Welcome to the books our Chat’n’Chew book group discussed in November 2023. We hope at least one book will appeal to you. We would love to see new and old faces at our next gathering in the Ellsworth room. From the comfort of your home, whatever the weather, you can now meet with us virtually through Google Meet. Register on our calendar. You will be sent a link to connect for that day. We don’t select one book, but share what everyone has been reading the past month. We hope to see you on Wednesday, December 20th, 12:30-2:00. We welcome all of you, passionate about books and reading like us.
Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie
In this historical novel, we meet a young Japanese girl. The time is after World War II in Japan. Noriko “Nori” Kamiza is a product of an affair between her wealthy Japanese mother and a black G.I father who has to face daily the repercussions of being a mixed-race child. The story starts in 1948 when Nori’s mother drops her eight-year-old daughter off at her grandparents’ home and never returns. They are so ashamed that she is relegated to the attic and never allowed to leave the house. The young girl suffers abuse at the hands of her grandmother, including chemical baths attempting to bleach her skin. Things begin to change when her legitimate half-brother, Akira, comes to live with the grandparents, following the death of his father. The grandmother is always trying to find ways to have Nori disappear because Akira is the heir and Nori is the “bastard” child. She continues to face challenges, such as being sold to a geisha house without her brother knowing at 14, then enduring overwhelming grief, being forced to leave Japan or die, traveling the world, falling in love, and finally being able to come into her own destiny. Nori is a character I couldn’t help but root for from beginning to end. She processes such strength and does not easily resign herself to her fate. A captivating book but this reader was not happy with the way the book ended. The ending seemed to contradict the entire character development. The author’s ending decides that Nori eventually learns that sometimes the circle of life brings one right back to the beginning. This reader hoped that Nori could escape the past and forge a life of her own choosing. This doesn’t happen.
True Biz by Sara Novic
This book will open your eyes to the deaf community and its struggles. It is a fictional story of River Valley, a residential school for the deaf, and its complicated, often tense relationship with the speaking world. True Biz is written from several perspectives; the first is February, the headmaster of the school for the deaf, and a CODA (child of deaf adults). The second is Charlie, a teenage girl born deaf and who has had a malfunctioning cochlear implant for much of her life. Charlie has hearing parents and is coming to this school to learn ASL. And the third is Austin. whose parents are both deaf. He has a newborn sister and is worried that his sister’s arrival may change his relationship with his parents, particularly his father. February also faces the possibility of the entire school closing down and trying to do what’s best for her students. The book presents the issues of the deaf community in a respectful and empathetic way. This reader feels you will be engaged with this book from the beginning. It is outstanding and highly recommended. This author has a great deal to teach hearing readers.
A Second Growth by Ruth Moore
This is a book written by a Maine author. She presents the challenges of the ever-changing way of life in Maine. It takes place in 1959 in a once prosperous, small coastal town. Residents can no longer fish, farm, or manufacture to earn a good living, so they pick up seasonal work and rely on government support. In the story, the local doctor finds an abandoned baby. He intends to fill out paperwork and deliver it to social services. But he has to take the baby with him to an emergency house call because a woman is ready to deliver twins. He leaves the abandoned baby in the kitchen while he goes to assist with the delivery. Meanwhile, the husband comes home, sees the abandoned baby, and thinks it’s one of his. He believes he has triplets! (3 boys) Sadly, the mother dies in childbirth. The doctor does what he thinks is best and decides not to tell the husband since the baby would be better off in a loving home instead of foster care. This decision ignites a series of events that affect the entire town, some of them relating to the baby’s biological parents. Moore, a master of detail, weaves an intricate plot of small-town humanity on Maine’s rocky coast. This book is recommended by this reader.
Let Us Decend by Jesmyn Ward
This novel will stay with you and haunt you long after you read it. The title alludes to Dante’s “Inferno,” (his dissension into hell) but this story tells the tale of a real hell on earth in the form of a reimagining of slavery. It is powerfully written but brutally painful as the writer inserts you into the life of Annis, a young teenage slave girl. Sometimes it is hard to read this book. It takes place in the years before the Civil War. It starts with Annis and her mother working on a Carolina rice plantation owned by Annis’s white father and master. Annis and her mother are very close. The mother teaches her how to be independent, and strong, and how to fight. She also tries to protect Annis from the recent advances of her father. The price of this protection leads to the sale of the mother. Eventually, Annis and her best friend are also sold south to a sugar plantation in Louisiana because she has resisted her father’s affections. Annis is marched, roped together along with dozens of other slaves the entire way, through a gruesome and unforgiving walk miles and miles long. You the reader walk her walk and you can feel the pain every step of the way. To survive this horror, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. She opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history She is eventually sold to an owner of a sugar plantation. This new life is just as hard and Annis continues to be subjected to multiple cruelties. Annis is only able to cope by escaping into her magical world. This is superb historical fiction, sprinkled with supernatural elements that pull readers into the painful life of a slave that is so visual that this novel might not appeal to all readers. But guaranteed the memory of your reading will stay with you.