Sara Rauch

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Book Review: ‘Right after the Weather’ By Carol Anshaw

Right after the Weather, Carol Anshaw’s fifth book, opens in a warehouse in Chicago, where Cate, a forty-something set designer, searches for the perfect desk to “pump up the visuals” of the play she’s currently working on, a play that, in her colleague’s words, “sucks.”

This moment sets the scene for what plays out over the course of the novel. Cate is good at her job, and has stayed in the profession as her “cohort of theater friends… came and went along”—getting married and having children and acquiring steady jobs. She has a nice-enough apartment, though her ex-husband is currently camped out in her spare bedroom recovering from a breakup by obsessing over conspiracy theories. She’s dating a woman she really wants to be “the one” despite the obvious warning signs, and attempting—unsuccessfully—to disentangle herself from an ongoing love affair. All of which is to say, she knows she’s adrift and each effort to anchor herself only pushes her further adrift.

The one sturdy thing in Cate’s life is her long-time friendship with Neale. Neale is beautiful, and sweet, and Cate adores her. So when Cate walks into Neale’s home one afternoon to pick her up for yoga class and discovers a couple of local drug addicts assaulting Neale, the resulting violence irrevocably alters both of their lives, as well as their friendship.

Because fate is as kind as it is cruel, the assault occurs in the same breath as Cate being selected by two lesbian playwrights to put up the set for their next New York show. This unexpected coup has the potential to finally launch Cate’s career—but it also provides an emotional (and physical) escape from the trauma she and Neale lived through in Chicago. Though it is her “big break,” the event and the resulting time away echo Cate’s inability to resolve anything in her life. When she wakes the morning after the assault, “She understands she has arrived on another side of everything. No one is over here with her.” What she claims to want and what she pursues remain at odds.

Set in late 2016 through early 2017, Right after the Weather captures a world in midst of crisis. Politics play a role in the book, along the edges—these characters are upset about the recent election, they worry about the turns the world might take—they are aware that the easy lives they have long led are under threat.

But the novel isn’t about politics, not really. It is about the psychology of ordinary people who are put through extraordinary circumstances. Anshaw’s sentences are beautiful, and her characters are complex; the plot builds towards a slow climax, which then falls into a slow spin and a somewhat abrupt finale. Anshaw’s meticulous attention to the quiet, inevitable impact of the assault on Cate’s life and her friendship with Neale’s gives Right after the Weather its main drive. But despite her best intentions, Cate cannot alter the course that fate has set her on.

Right after the Weather is a sensuous and layered book. Though its pacing is subtle, Anshaw is a deft writer and her details are insightful, intelligent, astute, and subtly humorous. Cate—who may seem hapless to some—perhaps merely lacks the insight to see that the artistic, if sometimes aimless, course of her life is actually a beautiful meander. She remains true to herself, even when it looks ridiculous to those around her. In the final scene, a ripple of an epiphany blows through her—not enough to change her, but perhaps enough to allow her to see she’s doing just fine.

Right after the Weather
By Carol Anshaw
Atria Books
Hardcover, 9781476747798, 272 pp.
October 2019

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Book Review: “Patsy” by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Patsy, the title character in Nicole Dennis-Benn’s exemplary second novel, yearns for one thing in the book’s opening pages: an American visa. Her best friend and lover, Cicely, long ago disappeared there, resurfacing in letters that promise a new life, a fresh start, and freedom. And though Patsy is a mother to a little girl, Tru, she desires nothing more than to escape the stifling life of Pennyfield, Jamaica, alone.

But the American dream that Cicely speaks of is far from the reality Patsy finds when she arrives in New York City on a temporary visa. Cicely has not exactly been forthcoming about the truth of her life: she has a son by her abusive, racist husband, and that tie, unlike Patsy’s own to her daughter, is enough to keep Cicely emotionally captive. Patsy’s fantasies of a new life with Cicely quickly dissolve, leaving her alone in an unfamiliar city, without documentation, without money, without community.

Depression threatens to subsume her, but she quickly discovers that as an immigrant, with no access to benefits or a safety net, allowing the “Devil’s cold” to take over will cost her livelihood. Thus begins her life in New York City, first as a bathroom attendant, then as a house cleaner, and ultimately, ironically, as a nanny.

Meanwhile, Tru, Patsy’s daughter, finds herself adrift amid her new life with her father and step family—a new mother and brothers she hadn’t previously known. She misses her mother and tries to follow her imperative to “be a good girl,” though as the years pass, this promise becomes harder and harder to keep. Tru finds solace in excelling at school and in soccer matches with the neighborhood boys. She’s whip-smart and sharp-tongued, refreshingly rebellious and centered as a teenager. Despite her occasionally self-destructive actions, Tru is able to embrace her sexuality and imagine a way out of a culture that doesn’t understand who she is—a hope that helps her navigate the rough waters of her life.

Patsy spans approximately ten years—from 1998 to 2008—and runs the gamut of undocumented immigrant experience: culture shock, indignity, loneliness, confusion, fear, regret, and eventually, uneasy acceptance. Dennis-Benn strives for an authentic portrayal, giving Patsy a distinct voice and emotionality as she grapples with the decisions she’s been forced to make.

Patsy, despite her struggles, can be difficult to empathize with, perhaps in part because of her seemingly careless abandonment of Tru. While there is no imperative for a mother to love her child, and while the idea of Patsy not feeling cut out for motherhood is well established, her break remains incomplete—encased in a sometimes baffling silence. (Indeed, one of the most heartbreaking elements of Patsy’s story is that despite her bravery in fleeing a place where she feels she has no voice, she finds herself even more invisible in America.)  As the story progresses, however, it digs into the meat of Patsy’s past, exposing the constrictions placed upon working-class women in Jamaica. As the years pass, Patsy’s feelings about the life she left behind move away from ambivalence, toward reckoning, and ultimately, redemption.

Of course, Patsy’s not the only character in the book whose behavior pushes the boundaries of sympathy. Most, if not all, of the women in Patsy are forced up against their limits. If they often behave in incomprehensible ways, and say unkind things, and refuse to see one another for who they are; if they, ironically, refuse to recognize the desperation they all (sometimes ungracefully) face, then it’s hard not to blame their behavior on the circumstances of poverty and patriarchy and expectation.

Though Patsy gets off to slow start and loses momentum towards its finish, the bulk of the novel is compelling. As Patsy’s story unfolds, it gains poignancy, finding a steadiness of heart. Tru’s sections shine throughout, pushing as they do to understand a child’s sense of loss, loneliness, and otherness. Dennis-Benn has an eye for detail and ear for dialogue, and she does not shy away from confronting the brutal reality that immigrants face in a place like New York City. As the narrative winds to a close, Patsy may be no closer to her dream of American citizenship, but she may be closer to the freedom of spirit she’s been looking for all along.

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Book Review: ‘Paper is White’ by Hilary Zaid

Set in the late 1990s in the Bay Area, Hilary Zaid’s debut novel, Paper Is White, follows Ellen Margolis, assistant curator at the Foundation for the Preservation of Memory, as she navigates the choppy waters of history, kicked up by two very intense and very important personal involvements. The novel opens with an Indian tale in the place of an epigraph,  about a woman who knows a story and a song, but refuses to give voice to either. The story and song tire of never being let out, and so betray the woman by shifting shape into men’s shoes and coat, thus provoking her husband’s anger at her unfaithfulness. It’s an apt metaphor for Paper Is White, a book that seeks to give voice to the stories that some would prefer remain unspoken.

Ellen is one of those people for whom ghosts are as real as the living—she is haunted by her late grandmother, and by her past relationships, even by attractions she only lives out in her head—the boundaries between past and present are as flimsy as air for her. The novel twines two stories together: opening the night Ellen and her fiancée, Francine, announce their engagement to Ellen’s best friend, which just so happens to be the night Ellen receives a mysterious phone call from one of the Foundation’s clients, Anya, a cunning and secretive Holocaust survivor with an unusual story to tell. Getting her to tell it, though, proves daunting.

Rules are made to be broken in Paper Is White, and Ellen, who should maintain a professional boundary with Anya, decides instead to follow a long, twisting path into territory where few have ventured. Despite knowing better, Ellen keeps her involvement with Anya a secret, fearing the repercussions from her boss and from Francine. She also, throughout most of the book, keeps her engagement to Francine under wraps, revealing it only when necessary, and often meeting with confusion or negativity, even from those she loves. This is, after all, the decade of DOMA, well before gay marriage had legal clout anywhere in the US. Not to spoil the ending, but once arrived, all the fear, all the worry, has been for naught. Ellen gets her happy ending, as happy as any can be when faced with the reality of a brutal world.

Francine, as the counterfoil to Ellen’s restlessness and seeking, is placid, observant, a model of patience. She’s the rock to Ellen’s water, never wavering. Even when her mother, Betty, up and disappears halfway through the book, Francine holds it together. Ellen, on the other hand, nearly falls apart. The other characters in the book—and there are many—bring levity, philosophy, clues, intrigue, and mystery. There’s a lot going on in Paper Is White, and the multiplicity of voices adds much to the narrative.

Zaid’s book is brave, and original, and does a wonderful job of bringing the 1990s to life. Paper Is White is compelling, and if the characters are occasionally too reticent, there’s a sense that this attitude is integral to the telling of this story. Forgotten histories—whether they are willfully forgotten, repressed, or silenced due to trauma—are subject to much scrutiny here, and who can blame the cast for wanting to hide? Even the bravest among us might turn away from this type of exposure. Betty, before she leaves, poses this to Ellen: “’Do you really think it’s possible…for people to tell the truth about their lives?’” Ellen is shocked by the question, especially given her line of work, but she’s perhaps more vulnerable to the follow up: “’Not to you, dear… To themselves.’” This question might be the driving force of Paper Is White. Ellen’s relentless pursuit of the truth keeps the novel’s pages turning, keeps the reader wondering what else remains in the depths. In the end, Zaid offers a number of insights on what we give words to, and what we consign to the silence of history, making this a memorable (pun fully intended) read.

 

 

Paper is White
By Hilary Zaid
Bywater Books
Paperback, 9781612941134, 312 pp.
March 2018

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Book Review: ‘The Evolution of Love’ by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Lucy Jane Bledsoe’s new novel, The Evolution of Love, brims with energy. In the opening scene, our protagonist, Lily Jones, walks west toward the San Francisco Bay Area, after flying in to Sacramento from Nebraska, in search of her older sister, Vicky. There’s been a devastating earthquake, and the region has been evacuated, but not everyone has left, and Lily, sweet, stable, dependable Lily, is hellbent on rescuing her sister, even if she has no idea if she’s still alive, even against her husband’s wishes.

As she navigates the broken freeway, she comes across two abandoned pit bulls eating the dead driver of a sports car. When Lily vomits, the dogs abandon the body to lap it up, forcing Lily to seek refuge in the back of a Fed Ex truck, where she locks herself in for the night. This squeamish, if realistic, moment is a good first look at Lily’s mettle. She might have married her high school sweetheart and settled down in the town she grew up in, but she’s no shrinking violet. She might claim finding Vicky as her reason for undertaking this ill-advised adventure, but it soon becomes clear that she has an agenda all her own.

The Evolution of Love features a number of intersecting plotlines and an intriguing cast of disparate characters. Bledsoe writes this strange new world with a confidence that the reader can trust, even if the occasional practical or logistical question does interfere (Where is the Red Cross? FEMA trailers? Perhaps these are the same questions those on the ground are asking), and while the shattered communities of Berkeley and Oakland are fascinating, the true heart of the novel lies among its characters. Lily—perhaps because she’s an outsider, perhaps because of naivete, or perhaps merely because of some invisible, privileged magnetism—draws a fast crowd of followers. There’s Kalisha, the ex-philosophy PhD and ex-addict, who runs the community meals program at Trinity Church where Lily first turns up and unwittingly gets herself a job. There are Annie and Binky, two homeless teenagers desperate for safety and affection. Then there’s Sal, Vicky’s hyena expert estranged ex-girlfriend, and Wesley, a grieving blogger who buys Vicky’s Harley but never leaves Lily’s thoughts. Last but not least is Travis, Lily’s longtime pen-pal and bonobo expert, recently returned to Berkeley after a tragic incident on the Congolese sanctuary where he’d worked for 20 years. Only Vicky remains aloof, keeping Lily at arm’s length, despite (or perhaps because of) Lily’s repeated pleas to make haste.

As the story unfolds, alliances are formed and shift, violence brews, secrets are revealed, betrayals shake longstanding relationships, aftershocks rattle the city, factions form, and characters die. (It’s a testament to Bledsoe’s skill as a writer that by capturing the disturbing ways that people die, she manages to pull heartstrings without resorting to sentimentality. Death is a fact of life here, and Lily and crew mourn in their specific, human ways.) Bledsoe strikes a deft balance between the personal and the political throughout the novel—one of its many strengths is how deeply we are brought to care about Lily and her crew’s fate by being forced to confront the brokenness of a world that looks—very eerily—like the one we currently inhabit.

Ultimately, The Evolution of Love is about love and community triumphing in the face of disaster. As Lily and friends finally head east following a second earthquake, the novel echoes Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang, without the ecoterrorism (no need, Mother Nature’s taken care of it). It’s a necessary journey, though temporary, because like it or not, Berkeley is home. This unlikely band of misfits might not get it all right, but they’ve proven themselves brave enough, and crazy enough, to fight for the world they believe in building, and for each other.

 

The Evolution of Love
By Lucy Jane Bledsoe
Rare Bird Books
Paperback, 9781945572838, 280 pp.
May 2018

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Book Review: ‘When Katie Met Cassidy’ by Camille Perri

Block an afternoon out of your schedule, grab a copy of Camille Perri’s new novel, When Katie Met Cassidy, and get ready to laugh, cry, and rediscover your faith in romance. This romantic comedy follows twenty-something Katie—a born and bred Kentuckian now living in New York City whose hipster fiancé has just left her for her closest friend—and Cassidy, a suave native New Yorker—as they meet, resist each other, and eventually, succumb to love’s spell. Here’s the catch: Katie is straight (or is she?)

Katie and Cassidy are both attorneys, and they meet as opposing counsel during a closing, but their similarities end right about there. Katie is a blonde-haired-blue-eyed embodiment of traditional Southern values; she’s a rule-follower who doesn’t even recognize Cassidy as female upon first sight. She’s freshly heartbroken, and on the rebound, and wears Dior shoes and little black dresses. Cassidy wears (perfectly tailored) men’s suits, has a snarky sidekick, and spends most of her free time at a lesbian bar called Metropolis, where she’s slept with most of the patrons. But when they run into each other again, on a street in the West Village, Cassidy’s invitation for a drink comes from a place of both habit and intrigue: Katie might be the ultimate “hard-to-get” girl.

When Katie Met Cassidy follows standard rom-com tropes and standard gay-girl-meets-straight-girl tropes, but Perri’s clean writing style and superb wit carry the book beyond the usual and into something laugh-out-loud funny, sincere, and fresh. As Katie begins to question her sexuality and Cassidy begins to question her love-life habits, they reveal themselves as imperfect, fumbling people, and their real-ness gives the book what it needs to really shine. Take for example, a scene between the two on a weekend getaway to a horse ranch upstate. Cassidy has been mistaken for a man, and neither correct the unaware party. Later, Katie asks, “Does it bother you?… When people call you ‘sir’?” Cassidy replies, “Not really does it bother you?” Katie deflects the question with, “Do you wish you were a man?” When Cassidy ups the ante with “Would you rather I were a man?” Katie responds with, simply, “I don’t know.” The scene moves on in to tender territory, neither truly addressing the huge issues posed, leaving tension hanging in the air. There’s so much at stake for these two women, and yet they willingly put off dealing with the ramifications of their actions. Sounds like true love, right?

Beyond its likeable protagonists, When Katie Met Cassidy draws a rich portrait of the lesbian community: these women are each other’s chosen family, and the Metropolis (fondly known as the Met) is their chosen meeting place—it may be a bar with a sticky floor and graffiti-covered bathroom stalls, but it is also a place where women-loving-women feel safe, and thus a place they can truly inhabit. Even Katie, who doesn’t know what the concept “femme” means, is welcomed with gusto upon her first visit. In an unexpected plot twist, the Met falls to corporate/gentrifying forces, throwing the entire community into a deep funk.

The deeper funk that visits Cassidy and Katie when the requisite miscommunication befalls them causes Cassidy to question her longstanding Lothario ways—it is in these moments, with the demise of her corner bar and the possibility of losing the girl she loves, that Cassidy decides the life she’s been living is unsustainable. She wants to grow up and be a committed adult—finally. Both Cassidy and Katie struggle to follow their heart’s desires into unexpected realms, and this parallel drives the novel toward its inevitable conclusion.

The book leaves some ends untied: Katie’s coming-out letter to her mother is unanswered, and the Epilogue—which includes a cool twist on the old U-haul joke—comes only a few weeks after Cassidy brings home a stranger in a preemptive attempt to get over Katie. But this too feels like a smart choice on Perri’s part. Will Katie and Cassidy be together forever? There’s no way to know, but one can, as all the best romances elicit, hope.

 

When Katie Met Cassidy
By Camille Perri
P. Putnam’s Sons
Hardcover, 9780735212817, 304 pp.
June 2018

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Book Review: ‘Black Wave’ by Michelle Tea

What if the world had ended in 1999? How would the story of your life have changed?

In Michelle Tea’s newest book, Black Wave, this is the case: as 1999 progresses, the state of the declining world moves rapidly toward decimation. The narrator, Michelle—a hard-partying, drink and drug-loving, San Franciscan lesbian writer—decides it’s time to get out of dodge, and announces her plan to move to Los Angeles. Her friends don’t believe her, but Michelle lives up to her promise—after a few more binges and a few more kisses— convincing a lover to rent a U-haul and drive her south.

Once Michelle arrives in LA, a couple things happen. The stitching of this piece of fiction unravels, revealing a meta-glimpse into Michelle’s awareness as both writer and narrator. The story you’ve relaxed into becomes, well, not real. As a reader, you wonder, does it matter? Is that not the pact you agree to each time you pick up a novel? But it does matter in Black Wave because this is a story about consciously choosing to tell a story instead of the truth. The other thing that happens, equally integral to this convincing dystopia, is that global warming peaks. From the squalid solitude of her new apartment, Michelle watches the televised beginning of the end. Suicides abound. Everyone knows they don’t have much time, but no one knows how much. The uncertainty gets to most, but not to Michelle, whose survivalist instinct kicks in. Michelle quits drinking, takes over the ownership of the used bookstore where she worked, finally has dinner with her brother. The “dreams” that become a new sort of addiction for the remaining population do not convince Michelle to abandon her reality—instead, she learns to enjoy her new life, however little there is left of it.

You might recognize this Michelle, if you’ve read Valencia, but then again, you might not. That’s one of the unsettling beauties of Black Wave—the meta-narrative weaves fiction with nonfiction, living by its own set of rules. Here what is true and what is created blend, blurring the lines into something bigger. Is this a story about a broken heart? Is it a story about the end of the world? Is it a story about recovery? Is it a coming-of-age story? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. And it’s more too—Black Wave is about queer subculture and the importance of storytelling, and it’s an existential meditation on the consequences of choice.

If you know Michelle Tea’s writing, you know that her work is energetic, gritty, self-aware, and totally unflinching—in these regards, Black Wave does not disappoint. If you are new to Tea’s writing, Black Wave is as good a place to start as any—in many respects, the book is a necessary companion to Tea’s earlier memoirs—diving right in to the heady waters of being a queer feminist writer.

Michelle says of the girls she meets while teaching workshops: “She wanted to free them all, all the girl writers. Girls needed to tell the truth about what the fuck was going on in this world. It was bad.” Only a book like Black Wave could get away with such a profound meta moment—and there is a sense of reverent freedom in these pages. Stripped of the tyranny of having to tell the truth, Black Wave is a dreamy apocalypse novel, and a fine exploration of how fiction and nonfiction live side by side.

Black Wave
By Michelle Tea
Feminist Press
Paperback, 9781558619395, 336 pp.

– See more at: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/08/28/black-wave-by-michelle-tea/#sthash.7eC63jGK.dpuf

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Book Review: ‘The Cosmopolitans’ by Sarah Schulman

Welcome to 10th Street, Greenwich Village, 1958. This is New York City on the cusp of a new modernity: marketing, brands, and television are ushering in the commercial age, and Sarah Schulman’s latest novel, The Cosmopolitans, is set right in the thick of it.

The Cosmopolitans opens with Bette, a white secretary exiled from her Midwestern family, watching the world outside her second-story apartment the way others do movies. Life teems below, and Bette—single, in her 50s, nurturing a longstanding unrequited love—is keen to it all, creating stories to fit upon her neighbors and passersby. As Bette watches, she waits for Earl—a black, gay actor, and her only friend—to return from his day at the slaughterhouse. The Cosmopolitans’ begins by painting an idyllic portrait of friendship between Bette and Earl, two misfits who have found each other in a world that barely notices them. For thirty years, Bette and Earl have been each other’s rock.

But this hard-won relationship is very soon shaken by Hortense—the daughter of Bette’s former lover, Frederick, and her cousin, Crevelle—whose unexpected appearance at first promises a new sort of family, but eventually threatens all that Bette holds dear.

Hortense is herself an outcast (or so she claims), an actress with big-city dreams and the misguided, self-absorbed drive (and money) to achieve them. Hortense, in her (sometimes not-so) ingenuous way, becomes the harbinger of enormous upheaval in Bette and Earl’s lives—crashing the past together with the future, leaving no character unaltered—when she lures Earl into an ill-fated relationship.

Schulman pays homage to Balzac’s Cousin Bette with her plot, but The Cosmopolitans is very much of its own era, using her characters to deftly examine through the cultural, political, and social mores of the late 1950s. The prose is erudite, capturing the essence of New York City’s intensity, finger on the pulse of change. In a fantastic side plot, the advertising firm Bette works for dips their toes into television commercials, finding almost too much success for their own good. The tv subplot fits perfectly with the book’s overarching themes of illusion and disillusion, delusion and desire.

Early on, Earl—desperate for love—says, “I want the truth to not be true”; perfect words for the ache of the human condition that infuses The Cosmopolitans. Loneliness is an animal that both Bette and Earl wrestle, though their ways of combatting this monster are very different. Romantics to the core, Bette and Earl are perhaps on the verge of becoming relics, each so caught up in their own yearnings that the truth becomes secondary. Bette rejects the television that her colleague has delivered, pining instead for her quiet evenings with Earl, while Earl casts Bette off in hopes of love, acceptance, and “normalcy.” In the end, Bette, whose constitution and intelligence proves strongest, surprises everyone with her meticulous and wily plans.

With the birth of commercial advertisements looming, the characters in The Cosmopolitans learn the hard way that not everything is what it promises to be. Plot twists keep the pages turning until the very last, and the cast of characters are engaging—unusual in the most refreshing ways. Sarah Schulman has given us a finely tuned, clever, and remarkably contemporary historical novel.

– See more at: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/04/14/the-cosmopolitans-by-sarah-schulman/#sthash.UnOCs6PL.dpuf