White Houses by Amy Bloom

A few years ago, when Amy Bloom's last novel, Lucky Us, came out, I read an interview with Bloom in which she said that her children said about her work: "It's always about sex and death." I thought that sounded intriguing.

So when my book group chose White Houses to read, I looked forward to it. 

White Houses is historical fiction, about the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and her lover, the newspaper reporter Lorena Hickok.

I didn't like the beginning. The scene in the opening chapter takes place just after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, and Eleanor and Lorena meet again after having been apart for some years. This scene emphasized the class difference between Eleanor and Lorena: Eleanor enters the apartment and sheds her clothes as she walks through it; Lorena follows, picking up Eleanor's clothes off the floor and hanging them up.

But I found as I read on that this novel was a compelling read. There's a tremendous amount written about the life of Eleanor Roosevelt, and Bloom seems to have read it all. It's clear she did a great deal of research. The narrative is full of observations about Eleanor's life, the many people she knew, and the many things she did.

We also learn about Lorena's hardscrabble rural background. This interest in the Depression and the period before it reminds me that Lucky Us was set during the depression (and partly in Hollywood).  

There's an interesting contrast, to me, between Lorena's deeply practical nature and the richness of Bloom's language. Bloom is a wonderful writer, and her prose just pulled me along.

Hereditary

I enjoyed seeing Get Out so much last year that I decided I'd take a chance and go see Hereditary. I really enjoyed it. I thought Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne's acting was very good, and that quality of verisimilitude made the story much more scary. But, it's not too scary. In my view, just the right amount. I'd definitely recommend it.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I skimmed this book last night. It's one of many on the list for the Great American Read, and one of many on that list that appeal to teens and young adults, and are suitable for parents and teens to read together.

I skimmed it because I read the first five pages or so and realized that I quite disliked the idea that the narrator of the book is a supernatural figure that invisibly gathers souls. It reminded me a little bit of The Lovely Bones, which was enormously popular at the time that I read it. This novel has been a bestseller for a very long time.

And, in fact, the framework of the narrator who sees things from above, led me, as I was reading, to see the book in very cinematic terms. In fact, as I skimmed the book there were many times that the mental pictures formed in my mind were similar to crane shots. I know that this novel was made into a movie a few years ago, and I think I'd be interested in watching the movie to see how the filmmaker's mental pictures compared with my own.

This book has been loved by many, but I imagine will not appeal to everyone. As a work of imagination, I admire Zusak's novel very greatly. I also admire that the Hubermanns were both ordinary and heroic; their story was lost as many stories have been lost. Zusak gives that lost history a record.