Ms. Hen reviews The Lesson

Ms. Hen in space

The Lesson

Cadwell Turnbull

Blackstone Publishing

2019

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she heard the author on a podcast talking about the book. When he talked about his inspiration to write this, he said that in the movies it always happens that aliens land in New York or LA, and not in a place that is unexpected. Mr. Turnbull is originally from the Virgin Islands, so he set the novel there.

THE LESSON is about people on St. Thomas who experience the Ynaa landing. Derrick is a young man fascinated by the Ynaa, and his friend/girlfriend Patrice is terrified of them, and leaves the island to go to college stateside. When the Ynaa land, they tell the people that they will help them with medicine and technology, but they do not tell them at first that the Ynaa are prone to violence and will tear apart humans that upset them in the least bit.

Derrick works as an assistant to Mera, the ambassador for the Ynaa. The other people on the island don’t like the fact that he works for her, and distance themselves from him. Jackson, Patrice’s father, was kicked out by his wife because she becomes involved with a woman, and he is attempting to write a book about the invasion. Some people think of the Ynaa as invaders and others occupiers.

This novel reminds Ms. Hen of other books she has read. The style with which it is written is reminiscent of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston, in the way that the characters speak in dialect most of the time, but the other writing is not in that voice.  THE LESSON also reminds Ms. Hen of science fiction that is not too heavy on science, but more focused on philosophy and psychology such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler.

Ms. Hen noticed a lot of food appears in THE LESSON. The characters are always eating, or preparing food, and it all sounds delicious. Some novels have no food in them at all, and some are bursting with meals and eating. Ms. Hen thinks that this has to do with the culture of the setting or the preference of the author. Everybody eats, and food either plays an important part in the characters’ lives or does not exist at all.

There are a lot of chickens, hens, and roosters in this novel, which Ms. Hen enjoyed. Also, lots of other animals appear in the narrative, which does not happens in every book Ms. Hen reads. She loves animals, being an animal herself. One significant mention of a rooster Ms. Hen noted is the section when Jammie’s rooster flies away, “The unkempt grass along the path had caught fire, and within minutes the chicken coop would be up in flames, too.” Ms. Hen was upset when the prize rooster, or cock, as he is referred to, flies away, but then is happy for him when she discovers his purpose is cockfighting, something which Ms. Hen does not approve.

Ms. Hen thinks THE LESSON is an important novel because it teaches us about power and strength, and the complicated situations that humans can get themselves into. It’s not only about occupation and invasion by aliens, but the history of the islands. Ms. Hen read a while ago that if we come into contact with aliens, we should pray that we find them first, because the history of exploration has not gone well for the people who live in the lands that get invaded. This novel is an example of how this could happen, and how frightening the idea can be, but Ms. Hen is a hen who does not fear the future.

Ms. Hen reviews A Moveable Feast

Ms. Hen at the Penn Hemingway Awards, April 2019

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway

Scribner

1964

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because she wanted to research on Ernest Hemingway for a speech she is planning. She wanted to read something by him that she had never read, and figured this was a good choice. She often attends the Penn Hemingway Awards at the John F. Kennedy Museum in the spring because it’s an awards show for writers, like the literary Golden Globes, plus they have free food and drinks (alcohol), which Ms. Hen knows would please Mr. Hemingway.

A MOVEABLE FEAST is a memoir of Hemingway’s time in Paris when he was young, and when he was working at learning how to write. When Ms. Hen read the description of the book, she thought he might be trying to prove how cool he was, talking about all the famous people he knew when he was living in Paris. But no, Ms. Hen discovered that Hemingway was not a hipster. He talks about how poor he was, and how some people wandering around Paris were sketchy. They were living in dangerous times; life was good for some people, but not others.

Hemingway writes about his friends that he would visit: Gertrude Stein, an older woman he admired who held court with the younger writers; Ford Maddox Ford and the shadiness that surrounded him; Ezra Pound who was kind to everyone. He writes about his friendship with Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, and how they would both drink, and they couldn’t handle it because it was poisonous to them. They would go to parties and pass out. His wife Zelda was crazy, who said outlandish things to Hemingway before they knew she was insane.

Shakespeare and Company, Paris

Hemingway talks about being hungry and walking all around Paris and looking in the windows of restaurants and bakeries and not having enough money to pay. He went to a museum to look at a Cezanne still life with fruit to satisfy his hunger. He borrowed books from the bookstore Shakespeare and Company, since he didn't have money to buy them. He and his wife would take what little money they had and go to the racetrack and bet on horses and win and use the winnings to survive. He figured out a way to bet on the right horse. Before the time when the horses were tested for steroids, the horses would be jumpy and jittery before the race, and he knew they were the ones that would win. Hemingway felt guilty about going to the racetrack because it took time away from his work. He didn’t like not writing.

Hemingway had an interesting way of writing. He would write something, and then for the rest of the day, he would not think about his work until he was actually writing again. That way his mind was clear when he went to the page. He would spend time reading, and socializing, and doing other things, but when he was writing, he just wrote. He didn’t like to be interrupted when he wrote, and he writes about a time when he was working in a café, and someone interrupted him. Ms. Hen thinks he would have liked laptops and headphones and music to drown out the noise in the café, like we have now. His method of having a clear mind when he went to write is a good lesson in being productive, which Ms. Hen will learn from. She can’t write every day because she has a job, and it’s difficult, but she tries to write when she can.

Ms. Hen garnered from this book that Hemingway seemed like a nice person. He might not have been perfect, but nobody is perfect. He was a man of his time. He writes about the desire to write one true sentence. Ms. Hen admires this, and tries do the same. Hemingway was a force of nature, whom nobody can duplicate.

 

Cafe le Flores, Paris, where Hemingway drank

Ms. Hen reviews The Awakening

The Awakening

Kate Chopin

Penguin Books

1899

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she had just read the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” since she was inspired to read that when she read STONER, and THE AWAKENING is similar to the short story. Ms. Hen had read this book years ago, but when she started reading it this time, she did not remember anything about the book except the ending.

This novella is about a woman unsatisfied with her life, Edna Pontellier. She is married, and has two children. The novella opens at a resort on the Gulf of Mexico in the summer, where the family is on vacation, and there are a lot of other people there. Edna becomes friends with some of the women, and she has a flirtation with Robert; they take a boat ride together, and she become infatuated with him. She thinks he feels the same way, but immediately he tells everyone he is going to Mexico to work.

Edna and her family go back to New Orleans, and she can’t stop thinking about Robert. He does not write to her, but she discovers he writes to the musician, Mademoiselle Reisz, and he in the letters he mentions Edna. Edna’s husband goes on a trip to New York, and she does not want to go with him, so she stays home. The children go to stay in the countryside, and she is alone in the house. She decides to move out of the house to a smaller one. Robert comes back to New Orleans, but she does not fulfill her wishes.

When Ms. Hen read this book years ago, she was not the educated hen she is today. She thinks she read this before she had her bachelor’s degree. Now she has a Master’s degree, and is able to read in a deeper way than before. What a difference an education makes! She does not have a decent job, but who needs a job when there are books to read?

This book reminds Ms. Hen of both MADAME BOVARY and ANNA KARENINA in the way that is about a woman who falls in love with a man who is not her husband, and it devastates her, and she ultimately dies. In the two other novels, the characters have affairs, and are obsessed with the men. In THE AWAKENING, Edna does not have an affair with her paramour, but she is still crushed. These books show what little options these women had; they did not work, and they came from privileged backgrounds, and had a lot of time to muse on their problems. They were all uninterested mothers; some women are not meant to be mothers, because they don’t have the inclination.

The difference between MADAME BOVARY, ANNA KARENINA, and THE AWAKENING, is that THE AWAKENING is American, and is written by a woman. When THE AWAKENING was published, Kate Chopin was ostracized because people in the time and place thought how dare a woman write about a woman being unhappy in her life? It’s acceptable for men to write such things in Europe, but the horror of an American woman writer proposing that a woman does not like being a mother, and wants passionate love outside her marriage! We hope we live in different days now.

Ms. Hen had a different experience reading this novella as a more educated reader. She thinks it’s important to see things through awakened eyes as we grow older. Some people don’t like getting older, but Ms. Hen thinks that older people know more, and are able to handle problems with grace and style. She does not wish to be young again, which might surprise some, but Ms. Hen believes that everyone has a different path. She recommends this book to anyone who wants to read about a woman trying to find happiness and failing in the messed up world.  

Ms. Hen reviews Stoner

Stoner

John Williams

The New York Review of Books

1965

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel on a recommendation from one of her acquaintances, whose opinion she respects. She had read a similar novel recently, BLUE ANGEL, and this novel is also about an English professor. This novel is different because it is about the entire character’s life.

William Stoner grows up on a farm in the Midwest, and when he gets older, his parents decide to send him to college to study agriculture to assist with the operations of the farm. But when he goes to college, he becomes enchanted by his English literature class, and he changes his major, unbeknownst to his parents, and studies English in order to become a teacher.

Stoner meets a beautiful young woman, Edith, and falls in love with her, and they get married. Their marriage is unhappy because Edith suffers from depression and nerves. They have a child, and at first Stoner takes care of the child, because Edith isn’t interested in being a mother or taking care of her daughter. Stoner teaches at the college where he was a student, and grows into teaching. He has an affair with a student, and they fall in love, but they realize they could never run away together. He gets into a dispute with the director of the department, which becomes a long-term battle.

STONER is exquisitely written. The writing is simple, but the reader gets drawn into it. It’s about an ordinary man’s life, who never does anything amazing, and is unhappy in his world, but Ms. Hen couldn’t help but be fascinated by this story of a man who keeps plodding along. Some people might think this is depressing, but Ms. Hen thinks it is realistic. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” is what Thoreau said about this subject of normal people leading their lives without questioning, and simply keep going on and on until we die. Ms. Hen thinks about this when she is on the subway going to work; she sees people sitting on the train, staring at their phones, and wonders if they are troubled by their lives and ever imagine there could be more than this.

STONER reminds Ms. Hen of a lot of other books she has read. The setting and the time period remind her of  a lot of Steinbeck’s work. The part about Edith when she was troubled and alone in her room reminds Ms. Hen of a short story called, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” because it’s about a woman in almost the same era who goes crazy and peels the wallpaper off the walls in the house where she is staying. Parts of the novel are also reminiscent of Albert Camus’ THE STRANGER, in the way that at times the character didn’t seem to know or care what he was doing, similar to the existential outlook of Camus' character.

Ms. Hen thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It’s sad, but it’s realistic. Life can be terrible, and all we can do is keep going day by day. Ms. Hen admires a book that tells the truth about life, that it can truly suck sometimes, maybe all the time. Ms. Hen thinks the best thing to do is to pretend life doesn’t suck, and bury ourselves in art that portrays other people’s problems, which can be worse than ours.

Ms. Hen reviews Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach

Jennifer Egan

Scribner

2017

Ms. Hen found this novel at the Little Free Library near where she lives recently, and since she had read another novel by the author and liked it, she picked this up. She immediately got swept away into another time and place, but one that seemed familiar to her.

This novel is different from the last few novels Ms. Hen has read in the way that it is long and winding, with lengthy chapters and complex characters. This is a novel that is meant to be chewed slowly and digested fully before the reader can fully understand what occurs.

MANHATTAN BEACH is about Anna, a young woman during the Depression and World War II in New York. Her father disappears when she is young, and nobody knows where he went. Her family suspects that he ran off, and hopes he has not be killed. When the war starts, she gets a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and eventually works as the first female diver working underwater on the ships. She meets Dexter Styles at a nightclub he owns, who she had met as a child when her father took her to his house. She discovers what happened to her father, but the plot twists and other events are discovered.

Ms. Hen thinks this novel captures the psychology of a time that does not exist anymore. The way women were treated by the men was despicable, and even though Ms. Hen knows that this is true to the past, she can’t help being disgusted by it. The world used to be much worse than it is now, especially for women and minorities. Anna works hard to prove herself to the men who are her coworkers, but she gets in trouble, and has to deal with her problem. She is crafty in the way that she handles her difficulty, which proves she is a person with intelligence and wiles.

Ms. Hen thought this novel was personally appealing to her, because it reminds her of her family history. During World War II, her grandfather worked in the Navy Yard in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and she imagines that world was similar to the one in the novel. Her grandfather didn’t go to war because by then, he had too many children. Her father was also in the Navy, so she has a connection to this sphere. The women who worked in the Navy Yard in the novel were waiting for the men to come home, but at the same time, they enjoyed themselves, and they made decent money. War changed things for the people back then, because they all had the same goal, and they admired the men who went off to fight.

This is not the type of novel that Ms. Hen usually reads. It’s long and winding, and is a type of mystery or noir thriller. Even so, she enjoyed it, and it’s a good book to read as the days are getting darker, and filled with promise of a new life, or at least a different life.

Ms. Hen reviews Angels of Destruction

Angels of Destruction

Keith Donohue

Three Rivers Press

2009

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she considered it a Halloween book, and she has read several by this author, always during the All Hallow's Eve season. She has enjoyed every book that she has read by Keith Donohue, and this novel was no exception.

A little girl named Norah appears on the doorstep of Margaret Quinn, and tells the woman she is lost. Mrs. Quinn lets the girl stay with her, and they decide to inform everyone in the town that she is Margaret’s granddaughter, whose mother is Erica, who ran away ten years before. Margaret has grieved for her daughter the entire time, and Norah helps by pointing Margaret’s attention on her. Margaret starts to believe that Norah is Erica’s daughter, because she wants to cling to the hope Erica is alive and will come back some day.

Norah and Mrs. Quinn try to trick everyone in the town into thinking she's Erica's daughter, including Margaret sister Diane, who comes to visit from Washington. People think Mrs. Quinn is strange because she is still at a loss over her daughter.  Erica ran off with her boyfriend because they wanted to join a revolutionary group, The Angels of Destruction, to help bring about change in the country. They did this shortly after Patty Hearst was arrested. Norah tells the children at school she is an angel, and performs miracles in the school to their amazement. Some of them don’t believe her, and the parents think she is dangerous.

This novel contains two books in one. The first section takes place in 1985, and is about Norah and Mrs. Quinn and what happens in Pennsylvania. The second section talks about 1975, and tells the story of Erica and Wiley when they run away to join the revolutionaries in California, and also Mrs. Quinn worrying about her at home. Ms. Hen admired that there were two books in one, and they were about characters in different times in their lives. The last section goes back to 1985, in Pennsylvania with Norah in school, and Mrs. Quinn.

Another aspect that Ms. Hen liked about this novel was the fact that the characters never knew the truth about Norah, whether or not she was an angel. That adds mystery to the story. It’s similar to the last novel Ms. Hen read, THE GRIP OF IT: in the entire book, the readers do not know if we should believe the events unfolding with the characters.

Ms. Hen thought ANGELS OF DESTRUCTION was spooky, but not too spooky. It’s more of a story of grief and sadness, and trying to recover from the devastation of life. Ms. Hen knows that life is full of sadness, and by reading novels like this, she reaffirms her idea that the sadness in the world belongs to practically everyone, and not just the unlucky few.

Ms. Hen reviews The Grip of It

The Grip of It

Jac Jemc

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2017

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because it is another haunted house book. She’s into haunted houses these days, for reasons that will remain unspoken. On the cover of THE GRIP OF IT, little faces are etched in that you can barely see, which Ms. Hen thought was adorable and scary when she first saw them. She likes a book with a creative cover.

This novel is about a young couple, Julie and James, who are tired of living in the city, and who want to move to the suburbs. The find the house, and are at first enchanted by the secret passages and large rooms and dark cellar. They move in, and change their jobs closer to their new home, and strange things start to happen. Julie gets weird bruises all over her body, and their neighbor stares at them through their window. The house has hidden rooms they don’t know about, and Julie gets trapped in one of the rooms.

The house makes the couple doubt each other. They don’t believe each other when they say they didn’t do certain things. Peculiar drawings appear on the wall in the bedroom, and each thinks the other did them. James cuts out of work to go to a museum in the city, and faints, and has to explain to Julie what happened. James had a gambling problem in the city, and he struggles with not gambling when they move. Julie has to take over the finances and handles paying for the house, because James lost a lot of his money. She is a take-charge person and practical, and he is a type of drifter.

One aspect of this novel that Ms. Hen likes is the point of view shift. Each chapter is told from the alternating viewpoint of either Julie or James. Ms. Hen didn’t get confused like she usually does when POVs change, because she knew exactly who was talking at the time. The characters have similar voices, but are distinctly different.

Ms. Hen thinks this is a scary book that’s worth it, unlike the previous book she reviewed here. She thinks that it’s psychological without getting boring, and the characters are continuously doubting themselves and each other, which makes the reader to continue to doubt whether what is happening is true or just part of their imaginations. Ms. Hen did not know what was going to happen in the end, and she likes when that happens.

Ms. Hen truly enjoyed this novel. It’s scary enough without getting too scary, and the fact that the characters don’t believe what is happening adds to the frightening aspect of the novel. Ms. Hen believes that the world can be a terrifying place, but reading books like this make it easier because it makes us realize life could be worse than it is right now. Ms. Hen says Happy Halloween!

Side Note:

The author is doing a reading at Harvard Bookstore on Saturday November 2. Ms. Hen does not think she can go, but you can read about it here:

http://www.harvard.com/event/after_hours_at_the_bookstore_with_jac_jemc/