Costa Rica Reading

A month in Costa Rica is a month in paradise with a beach, palm trees and books. I took a few books with me and bought more at the crammed and crowded second hand bookstore. Then Laurie Atkinson, Birch River writer, and book aficionado, arrived for a week to talk books. We both love Rachel Cusk and spent a lot of the week discussing Cusk’s novel, Kudos, and the various threads and themes that this sly writer uncovers.

Here are a few books I enjoyed:

1.     Breathe, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat  A young Haitian woman goes to New York to reunite with her troubled mother. She finds a lover and has a child. From the first page, this delightful book comes alive with Haitian expressions, superstitions, customs and ideas, many of which follow our heroine to New York. Back home in Haiti, her extended family must deal with the chaos and violence that tear apart her country.

  Edwidge Danticat

2.     Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland. Peppy quirky writing sees fat, lonely Liz find happiness when her son, given for adoption years ago, turns up. She nurses him through MS and after his death sets out to meet the young man’s father who she encountered years before on a school trip to Europe. Before she leaves Canada, she sees a meteor fall and takes home the small hot rock which lands near by. The rock will have dangerous consequences. A fun book but, as usual with Coupland,  lots to think about.

3.      Heat Wave by Penelope Lively. There are two disintegrating marriages in this book. Pauline lives in the English countryside editing a book. Her daughter Teresa lives in an attached house with her child Luke and her husband Maurice. Teresa is madly in love with her husband who, possibly,  is cheating on her. The situation reminds Pauline of her ex husband, Harry who, many years ago, cheated on her and she obsesses on this failed marriage. A double story with an amazing ending.  (Watch for the review by Laura Atkinson)

4.     Becoming by Michelle Obama. She had a loved and protected childhood with good parents and a loving extended family. She always was a striver working her way up the ladder to Harvard Law School, a top Chicago law firm, and from there into working for the city, and finally for progressive agencies. During these years she meets Barak Obama, marries and has two daughters. After she has children, the book is taken up with her desire to protect and nurture them as her husband becomes a senator and then president. I found the description of the protection around the first family alarming. Her work to combat childhood obesity was inspiring in its scope and professionalism. It was as if she were running a large social agency which tackled the problem on many fronts.

5.     Lear’s Shadow by Claire Holden Rothman   Bea Rose, depressed after losing her business and boyfriend, joins an outdoor theatre troupe putting on King Lear in various parks in Quebec. She meets Artie, a childhood friend, who protected her from bullying because she had a scar on her face from an operation to correct a hair lip. The actor playing King Lear, once famous, is but now old, decrepit and a lush. Bea is his shadow: her task to get him to the performance in a reasonable state. Bea’s father is in the first stages of dementia. As Bea enters into a love affair with Artie, her father becomes deranged and violent. The story of a woman bowed by circumstance who manages to win through. I found the novel so mesmerizing and lovely that I regretted every time I put it down. 

     

6.     Also read and enjoyed: A Delicate Truth by John LeCarre, Hot Millk by Deborah Levy, plus two police procedurals, A Voice in the Night and The Wings of the Sphinx, by Andrea Camilleri, lovely light reads set in Sicily