This was a really intellectual book.  It is so academic that it took me quite a while to adjust to reading it and for the first several hours, I kept thinking that I just wasn't smart enough anymore to appreciate real literature. The plot is complicated, with lots of characters set in two time periods, with scholars in the 2000s unfolding the story and mystery of a set of papers written in the 1660's.  The romance in both eras is as much with the pursuit of philosophic truths as between people.  

So, it took me a while to adjust to the language, to adjust my thinking to a philosophic space. The book assumes you know quite a bit about Spinoza, Hobbs, and other philosophers, so I had to dig deep in my memories of all those philosophy classes I took as an undergrad, but a lot of it came back to me as the story unfolded.  

The second part of the book takes place in England during the plague and it was horrifying to read about could be happening here if we weren't taking the kind of precautions that we are taking during this modern-day plague we are living through.  The antisemitism of the era is a constant backdrop of the historical story, as well as the misogyny and limited options for women in across life circumstances--whether a wealthy intellectual or a housekeeper/servant.  What I ultimately loved about the writing, though, was how these themes were woven into both storylines without fanfare.  Probably the thing I liked best was the themes of mentorship and friendship that form the backbone of the relationships in this story.  More than family, more than romantic partnerships, the platonic, symbiotic connection between someone teaching and someone learning was striking and, really, how often do we see those types of relationships explored in a novel, especially one of this complexity?  The unseen strength of the bond between the librarian, the document restorer, the grad student, and the grumpy old professor is both subtle and lovely and when written in conjunction with the friendships between the rabbi, the brilliant orphan scribe, the housekeeper, and the wealthy rebel,...well, it is something to behold.

There is also a lot to think about here in terms of surviving a plague and putting our pandemic experience in perspective.  It reminds us that one outing in a moment of weakness can be devastating and that wealth and privilege doesn't protect you and that how we treat each other during these hard times matters, regardless of whether we survive, but that what we are doing to survive is temporary and that we can emerge on the other side.

You'll need to pay attention and if, like me, you have put your philosophical thinking on hold, you might need to google some people and theories to keep up, but ultimately it felt good to dive deep into this complicated storyline.

​Recommend.

Spoiler alert...ok not really.  The opening scene is a graphic rape scene of a young girl in an elite boarding school dorm room by two seniors who are also adult men.  The memoir circles back to this scene in graphic detail over and over in a literary choice that mirror a brain processing this kind of trauma.  While in many ways a brilliant tactic, it is exhausting and feels redundant and burdensome at times.  

The rape and ensuing physical manifestations of the STD she contracted from it are the actually the backdrop, though, for a high school experience marred by the rape, that was bragged about by the boys as a threesome and tarnished the rest of her years at the school.  Her common response to the assault included sexual promiscuity and much of the story is about those experiences, some of which can be described as "bad sex" and some of which are also sexual assaults.  Labeled a "slut," the story explores the inner turmoil of teen isolation and describes how this can lead to a life of overachievement and high functioning as a cover for trauma recovery.

It was difficult to decide whether to recommend this or not, and I was pretty sure it would go in the Not Not Recommended category, primarily because at the end of the day I think the graphicness ended up being a distraction. I am also not a fan of opening with trauma scenes.  It feels like overused and oversimplified literary technique that took away from an otherwise compelling narrative, kind of a cheap trick to suck in the prurient reader.

However, the tone and style of the book changes dramatically in about the last third.  It is much less literary, as it shifts focus to various legal cases and investigations involving the school. I had already decided this was likely as Not Not Recommended book, because of the graphic scenes, but this last second convinced me that I should recommend it, but with a caveat for the violence.  So much of this last part vividly and accurately reflects my experiences with the legal system since the 90's.  The secondary violence of untrained and sometimes uncaring the medical, law enforcement, and legal response to the sexual assault of children is set out here in painful detail that many people will relate to and many, many others would benefit from reading.  So, in the end, I do think this is a recommend.  Book your therapy sessions before you start reading, though.  There is a lot to process here.

Recommend.

I liked this book quite a lot.  Written about McMinnville, Oregon, just up north from us a little ways, I found it even more interesting as the author, a native McMinnvillian, tells the story of a community in which successful kids succeed and others are left behind.  The opioid crisis  the loss of logging and other blue collar jobs weave through the stories, covering everything from driver's license suspension policy to mental health crisis and petty crime.  A recurring theme is how small white town America continues to support conservative policies, and Trump in particular, despite relying on government programs, being hurt by the lack of social services, and needing access to more programs, not less.  The comparison with Black communities provides food for thought and overall it is a unique perspective on the status of rural America.

​Recommend.

Oh, the existential angst of someone raised by an atheist father with existential angst trying to make sense of the world...it can be so painful.  A memoir tucked into a biography of problematic Stanford president David Starr Jordan, there is a lot of interesting and troublesome history, about him, that institution, the cataloging of fish species, and eugenics.  While philosophically interesting in places and certainly containing a lot of intriguing information I didn't previously know, I just couldn't get into the musings about the meaning of it all when set out in the context of privilege and power.  Her idea, that grief and loss and lack of control over ones life, can lead to collecting and organizing as a way of trying to take power over your life was novel to me, but not enough to carry the entire book.  Not recommended.

This book was so exceptionally fabulous until it wasn't. There was so much that I just loved. Set in Seattle, there is a bakery as one of the main locations and the description of the baked goods were mouth watering--and really miss going to really good bakeries. I loved the vivid and eccentric characters. I didn't know where the story was going, but I did not see where it went coming and where it went was so violent. It had been such a sweet story, but having that almost at the end and then a quick resolution that doesn't address the complexity of the trauma just left me really disappointed, in addition to horrified over the assault.
Not recommended.

I don't know if it is me in my pandemic state of mind or just a coincidence, but I found this book also very difficult to get into at the beginning.  It is an historical novel based on the life of Varina Davis, the young wife of Jefferson Davis, about whom I knew nothing before reading this.  The writing style jumps around so it is not in chronological order, but neither is it  really in flashbacks, either.  It just skips around, alluding to other things that happened in the past that you don't know about yet and I found this confusing and also like everything was a spoiler alert, while maybe masquerading as foreshadowing.  It was quite off-putting.  But at some point, it settled into a more linear story that was fascinating to think about.  I find myself now wondering how much of it was historically accurate.  This genre of writing fictionalized accounts of famous historical figures' lives isn't my favorite. I'm not sure how I feel about blending this level of fiction with biography, but I don't exactly like the idea.  Nevertheless, by the end of the book, I was quite captivated by the end.  It is another soft recommendation.

So many people I like love this book and I was excited not just for the book, but for a new series to love.  But, alas, I did not love this story. I did not even like it.  It is, at its core, a book about war and there just are not that many way novels that I like.  It is dressed up with magic and its biggest strength was some really good lines and even passages, mostly about religion, philosophy, and morality.  
There are so many examples, like this one: “We follow the codes not because they bring gain, but because we loathe the people we would otherwise become.”  Of the three or four interwoven plots, I only got interested in one about an academic woman mentoring a young intellectual--a storyline about learning, teaching, layered deceptions, and the complexity of relationships.  The book is 1200 pages, 45 hours, so it is a significant investment and I found myself really slogging through the war and politics parts, which I would say make up at least three-quarters of the story.  Not recommended.