Behold the Dreamers

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, 382 pages.

Jende Jonga is able to come to the United States from Limbe, Cameroon, thanks to his cousin Winston. And thanks to Winston, Jende lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior exec at Lehman Brothers (pre-2008 crash). Nene, Jende's wife eventually works temporarily for Edwards's wife Cindy, and because of this the Jenga's situation improves but they also have a front-row seat to the unraveling of the Edwards's household.

Mbue does a wonderful job of portraying all of her characters sympathetically.

Commonwealth

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, 322 pages.

An engaging novel of family love and family dysfunction. The book starts with the parents, Bert and Theresa, and Fix and Beverly out in Los Angeles. Bert is a prosecuting attorney and Fix is a cop. Bert and Theresa have three children with the fourth on the way. Franny, whose christening is the setting for the beginning of the novel, and Caroline are the two children of Fix and Beverly. Bert crashes the christening, drunkenly kisses Beverly and the lives of the adults and all of the children (including the yet-to-be born Albie) are altered. The six children spend feral summers at Bert and Beverly's new home in Virginia, drinking gin and running around with Bert's gun. Tragedy finds them, and everyone spends the rest of their lives dealing with that.

Well narrated by Hope Davis.

Stolen Beauty

Stolen Beauty by Laurie Lico Albanese, 302 pages.

The parallel stories in this novel follow Adele Bloch-Bauer and Maria Altmann, two actual Austrian women, aunt and niece, through their lives, especially exploring their strength as women, and how their lives were intertwined with the paintings of Gustav Klimt. Adele, who lived in Vienna from 1862-1925, sat for two portraits by Klimt, and was the model for his portrait of the Biblical heroine Judith. Lico Albanese portrays Bloch-Bauer as an exceedingly gifted woman who struggles to maintain her ideals, identity, and passion during a time when all three of these could be taken from a woman. Her niece, Altmann, as a Jew in post-Anschuluss Vienna struggles with a much more concrete set of threats. She must keep her wits about her as she attempts to win her husband's release from Dachau and find a way for them both to get out of Austria.

Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray

Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray by Alan Fishbone, 100 pages.

I think this book was written with a younger reader in mind, maybe for someone who hasn't encountered Hunter Thompson, Robert Pirsig, or even Sonny Barger. It is interesting in parts, there are stories of the author's feelings about the classics (the back cover tells us that he has a Masters in Philosophy in Classics from Colombia), about his adventures in Venezuela, his adventures and misadventures on motorcycles, and his adventures with a couple of women. He doesn't delve too deeply into studying the classics, or really much beyond some quotations and some exploration of the relative merits of Plato and Diogenes. It's 100 pages long, it's kind of narcissistic, but the style is engaging and it moves along quickly.