Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Published by Simon & Schuster on November 28, 2023

Alice, Sadie, and Celine is a study of the three women who lend their names to the novel’s title. Celine McKeogh is a “decorated feminist” who teaches gender studies at Berkeley. Her daughter Sadie learned to hate Celine during her childhood because so many people hate Celine that hating her made Sadie feel normal. Celine is angry at Sadie because Sadie isn’t angry at men. “Well, you should be,” Celine assures her daughter. Sadie is too busy being angry at her mother to spare any time for men, apart from a recently acquired boyfriend who needs some alterations (“shorten the sincerity and let out the sex appeal”). But Sadie at 23 is still a virgin and uncertain that she can rid herself of that affliction.

Sadie’s best childhood friend was and remains Alice, although a rift has separated them ever since Alice moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Alice is back in San Francisco to act in a community playhouse version of A Winter’s Tale. The venue is unimpressive but Alice notes with pride that the acting company received four stars on Yelp. Perhaps because she made a promise to spend the weekend with her boyfriend or perhaps because she is angry at Alice, Sadie sends Celine in her stead to watch Alice’s performance on opening night.

Celine is unhappy to be drafted into service but Celine is unhappy about everything. Although she has never taken Alice seriously, Celine is overcome by a sudden onrush of lust when she sees Alice playing the role of Hermione in tight jeans. Celine makes a move on Alice, who is too stunned to resist. Soon embraced by lustful desires of her own, Alice begins a clandestine relationship with Celine. Will it be a friendship destroyer when Sadie learns the truth?

Backstories follow, developing the childhoods of Sadie and Alice and the adulthood of Celine. It is easy to understand why Alice and Sadie bonded as kids. Alice had minimal interaction with her own mother and envied Sadie for having a mother who fought with her constantly. Alice grew up in a comfortable home but she “felt the house like a snake feels the fraying skin — shiny scales gone lusterless, old iridescence — that it is past time to molt.”

Sadie envies Alice for knowing “so much about men. You’re a man whisperer.” Sadie is a planner but because life interferes with plans, Sadie “lived a life of fictive imaginings.” In the present, we learn how Sadie’s plan to lose her virginity goes awry, probably because she read her mother’s first book and believes that sex with males is always coercive, notwithstanding her decision to date the least coercive guy imaginable.

Alice is “generous and kind, agreeable, pretty, adored by all.” But does she have any substance? It isn’t surprising that after her lust abates, Celine realizes she has allowed herself to become “madly infatuated with a nobody.”

Celine is the most interesting character. At 44, her academic career is stuck. Her early work has suffered from the plague of widespread acceptance. Ideas that were once radical have become mainstream, robbing her of her relevance. In middle age, Celine cannot even scandalize her own daughter. Celine has responded to her circumstances by developing “a remarkable ability to sniff out happiness and stifle it like a fire extinguisher.” It’s no wonder that she’s widely disliked by all, although she does have a certain charm that shines through her self-centered demeanor.

The novel takes a long jump into the future as it winds up the story, featuring the child of a main character. We learn that the main characters learned some lessons. Good for them. The child, on the other hand, is judgmental and still has much to learn. Maybe the point of jumping ahead (which otherwise baffled me a bit) is to demonstrate that each new generation has a lot to learn before it is qualified to judge members of the previous generation. Or perhaps the point is to show that some adults still need to grow up, regardless of age.

Sara Blakley-Cartwright’s story is amusing because her characters adhere closely to stereotypes. Celine is a caricature of a woman who became an influential feminist in an era where feminist scholarship was trying to establish its relevance in academia and who cannot easily cope with the loss of attention she experienced when gender studies moved beyond her early contribution.

Celine’s relationship with Sadie is anchored in the stereotype of mother-daughter relationships involving mothers who want to be admired more than loved by their daughters and stunted daughters who, fighting to reject maternal advice they may have already internalized, want to be accepted more than guided by their mothers. Alice represents the stereotype of a pretty girl who aspires to be an actress and, having given little thought to her life, is surprised but unprepared when she encounters new ideas and experiences.

I don’t know if the story intends to satirize porn, but sex with a best friend’s MILF, coupled with a lesbian twist, seems to merge multiple Pornhub categories. Perhaps the story is meant to titillate, although (unlike Pornhub) the sex is far from graphic. The plot doesn’t amount to much —a disappointment to readers who can’t live without a thrilling plot — but it is a reliable vehicle to ferry the characters through the novel. Blakley-Cartwright’s observant prose exposes the characters’ foibles and pokes good-natured fun at the social groups they represent. Alice Sadie Celine is an easy book to enjoy.

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Iwo, 26 Charlie by P.T. Deutermann

Published by ‎ St. Martin's Press on November 28, 2023

P.T. ‎Deutermann’s recent novels have been working their way through the Pacific War. This one showcases the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. The protagonist is Lee Bishop, a naval lieutenant assigned to a destroyer. His job is to communicate with spotters on the island and to translate the coordinates they provide into firing solutions. Being the military, information provided by spotters goes through layers of bureaucracy before orders to fire are finally given. The delay endangers Marines who need immediate support. Bishop comes up with a plan to replace multiple competing grids with a single grid. The plan will streamline the process and save American lives.

Unfortunately for Bishop, he is sent to Iwo Jima to explain and test his plan. He’s given the job of a spotter, a job that most Marines don’t survive for more than 24 hours before a sniper puts an end to their spotting. Three Marines who have become known as the Goon Squad are assigned to keep him alive. Bishop is a mere naval lieutenant and not a Marine, but they bond anyway. Bonding becomes easier after they repeatedly save each other’s lives.

Bishop proves that his idea is effective. It’s so effective that he’s repeatedly sent into the field on new missions. He saves countless lives by calling in strikes on Japanese positions, devising ways to get the right shells to land on the right targets.

The missions are harrowing. Nobody writes combat scenes with more voltage than Deutermann. If it is improbable that one man can do as much damage as Bishop causes, Deutermann sold me on believing in the possibility of unlikely heroism.

It’s amusing that Bishop reviles the Japanese because they use sneaky tactics and fight to the death as he finds sneaky ways to outfight the Japanese and praises Marines for fighting to the death. Such is the logic of war. I can’t fault Deutermann for portraying that logic as it appears to combatants.

Apart from holding widely shared opinions (like other soldiers and sailors in Deutermann’s recent novels, Bishop hates everything about the Japanese), Bishop doesn’t have much of a personality. He’s dutiful and friendly and brave, but he isn’t developed with the same depth as the protagonists in some of Deutermann’s other novels. To the extent that his personality comes through, Bishop reveals it in an epilog when we learn that he has not gotten over the trauma he endured on Iwo Jima. The epilog is genuinely moving. It also takes an honest look at the difficult cost-benefit value of crippling three divisions of Marines to capture a single island.

Even if Bishop is a bit bland, this novel doesn’t need to rely on characterization for its success. Deutermann excels at bringing the reader into a battlefield. The carnage of war, the relentless fear that an attack is imminent, the hope of survival, the odor of fuel and sweat and decaying bodies (and sulfur in the case of Iwo Jima), the deafening noise of artillery, all contribute to growing tension as the reader follows Bishop and hopes that, against all odds, he will complete his missions and survive intact. I don’t go out of my way to read war novels, but I am never disappointed by P.T. Deutermann’s stories about World War II.

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Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

First published in 1927; published by Penguin Vitae on November 14, 2023

Death Comes for the Archbishop tells the story of Jean Marie Latour, a French priest who served for ten years as a missionary in Ohio before the Vatican made him a Bishop and assigned him to the western territory that the US acquired from Mexico. The story follows Latour from his arrival in Santa Fe to his death as an Archbishop. The novel’s copyright expired this year, which likely explains Penguin’s decision to reissue it, though Penguin claims to be doing so to celebrate Willa Cather’s 150th birthday. Regardless of motivation, Cather was a remarkable writer and any effort to keep her work in print is worthy of celebration.

In Santa Fe, Latour takes charge of a diocese with unknown boundaries. After the US creates the states of New Mexico and Arizona, Latour’s jurisdiction extends to both, although he will need to negotiate with Mexican bishops to the extent that political boundaries divide existing parishes. Conferring over distances of thousands of miles is no easy task when telegraph wires remain to be strung and travel must be accomplished on horseback. Latour’s diocese later expands to the Colorado Rockies when the gold rush inflates the population. The prospectors have plenty of saloons and gambling rooms but no priests.

Joseph Vaillant, another Frenchman, has been Latour’s best friend since their days in the seminary. He joins Latour as a reliable ally. Vaillant prefers Tucson to Santa Fe, but he feels his true mission is to find distant communities that priests never visit. Vaillant wishes to convert Indians and restore religious teachings to Mexican Catholics who can’t quite remember what they are supposed to believe, apart from veneration of the Virgin Mary.

Vaillant does not suffer from the sin of pride; he is as comfortable with the poor and uneducated as he is with the Cardinals in Rome. Unlike the more reticent Latour, Vaillant is built for the life of a missionary. He eventually takes on Colorado as his most challenging assignment.

The story provides a clear-headed and amusing look at priests in the wild West. Some are pious, some are gamblers or drinkers, some have left a trail of pregnant women across their parish, some are outright thieves who betray parishioners (most of whom are Mexicans or Native Americans) to acquire their land. Latour and Vaillant are pious and devoted to their faith, making it their duty to clean house, albeit cautiously.

While some of the priests under Latour’s command are not particularly interested in maintaining their vows of poverty or chastity, one priest suggests that the local priesthood represents a living church, “not a dead arm of the European church. Our religion grew out of the soil and has its own roots.” It is an indigenous church, one that is more fun than Rome’s, but the Catholics in Latour’s diocese are devout. Latour concludes that European formalities would destroy their faith and that disciplining a scandalous priest might come at the cost of losing his loyal flock. A competing view suggests that the parishioners are adaptable and will follow a pious priest just as readily as one who has a more relaxed attitude about religious decorum.

The novel focuses on the personalities of Latour and Vaillant rather than their religious beliefs. Apart from relating the occasional miracle, Cather’s goal is not to proselytize but to explore Latour’s challenging life. Cather ignores church doctrine while emphasizing Latour’s devotion to orchards and gardens. Latour wants his priests to save souls but also to bring fruit and vegetables into starchy Mexican diets.

Much of the novel reads like an adventure story combined with a western. In an elegant voice, Cather captures the time and place with stirring descriptions of the New Mexico desert, the hardship of travel by horse or mule, and the fortitude of people who live in “the hard heart of a country that was calculated to try the endurance of giants.” Latour admires Indians who, unlike Europeans, respect nature without trying to conquer it. “It was as if the great country were asleep, and they wished to carry on their lives without awakening it; or as if the spirits of earth and air and water were things not to antagonize and arouse.”

Latour is happy to see an end to the Indian Wars and to slavery before he dies, but the story is more personal than political. Latour nevertheless makes an effort to save a small tribe from Kit Carson’s brutal approach to warfare. When the tribe’s chief ventures out from his sheltering canyon to meet with the Bishop, Latour develops an appreciation of the gods who dwelt in “inaccessible white houses set in caverns up in the face of the cliffs, which were older than the white man’s world, and which no living man had ever entered. Their gods were there, just as the Padre’s God was in his church.” Latour’s flexibility of thought demonstrates how open minds inspire better lives. In a time when people who are capable of seeing others are derided for being“woke,” Cather’s lesson carries enduring value.

RECOMMENDED

Day by Michael Cunningham

Published by Random House on November 14, 2023

Day is a novel of family drama and personal failures. Characters behave selfishly, a common trait that commonly destroys relationships. The story takes place at the height of the pandemic. Ambulances race down Brooklyn streets as sirens interrupt conversations. The children of two key characters live in fear of opening a window. The virus will have a significant impact on their family before the novel ends, for which the kids will blame themselves.

Robbie Byrne can’t find an affordable apartment in New York City on the salary he earns as a sixth-grade teacher. His sister Isabel owns a Brooklyn brownstone and he’s been renting the attic rooms from her. Isabel’s son and daughter are growing too old to share a bedroom, so Robbie needs to find a new place to live. Isabel’s husband Dan will miss his daily presence. Robbie and Dan are attracted to each other, although only Robbie is openly gay.

Robbie and Isabel have invented a fellow named Wolfe who chronicles his life on Instagram, adding life-affirming captions to pictures of nature or cabins that Wolfe might want to buy, to the delight of followers who presumably believe in his corporeal existence. Wolfe sometimes posts pictures that were clearly taken in a different season, but his followers don’t seem to notice or care. Such is Instagram. This is one of the novel’s more interesting inventions, although I think it might have been plumbed in greater depth.

As Robbie packs and discards his belongings, he is reminded of his past. Michael Cunningham uses that device to acquaint the reader with Robbie’s backstory: a photo of a college lover who was going through a “gay phase”; a scarf gifted by an older lover; acceptance letters into medical schools that Robbie decided not to attend. A boarding pass reminds him of a death. Everything reminds him of Adam.

Dan is a musician who had the usual rock star problems without the success of being a rock star. He played in bars but never had much of a following. By going to rehab and becoming a househusband, Dan transformed himself into “an affable, harmless man.” Isabel appreciates the change but no longer finds him interesting. That seems ridiculously unfair to Dan but relationships are often characterized by unfair judgments. When does it become too late to save a marriage that has never been terrible? Isobel isn’t sure of the answer even as she comes to suspect the marriage has already failed.

To his credit, Dan does not allow Isabel’s negativity to prevent him from writing songs again. He posts them online while dreaming of a comeback. Robbie is the only person in the household who listens to his music with approval.

Dan and Isabel have two children. Violet believes she sees ghosts (or shadows representing spirits). Perhaps she does. Perhaps she confuses imagination with reality. Violet acts as a reminder that the deaths of relatives are experienced as a family, not just as individual losses. Ultimately, the presence of a little girl who sees dead people detracts from the story more than it adds insight. And honestly, I’m just annoyed by child characters who say things, even unwittingly, that demonstrate wisdom beyond their years. Still, I appreciated Violet's insistence on wearing a yellow dress that no longer fits, despite her mother's belief that yellow just isn't her color, because it was a gift from a character who is no longer living.

Dan’s brother Garth is a sculptor who can’t get his work into a gallery. Garth has a baby with Chess Mullins. Chess teaches literature to snobby students who argue that classics written by white people aren’t worth reading. Chess doesn’t want a man in her life and regards herself as the baby’s only parent. Chess wants Garth to be “mildly fatherly” two days a week but otherwise to mind his own business. Whether they love each other is a question to which neither can supply a satisfying answer.

Garth is a bit needy and Chess is a bit cruel to him. She believes cruelty is necessary because “Garth, like most men, can only deposit his needs at her feet” and ask what she’s going to do about them. Ouch! She believes Garth means well but isn’t up to the task of being a father. Her judgment seems unfair since she’s given him no chance to be a father. In the novel’s late stages, however, Garth’s greatest need is to be a father. He feels “a low howl of loss,” a sense of being diminished, as Chess’ actions make it increasingly difficult for him to be more meaningful than a visiting uncle in his son’s life.

All of this adds up to a typical domestic drama, albeit one that benefits from unusually strong prose. The story makes abrupt transitions, moving to a different place and time as if Cunningham decided “that’s all you need to know about this chapter in the characters’ lives, now it’s time to move on.” I suppose most novels do that, but the transitions seem unusually jarring in Day. By the middle of the novel, Robbie is suddenly in Iceland while everyone in New York is sheltering in their homes. How or why he ended up there is a bit of a mystery. In the next chapter, off-scene pandemic events have made permanent changes to the Byrne family. The transition has caused an attitudinal change in Isabel’s children and in adult characters who “can’t embrace the world the way we once did.”

As is the custom with family dramas, the novel ends with the characters pondering their futures. Most of them have survived the pandemic and their relationship turmoil. The point seems to be that life goes on for everyone who doesn’t die.

I appreciated the fullness of the characters’ creation. I can’t say that I was all that interested in how their lives might progress or that I was sad to reach the book’s end. Still, the characters and their attempts to cope with failure are interesting and their stories are told in confident prose. That’s enough to earn a mild recommendation, or perhaps a stronger one for devoted fans of domestic drama.

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Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

First published in the UK in 2021; published by Scribner on November 14, 2023

Alan Garner has a long history of incorporating mythology into his stories. Garner draws on those roots and more modern sources, including a World War II era comic book, to conjure a delightful story about an aging man who might be the modern version of a wizard and a young boy who might become his successor.

Treacle sells rags and bones (ragbone) from his pony cart. Joe Coppock trades his old pajamas and a lamb’s shoulder blade for the opportunity to pick anything from Treacle’s treasure chest. He picks an old pot that seems to be the only treasure with no value. Treacle also gives Joe a stone.

Treacle tells Joe that he makes people better: “I heal all things; save jealousy.” Joe wears a patch over his good eye to force his lazy eye to become more industrious. Following Treacle’s directions, Joe dips the stone in water and his name appears in silver letters. Soon he finds that his vision has changed. His lazy eye is still lazy but each eye gives him different view. One perceives the world as Joe believes it to be while the other sees things (and people) Joe cannot otherwise see. The differing views place Joe in a “flustication” (apparently, a state of confused excitement that is similar to intoxication).

When Joe gets lost in a bog, he meets Thin Amren, who needs to live in the bog so he won’t dry out. When he sleeps, Thin Amren dreams existence into reality. Joe is only lost because he hasn’t learned how to separate the realities he sees through each eye. Thin Amren explains that Joe is gifted with the glamourie. When he sees through his good eye, he can easily spot his house; when he uses the lazy eye, the bog is everywhere. Perhaps the lazy eye allows him to see into the distant past or the far future or both at once.

The other notable characters come to life from the 1940s UK comic Knockout, including Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit. The story hints at Wonderland as Joe runs through mirrors. Joe’s adventures also reminded me of Little Nemo in Slumberland in their dependence on dream logic.

The story might be read as a coming-of-age novel, in that Joe comes to realize that his life has changed and that change should be embraced, not feared. When Joe abandons his old life at the novel's end (his parents are never in sight so he gives no thought to missing them), he seems to be riding off to meet his destiny.

Fans of playful language might want to put Treacle Walker on top of their reading lists. Treacle uses words that don’t seem quite real to my American ear, although they mostly are. In British slang, “taradiddle” means a petty lie or pretentious nonsense. “Macaronics” refers to words from one language used in the context of a different language. “Nomines” seems to be a Yorkshire word for “children’s chants.” Garner uses “hurlothrumbo” as a reference to the supernatural (the word derives from a “nonsense play” of the same name that Samuel Johnson published in 1729). Unless you have an unusually extensive vocabulary and knowledge of British culture, you should keep Google handy to enjoy the full meaning of Treacle’s diatribes. I also love his description of a hammock as “a lot of holes tied with string.”

During his long life, Garner has written books for children and adults. Children would probably enjoy Treacle Walker — they might identify with Joe when he sobs “I’m only little, I’m only little” — but this is a novel for grownups who haven’t lost their wonder at the world. The novel is short and, in its brevity, confounds the reader with more ideas than most authors can manage in a trilogy. While I’m not sure the ideas entirely make sense to reality-grounded adults, I’m recommending the book for its inventive prose and for a story that will make perfect sense to children and to adults who recall how the power of imagination helps children make sense of the world around them.

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