Plainsong by Kent Haruf

I didn't see it coming, but I just fell in love with two men. They're brothers named Harold and Raymond. They're not my usual type, but they just convinced me that two single farmboys whose lives revolve around cattle rearing could literally melt my heart.

In the fictional town of Holt, Colorado, we follow the lives of the Guthrie family: father Tom (a high school teacher), his two young sons, Ike and Bobby, and a wife who lives in the shadows of her own despair. Victoria Roubideaux, young and pregnant, suddenly finds herself without a home and turns to her kind teacher, Maggie Jones, for help. And finally, Harold and Raymond McPheron, the two brothers whose routined life is upended in the most unexpected and touching way.

Holt is a simple town that's home to regular people with big hearts. The drama is not flashy, but simmers gently. The quiet backdrop of vast, flat plains allows the characters to shine in the foreground. It's a big-hearted story about life lessons, coming of age, and love in all of its many forms. I loved every minute of this book. It was just perfect in every way and proves that not every book needs to have super-sized plotlines or flashy characters to stand out. It's when things are quiet and pared back that we're able to reach through the noise of everyday life and hear people's heartbeats. 

As I visited Holt, I felt the dust caught in my throat, the thrill of peeking through windows, the hard realities of farming. The pull of doing what's right, of loneliness and warm bodies, of finding one's place of acceptance. Changing one's ways, putting others ahead of oneself, the importance of kindness.

This book felt as comforting and restorative as a warm bath and is best read under cozy blankets on a lazy day. Allow yourself to slow down, open your heart and prepare to fall in love.

A Separation by Katie Kitamura

I couldn't put this book down - unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. I just wanted it to be done.

A Separation jumps straight into the plot without giving us any reason to know, and subsequently care about, any of the characters before thrusting them into disorder. Once I did get to know them, they were disappointingly unrelatable. The protagonist vacillated between not caring and then perhaps caring about whatever was unfolding in a wishy washy way, but since she never made her intentions clear, it made it impossible to get behind her. 

Dialogue was written and then analyzed. Scenes unfolded awkwardly and were then dissected. No threads were placed to create tension and interplay. The reader is never given the ability to read between the lines and draw our own conclusions. The theme of illusion predominates, which has potential to be alluring, but the author overexplains everything, stripping the story of any intrigue. 

I found most of the relationships grating and implausible. One relationship in particular involving the main character actually made me roll my eyes. Again, not enough background was provided to give any credibility. The entire book felt unconvincing and had the aura of a first draft. It had potential within the bones of the plotlines to become something better than the final version, but needed further development to make it all ring true. One of the most important parts of a book is feeling a connection to the characters. It's fine if they're atypical, but the reader still has to be given a reason to care about them, otherwise, the whole thing falls flat. Without a reason to care, it leaves no lasting impression.

The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Honestly, I can't believe what I just finished reading: an entire book dictated by one blinking eye, one letter at a time. Let that sink in for a moment.

The author, Jean-Dominique Bauby, was a successful editor-in-chief at Elle France when one day after work, on his way to pick up his son, he suffered a massive stroke. As he describes, in the past this would have meant certain death "but improved resuscitation techniques have now prolonged and refined the agony." He came out the other side of a multi-day coma paralyzed from head to toe, unable to move or speak. His left eyelid blinking was his only method of communication.

On the outside, he inhabited an incapable body. But inside, he was alive.

Rather than using a standard alphabet, a special board was created starting with the most frequently used letters in the French language, descending to the least used. Anyone who visited Jean-Dominique had to painstakingly make their way through each letter of the alphabet while he blinked in the affirmative and they transcribed what he was trying to convey.

This gruelling technique was what he used with an assistant, Claude, who helped get his thoughts from his head onto the page to create this book. He would memorize and rework passages throughout the night and have them ready to spell out when she visited him during the day. How he managed to get coherent, engaging, richly textured chapters that marked his life pre- and post-trauma is truly a remarkable feat. It's not just a series of facts. It's a book about the intricacies of life. It's a book about human enlightenment.

It's not simply due to the extravagant difficulty and unique voice that I'm awarding this book with so many stars. Jean-Dominique shows us the other side of paraplegia and disability. If we can learn to disregard the human outer shell, with patience and care, we can begin to comprehend what extremely insightful thoughts and dreams lie within a fully awake mind.

Jane, the Fox & Me by Fannie Britt

I don't know which is more beautiful: the story of Jane, the Fox & Me or the illustrations that accompany it. If I'd written such a touching story and then had the visual representation this book was given, it would be such a gift.

The story is about a young girl, Helene, who just can't seem to fit in at school. To get her mind off her troubles and divert attention from herself, she loses herself in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and draws parallels between herself and the title character. Will she be a tragic heroine or will everything fall into place...

The drawings are beautifully muted, mainly in shades of light grey, which perfectly matches the tone throughout. But now and again, when there is a small spark of hope or a shift to revelry or a pique of recognition, colour will overtake the page, creating perfect impact.

This is a quiet but powerful book that anyone who's ever felt like an outcast will appreciate. It provides comfort and hope and is as beautiful inside and out as the little girl at the heart of it.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Much is amiss at the fun home. The house, like everything within its walls, is a paradox. Everything is the opposite of what it appears to be. Reading this memoir is like untangling a gigantic knot. Everything's tied up tight to near-breaking point. Then we witness the family unraveling...

Alison Bechdel's father is compulsively restoring their crumbling mansion, covering up not only the old walls but his true identity. Her mother, fittingly, is a part-time actress. Her brothers are secondary; it's not really their story. The entire family appears to live alongside each other rather than truly with each other, but it's the riddle of Alison's father and their duplicitous relationship that's at the crux of the plot. 

Their only shared love - classic literature - provides a slight buffer for a tumultuous father/daughter relationship; however, the more parallels that are drawn between the books' characters, the more the familial duo appear to be mirroring the literature that means so much to each of them. They communicate in opposites but write in truth. 

Her father hides his true identity while Alison attempts to share hers. He lives somewhat vicariously through her, yet can't quite connect.

And then it's too late. 

This memoir perfectly reveals why it's impossible to live a contented, peaceful life when you're deceiving not only yourself but those around you. If only they'd stopped communicating in riddles/if only the patched-up house didn't represent the father's psyche/if only fate or destiny or whatever it is hadn't brought her father back to small-town life/if only a life and then an entire family hadn't been built on secrets and lies/if only they'd begun with the truth/if only/if only/if only...

But, oh, that final panel hit my heart.

Columbine by Dave Cullen

Columbine used to just be the name of a regular high school, but after April 20th, 1999, it became so much more. Since that fateful date, the name Columbine brings to mind horrific images. This book brings to life the backstories of all of those images. It dismantles an unbelievable number of myths, legends and corruption surrounding that infamous massacre.

Immediately after the event, there was rampant speculation about how two seemingly normal boys decided to one day walk into their school and shoot up their classmates. Was it violent video games? Hardcore music? Gangs? Bullying? Bad parenting? The answers took years to figure out, and they're all in here. Dave Cullen took ten years to write this book and it shows. I can easily state that this is one of the most thoroughly researched and well-written non-fiction books I've read. 

When I thought back to Columbine before reading this book, I pictured two high school kids in black trench coats creating mayhem one day. But the story goes back way further than just that day and it involves so much more than just the two shooters. It forever changed the lives of two thousand students, teachers and their families through fear, violence, death, injury, PTSD, suicide, survivor's guilt, involvement on the periphery of the crimes, deception, and corruption. It is definitely not the story of just one day. It was a year of planning for the shooters and over a decade of truth-seeking for the survivors. It was not a single-day event; it was - and continues to be - a saga.

Dave Cullen managed to sift through an Everest of documentation and not only distilled it all down to make sense, providing explanations for motives and describing the aftermath in detail but, equally importantly, he also showed us the complicated reactions of the people involved. Reading about them never made anyone feel like characters in a book, but real people with real feelings and emotions. He made a nonsensical event make sense. He somehow wrote about an overwhelming amount of information and number of people, yet it was never hard to remember who was who or what their specific relation to the story was. Though the subject matter was gory and unbelievable and very much felt like a movie because the terror of what happened is just unimaginable, the writing was never sensational; he stuck to the facts and let the story tell itself. 

In an interesting twist of timing, I just came across a copy of A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, written by Sue Klebold, the mother of one of the two killers. It was just published in 2016. It's noted throughout Columbine that the parents of both of the shooters kept an extremely low profile and rarely spoke out, so I'm eager to read her side of the tragedy. Because that's what this story really is: an unimaginable tragedy. After feeling so immersed in every aspect of it throughout this book, I wish peace for everyone involved in any way.

A Really Super Book About Squirrels by Graham Taylor

If you're looking for a serious book about squirrels, then stop right now. You're in the wrong place. If, however, you have had the following squirrel-related incidents happen to you - as I have - then this book is likely right up your alley:

- Driven over a squirrel's foot (accidentally!), had it stop, look you right in the eye and let out a tiny offended squirrel scream.
- Walked to work, had a squirrel run down a tree, straight up your leg and then run off like nothing unusual just happened.
- Opened your front door, walked to the kitchen to put something down only to see a squirrel sitting on a bookshelf like that's a perfectly good spot for a squirrel to hang out.
- Had that same squirrel suddenly mobilize, running around and over and under and on top of your computer desk, your kitchen table, your bookshelves, your chairs, eating your food, shitting on your belongings, eating a tunnel through your wall, biting straight through that patched up hole a day later, going outside and bragging to another random squirrel thus encouraging them to replicate this same routine him/herself a few days later.
- Tried to fall asleep and/or been woken up to the sound of scratching/squeaking/scampering in your ceiling as a squad of squirrels is partying it up without even pausing to consider covering their part of the rent.

A Really Super Book About Squirrels features a man who really tries to understand a squirrel that hangs out around his house. He asks it questions, tries to get to know its quirks, tries to befriend it, then (spoiler alert!) realizes that perhaps there are simply not enough common traits between humans and squirrels to form a solid friendship.

I'm going to be gifting this aptly-named book to some friends who will also deeply appreciate a quirky squirrel book. Because, in my opinion, quirky squirrel books are the best kind of squirrel books there are.

About Alice by Calvin Trillin

For a change, I picked up a biography of someone I'd never heard of. In this case, the late Alice Trillin. Her husband, Calvin, has been a writer for the New Yorker since the early sixties. I'd never heard of either of them, but he has a very lengthy list of published work in the first couple of pages which leads me to believe that I'm likely in a very small minority.

What I discovered about Alice after crawling out from my rock: Her husband, family, friends, acquaintances, and friends of acquaintances clearly adored her. She was radiated positivity and didn't let anything get her down. She had cancer, but didn't let that define her. She sounded feisty, funny, generous, smart, beautiful, opinionated yet humble. She's the kind of woman that every man would want to be with and every woman would want to be.

That was just her in a nutshell like the book itself. Reading About Alice felt like taking a small glimpse inside a beautiful little gift box, sneaking a peek at the effect a cherished woman had on those who knew her, touching the stories inside and then closing the lid on a celebrated life wrapped up into a special little book. And I personally think that being eulogized by a child as "the coolest girl I ever knew" is just about the best compliment one could receive.

The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling

The Golden State opens with Daphne, a semi-single mother, temporarily walking out of her solid 9-5 San Francisco University job (for now, at least) and escaping to her family's trailer located in a desert town in Altavista, California. She's semi-single because her husband, Engin, is tangled up in an immigration/green card/bureaucratic mess and is stuck in Turkey. Daphne's not exactly sure what she's escaping or why, but she feels a strong pull leading her away from her everyday life and a return towards her roots. Along for the ride is her sixteen-month-old daughter, Honey. 

The novel spans ten days that Daphne spends in Altavista. Not much happens in this small town and, like all small towns, there are characters with a capital C. Cindy is the far-right-leaning next-door neighbour whose political ambitions include being part of a group that wants Altavista to separate from California and become its own independent state.

Alice is an elderly lady who, like Daphne, is only a temporary member of this tiny community. Daphne and Alice bond at the local restaurant over Honey and the Turkish language and things between them develop from there.

With not much for Daphne to do, she spends her time mainly wandering around the town, sneaking drinks and cigarettes while Honey's napping, looking through her deceased parents' belongings and thinking about her husband. While this doesn't make for an earth-shattering plot or a sense of urgency, it definitely highlights the slow pace of small town life and the highs and lows of motherhood, especially wanting nothing more than a break when Honey's awake but showing the deepest of love when she's reflecting about her as she sleeps.

Alice and Daphne's lives become forever entangled in the last couple of days and this is where things really start to develop and become a little more unpredictable. 

The Golden State is a serene read. It's got sparks of quirky humour, especially where motherhood is concerned, and vivid descriptions. For a near-300-page book without a lot of twists and turns, but a whole lot of killing time and reflecting, it somehow manages to pull the reader along for the ride - and it was a ride I was happy to be on.

Putney by Sofka Zinovieff

Putney is a headfirst journey into right and wrong. It's a story of consent viewed from three angles: those of Ralph, a thirty-something family friend, Daphne, the object/child of his affection, and her best friend, Jane. Given the subject matter, it could definitely be a polarizing and/or triggering read, but I personally felt as though the subject was tackled respectfully with a lot of careful thought.

Daphne is a beautiful sprite of a child. Raised in a very loose, free flowing family, she and her older brother are basically given free reign and not many rules. It's the seventies and she lives in a very bohemian household. Her parents are always on the periphery. When they're at home, there's an open-door policy and lots of boozy dinners with their eccentric friends, but oftentimes, they're out for indefinite amounts of time and Daphne is mainly left to her own devices.

Ralph enters Daphne's life at an early age. He's a composer and develops a close working relationship with Daphne's novelist father, Edmund. From the moment he lays eyes on her (he around age thirty; she aged nine) he's mesmerized. She glides through life, carefree and loose and when she turns twelve, he seduces her. They continue and delve deeper into their secretive relationship for a few short years. While they're relationship is clearly inappropriate from an outside perspective, Ralph justifies it by claiming a uniquely special bond to only her, even though he also marries and has children with another friend of the family, Nina. Daphne believes she is in love with Ralph and blindly follows his lead.

Jane feels like she doesn't measure up. She constantly compares herself to her friend, Daphne, and comes up short in every respect. She feels to tall, too fat, too bookish in comparison to lithe, golden, exotic Daphne. Early on, she discovers the secret relationship going on between her friend and Ralph and on top of everything feels like a third wheel. She's jealous of the tiny presents he brings her friend and of the attention she receives from him. While she mainly resents Ralph, she also develops complicated feelings of jealousy towards him.

The story bounces around from the seventies to present day and alternates viewpoints by each of the three main characters. We see the story of Ralph and Daphne unfold, then we meet them again in the present day - Ralph in his seventies, dying of cancer, and Daphne and Jane in their early fifties. Time brings new perspectives, unfurls old discoveries and shines a spotlight on these complicated adult/child relationships.

There are a few twists and shocking revelations that definitely keep the plot interesting. Will Ralph get away with the rape of a minor? Does Daphne still hold affection in her heart for Ralph? How does Jane feel now that she and Daphne are adults with children of her own? Only time will tell...