Frog music, by Emma Donoghue

San Francisco in the mid-1870s was a wide-open frontier town.  This novel is based on a true unsolved homicide there although the author, in her first mystery novel, does offer a possible solution.  Blanche Benuon earns her living by performing “leg dances” in a high-end brothel in Chinatown, where she lives with her man, Arthur, and their friend, Ernest.  Arthur and the younger Ernest worked together as a trapeze act in their native France and Blanche had run off with them at the age of fifteen.  After Arthur is injured in a fall, the trio immigrate to America. The two men spend their days gambling (and usually losing) while Blanche brings in money from her dances and from going home with the customers.  In 1876, the city was experiencing an unremitting heat wave and a smallpox epidemic.  It is against this grim background that the novel’s events occur.  Blanche meets Jenny, a cross-dressing young woman who earns her living by catching frogs for the restaurant trade, when Jenny literally runs into her on her “high-wheeler” bike.  Jenny is regularly locked up for the crime of dressing against her sex, but is a cheerful, resilient, and outspoken survivor. Despite this inauspicious first meeting, the two rapidly become friends.  Jenny wonders about the picture of a baby in Blanche’s room and learns that she and Arthur have a child who is nearly one and has been sent to live “on a farm” recommended by the Madam of the brothel where Blanche works.  Jenny’s questions prompt Blanche, who has largely put her child out of her mind, to find out exactly where P’tit (for “Petite Arthur”) is living.  It is horrifying, and P’tit is a malnourished and damaged infant who she snatches up and brings home.  This sets in motion the events that will lead to Jenny’s being shot dead in a shabby rooming house outside of the young city’s limits.  Throughout the book, snatches of popular songs of the time provide another atmospheric dimension to the narrative.  The picture of a raw San Francisco full of gamblers, “bachelor” Chinese who do much of the labor in the city, whores, eccentrics, and disease is fascinating and well-drawn.  Blanche, a woman who enjoys sex, has known no other life, and is rather untroubled by her place in the menage a trois, is awakened by her brief relationship with Jenny.  An interesting and unusual story.  403 pp

The Invaders

The Invaders / Karolina Waclawiak 239 pgs.

Cheryl and Teddy share narrator duties in this book.  Cheryl is "the second wife" who has never really been accepted by the community.  Now her marriage is failing and she is trying to find her way.  Teddy is the spoiled, addicted step son who returns home after being kicked out of college.  The community is an exclusive beach side "resort" area in Connecticut.  Outsiders are showing up to fish and the town busy-body wants to be sure the town is "secure" from the bad element that seems to include anyone that doesn't live there.  On the personal level, Cheryl's marriage is falling apart.  She is alienated from her family and doesn't know what to do.  She basically just asks her husband to love her again...go back to the "good times."  Teddy is a complete mess and after an accident that cripples one of his arms, he is starting to wonder if he fits in anywhere.

This book is interesting and kind of odd.  Cheryl seems to be moving towards a total breakdown, Teddy may have already hit bottom, hard to tell.  An interesting mix of personal story and community story that may mirror real life.

The Turner house

The Turner House / Angela Flournoy 341 pgs.

The Turner family is large, 13 siblings who are all adults now and unable to agree on very much.  The house they grew up in is in a bad part of town and vacant now that matriarch Viola is staying with her oldest son and his wife. Although Viola thinks she will return home, it is obvious that she isn't going to get much better.

I thought the story would be focused on the house but really it is much more about the family and their relationships.  The house is in the background as we learn about Viola's early marriage.  There is some detail of current day of oldest and the youngest of the 13 siblings but everyone is mentioned at one time or another.  I really could not fathom the book being able to feature so many characters but somehow Flournoy fits it all in and makes it something you don't want to put down.

The Gun / Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Allison Markin Powell, 198 pp.

A short, strange, and affecting novel.  Nishikawa, a young university student, happens to stumble across a crime scene and finds himself a gun owner as a result.  The novel tracks his slide into complete obsession with the weapon, to the detriment of his personal relationships, and, ultimately, his sanity.

Told in a disturbingly flat first-person narrative style, Nakamura seems to have hit on something I've talked about with friends but that I don't hear much about in the wider culture: gun love as a form of idolatry.  Frequent uneasy references to American cultural hegemony round out a disturbing, if not entirely pleasurable, read.

Sound Man

Sound Man by Glyn Johns  314 pp.

Music producer and sound engineer Glyn Johns chronicles his career from his start as a teenager through his days of recording such musical giants as The Rolling Stones, Steve Miller Band, The Beatles, The Who, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, The Eagles, Joe Cocker, Led Zeppelin, The Band, Eric Clapton, and an extended Who's Who of the rock music industry. This book is a slow starter and I had trouble keeping interested but Johns soon hits his stride when talking about the musicians and the different methods he used to record them. While I can't say this book is as well done as The Wrecking Crew I still enjoyed reading about the work that went into creating so many of the albums I love. Johns presents his life in an unapologetic and honest way, never denying his mistakes or sugar coating problems that occurred with difficult artists.

Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky

Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky
by Sandra Dallas, 237 pages

The year is 1942.  The bombing of Pearl Harbor is recent history, and America has entered WWII.  Japanese Americans in the U.S. are being treated as second-class citizens.

12-year-old Tomi Itano's father has been taken away by the FBI for no reason other than being Japanese.  Ironically, her father loves America and is proud to have raised his children to be exemplary citizens. Soon Tomi's family is forced to leave their home in California and they are transported to to an inland "relocation" camp in Colorado.  The conditions in the camp are barely habitable - more like a prison than a camp, but Tomi's family insists on maintaining a positive outlook as they wait to hear from her father.  Tomi spends several years in Tallgrass, and time takes its toll on the family.  Will Tomi ever see her father again?  And will years spent imprisoned by the country she loved change her opinion of America?

Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky is the second novel by Sandra Dallas taking place at Tallgrass relocation camp, but offers a different perspective than the other novel - Tallgrass.

This title is a Mark Twain Readers Award Nominee 2016-17.  I look forward to using it as springboard for generating student interest in this piece of America's past.

The book of Aron

The book of Aron / Jim Shepard 259 pgs.

A beautifully written book about an ugly topic.  Aron is a young boy in Poland whose family moves into the Jewish ghetto by the Germans who occupy Poland.  Slowly, his family is taken from him by illness, and labor camps.  He ends up in the orphanage run by Janusz Korczak but the ravages of illness, poverty and over crowding do not make for a lot of comfort.

Aron is a bit strange but is fairly self-sufficient. He joins a gang and helps to support his family with his dealings, ability to steal food and smuggle items.  All of his efforts do not prevent the horrors of the reality.  Things just keep getting worse.

Janusz Korczak is a real person and the story told here is mostly true.  It is horrible and sad and full of lice and illness.  An important work that will bring tears to your eyes.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling, 734 pages

Hey, it's Harry Potter's fourth year at Hogwarts and nefarious deeds are afoot! Dark wizards are causing mayhem at the Quidditch World Cup, and an unknown person has made sure that Harry is chosen for the dangerous Triwizard Tournament, and Harry's pretty sure it's not meant as a treat. This is where the books start to get really grown-up, and I was a bit worried about reading it to my son. But the kid is officially a HP addict: as soon as I closed this one, he ran to the shelf for Book 5. Onward!

Love and Other Foreign Words

Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan 352 pages

Josie Sheridan thinks too much - perhaps that's just a consequence of having a high IQ.  But sometimes over-thinkers dwell on the things that bother them.  Josie is a brilliant 15-year-old taking college classes - struggling to relate to both her college and high school peers.  At home, her family relationship is strained when Kate, her closest sibling, gets engaged to someone Josie can't stand.  And she can't stop thinking - or talking - about it.

Intellectually Josie is an adult, but emotionally still a child - a stubborn one!  She is hilarious and witty (she'll have you laughing out loud), but she has the uncanny ability to make a bad situation worse.  As the year goes on in this story, Josie is able to reconsider some of her opinions about love (among other things) when she begins to finally experience it for herself.

This title is a nominee for the 16-17 Gateway Readers Award for readers grades 9-12.  In my middle school collection I expect it to be popular among my 7th and 8th students.  Students will be recommending this one to each other.

The good house

The good house / Ann Leary, 292 pgs.

Hildy Good is the number one real estate agent in her town, a tony place outside of Boston.  She is related to a women who was persecuted as a witch in Salem.  She is a raging alcoholic but isn't ready to quit when her daughters stage an "intervention."  She is off the sauce for awhile but then decides she can have a little wine at home at night.  As the story goes, you get a good view of the extent of the drinking and the blackouts that make Hildy a bit of a untrustworthy narrator.  She makes friends with a newcomer in town who doesn't know about her trip to Hazelden and makes her a new drinking buddy.  Over a year or so, we see Hildy doing good around town and doing some bad as well.  She is such a part of the town that she is involved in almost everything.  Does the drinking define Hildy?  It is hard to say sometimes.

This book has some funny parts and some sad parts.  I listened to the audio version and it was well read by Mary Beth Hurt.