December reading roundup #2

We made it, friends – the end of 2022 is nigh. As we wrap up the year and I recover from Christmas travel, here’s what I have been reading:

The Sweet Spot, Amy Poeppel
I flew through Poeppel’s warm, witty, hilarious latest, which involves four different women (an artist, her buttoned-up mother, a divorcee bent on revenge and a young woman caught in the crossfire) taking care of a baby who belongs to none of them. I laughed out loud several times. Bonus: it’s set in my favorite tangle of streets in Greenwich Village. I also loved Poeppel’s Musical Chairs. To review for Shelf Awareness (out Jan. 31, 2023).

Inciting Joy: Essays, Ross Gay
I adored Gay’s The Book of Delights (and did a Q&A with him, itself a delight). This new collection explores joy as it’s intertwined with sorrow, grief and desire – and it’s fantastic. I love Gay’s rambling style (though the footnotes occasionally get out of control), and his warm, wise, human voice. So good.

Of Manners and Murder, Anastasia Hastings
Violet Manville is astonished to discover her aunt Adelia is behind the popular Dear Miss Hermione column – and even more shocked to be handed the reins when Aunt Adelia leaves town. Soon Violet has a real mystery on her hands: the suspicious death of a young bride named Ivy. A fun British mystery with a spunky bluestocking heroine. To review for Shelf Awareness (out Jan. 31).

Healer and Witch, Nancy Werlin
Sylvie, her mother and her grand-mere are revered as healers in their village. But when Grand-mere dies and Sylvie makes a terrible mistake, she sets out in search of help. A sweet, thoughtful middle-grade novel set in medieval France, with a few surprising twists and some insights about vocation and calling.

Love in the Time of Serial Killers, Alicia Thompson
Phoebe has reluctantly moved to Florida for the summer to clear out her dad’s house and try to finish her dissertation on true crime. But she keeps getting distracted by the (literal) guy next door: is he really as nice as he seems, or is he a killer? A snarky, hilarious mystery with a great main character; I also adored Phoebe’s sweet golden-retriever younger brother.

The Mushroom Tree Mystery, Ovidia Yu
The Allies have won the war in Europe, but things are still grim for Chen Su Lin and her compatriots in Singapore. When a young aide is found dead, Su Lin becomes a suspect – and between caring for a blind professor, supervising the houseboys, trying to decipher news of the atomic bomb and prove her innocence, she’s very busy. A gripping entry in this wonderful series.

Travel as a Political Act, Rick Steves
I loved this thoughtful memoir by Steves – a guidebook author and TV personality – about how travel has shaped and expanded his worldview. He tackles drug policy, autocrats, poverty and other political issues, but also writes engagingly about simply encountering other humans. My favorite line: “Understanding people and their lives is what travel is about, no matter where you go.” Amen.

Kantika, Elizabeth Graver
I flew through this epic novel based on the life of Rebecca Cohen Baruch Levy (the author’s grandmother), a Sephardic Jew whose early 20th-century life takes her from Istanbul to Spain to Cuba and eventually to New York. Richly detailed, full of family drama and rich insights on womanhood and the complexities of love. So so good. To review for Shelf Awareness (out April 18, 2023).

Winter Solstice, Rosamunde Pilcher
I adore this gentle novel set in Scotland at Christmastime, which follows five loosely connected people who end up spending the holiday together. It proves transformative for all of them. I loved revisiting it, as always.

Most links (not affiliate links) are to my local faves Trident and Brookline Booksmith. Shop indie!

What are you reading?

P.S. The fourth issue of my newsletter, For the Noticers, comes out soon. Sign up here to get on the list!

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Exploring Motherhood and Sacrifice: Sadeqa Johnson on The House of Eve

Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of five novels, including Yellow Wife. Her powerful fifth novel, The House of Eve, follows two young Black women in the 1950s who are forced to make difficult choices relating to motherhood and career ambitions. I interviewed Sadeqa for Shelf Awareness, and excerpts from our conversation are below.

What was the inspiration for The House of Eve?

The character of Ruby came out of an idea I had for a YA novel. She also was partly inspired by my family. I remembered my mother telling me that she didn’t know her mother was her mother till she was in the third grade. My grandmother had gotten pregnant at age 14 and had my mother at age 15, out of wedlock, and she had had her in secret. My mom had lived with her grandmother until she was eight, and then she found out that my grandmother was really her mother. I started thinking: How is that situation possible, and what does that do to the child?

I started researching how it was at that time, and I came upon these homes for women. They were largely for white women: teenagers and women in their 20s who were not married. They went into these homes when they were pregnant, and were usually forced to give up their babies. But I couldn’t find a Black woman in these stories.

I am a Black woman and I like to write about the Black woman experience. There is not just one single narrative, no matter what we see on TV. I was doing some research about the Black experience, and I read a book called Our Kind of People, about wealthy African Americans who knew their family history for two or three generations. They were doctors and lawyers, and I traced this research into Washington, D.C., and that was the beginning of William and Eleanor’s story.

Eleanor’s experience at Howard University is wildly different than she expects, after growing up in a mostly white town.

I was watching Toni Morrison’s documentary, The Pieces I Am. Morrison was from Ohio, and she said, “I didn’t know that [Black] people separated themselves by color until I set foot on Howard’s campus.” She lived on a block with Germans and Italians and Poles, and everyone looked out for each other. That wasn’t my experience, but I made that part of Eleanor’s experience. [At Howard], she gets a closer look at the way Black people separated themselves by color.

Of course, that is all leftover baggage from slavery: the light-skinned people who were the master’s children, who often worked in the house, and the darker-skinned folks often worked in the fields. The colorism and the social situations at Howard added an extra layer to this transition time for Eleanor–being away from home, being at school, being on the poorer end of the spectrum. There was the classism she faced as well.

Ruby falls in love with a Jewish boy, and both she and the adults in her life understand that this love might hamper her chances at a college degree.

Ruby says in the book that she was okay with being unhappy, but she was not okay with being poor. Sometimes, for girls like Ruby, it’s a choice. How long would her happiness last if she was poor?

For Ruby, I think the choices were easy. For her family members, the only jobs available were serving white people: cleaning their houses, nannying for them, chauffeuring them. The only way out was an education. And even that was sketchy–because, being poor, you couldn’t afford it. A young girl should not have to choose between falling in love and getting an education. But if she didn’t choose, she would be dependent on white folks. Being poor–or not being poor–is a strong motivator for a lot of decisions that people like Ruby had to make. Even now, really, that’s the case.

Eleanor loves her work at the Howard library, and finds a mentor in Mrs. Porter, the librarian. What was the inspiration for her character?

Mrs. Porter was based on a real person who worked at the Howard library. As a library geek, the library was my foundation for reading and writing. My relationships with the librarians totally fueled who I am today. The best secrets in books happen by accident, and when I stumbled upon Dorothy Porter’s character, I had to figure out how to weave her in.

Those scenes were a pure joy for me–writing about a woman who worked so hard to preserve African and African American and Caribbean history. I loved being able to tie Eleanor into something so historically sound, which was also very important to her character.

Shame is a common theme in the novel: both Eleanor and Ruby are shamed for their choices and also for their struggles.

Shame for women is just rampant in our culture. If my kids misbehave, people are going to blame me–not their father! Anything that happens in the family structure is the woman’s fault. My daughter couldn’t find a homecoming dress that fit her shape. I told her, “It’s not you that are wrong–it’s the dressmakers thinking that we all fit into this one category.”

I think that’s the case for Ruby and Eleanor: Ruby not fitting into Mrs. Shapiro’s world, checking any of the boxes she thought would be a good fit for her son. And as for Eleanor, she was not of this wealthy society that Rose Pride thought William should marry into. Women tend to think of this as their own fault, if they can’t get pregnant or they can’t carry a baby. Women are taught that at a very early age, and that’s something we deal with unless someone teaches you how to stop.

The House of Eve is ostensibly the story of two women, but really it’s about multiple women: Ruby and Eleanor, their mothers, Ruby’s aunt Marie, Mrs. Porter. What do you think is important about that ensemble cast?

So many of the Black women on TV look the same–they all act the same. In The House of Eve, we have different colors, different classes, different socioeconomic backgrounds. I think all these different Black characters in this story creates the melting pot. There’s all these different versions of our story that are being told.

You can read my full review of The House of Eve at Shelf Awareness – and I encourage you to give it a read when it comes out in February.

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