Defying Stereotypes

In the past couple of months I read two books written by female authors about women who defied the social norms of their time. Even if they didn’t manage to break the glass ceiling, they bypassed it.

The first book, The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is based on the life of Belle da Costa Greene, a historical figure who lived and worked in early to mid-twentieth century in New York.  Belle was the daughter of Richard Theodore Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard University, an activist and lawyer.

At the urging of her mother, Belle takes advantage of her light complexion, changes her name from Belle Marion Greener to Belle da Costa Green and pretends to be of Portuguese ancestry.

Belle, who fell in love with fine arts and old manuscripts under the influence of her dad, grows up to become an expert in the field. When J.P. Morgan is looking to hire a librarian for his personal library, Belle, a young and petite woman, manages to snag the position from many older, more experienced male competitors.

Under the tutelage of her mother, who encourages all her light-skinned children to pass as white, and trains Belle systematically in how to handle delicate situations when her experience, credentials or ancestry are questioned, Belle manages to maneuver the course of her career. She gradually acquires new skills and insights of her own on how to deal with the demanding and capricious J.P. Morgan, and his acrimonious daughter. Belle becomes an expert both in spotting, finding, and authenticating ancient manuscripts, and in bidding on them in auctions, and negotiating sales contracts. So much so that her boss trusts her with huge sums of his money to acquire manuscripts and art for his personal Pierpont Morgan library. Belle does this while being the only woman in a sea of men, and being extra cautious not to accidentally give away her secret of being black.

The storyline is linear and the writing devoid of any humor. The book mainly concerns itself with Belle’s fear of her true identity being revealed, and thus is a tense read. Through her meteoric success as J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, she gets many promotions and is able to provide many necessities and luxuries for her family. However, she knows how very racist Morgan is and if he finds out she’s black he will fire her with no second thought. Not only will she lose her job, but also she will not be able to find another one, because no one will knowingly hire a black woman for any decent job. Thus her family will lose their high lifestyle.

This fear forces her to sign off on the prospect of marriage, because her children might betray her ancestry. It also forces her to develop various coping mechanisms when Morgan pressures her to attend his family parties, concerts and balls. She also cultivates her patience to deal with Morgan when he is extra stressed and extra capricious, and coddling skills when he needs to be comforted. She is such a resourceful and capable woman that even living under these circumstances she manages to have a forbidden affair with someone who has his own secrets to guard.

What I found more interesting than the fictitious book based on a remarkable historical character was the relationship between its two co-authors, discussed at the end of the book. When Marie Benedict, a white lawyer turned novelist, had the idea to write A Personal Librarian, she felt she would benefit from a black woman’s perspective, in character development, racist social attitudes and language of the time. So she approached Victoria Christopher Murray, a black writer, regarding co-writing the book. And “the rest is history” as they say. The two women formed a lasting deep bond, learned from each other, and discovered a lot about their subject.

The Personal Librarian is a historical fiction about an amazing woman who defies the norms of her day and age to become one of the most powerful women of her time.

The second book I read, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, is also about a woman defying the stereotypes of her time. But whereas Belle is a historical character, Elizabeth is ficticious. While The Personal Librarian is a tense read, Lessons in Chemistry is light and funny. And while Belle lies all the time in order to succeed, Elizabeth is a compulsive truth-teller sometimes to her own detriment.

The story is about Elizabeth Zott, a PhD Cnadidate in chemistry at the UCLA in 1950s, who is practically kicked out of the program because she stabs her advisor with a pencil while he was sexually assaulting her. The police doesn’t believe her story. Afterall the advisor is male and a professor, wherease she “just” a girl. 

Later, while working at the Hastings Institute she meets and falls in love with Calvin Evans, a genius and a famous Nobel Prize nominated chemist. A genius daughter is born of their union.

Hastings kicks Elizabeth out because she becomes pregnant out of wedlock. As a last resort she agrees to be the chef on a cooking show. Despite the recommendations and demands of her bosses to wear sexy clothes and fix cocktails at the end of the show, Elizabeth wears trousers or drab dresses. “She looked like a cross between a hotel maid and a bomb-squad expert,” doesn’t fix cocktails and mixes a lot of explanations on the chemistry of ingredients and why and how they interact with each other. This makes her show a hit. She makes women feel intelligent and empowered to learn and do things other than housekeeping. Elizabeth continues to defy the sexist norms of the society, like she’s impervious to them.

There are many secondary characters in Lessons in Chemistry who help or hinder Elizabeth’s trajectory in life. The genius of Garmus is the extreme qualities she convincingly and humorously injects into them. She’s got super-dumb people and super-smart animals. Of the lecherous and abusive husband of Elizabeth’s friend, Harriet, she writes, “Like most stupid people he wasn’t smart enough to know just how stupid he was.”

My favorite by a long shot was Six-Thirty, Elizabeth’s dog, who picks up her has a vocabulary of over 800 words, to whom Elizabeth reads literature all the time, and who picks up her 5-year-old daughter from school every day. Garmus gives the dog human-like abilities and thoughts. It’s absolutely endearing how Six-Thirty refers to Elizabeth’s baby in her mom’s womb as “the creature”, and how he cares for her. “The dog pressed his head against her thigh begging her not to go any further.” Or how he keeps a running commentary on human behaviour: “Humans were strange Six-Thirty thought. The way they constantly battled dirt when they were above ground, but after death willingly entombed themselves in it. At the funeral he couldn’t believe the amount of dirt needed to cover…coffin and when he saw the size of the shovel he’d wondered if he should offer the help of his back legs to cover the hole.”

Bonnie Garmus, who worked as a copywriter for years, is a master of packing punches with language. She’s concise, candid and witty. In an interview with The Guardian she says she was inspired to write the book after a particularly frustrating meeting at the advertising company she worked for, in which she gave a presentation to male colleagues, had her ideas appropriated by one of them, and was put down as a woman to boot. She wrote the first chapter of the book on that very same day!

Lessons in Chemistry is so meaningfully entertaining that despite being a debut novel it was number 1 on the New York Times, Sunday Times and Der Spiegel best-seller lists, has won multiple awards, has been translated into 42 languages, and turned into a TV miniseries of the same name starring Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott.

Intelligence with Severe Attitude

I have to confess I hadn’t heard of Jordan B. Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist, before I started listening to his best-seller, 12 Rules for Life; An Antidote to Chaos. When I told a couple of friends that I was listening to a book by Peterson, they paused, looked at me askance and sounded surprised.

I must say that for the first few chapters I enjoyed listening to Peterson. The book is divided into twelve chapters, each discussing one of the “rules”. The first chapter is about the importance of posture, with some very clever and interesting examples from humans and crustaceans, and parallels between them. One never thinks of posture as an important feature in enhancing the quality of one’s life, but Peterson proves that it is.

The second rule advises you to care for yourself like you’d care for someone who you’re responsible for helping. He compares the way you’d care for your pet, with the way you care for yourself. It’s humorous, but true. We often do take much better care of those we love, pets included, than of ourselves.

And so it goes. The first few rules are entertaining, educational and take a broad view of the “rules” Peterson talks about. Peterson, who has a PhD in clinical psychology, and has researched and taught at Harvard and University of Toronto, uses information from a vast array of sources including biology, psychology, pop culture, literature, history, mythology, fairy tales, religion and politics to support his claims.

As he proceeds through his chapters he starts going on at length through his examples, and only relating them to the rule he’s supposed to be talking about towards the end of the chapter. He has long meandering and scathing criticisms of post-modernism, feminism, socialism, communism, Stalin, Mao and Carl Marx.

Towards the end of the book the reader finds lengthy narratives, that are tied only loosely to the main rule at the end of the chapter. For example the chapter on rule 12, “Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street”, is mostly about Peterson’s daughter’s heart-breaking illness, her multiple surgeries and the agony she and her parents went through. There’s very little about the rule and only at the very tail-end.

In spite of the fact that the main rules Peterson talks about are reasonable and can enhance your life, like for example teach your children social skills but don’t overprotect them, or tell the truth and be precise in your speech, as the book progresses his methods of proof become increasingly sexist, contradictory, religious, didactic and outlandish. He claims that order, logos and consciousness are masculine qualities. Chaos is feminine. Men are pushed to feminize in our society. They shouldn’t be. Men have to toughen up.

Peterson often contradicts his own rules in the book. His rule 9 is “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t”, but his moralizing and lecturing are proof that he thinks he is the know-it-all and the reader is totally ignorant. His rule 10 is “Be precise in your speech”, but his chapters are often circuitous stories.

There are numerous references to the Bible. Adam and Eve, Abel and Cain, direct quotes from the New Testament are liberally used to prove points and arguments. Peterson becomes downright preachy and tells his reader to “Grow up,” or “Have some humility.” And even threatens his readers that if they don’t follow his rule, “You will fail and suffer stupidly and that’ll corrupt your soul.” The reader is prompted to think, “Are you serious?!!”

Peterson’s self-righteous attitude is augmented by his holier-than-thou tone when he reads his book.  Those who read his book, (as opposed to me, who listened to it read by him) will be spared some of his proselytizing manner and might get more out of his considerable expertise and experience.

All in all, I would not recommend listening to 12 Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos. If you’re really keen on knowing what it’s all about, read it. You’ll get much more benefit from his remarkable intelligence and knowledge if you read his book, provided you can stomach his severe sanctimonious attitude.

An Delightful Joyride

It’s for good reason that The Lincoln Highway has made the New York Times best-seller list and sold over a million copies. It’s structure is masterly, its language delightful, and its characters absolutely adorable. 

The story happens over ten days. There is a section for each day. Every section has a few chapters, each told from the point of view of one of the eight main characters.

In 1954 because of his father’s sudden death, eighteen-year-old Emmet gets an early discharge from Salina, the juvenile correctional facility where he’s serving time for manslaughter. He returns home, signs the foreclosure papers for his house and farm, and takes charge of his eight-year-old brother, Billy. The two plan to drive from Nebraska, where they are, to San Francisco to find their mom who walked out on them shortly after Billy was born.

But life gets in the way. Enter Duchess and Woolly, Emmet’s fellow inmates who have run away from Salina, to completely overhaul these plans. They steal Emmet’s car and money and head to New York. So instead of driving west to California, the brothers hitch a ride in empty boxcars on a train headed east to New York City, to reclaim their car and money.

Extra characters are introduced along the way to add layers and entertainment to the story.

The main genius of Amor Towles’s writing is that he gets into the heads of his irrational characters like nobody’s business, so all their idiosyncrasies, blunders, illogical decisions and pure craziness make sense to the reader.

All his characters, even the criminal Duchess, are loveable and multilayered. The conscientious, responsible, soft-hearted Emmet, the manipulative, unhinged, unscrupulous Duchess, the acquiescent, generous, mentally ill Woolly, and the honest, friendly genius, Billy are each convoluted and captivating in their own way. They make the delicious ingredients of the scalding hot soup that is the plot of The Lincoln Highway.

The most entertaining of the additional characters is Ulysses, a homeless veteran and strongman in his mid-forties who is crisscrossing the country in empty cargo boxcars and strikes the most unlikely close friendship with eight-year-old Billy.

Towles’s language is impeccable and at times lyrical. When Woolly goes into his ancestral vacation house his observations are: “Not much had changed in the room since he had been there last. His grandfather’s grandfather clock was still by the window unwound. The piano was still in the corner unplayed. And the books still sat on their shelves unread.”

There’s a generous dollop of humor in almost every chapter. Duchess, who comes from a big city says the following about Morgen, the small town Emmet and Billy live in. “Living in the big city, rushing around amid all the hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. But in a town this size, when a piano falls out of a window and lands on a fellow’s head, there’s a good chance you’ll know why he deserved it.”

In short The Lincoln Highway takes you on an entertaining joyride with three impulsive teenagers and a kid. Many wonderous adventures, unexpected events and hearty laughs later it comes to an end with a final startling twist.

Heart-Squeezing Humor

When I asked my daughter to give me titles for a light read at the cottage, she suggested The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman.

And I can’t thank her enough for it.

It’s a funny, cleverly-written, feel-good and heart-squeezing novel. It’s entertaining but not frivolous.

The story is about Norman, a twelve-year-old boy, who aspires to be a stand-up comedian. He and his best friend are planning to take their two-man show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when they’re 15. There are many obstacles, the most prominent of which is his friend’s sudden death. But with the help of his mother and a few other unexpected allies, nothing can stop Norman.

The book is written alternately from the point of view of Norman, and his thirty-two-year-old mother, Sadie. The two main characters share a number of qualities: they have zero self-esteem, they admire, trust and fiercely love each other.

About two thirds of the book is a road trip in which Leonard, an octogenarian friend of Sadie, drives Sadie and Norman to various cities in England. They search for Norman’s father, and venues with open-mic, where Norman can practice his solo comedy act in preparation for Edinburgh.

They encounter various roadblocks and meet interesting and colorful characters, including Norman’s suspected fathers. The trip culminates in Norman joining a delightful get-together of a few Scottish men on a boathouse. That is the icing on the cake of this delicious novel.

Julietta Henderson makes you fall in love with Norman, Sadie and Leonard, plus a few of the minor characters, (even the Goth girl). She makes you cringe, feel, root and cheer for them.

And boy does she make you laugh!

She has the gift of a unique sense of humor, which she uses brilliantly in this, her debut novel. Her humor is at times just funny, at times sarcastic, exaggerating, understating, jarring and sad.

And I’m not kidding you. Her humor can be sad.

“I swallowed hard, sending a mouthful of words back down unused.”

“Leonard rearranged his bones on the chair, smoothing his trousers…”

“I’d woken white-hot angry every single day…so angry that I couldn’t concentrate on my university course…or even on the tedious task of sucking air in and out of my lungs, which I’d not very seriously considered putting a stop to once or twice.”

“I reckon there should be a different word for that kind of nasty laughing. Naughing, maybe.”

“…so he wouldn’t come across me crying over a mobile phone…Snotty and hiccupping, cushion corner pushed into my mouth to dull the racking sobs…”

In short, I would whole-heartedly recommend this book as a light-hearted, hope-inspiring and soul-warming read.

An Exercise in Imagination

A number of my friends liked The Hidden Keys by Andre Alexis because it takes place in Parkdale. They liked reading about familiar street corners, cafes, bars and even the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. Others enjoyed the book because they found it entertaining.

I found it entertaining in its infrequent funny parts, but overall, I found the plot so contrived and the characters so unrelatable, that had it not been for a book-club, I would have probably not finished it, even though it is a slim volume.

The story is about a twenty-something professional thief, Tancred, who is close friends with a detective, named Daniel. Tancred befriends Willow, a woman who is over fifty and a heroin addict. She convinces Tancred that she is heir to a multi-million-dollar inheritance that her deceased billionaire father has left her and her four siblings, by gifting them each with a unique memento. The mementos contain hidden messages that combined together, are supposed to lead to the hidden treasure. Willow hires Tancred to steal said mementos, so they can figure out the message that leads to the secret inheritance.

You have to give it to Alexis; he has a flowery imagination. I think he probably had a lot of fun thinking up the colorful characters of the billionaire and his five children, Tancred, his close friends and their families, the various dealers, neighbors, eccentric war veterans, artists and others.

But in the humble opinion of this reader Alexis goes overboard with the outlandish details that don’t serve a purpose in the book. His huge cast of kooky characters range in ancestry and race, for no apparent reason, from Armenian to German, British, French, and Lebanese, with two of the main characters being a black man with blue eyes, and an albino who calls himself “nigger”.

Not only are the characters unnecessarily varied and numerous, they are unrelatable, and emotionally non-engaging. The reader doesn’t care what happens to them. Add to that their spurious relationships: there’s a father wanting to distract her junkie daughter from drugs by setting up a convoluted treasure hunt. Tancred and Daniel, who are high-school buddies and close friends, for some reason don’t talk to each other about their jobs, while Daniel is the detective investigating Tancred’s thefts, unbeknownst to both of them.

Many of the details of the plot border on the absurd. The “clues” are artificial and far-fetched, the building that’s supposed to be a fortress is totally sci-fi, and the whole stealing back and forth of the mementos is bizarre.

Although there is a good dose of philosophy, capitalism versus socialism discussion, and ideologically the book seems to criticize capitalism, its very premise is a billionaire playing posthumous games with his children, without which the whole story wouldn’t exist.

What I enjoyed were the occasional hilarious passages. “I don’t know why people don’t worship chance. It’s as powerful as any of the gods and it doesn’t need money, doesn’t punish, doesn’t care what you eat on Friday. I’m not a believer, but if I was going to be, I’d worship chance. You could have churches that look like dice.”

“And having brewed a pot of lapsang souchong – the smell of it like a damp dog by a dead campfire – he brought…”

This is not a book I’d recommend. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t enjoy it.