January thru April 2018: Where'd You Go Bernadette, Little Fires Everywhere, Moloka'i, and The Rock the Road and the Rabbi

Volume 1, Issue 2 - April 2018

BUTLER WOMEN

OF WISDOM

QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER

Greetings, Women of Wisdom!

Happy Mother’s Day!  Hope you all enjoyed a May day of showers with flowers or some other sweet indulgence.

As the year picked up its momentum, I quickly found myself way past my own quarterly deadline for this newsletter. Luckily, I have no editors hounding me for words only you my readers who have forgotten that the book club archivist still pens the minutes of our meetings.

Looking back, this newsletter includes summaries of the Butler Women of Wisdom’s discussions from books we have read from January 2018 to April 2018. The books include Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste NG, Molokai by Alan Brennert, and The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi by Kathie Lee Gifford.

Starting the year with Lori’s choice, our January’s read Where’d You Go Bernadette provided us with comic relief from the “blah” days of January. The story, a documentary novel, takes place in a Microsoft town in Seattle where Semple plants an eccentric family in the middle of an upscale neighborhood of Craftsman built homes. The mother, Bernadette, once an award winning architect, ironically does little to mask their own home’s dilapidation amid the classic designs. While thorny blackberry bushes grow up from the floor, the home is where Bernadette is the wife to her Microsoft celebrity husband, Elgin, and mother to her genius daughter, Bee. Among the letters, emails, and notes which construct the novel’s plot, it segways between various points of view, leading the reader to wonder whether Bernadette is indeed crazy. Her inability to perform even the most menial of tasks and giving up her personal ID to a veritable virtual stranger is a sure sign that Bernadette may have bats in her belfry. As her problems surmount due to the meddling of a conniving neighbor, the scamming virtual assistant from India, and her husband’s adulterous co-worker; Bernadette frees herself from a forced stay in a mental institution by fleeing with her daughter Bee on Bee’s planned family trip to the South Pole.

Semple incorporates so many fun one-liners as the chronicled events in Where’d You Go, Bernadette progress. It heats up with humor from the very beginning with sardonic lines like “Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They’re everywhere,” and  “You know what it’s like when you go to Ikea…, and even though you may not need a hundred tea lights, my God, they’re only ninety-nine cents for the whole bag!” We had a good time discussing Lori’s hilarious book pic and look forward to the movie coming out this year which will star Cate Blanchett as Bernadette!

A suburb of Cleveland is the setting of February’s read Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Cheryl’s pick, this book contrasted two very different lifestyles. When the wealthy suburbanite Richardson family becomes interested in the unconventional lives of their tenants Mia and Pearl Warren, conservative lines are crossed. Through this story of high profile parents raising the perfect family in their perfect home on their perfect street, dark secrets are divulged and their superficial life begins crumbling. As always in the worlds of those who hold themselves above others, it is the little person who pays in the end. Mia, a starving artist, and her daughter Pearl are drawn into the drama of the Richardson’s heart and home only to be tossed out by Mrs. Richardson, a controlling white collar socialite.

The value of this book lies in the endearing mother and daughter relationship between Mia and Pearl. As Pearl is now grown up, Mia misses the occasional embraces of her daughter. “It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.” Mia understands the essence of parenting, “To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, … a vast eternal place...You could see it every time you looked at her. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge… And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again. Ng’s writing becomes very intense in some passages as if she is trying to say what no other writer has ever articulated about motherhood. It is a theme that is just too transcendent, it is love in its highest form.

Making the list of the top ten best books I have ever read is not easy, but Moloka’i by Alan Brennert now holds that honor. First, the book is historical fiction, my favorite genre. Second, the setting includes a priest and a convent with nuns; and third, it relates a richly factual story of American oppression using a child’s innocence to support the message of social injustice. Brennert’s novel is an epic which spans a lifetime of drama of one character, a leper.

In Moloka’i, we meet the main character Rachel Kalama a happy and loving five year old living on the Hawaiian island of her birth, Honolulu. When she succumbs to leprosy two years later in 1893, she is torn from her parents by the American board of health, never to return. Young Rachel soon finds herself on the shores of Moloka’i, a remote island used for the banishment of leprosy victims. The direction of Rachel’s pathetic life seems bleak, but Brennert is able to shine light in the darkness of her internment. Taken in by a convent of nuns as a child, Rachel is protected from the paganism of the rest of the island. She grows into a young woman able to find love amid so much loss, “I’ve come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death . . . is the true measure of Divine within us. . . It is in our mortality that we are most Divine” (307). This passage expresses the timeless theme of Moloka’i, my fourth reason for placing this book on my list of top ten novels of all time. A deep undeniable message makes the time spent reading worthwhile.

April’s meeting to discuss my book pick, Kathy Lee Gifford’s The Rock, the Road and the Rabbi was so well attended! It was more of a book “party” at Natilie’s Pizzeria than a book club. Such a gathering it was, Vince Tavolerio himself, the locally re-known owner, graced our table for a short chat. Ten of our eleven members were in attendance. Even Jody was back from her travels to God knows where - and He knows because He is usually the one who sends her there. It was a good discussion about the enlightening explanations of scripture from the viewpoint of a Messianic Jew. Learning about the Jewish culture, we now understand is vital for truly understanding the Divination of Jesus Christ, His heritage, and the customs He observed.

I am now confounded by the symbolism which is everywhere in Biblical text. Every number, every food, every animal, every name holds so much meaning. How do we think we can truly know what the Bible is saying without understanding the language of Hebrew and the numerous other Biblical languages? We all decided, it would be beneficial if we could all be like Kathy Lee and just have our own Messianic Jew on hand for instruction. It’s never too late to learn. At the age of 82, Frank Gifford, Kathy Lee’s husband, finally learned. He found his stone, his sense of peace and purpose in this life. With or without an understanding of Hebrew, Kathy Lee’s book encourages us all to pick up our stones and just throw them on the road that Christ has prepared for us. On page 147, Kathy’s Rabbi Jason quotes Jeremiah 29:11, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Consequently, Kathy Lee’s exuberance throughout the contents of her book is contagious. In sharing with us an understanding of the Jesus of His time, it can only deepen our relationship with Him.

The meeting to discuss our next book The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen is soon approaching. This time we will meet at Ann Marie’s Restaurant in East Butler. The date is set for Wednesday, May 23, at 6 PM. Our second historical fiction novel of the year, The Tuscan Child reports those who have started reading it are loving it. The title, selected by Sharon, takes us to Tuscany during WWII and transports us thirty years into the future to an English countryside. With that description, I can’t wait for my own reading journey to start!

I’m looking forward to seeing all of you on the 23rd!

Sincerely,

Tammy