate woman she came to be. On Saturday I kissed her forehead, told her I loved her, and said good-bye.

Rest in Peace Little Sister.

At this point she was still making an effort—make up, wearing actual clothes, hair cleaned and combed. I’ve got pictures of her when she was young and darling and carefree, but they’re too old to upload.

This was taken three years ago, the last time I saw her before she became sick. It was obvious at this point that she’d given up. No make up, hair a mess. She’d stopped wearing actual clothes, but spent her days in soft nightshirts. She went to the grocery store at seven a.m. on Saturday because that’s when it was least crowded and she didn’t want to deal with people. Other than that, she no longer left the house.

Adventures of a Dead Cat

Continuing the cat theme, here is the opening of Disappearing Otis, a novel I put on Amazon ten years ago as print-on-demand, so very few have read it. It is a clever book that, sadly, will probably never find its way on to a bookshelf. Alas, a writer moves on, and I’ve written twenty novels every bit as clever since. But this cat story was fun to write—so enjoy:

They’re on their way back from visiting FayNell’s parents in Hartfoot when the car in front of them hits a cat. The girls, foothills to their brother in the back seat, witness it all—the orange cat racing up from the fire ditch at the side of the road; the Ford slamming on its brakes and swerving; the cat flying through the air. The Ford slows as if it might stop, but then continues on its way.

Maddie starts up pleading and crying and so does Essie, so what choice does Chris have except to go and check on the damn thing? He pulls over to the side of the road and they all pile out and scuff back to where the cat got hit and of course it’s dead and blood is oozing from its mouth.  

“Daddy, we can’t just leave it here,” says Essie, her voice pitiful. “We can’t just let it stay here where all the other cars’ll run over it.” 

“We’ll move it to the side of the road then,” he offers.  

But no, this isn’t good enough.

“Please Daddy, please. The buzzards’ll get it.”  

The girls are wrapped around FayNell, hugging on to her thighs—and FayNell, with tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes, has a desolate look on her face that hurts Chris’s heart because he knows what she’s really seeing when she looks at that dead cat. Gary stands by his mother’s side, looking at the cat and shaking his head sorrowfully.  

It gets really hot in the panhandle of Texas in August. There are no clouds and there is no breeze to push the air around. The heat rising from every surface makes the atmosphere shimmery, and the five of them standing like that at the side of the road are dripping sweat and panting like dried‑out dogs from just the minute or so away from the car air conditioner. Already a fly is buzzing over the feline carcass.  

The cat doesn’t have a collar and, scanning the area, Chris can see that its home could be any one of the houses in the new development off to the south—and he isn’t about to go knocking on doors telling somebody that their cat is dead. So what he does is, he gets the Neiman Marcus bag that’s left in the trunk from when FayNell took the girls shopping in Dallas in March, and he gets some newspaper that’s also in the trunk, and he scoops the dead cat into the gray paper bag with the string handles.

“There now,” he says. “We’ll give her a nice burial in the backyard when we get home.”

He puts the dead cat in the trunk and the girls seem satisfied with the solution of a funeral. They drive on.

When they’re almost home it suddenly hits them that they’re hungry so they decide to stop at Ben’s Country Kitchen for a meal. As soon as Chris parks the car and opens his door the heat hits him in the face, reminding him of the cat in the trunk. That dead cat baking in what’s basically an oven can’t be a good idea. So he takes the bag out of the trunk and sets it in the meager strip of shade beneath the rear fender with the intention of putting it back in when they return from their meal. They go into the restaurant and, as coincidence would have it, are seated at a table by the window that overlooks the parking lot and the back of their car and the dead cat bag.  

They all look at their menus but the gazes of all five of them keep returning in the most morbid way to that Neiman Marcus bag. They give their orders to the waiter.  

Next time Chris glances out the window a woman is hobbling through the parking lot, a black woman with a squashed‑up face carrying a heavy coat and a bulging roughed-up purse. Her shoes are worn-down pumps, and her feet puff up and over the sides of them like risen dough. And her dress—in this heat!—is high‑necked and long‑sleeved, burgundy knit of some kind and hanging unevenly all the way down to the middle of her calves.  

“Oh the poor thing.” FayNell releases a compassionate sigh, causing the twins to also heave weighty sighs. “All her worldly possessions in that purse. And the heat of that dress!”

The woman—he can’t tell her age but her hair is gray—is trudging right along, a slow‑moving boat, aiming herself toward the park across the street, maybe planning to find a bench in the shade where she can rest. But when she catches sight of that Neiman Marcus bag she stops. She looks at it; and she looks all around. Then she limps on by it on her swollen feet. But she stops on the sidewalk before crossing the street and back she comes to the bag. And once more she stops and looks around. And once more she carries on shuffling, this time toward the back of the building—and there she stays for three minutes or so, until she emerges, a purpose this time to her walk; and she carries herself with confidence straight to the car, stops, stoops, slips her arm through the strings of the bag, takes it up to her bosom, and then walks on.  

The food arrives, and its arrival is a nuisance to them.  

“I don’t know what to think about this,” Essie says fretfully.

Maddie, equally confounded, echoes, “I don’t know what to think, either.”  

The woman, bowed protectively over the bag, is moving off. This time she continues across the street—and her curiosity about her prize is too much for her because she stops at the first bench she comes to, opens the bag, and faints, collapsing forward and on to her side.

The family starts eating. Chris doesn’t really taste what’s on his plate, though ordinarily Ben’s is his favorite; nor does he meet the eyes of anyone else at the table, but views the floating of their forks between plates and mouths only peripherally.

Somebody inside the restaurant, or maybe someone driving by, must’ve taken notice of the woman hunched over there on the bench because within five minutes an ambulance drives up and two uniformed attendants jump out. 

Movement at the table stops.  

Together the EMS men move to check on her. One of them takes her pulse while the other bends low over her face. Then an attendant fetches the gurney and, in cooperation, one at her feet and the other supporting her head and shoulders, they scoop her aboard the white surface and roll her out to the ambulance. Then one of the attendants, looking around, spies her few articles—her bulging purse, her heavy coat, the Neiman Marcus bag—and going over, gathers these things and slides them into the back of the ambulance and closes the door. They drive away.  

This last, this absurd gathering-up of the dead cat like it’s a prized possession, is too much for Chris—and for the kids. Just imagine the reaction in the emergency room! Four pairs of twinkling eyes find each other and laughter follows—a laughter that won’t cease, an embarrassingly loud laughter complete with spit and open mouths filled with half‑chewed food. Tears roll down Chris’s cheeks. The girls laugh so hard they can’t sit still in their chairs and Gary loses his breath so that he makes braying noises and that makes them laugh even louder. They laugh and laugh so that the other mid‑afternoon diners stare and the servers form themselves into a puzzled line over by the bar.  

And through their laughter sits FayNell—erect, stern, and unmoving. Up until three years ago she would have laughed along with them over this string of outlandish events. But now instead of humor, horrified indignation is stamped upon her brow; priggish disapproval pinches her lips; and the haughty gleam of the fanatically empathetic glows from her eyes.  

And upon whom is she focusing all this intolerance? Who is she blaming for this entire comical sequence?  

Chris, that’s who. From the second the cat got hit by someone else’s car to the moment a poor woman was carried away in an ambulance, FayNell has been tallying and judging, and blaming her husband, a kind man who only wants what’s best for everybody.  

There was a time when she hadn’t been so unbending. There was a time when she wasn’t so quick to assume wicked intentions behind every episode. 

Chris can trace to the day the beginning of this change in her. It was the day of The Accident, three years ago. Somehow he’s been designated as the brunt bearer which is unfair because he wasn’t even there that day; he wasn’t involved in any way.

And that’s why the next evening, after he spends the afternoon brooding in front of the Ryder Cup, he packs his toothbrush, electric shaver, and a few articles of clothing, and leaves the house. He honestly has no intention of staying away from his home and family forever and FayNell knows this; and she knows also that the fault of his leaving is hers. He’s suffered long enough because of her sorrow. If she doesn’t find a way to put her anguish behind her the rest of their lives will be no more than haunted shadows cast by dead wishes and hopes gone sour.

Because the story calls for a picture of an orange cat.

Another Cat Story, This One Not So Depressing

When I moved to Cairo I realized that I needed a cat. Well, nobody needs a cat; but David traveled quite a bit and I thought it’d be nice to have a warm purring animal close by. Obtaining one wouldn’t be a big deal because they were everywhere. Feral cats lived in the streets and alleys. We had several living in the stairwell of the building. I could’ve grabbed a kitten from the garbage heap next door—I’d seen them crawling around over there. But David felt that they were probably diseased and wild (having never had a cat, he didn’t realize that a cat’s a cat no matter where it comes from) so he asked around and it turned out that someone at work knew someone who needed to find a home for their young cat, and that’s how we came to have Panache, a dainty year-old Siamese. 

Panache was feeble and petite. She spent most of her time spread out on the pilot on the stove, perched on a transformer, or snoozing in the sun. She spent all her life seeking heat. Her meow was a feckless croak, and she had no personality or sense of fun. She never chased a string or showed an interest in a toy. She felt no affection and gave no affection. Cats have a reputation for being aloof and independent, but she was the most boring and inert cat I’d ever encountered. 

We got transferred to Holland. Transporting an animal from a country like Egypt (open sewage, people in gallabiyahs hanging off buses) to a country like Holland (immaculate, organized, highly civilized) involved a lot of paperwork. Trips to administrative offices, health forms signed by a vet, and permits from both the Egyptian and Dutch bureaucracies—getting all that paperwork ready was a lot of bother. But when we landed in Amsterdam, nobody cared. When I urged the passport official to look at the folder holding her transport papers, he shook his head and gestured for me to move on. Security guards watched from posts throughout Schiphol and I poked my folder toward them, asking who I should see to get her cleared. Some ignored me and some waved me on. In the end, papers unexamined, we simply cruised out the entrance with Panache in her carrier, perched atop our cart full of luggage. I never got over feeling that she was there illegally. 

Fast-forward. We had kids and got busy. Panache was always in the background, eating, sleeping, seeking warmth, and remaining, as always, a pitiful excuse for a cat. 

We came to know a couple, Ann and Eric, at the Anglican church we attended in The Hague. Ann was a writer, so we had that in common; though while she wrote novels about God answering prayer and how faith’ll get you through, I was writing novels about quirky women doing quirky things. Her husband, Eric, was a jovial guy who outfitted commercial fishing boats. Also, they had two kids, as did we. Ann and I got together quite often. We bet on who’d get published first. She won.  

To get the full effect of this story, you have to know about Ann. She was deeply kind, the sort who took soup to friends when they were ill and helped tottering gray women across the street. Always compassionate, always generous. And riding alongside the loving part of her soul was a robust sense of humor, though even when she was making a joke, she was unerringly careful with her words—a trait I respected because quite often the words that fly from my tongue are snide or inappropriate.

When Panache had been with me for seven years, she became sick. She quit eating and she was so weak that she was unable to jump up to her chair in the sun. She’d probably been sick and growing sicker for days and I hadn’t been paying attention. It was that busy time—a two-year-old and a four-year-old—and my cat got sick and I didn’t even notice. Burdened by guilt, I rushed her to the vet, who told me her kidneys were no longer functioning. He advised me to have her put down. 

On Sunday when I went to church, I was still feeling miserable. During the social time after the service, the four of us came together for a chat as the kids ran circles around us. Expecting heartfelt sympathy from Ann, I told her that my cat had died. 

“You could have her stuffed and nobody’d know the difference,” she said.

She immediately slapped her hand over her mouth, her wide eyes revealing horror at what she’d just said. 

I was stunned. And so were Eric and David. 

Then, recalling Panache’s bland lethargy, we all burst into laughter—and I knew I’d never again think about Panache without also thinking of Ann, her faux pas, and the shocked look on her face when she realized that an unpleasant truth had escaped so gracelessly from her usually guarded mouth. Too, I appreciate the irony that the cat who slept twenty-three hours a day and lacked a personality is responsible for such a hilarious moment.

This isn’t Panache. Panache wasn’t this healthy-looking. She was skinnier and her hair wasn’t this fluffy, but the coloring is right.