Tag: books

book-review, books, Family Drama, literature, reading

The World Played Chess

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by Robert Dugoni

This is a complex, intertwining story told by two men in three time periods. We start in 2016 when Vincent, a successful lawyer, receives a journal from an old friend he hadn’t heard from in years.  The author of the journal was William – someone that Vinny met when he was 18 in the summer of 1979. William, 12 years older than Vinny, had made a strong impression on him, and while he never spoke of the friend, this relationship helped shape the way Vinny approached life. William’s journal was written when he was an 18-year-old going off to Vietnam in 1967. Vinny had been a witness to William’s PTSD that summer, when he couldn’t fathom how difficult choices in life can be and how they change your course forever.

In 1979 Vinny just graduated as valedictorian, was accepted into Stanford, but his family was unable to pay the tuition and he is devastated. Instead, he is headed to community college. As he parties with his friends that summer before school, he takes a job in construction. There he meets William, a Vietnam vet twelve years older than he is. Over the course of the summer William tells stories of what he lived through as his life unravels.

As Vinny reads the journal in 2016, one entry each day, he is also preparing for his son Beau to graduate high school and go off into the world.  Disappointments and frustration are all there, as Beau tries to become independent and make his own decisions. After a tragedy Vinny watches as Beau struggles with the fragility of life. He is seeing personally that growing old is a privilege, not a right. Through Vinny’s eyes we see the pain of watching youth stolen from both William and Beau at the same point of life. You are reminded that the moments in between are all about shaping who you are. You need to accept your abilities, and make choices for yourself and your family, with the knowledge that all choices have consequences that you must live with. You also learn to put things in perspective – like being able to go to community college is better than not being able to go to college at all.

Everyone’s demons are different, but in the end, the role that Vinny place for both William and Beau is someone that has enough empathy to listen. That allows both men to face the hard parts of life, and be able to move forward to being a better person because of their past, not despite it. In 1979 most didn’t want to listen to those that saw horrors in Vietnam, and in 2016 most don’t want to acknowledge the dark possibilities in life.

This story was so well written that it was not hard to jump between the timelines. The interweaving of the stories is what makes it just so poignant – even though each man had different things happening in their lives at 18, the hope for the future and the realization of what that really means is difficult. As I watch my own son at 18, this has given me another layer of understanding to what it is he is grappling with. I wholeheartedly recommend reading this. 

book-review, books, Hispanic and Latinx Cultures, reading

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

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This book is very complex, but also very simple.

The story begins with us following Olga while she is working to make a bride and her uber-rich family happy by ordering hand-made napkins, while making sure she has added enough to use at her cousin’s wedding in a few weeks. We meet her congressman brother, Prieto, as he greets his constituents – the part of the job he loves most. After he returns to his office, we hear him being summoned for a meeting with Arthur Selby – someone not a constituent or a donor – which will be resentfully attended.

As we learn more from each of these siblings, you learn of how their father Johnny was a revolutionary looking to change schooling to make the next generations of kids more equal, but returned from Vietnam as a heroin addict. After meeting and marrying Blanca, also a revolutionary, they had two children. While clean for a stretch, Johnny descended back into drugs, crack and became infected with HIV/AIDS. Blanca kept her eye on the revolution, giving speeches globally, until one day she left on one of these trips, but never returns. Olga was 13 and Prieto was 17 when their mother left. Because of their father’s habit that kept him in and out of jail, their Abuelita raised them, with the large family all helping.

While physically abandoned, each child continued to hear from Blanca and what she thought of their life choices via mail – no return address and no way to contact her. Neither shared with the other that they received these communications. The revolutionary diet of rhetoric they were brought up on, even with absent parents, impacted them, as did watching their father struggle with trying to provide for them while being chained to his addiction.  

Prieto took a grassroots approach to this revolution, first as a councilman, then as a congressman. Teased as “pollyanna” he didn’t have a side hustle – something that everyone else seemed to have going as an open secret. Olga took the educational route, gaining entry into an ivy league school where she looked safe enough, but never felt like she fit in or what to do next. Getting in had been the goal for her, while for those of Ivy-type families it was only the start of the chase.

Both siblings were faced with the realities of what the “establishment” was and how this establishment abused the power of it. Those with money, status, and skin were always plotting to keep it, and more importantly keep it from people not like them. Because of the systemic biases that have been built into all systems, education, housing, pay, healthcare and more, life is stacked against everyone “else.” The story highlights how people of color must decide on buying into the establishment version of success, or their own culture’s version.

The story is about how to use power to get what you want. It also highlights that these traits exists on both sides of the coin – the revolutionary mother was manipulating them and countless others to get what she wanted. It is the extremes of each side that pit us against each other – and that power itself, regardless of where it comes from, corrupts.

Extremely well written, engaging and thought provoking. This story of disenfranchisement, hidden secrets and the desire to be loved lays bare that we each must find our own definition of success, embrace the life you have and be open to ask for help when you need it.  

African Experience, book-review, books, read around the world, reading

Hate has too many places to live: Abyssinian Chronicles / Uganda

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Written as a novel, this is a semi-autobiographical tale of a family’s existence in Uganda in the 20th century. The racial, religious, gender and economic strife is all here. The story begins in a confusing way, setting the stage to meet the main character. At approximately 100 pages in I finally figured out when and who we were supposed to be focusing on. The historical information on the family, however, was needed to make the next 300 pages make sense.

Set in Uganda, we are introduced to the deep-rooted Catholic church’s influence, as well as the Muslim and Pagan traditions. These traditions tend to mix together, with some being incorporated into others. The influences of the outside cultures, Catholic and Muslim, is due to the evangelical history of Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia) and the traders from the Middle East that came with the British. This becomes important when the reign of Idi Amin begins.  

Having an understanding of the history of Uganda would have helped, but this was covered in the first 100 pages through how the family members were impacted. The politics were not the focus, but the impact on the family. Information on what was happening was not central to living lives in the villages at that time. Early in the 20th century the tsetse fly spread a “sleeping sickness” pandemic, killing approximately 300,000. 1962 brought independence from Britain, the first election bringing Dr Milton Obote to power. 1967 brought a new constitution, giving more power to the Prime Minister, Obote. In 1971 Idi Ami overthrew the government and began a reign of terror – killing anyone that did not agree with him. Then the war with Tanzania, which Amin lost, and Obote returned to run a country that was decimated economically and ecologically. A new “plague”, HIV/AIDS then swept the African country.

The story starts in the time of independence, with the beginning being like the sleeping sickness – slow but gotten through. The family is a macrocosm of the country. Serenity (the son of a clan elder that had no interest in leading) and Padlock (a woman that was too brutal with her charges as a nun that led her to be thrown out of the nunnery) were the first despots that we encounter. Padlock required complete obedience from her children, and was brutal in enforcing her rule, while Serenity allowed this to happen as long as he was not impacted.   Mugezi, their eldest son, was never liked by Padlock and took the brunt of her hatred. He learned early on how to survive, instigate, and infuriate those in power. Padlock gets her way to send Mugezi to become a priest. Within the church walls, however, the next set of despots is found, with upperclassmen terrorizing the new students as the priests look the other way, or the controlling nature of the priest to have feasts of good food while the students watched and received mealy porridge.   

Through all of these tests, Mugezi learns how to survive, profit and exact revenge. These skills are what will allow him to survive the ongoing tragedy he is living through. To the very end, Mugezi relies upon his understanding of human nature and his ability to leverage this while not being too greedy.

This story is not easy to read. Awash with violence, the value of human life is cheap. The outright bigotry, of whites against blacks, blacks against Indians, Catholic versus Muslim, is prominent – the white Priest calling the black ministry students monkeys, the glee of the blacks when the Indians were deported, the smugness of the Catholics that only sinners got the “slimming” sickness (AIDS) – are all in the open. The hatred for each of the “others” is breathtaking in strokes, and the root of the cause of so much destruction. I kept looking for hope at the end, but I am not sure I found it.

While this book was well written, you need to be able to handle the horrors that are brought forth. I read this book at a time when I am personally struggling with the ongoing exposure of the deep hatred that remains in the Unites States. The fact that this has never gone away, or truly lessened for those that believe and teach this hatred is overwhelmingly depressing for me. In a world that has become so connected, how does this hatred of others still exist? As with Uganda, the answers are tied in not only racial issues, but are complicated by economic, religious and gender constraints also. These are all entangled and cannot be separated. We need brave souls to stand together to work toward a total solution that is based in respect for human life and beliefs. In 2022 they say there is much to look forward to for Uganda. I hope that is true there, and everywhere else in this world.

Black Experience, book-review, books, reading

Homegoing

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In my first attempt of the year I head to my library’s website.  My first stop – my lists of saved titles to read.  Around the World – my list of books to read from every country – beckons me.  After reading many Top Ten lists of 2021, I choose Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. I click the button to reserve my copy.  In one week, it is in my house. 

The story pulls me in immediately. First, we meet Effia, a girl in a village in Ghana.  Her father is “a big man” in the village.  Her mother beats her often.  The chief is set to marry her when she becomes a woman, but her mother tells her to keep that a secret.  Instead of earning an honored place in the village as a first wife, Effia is given into marriage with a British officer.  When she goes to Cape Coast Castle, she discovers there are people that look like her in the dungeon that will be sold as slaves.  She learns quickly that the British will become “mean” when questioned about this.

Next you meet Esi.  She is the daughter of “a big man” in a different village.  Her mother loves her and is always near her side.  It is in this story that you start to hear that people in the North are not human.  The Villagers have conducted raids across the country, being known as a strong tribe to be afraid of.  Prisoners are held in cages in the village center, with people walking by to spit on them because they are not people.  Esi’s mother is forced by her husband to pick a girl to be a house girl.  The mother protects her as best she can.  It is not until after the girl is whipped by the father for dropping two drops of water, at the urging of the rest of the family, that Esi learns that her mother had been a slave before.  As fate has it, it is Esi that ends up in the dungeon below where Effia is.  This is when we learn that these are half sisters, each traveling a very different path from the other. 

I am very uncomfortable reading this book, which is probably the point.  From the first, when I realize that the villagers participated and profited from enslaving their own kind, just from a different village, I am sick.  When I realize the animals that are found around those villages become what these people are called in derogatory terms, I am horrified – I knew of the slur, but this put the pieces together of where the slur came from.  The way groups of people dismiss others – making it easy to treat them badly by stripping them of any humanity – is way too familiar.  This is the tactics that the Nazis took in 1930s Germany against the Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and more.  These tactics are not just our history.

This history continues to haunt us.  The legacy of slavery remains in the systemic structures of our world, including education, economic support for the poor, and access to proper mental and physical health resources. We continue to be faced with the stark realities of continued prejudice: Floyd George’s murder, LGBQT+ being thrown off roofs, and women like Malala being shot.  Until we start looking at others as part of us, this will not change.  There continue to be people that need to be better at someone’s cost. They lead the way for others to feel better about themselves by putting others down. They strip the belief in the humanity from those they push down.  All those that participate in this, or that stand by and let it happen, ultimately lose their own humanity. We need to open oppressor’s eyes to this.  Unless we all understand we are in this together, there will be no end. 

This is my reaction from the first third of the book.  My soul is crying, and I can’t continue.  If the rest of the story continues as well written, I can only guess at the depth of feeling and thought it will provoke in its readers.  As for me, I am too saddened by the reality of what this represents, and gripped by the fear that we have not learned enough to keep it from happening again. 

book-review, books, Hispanic and Latinx Cultures, reading

Hispanic Heritage Month 2021

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In honor of Hispanic Month (September 15, 2021 – October 15, 2021), I decided to read about a place I didn’t know much about.  Cuba, an island that was forbidden, ruled by a man that lived longer than anyone expected, cut off from its closest neighbor, with its people fleeing on makeshift rafts at sea.  What did I know about this island?  Bits and pieces – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, Cuban cigars, and the place where Sky Masterson takes Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls.  I figured it was time to learn more about the people, and maybe something about the politics of the place.

Since I love historical fiction, and learn about cultures and how they got there from novels, it made sense for me to pick one for the task.  Next Year in Havana is a mix of historical details, sociological analysis, and a love story.  Told from two women’s perspectives and times – Elisa Perez, debutante Cuban in high society of 1958 and Marisol Ferrera, freelance writer and member of Miami’s Cuban exile community in 2017. 

Marisol, raised by her grandmother Elisa, is coming home to Cuba, where her grandparents fled with the family when Castro took over.  She brings with her memories of stories told to her about the way things had been, and a tin containing the ashes of her grandmother, who told her those stories.  Marisol is to find the final resting place for the ashes in Elisa’s beloved Cuba.  Met at the airport by Elisa’s childhood best friend’s grandson, Marisol comes into possession of a pack of love letters from her grandmother to a man that was not her grandfather.  This leads her on a quest for the truth.

Then, as before, asking questions can be bad for your health.  Through eyes of revolutionaries, each woman in her time is faced with the stark reality that their lives were pampered, and that poverty was real and near.  The details on how hard life had been on those that remained in Cuba, making a life through the hardships, versus those that left Cuba and settled in Miami clinging to what Cuba had been.  It even goes into some detail on how the island nation had always wanted to be free, but was always at a larger country’s whim – America, Russia, and even Venezuela.  The war that brought about Castro’s revolution, and the war that put Batista in power before him, were all about democracy – and the hope to return to constitutional law.

Ultimately, the question “are you a Cuban first or an American first”, and what that means to those that stayed and those that left simmers under the surface, as does the uneasy peace made to allow the regimes continue the grip on the people.  Love, family love, romantic love, and love of country are at odds with each other in this novel.  Nothing is easy, choices must be made, and you make the best of what you are given. 

Other books that I have enjoyed from Hispanic authors, in no particular order:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent by Julia Alverez

In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alverez

Afterlife by Julia Alverez

The Alchemist by Pualo Coehlo

Black Experience, book-review, books, reading

The book of lost friends

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This is a book with at least two stories, all that intersect around family, and history.  We start meeting Benedetta Silva, known as Benny as she starts her first job teaching at a poor rural school in Louisiana to help pay off her student debt.  Although she is white, she is living in poverty until her first paycheck arrives.  She is intimidated by the unruly teens that await her, fighting with each other, and never listening.  She tries everything to get them engaged, even buying treats for those that are hungry from her low salary. 

Next we meet Hannie and her slave family were being moved from Louisiana to Texas by a relative to keep them from being set free.  Out of sight of the owners, the relative starts to sell off the family in ones or twos the whole way there.  The last to be sold, Hannie finally gets the buyer to understand that she was stolen and sold away from her rightful owner.  Along the way, she had kept track of who was sold where, in the hopes to reunite with them in the future.

As we follow Hannie, who is returned to the original plantation alone but strikes out as a sharecropper with a few other slaves that had remained, we see that she is smart and resourceful.  Lavinia, the plantation owner’s pampered daughter, meets with Juneau Jane, the plantation owner’s mulatto daughter by his mistress.  Afraid that Lavinia’s arrival meant that the head of the Gossett plantation was dead, Hannie listens in to find out what is happening because there was only one year left on the lease before the sharecropping land was to be free and clear for her and those working it.  The three end up in an odyssey to find the father, to determine who was entitled to what property.  At one point the three end up in a church, where the walls were covered in posters of letters to friends, where people were looking to reconnect with those that had been sold away. 

Benny, who is renting out a home near the plantation because it was the cheapest she could find, needs help when the roof starts to leak. Through this challenge, Benny meets marvelous women that have kept the community together and give Benny hope for surviving.  Through the stories that Benny hears from Mrs T, she decides that this is the story that would resonate with her students, and asks her to come and tell it to the kids.  The kids are hooked and come up with a way to bring the stories to life.  While not approved by the school board, made up of rich white folks, the stories are coming from the Carnegie Library, a source of pride of the community at one time.  Facing a threatening police force, and the school board that sends their own kids to a private school instead, Benny is told to just let the kids get a vocational education as they were not better than that. 

Throughout the chapters flipping between the two, actual letters written and sent are included.  These had been published in the Southern Methodist newspaper and was shared via pulpits across the country.  The heartwrenching stories behind each of these hit home for me.  I did not know that these adverts had been created for people to finds each other in the late 1800 – early 1900s.  I did, however, understand these completely.  As a Jew, I am fully aware that after WWII, the same was happening in the displacement camps throughout Europe with people searching for any connections that may be left.  It is the guilt at being alive, combined by the fear of being alone, that makes these so sad.  While the longing is always there, sometimes it is easier not to ask the question for fear of the answer.

That also is true when it comes to a hard past.  In the Louisiana is the reality that slavery did happen.  Ancestors we part.  But in order to remain in power, the stories and intimidation continued.  It is this need to keep the power structure as it is, and the fear of what will happen if it is not, that keeps the true history of the plantation and those that lived on it.  Until you face the choices that you made, good or bad, and acknowledge them, you are doomed to spend your life covering up for them. 

book-review, literature

By the Book

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Did you ever feel like you have heard a story before – often?  It seems as though there has been a number of “reboots” happening in the storytelling world. 

10 Things I hate About You is based on The Taming of the Shrew;

A Thousand Acres is King Lear;

The Lion King is Hamlet;

The Madwoman Upstairs is Jane Eyre;

The Lost Child is Wuthering Heights;

On Beauty is Howards End;

Bridget Jones’ Diary is Pride and Prejudice;

Clueless is Emma. 

Adding to this list is a retelling of one of one of my favorites – Persuasion.  By the Book, by Julia Sonneborn, as with many retellings, notes the book as a favorite of the protagonist’s (Anne with an E – a nod to another beloved book).  Though many names are similar, Lady Russell became Dr Ellen Russell, others are new to the telling.  As the original – Anne’s father cut her off when she didn’t go to law school, her sister Lauren’s attacks Adam as someone who would never be successful, and Dr Russell pushes that Anne follow her mentor’s footsteps to Yale’s MFA program. All these combined to put pressure on an impressionable young college woman that was not sure how to do anything other than fight for her books, her constant comfort.

With modern twists and turns that are inevitable in a Victorian love story, even if told in the 21st century, there is always comfort in knowing that all will end well.  Especially in the crazy COVID world we live in. 

Well written, a fun read that kept my interest. 

book-review, literature, Middle Eastern, read around the world

Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak

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There are spoilers here, but I tried to keep them to a minimum.  This book was translated from Turkish.  While many times a book can lose something in translation, I was amazed that I felt no stilt or stumble along the way that happens in so many translated works.  This was an amazing story that unfolded in surprising and extraordinary ways.  Well worth the read. 

This story starts off in a way that does not prepare you for its depth.  It is modern Istanbul and the country is simmering in the duality of the world -– is it Secular or Religious? Rich or Poor? East or West?  A woman is driving her daughter through the city which teems around them as they are stuck in traffic.  This woman, Peri, uncharacteristically leaves her bag in the back seat of her car, and it is stolen.  Also uncharacteristically, she runs after the thief to retrieve it.  As she runs through the alleys of Istanbul, she is faced with the dark underside of the city.  She is wounded, and almost raped, but is able to survive with only a knife wound to her hand, and a photo from another lifetime.    Peri then returns to the car with her daughter, drives on to her original destination – a dinner party with the elite of Turkey.

You will not be aware until you have finished the story, that this is a metaphor for her life. 

The story is told starting now, and flashing back to Peri’s history.  With a bit more told each time, the woman becomes more visible.  Her mother, a religious woman, believes that there is darkness in Peri’s soul, and Peri had not faced it in years before she was following the child that stole her bag.  It is this darkness that has led Peri to live between her mother and her father, non-religious, that fight each other for everything.  Peri has spent her life being conflicted because she didn’t want to take sides, even if she was leaning toward her father’s.  He had placed all his hopes for the future of the family on her going to Oxford.  Peri was successful in getting there.

Once there, however, she continued to remain outside everything.  Her suite mate, a fully assimilated woman from Iran, suggested that Peri take a lecture with Professor Azur on Gd.  Initially not interested, she warms to the idea.  Once accepted to the selective seminar, the challenges that Azur puts in front of her continue to perplex her.  Another woman Peri befriended in the college, Mona, a religious Egyptian, joined her in the class.  The suite mate, Shirin, ended up convincing them all to live together.  All along, Peri was warned by some that Azur thought he was Gd, and Shirin who swore he was.  Throughout the story, you see the twists and turns of the pathways of Peri’s mind, just like the pathways she ran after her purse.  The wound on her hand continued off and on to bleed and throb, just like Peri’s emotions.  The duality of choices, to be or not, and the reality of Peri’s which was in the middle, are reflected throughout the country, and even within all the people at the party.  As Peri is faced with inquiring minds that hear she went to Oxford, she speaks out for herself, timid at first.  She reviews and revisits the past during this dinner, and she comes to a conclusion.  She asks her mother for a phone number.  Once dialed, she faces the first of many steps toward reconciling herself.  At the end of the call Shirin tells Peri to call Azur.  Peri, during this phone conversation, had been hiding in a hall.  She then hears and sees masked men enter the house, and she hides in the closet behind her.  In the blink of an eye, she calls Azur, and hears he is not angry.  She then begins a seminar on Gd, teaching the teacher.  As the power runs out on the phone, Peri stands and opens the door.  She is finally ready to come out of the closet, figuratively and metaphorically, to face her destiny.  She is no longer hiding from herself or anyone else.

book-review, books, Family Drama, literature, reading

Lost and Found

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Each person leaves things behind, sometimes on purpose others, not.  These items can be keys to moments that change our lives.  This is the basis of the story behind The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. Throughout the book there are strings of stories of how mementoes are kept or lost, with them all coming back together in the end. 

There are two stories that this is based upon.  The first, a woman, Laura, who comes to work for an author and the second a woman, Eunice, who comes to work for a publisher.  Both women are brought into these men’s lives and become for them the way to fulfill their own destinies.  It is through the stories of people around them that show the six degrees of separation. 

Ultimately, the truth is told by a young woman with Downs Syndrome. It is through this girl’s ability to see and feel the things around her with no preconceived filter that helps her lead others to their own truth.  This girl, her given name is Sunshine, sits in the park observing those who live around her, including the author across the way.  As she realizes he has died and the woman who came each day to work with him moves in, Sunshine decides that this is her opportunity to make a new friend.  She comes around often, and at times Laura hides in the cupboards when she doesn’t want a visitor.  The gardener, Freddie asks why Laura doesn’t just explain to Sunshine about the times she wants to be alone.  After an old girlfriend comes around for Freddie, who also hides, the both come clean to those pursuing them with the reasons why.  Sunshine pragmatically states “why didn’t you just say so?” 

If we could only listen to this advice in our real lives.  How many times have we twisted ourselves into knots to avoid something instead of facing it straight on?  If we had been honest with ourselves and others, how much energy and heartache could be avoided?

As the stories continue, Sunshine later states that she is never listened to.  Again, Laura and Freddie stop and realize that there is truth to what she says.  Once they listen, they take steps toward solving a mystery at the heart of the story.  As the story progresses, tales of lost objects – how they came to be lost and how they came to be found – continue to show hints of how they are intertwined. 

When at last Sunshine puts a bet out for Freddie, the ending for both stories becomes apparent.  Sunshine has again predicted it through her simple but perceptive observation.  The tale is of love and loss, finding and discovering, and being honest to oneself.  If you are true to yourself, observant and open, you will find your happiness. 

book-review, books, read around the world, reading, time travel

Time travelling

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If you were able to go back in time, would you? What if there are all sorts of rules that you need to abide by to do this? You have to sit in a specific cafe, at a specific chair, and not get up. You can only meet someone who had been in the cafe, and the present will not change. And you only have as much time there as it takes for the cup of coffee you were served to go cold.

That is the truth about a small cafe in Japan that has been serving coffee for over 100 years. Urban legend has been published, but most are scared away by the rules. This book, Before the Coffee Gets Cold translated from Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Japanese best seller by Geoffrey Trousselot, tells the story of four people who are driven to make the choice to sit in this chair. Each has their own reasons for doing this. One goes back to confront a man who left her, one is seeking to receive a letter from her husband’s early onset Alzheimers, another to see her sister one more time, and the last to meet the daughter she has not been able to meet. All while knowing they need to wait for the seat to be empty, as it is occupied by a ghost that didn’t drink her cup of coffee in time.

The beautiful reasons why they choose to go, and the unexpected ways these visits unfold are nothing short of love stories. Written tenderly, even in translation, each woman that goes is motivated by love – unrequited, romantic, familial and maternal. Each visit, while not changing the present, has significant impact on each of these women.

The way the stories unfold is comforting and the language evokes a dark and cool underground cafe in Japan. A gentle read of love and the possibilities of reliving a moment in time.

It may be an ironic way to end 2020, but it does bring hope.