Lilian Boxfish Takes a Walk

by Kathleen Rooney

New York City, New Year's Eve, 1984. A woman named Lillian Boxfish, about the same age as the century, has no particular place to be. Dressed in her favourite mink coat, she embarks on a miles-long stroll around lower Manhattan. The novel switches between Lillian's encounters with ordinary New Yorkers and her memories of six eventful decades living in the city.

Based on the life of the copywriter and poet Margaret Fishback, author Kathleen Rooney begins with Lillian's stint at Macy's department store, where she's one of the first and highest paid women in advertising. Rooney's lively prose is peppered with witty poems written by the real life Fishback.  The  crackling writing brings the Jazz Age to life: from the wood-paneled walls and elegant elevators of Macy's, to sparkling Prohibition-era cocktail parties.

Lillian is in her element as a career woman, and becomes a published poet. Eventually the self-proclaimed "single girl" falls for a charming Italian-American, and she's forced to give up her career as she becomes a wife and mother.  As Lillian’s memories turn to her middle years, life no longer seems as “bright as a penny" and she stumbles under the weight of personal problems.

Although 1980s NYC is beset by a crime wave , the elderly Lillian has clearly regained her resilience. She is undeterred when she sets out on New Year's Eve, having always been energized by long walks through the city. Lillian meets a limo driver who's baffled by her refusal to take a ride, a security guard haunted by his tour in Vietnam, a convenience store clerk with dreams of making it big, a young man traumatized by the AIDS epidemic, a barman, a maître d’, and even three muggers. Among the many stops and landmarks mentioned along the way, Lillian visits the famous Delmonico's restaurant where she once experienced a devastating break-up. Lillian orders Delmonico's legendary steak, determined to enjoy it more than the last time she was there.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is a novel packed with charm, with a firecracker of a main character. It is a love letter to New York City , a meditation on the things that sustain us as we age, and an homage to pioneering career women. Like a meal at Delmonico's, this is a novel to be savoured.

Over the Top

by Jonathan Van Ness

Jonathan Van Ness, beloved grooming expert on Netflix’s Queer Eye series, came out with an eye-opening memoir filled with struggle, hurt, and most importantly, love. The effervescent TV personality comes off as a strong, confident, person with plenty of self-love to go around so it came as quite a surprise to find out this was not always the case. From early childhood, Jonathan experienced terrible trauma that shaped their life in unspeakable ways. Told from a place of brutal honesty, Jonathan delivers the hard truths of his childhood and young adulthood in hopes that this story will allow others to open up about their own trauma, and hopefully begin the healing process.

I was advised to read this as an audiobook by a friend and am very glad to have done so. Read by the author, it was a pleasure to really listen to this story from the totally unique voice of Jonathan Van Ness. Their optimism, honesty, and desire to do better and be better is truly inspirational and translates so well in the telling of this story.

While this book definitely hits on many hard topics from child abuse to drug addiction, prostitution, and HIV, Jonathan manages to bring a positive perspective, thus making a hard conversation, something digestible and meaningful. I am very grateful to have read this story as it opened my eyes to some issues people in communities that differ from my own.

Good Vibrations

by Mike Love

Mike Love’s Good Vibrations is his story of his life as one of the founders of the Beach Boys, a band best known for classics like Good Vibrations, Surfin’ USA, and Help Me Rhonda. Most people’s impression is that they are a fun-loving, goofy band. And a lot of the time, they are!

For people who dig a little deeper into the history of the band, though, they know that while the music was fun, their personal lives were a lot more complicated: Brian Wilson suffered from serious mental illness, Dennis Wilson was taken advantage of by Charles Manson, and the whole family was in an abusive family situation with the Wilsons’ father. These complications made the band’s internal situation especially complicated: Mike Love didn’t always appreciate the musical direction of the band. He wanted hit after hit, and he believed that the formula worked. Write surf songs. Get on the charts. Make money. Live the rock n’ roll lifestyle. Ignore all those other issues for the sake of a hit.

All this paints an ugly picture of the man: Love knows how many of his statements and behaviours are on the public record, including a rant at the Beach Boys’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when he bad-mouthed a whole series of rock legends and stars. He sued Brian Wilson for control of the band and tried to get a larger financial stake from Wilson’s rights to the music he wrote. Mike Love claims everything he has said and done was out of Love for his family, about his deep respect for Brian and was only trying to protect him from himself.

Good Vibrations is a fascinating look at a man trying to reclaim his reputation. Mike Love doesn’t really come across as a sympathetic figure, even in his own words. As much as he knows that no one seems to respect him that much, he doesn’t seem to really understand why he comes across as the villain in the Beach Boys’ story, as a man who resisted the band’s efforts to grow and move ahead of the times.

Riveting tales from the crematory

I first encountered Caitlin Doughty while watching Ted Talks. Her talk, A burial practice that nourishes the planet, explores different ideas for burial that don’t pollute the environment with toxic, cancer-causing formaldehyde. It was absolutely fascinating, so when I learned that she was a published author with three books, I wasted no time getting my hands on them.   

In Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Doughty tells the story of her journey into the funeral industry, from crematory assistant, then mortuary school, to founder of the death acceptance collective The Order of the Good Death. The book opens with her first day as a crematory assistant, flashes back to her first encounter with death, and goes over frank and often graphic descriptions of what happens to bodies at the funeral home and beyond. It’s definitely not a book for the faint of heart, but far from being all sadness, horror and gore, this book is also hilarious, candid, and empowering. Doughty challenges the idea of death avoidance that has permeated our society’s death rituals in the last hundred years with the rise of the multimillion-dollar funeral industry. She challenges the reader to ask themselves what do you want to happen to your body when you die?

Her next two books are equally enjoyable and fascinating. In From Here To Eternity, Doughty explores different current cultural death rituals. From Zoroastrian sky burials, to Bolivian natitas, and Japanese kotsuage ceremonies, there is an immense diversity on how humans care for the dead. In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty answers questions children have posed about death such as can Grandma have a Viking funeral?, or what would happen if you swallowed a bag of popcorn before you died and were cremated?

Death is inevitable. No matter how much we might not want to, we will all, eventually, die. It is an unchangeable and, at times, terrifying truth. It certainly terrified me, but after reading Dougthy’s three books, death feels less frightening and more like just another part of being human. It is not something I’m looking forward to but it is not something I avoid talking about. I most definitely recommend these fascinating, hilarious, and poignant books to those of a curious mind and a brave heart. 

The Best We Could Do

The Best We Could Do 

Thi Bui

Upon becoming a first time mother, Thi Bui reflects on the lives of her Vietnamese parents.  In an effort to understand her tense relationship with her parents, the author explores her family’s story and recreates it in this beautiful graphic memoire.  During the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, her parents made a daring escape to Malaysia to seek refuge from a country in turmoil.  How they came to be on that boat, and how they eventually came to the United States is a much longer and more complicated story that really shines a light on the enduring strength of people in the face of adversity.    

Alternating between periods in each of her parents lives, Bui weaves a story of two separate people who come together to create a family that endures through hardship and works hard to bring better times. The stories of Bui’s parents, Bo and Ma, as children, as a young couple, as new parents, and as refugees, shows amazing growth of character and really humanizes Bo and Ma beyond the label of just being Bui’s parents.  

Beyond the amazing story of two people carting their three children (while Ma is eight months pregnant!) across the seas on a rickety boat, dodging pirates and detection to save their family from the chaos of Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War, this story exemplifies the hardships parents will endure for their children.  This love is illustrated so beautifully in word and image throughout the book.   While Bui did not grow up in a household where love was expressed verbally or openly on a daily basis, you can see that Ma and Bo did the best they could. 

The Best We Could Do reminded me of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Louis Riel by Chester Brown.  All three books use a different medium to convey true stories of people facing resistance from external forces.  The illustrations bring a new dimension to the telling of these stories.

Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight

Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight

  By Alexandra Fuller

Written by a British expatriate, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is a memoir of growing up in Africa.  Set in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Mozambique and Malawi, this book follows Alexandra Fuller from the age of three as her family builds a life in an unforgiving and remote land.

The Fullers believe in colonial rule.  Although they are immigrants to Africa, they consider black Africans an inferior race.  Africans are employed as cooks, nannies, houseboys, labourers and trackers, but it’s the Fullers who run the farms on which they live.  And initially, it is also the British who govern.

Over time, Africans begin to rebel against their European rulers.  “Terrorism”, in the form of attacks on white settlers, is a constant concern for the Fullers.  Corruption in Africa is rife, war is rampant, and lawlessness is the rule.  Although the family lives with the uncertainty of government takeovers and later, spies, they never seem particularly bothered.  They contend with police road checks (which usually involve a bribe) and violence, not to mention disease, scorpions and polluted water with relative ease.  In a sense they are true Africans as all of these third world hardships are simply a fact of life for them.

Clearly there is nothing glamourous about farm life in Africa.  Alexandra, known as Bobo, is a true farm girl.  She revels in the horses, dogs, dirt and rhythm of life on the farm.  Having moved to Africa at the age of three, she also clearly adores the continent; Fuller’s writing brings to life the smells, the sweltering heat, and the stunning beauty.

On a more intimate note, Fuller describes the family’s loss of several children. The pain of these losses is felt most acutely by her mother, who struggles with alcoholism and her mental health as time wears on.  Her mother’s behaviour has a profound effect on the family of course.  Yet the Fullers soldier stoically on, throughout the growing familial madness.  The book ends on a positive note as both living daughters embark on their own lives. 

Alexandra Fuller provides an enlightening glimpse into the hearts and minds of colonial settlers.  And despite its dysfunctionality, I felt a deep affection for her family.  A fantastic read!