By Miriam R. Kramer Witches, vampires, and daemons, oh my! The bitter winds and darkening days of November will inspire you to enjoy Deborah Harkness’s absorbing historical fiction trilogy: A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and The Book of Life. Drawn from her experience as a professor, she explores an enticing world of academia and ancient lore, dipping into history as her vivid characters take life, some in more ways than one. Start reading on November 2, All Souls Day, for fun. A Discovery of Witches, published in 2011, features Diana Bishop, descendent of a Salem witch and tenured professor of protochemistry at Yale. While living in Oxford for a year, she keeps denying her powers, keeping away from fellow witches and other non-human creatures, and attempting to control her environment and research her area of expertise as if she were a human. In particular she pours herself into studying the natural philosophy of alchemy. Alchemists focused on transmuting base metals such as lead into precious metals such as gold while looking to create the philosopher’s stone, an elixir of mortality known to many Millennials from the Harry Potter books. They also searched for panaceas to disease. If the paragraph above sounds tedious, don’t let it scare you off. Harkness is a vivid storyteller who weaves academia into an enjoyable, fast-moving tale of escapism. It involves romance, time travel, and the innate powers that people find when they explore what and whom they love, who they are, and become the best versions of themselves. At Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Diana asks to review a medieval text, labeled Ashmole 782 for the man who owned it. When she receives the book, she realizes that it is set apart by its imagery unusual to alchemy. A magical palimpsest, it is a text…
By Miriam R. Kramer From the Vault, September 2015: These novels remain compelling and evergreen. I also recommend The Kremlin’s Candidate, which was published as the last in this trilogy after I wrote this review. As one who lived in Russia twice since the fall of the Soviet Union and visited the American Embassy in Moscow several years ago as part of a diplomatic delegation, I consider them among the best Russia-set spy thrillers I have read in recent years. What would Jason Matthews, Graham Greene, or someone as gloomily introspective as John Le Carré write about gathering intelligence during Russia’s war on Ukraine? May Vladimir Putin end his reign and the Ukrainian people resoundingly repel his aggression. Ripped from the heart of Mother Russia, Jason Matthews’s spy novels Red Sparrow and Palace of Treason are two very enjoyable ways to while away this month. Red Sparrow won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American in 2014. Its successor is a worthy follow-up, packed as completely with inventive plots, the type of burned-on-the-retina characters that make thrillers actual page-turners, and a dizzying variety of locales that would satisfy even Jason Bourne’s lust for travel. The characters dancing first in Red Sparrow are the SVR operations officer, Corporal Dominika Egorova, and CIA case officer Nathaniel Nash. Egorova, a once-promising prima ballerina and pure-blooded Russian patriot, sidelined by a foot injury, is introduced to the world of Russian spycraft by her sleazy uncle, First Deputy of the Foreign Intelligence Service Ivan Egorov. He uses her beauty to sideline one of Vladimir Putin’s rival oligarchs during an evening à deux in the oligarch’s apartment on Moscow’s Arbat. After her training in traditional operations, her uncle sends her to Sparrow School, a degrading Soviet-style institution where she must learn to act…
By Miriam R. Kramer This month I decided to navel-gaze with the characters in three non-fiction books about therapy patients: Group, by Christie Tate, Good Morning, Monster, by Catherine Gildiner, and Pageboy, by Elliot Page. Filled with patients, psychologists, psychiatrists, and more-or-less triumphant journeys towards wellness, the books all completely absorbed me on multiple levels. I looked at the human condition from different angles and through other eyes with these authors. Christie Tate was ranked at the top of her law class, a twenty-something with a severe eating disorder who thought constantly about suicide and was unable to be close to anyone, let alone find a husband and have children. When she saw an eccentric therapist, he urged her to join one of his therapy groups where she would have to bare her soul and tell all her secrets. It frightened her to a point of paralysis. When she finally joined and was urged to talk about her secretive restrictive food habits and sexual experiences, she had an exceedingly difficult time adjusting. Gradually, though, her turn towards vulnerability, however forced, started giving her a foundation and roots in the community. She had a long, hard journey giving up some of her neuroses and isolation to gain better self-esteem and boundaries, but she finally found a better place. Over years in the group and another that pushed her further, she found the self-esteem to look for better work, also chancing attachments to lovers and boyfriends only to be heartbroken multiple times. Yet the groups were there to save her, along with her law school friends. Years later, with the help of her groups and therapist, she finally found out who she was and what she wanted, she received the love she was looking for. Tate’s messy, funny book shows a radical…
By Miriam R. Kramer With a monstrous heat wave burning up the South and Southwest of the United States recently, we could all use a physical and mental break. So why not sit on a covered porch or under an umbrella at the beach and take a trip to Sweden? Try out The Sandhamn Murders, this series of nine murder mysteries set on Sandhamn, a popular island near Stockholm where tourists vacation in the short, beautiful summer months. Viveca Sten has written a clutch of books that make for perfect beach, lake, or pool reading, especially for travelers looking to escape to someplace with sun and cool summer breezes. Her novels have been televised as a popular Swedish crime series as well. The Sandhamn Murders features two primary protagonists: Nora Linde, a lawyer, and Thomas Andreasson, a police detective with the Nacka police division in Stockholm. Having known each other since they were children, they love each other as brother and sister Nora owns a home on Sandhamn which she has visited for mini-breaks and vacations since she was a child. At the beginning of the series, she arrives there with her two young sons and a handsome doctor husband. Thomas, who has lost his wife when his child died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), also has a small summer home on a nearby island, Harö. Nora and Thomas face diverse crime schemes and murders that take place not only in Sandhamn, but also in the archipelago of small islands with summer cabins that exist east of Stockholm. They exchange information to help each other solve the homicides. Instead of being a safe haven for hordes of tourists looking for a weekend getaway from the city, along with celebrating the popular Swedish holiday of Midsommar (Midsummer), murders taint festivities…
By Miriam R. Kramer Who decides what makes for a beach book? Perhaps some save time for serious reads during their yearly holidays, but many think that beach novels could accidentally be left in the sand covered with lotion and no harm done. These days, though, the beach book might be on an e-reader, so it’s simply left to be crowded to the back of your content list and forgotten when new works take its place. In any case, here are some new publications from which to pick, some of which may resonate long after July and August are memories. First up is actress Jennette McCurdy’s unsparing memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died. Her fast-moving, compelling work looks at her relationship with her stage mom and dysfunctional family. Her anxious, unfulfilled mother focuses on her goal of making Jennette a star, taking her to her first audition at six years old. In trying to please Mom, Jennette does everything she can to perform to standard, eventually ending up on a Nickelodeon series called iCarly, followed by the spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande. Her mother, who has no boundaries, goes as far as bathing her and her brother until they are teenagers. As she grows up, Jennette develops addictions and a serious eating disorder to relieve the pressure, rejecting therapy until she has no choice when she feels herself slipping away. Although I have not seen her TV series, I was drawn in by the outrageous title, which represents her pitch black humor. McCurdy’s look back is far more nuanced than the title in sorting her feelings about a mother she loved and feared. It is also funny enough to make her palatable and admirable as the survivor of a bizarre, pressured childhood. Then comes Ruth Ware’s novel The…
By Miriam R. Kramer Children’s literature is the early foundation for our imagination, understanding of others, and the way we approach the world. I can still remember my mother reading to me and thinking how badly I wanted to learn how to read myself. My father would say it was imperative to have an excellent vocabulary, and we would discuss interesting words. My grandmother, a teacher, taught me to read, and my grandfather, a historian, took me to the public library on a weekly basis every summer when I came to visit. I would enter endless wondrous worlds: ones that strongly echoed my own and others that were set in alternate universes but still rang true. So here are some recommendations to make children’s lives infinitely richer. I cannot list all my favorites in this amount of space, so I will suggest a few beloved old titles and some new ones that have crossed my path of late. For very young readers, Dr. Seuss is always a great place to start. Dr. Seuss’s ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book is a delight, like most of his colorful, whimsical works. I cannot think of a better way to learn the alphabet. The Cat in the Hat starts children learning the joys, rhymes, and rhythms of poetry on a basic level. Dr. Seuss makes serious points in a charming, seemingly nonsensical way, whether he is talking about the spirit of Christmas in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, or the importance of conserving the environment in The Lorax. He embodies Oscar Wilde’s quip: “Life is too important to be taken seriously.” An adorable, classic work for children from four to six is Arnold Lobel’s Caldecott Honor book, Frog and Toad Are Friends. The book presents an excellent friendship between very different personalities. Frog and…
By Miriam R. Kramer “If the Lasso way is wrong, it’s hard to imagine being right.” Trent Crimm, a British journalist from the Independent writes these words in his column about soccer, or football, as most of the world calls it, becoming one of many aloof or hostile characters won over by an American football coach named Ted Lasso. The Emmy-winning Apple+ TV series emerged just when it was needed at the height of the pandemic on August 14, 2020. The story of Lasso, who moves to the London Borough of Richmond to coach a Premier League soccer team, Ted Lasso lives up to its hype. Currently in its third and last season, it continues to reveal the kind of heart, beauty, and humor that most TV stumbles past even with clever plotlines and spot-on writing. Ted Lasso is its own animal, a show that may make you tear up but never makes you feel despair. It is anti-despair, and despair is very fashionable in peak TV, the golden age of television characterized by cable series and shows released by streaming series. I am tired of hunting for TV that makes me happier, while also spoiled by excellent series. From shows like The Sopranos to Mad Men, Homeland, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, or a lesser-known British gem such as The Fall, I consume series and then let them go, while remembering great acting, storytelling, and the moods they evoke. While many of them are wonderfully written, memorable, humorous, or provocative, they often reflect and support deep cynicism and feelings of desolation. I recently finished the first season of The Last of Us, a post-apocalyptic series that jangles the nerves, picking up the ever-popular theme of zombies while highlighting deeper human stories in some episodes. I have…
By Miriam R. Kramer South African comedian and commentator Trevor Noah captured the national spotlight when he was appointed as the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central in 2015, replacing the iconic Jon Stewart. When he started, Noah aptly said “I can only assume this is as strange for you as it is for me.” The studio executives who picked an astute, biracial unknown over a bog-standard witty white guy were considered daring at the time. Noah’s outsider’s take on American and international culture and events worked in his favor, gaining him a devout following until he gave up the show in 2022. While on the air, he also wrote Born A Crime, a number-one New York Times bestselling memoir about growing up in the South African-defined category of “coloured” (South African spelling) during apartheid, and how that shaped him as a man and as a comedian. In his memoir, Noah talks about identity in South Africa, how his parents’ different identities shaped his own through their presence and absence, and what it meant to belong to a rigidly defined caste. His mother proved the defining influence on his young life. Trevor describes her as someone extraordinary, fearless, unaccepting of the limits placed on her life as a black woman through the apartheid. One of those strictures was the South African law preventing black and white people from having a child, or indeed the member of any prescribed race from having a child with someone from another race. As a young woman, his mother, having mostly brought herself up, was an independent thinker as well. Forbidden from living in designated white areas by the government, she slept in restrooms at night to avoid going back to Soweto, the black township where she was prescribed to live with her…
By Miriam R. Kramer As a teenager in 1985 I first ran across Margaret Atwood’s newly published work, The Handmaid’s Tale, at Old Town’s wonderful Olsson’s Books & Records, which formerly stood on S. Union Street in Alexandria. I was taken aback by the power and simplicity of her writing. This classic work of radical dystopian fiction describes the fate and musings of one woman, Offred, a Handmaid in a monotheocracy called Gilead, formed after the imagined destruction of the United States of America. Recently Atwood’s powerful book has been adapted into an equally riveting series on the streaming network Hulu. In this patriarchal post-American society, martial law and a totalitarian regime controls the movement of all citizens and women in particular, all of whom must cleave to traditionally interpreted monotheistic, puritanical values, or suffer terrible punishments. Those in charge twist the Bible’s words into propaganda, dividing women into high-status Wives, nun-like propagandists and teachers known as Aunts, servant slaves such as Handmaids and Marthas (housekeepers/cooks), low-status Econowives, and finally the Unwomen, those too unruly to do anything but shovel toxic waste in the Colonies until they die, or others who serve as speakeasy-style prostitutes. No women work outside the home, and none, even those with higher status, are allowed to read and write. Fertile women are particularly prized for their ability to continue the human race, since disease and chemical waste in the former United States have caused sterility among the population at large. Therefore, those few women proven to be fertile who are not already married to high-ranking Commanders in the rigidly conservative new hierarchy are requisitioned as Handmaids. They exist as puritanically dressed sexual slaves subject to impregnation on religious monthly Ceremony Days. Handmaids bear the burden of continuing to populate the country in pleasure-free, wife-supervised rituals…
By Miriam R. Kramer “He’s a real nowhere man Sitting in his nowhere land Making all his nowhere plans for nobody Doesn’t have a point of view Knows not where he’s going to Isn’t he a bit like you and me?” Lennon/ McCartney Harry the Spare. William the Heir. The former a young man floating angry, purposeless, and bemused in his gilded cage; the latter distant, walking a straight line, fulfilling endless rote duties to the public while carrying the weight of an ancient monarchy on his shoulders. In writing the book Spare, Harry, Duke of Sussex, has given people all over the world a look at his inner workings of the monarchy, a world shrouded in secrecy despite a rabid, lying paparazzi creating controversy with splashy headlines and stolen pictures. Harry delves into his worship of his mother Diana, his undiagnosed and life-changing trauma at her death, and his complex, troubled relationship with his family. He also reveals the path he trod and the therapy he experienced to find his raison d’être. Harry sketches himself as a lad traumatized repeatedly by a ravenous paparazzi paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for pictures of royalty. As a young man he re-lives the memory of his mother’s fate at the hands of tabloid journalists over and over, searching for his purpose and goals despite the emptiness he feels from her loss and his highly unusual role within British culture. He reveals his difficulty in losing his early memories of his mother after she died, and his bout with magical thinking. Until he was 23 he believed on some level that his mother was alive and had disappeared to escape the press, with the intention to come back some day. Down for Eton from his birth, Harry detested its emphasis on…
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