"Conversations With Friends" by Sally Rooney

I bought "Conversations With Friends," the debut novel by Irish millennial author Sally Rooney, shortly after I first read "Normal People" (which I reviewed here and again here).  A few people have said they liked it better than "Normal People."

I'm not sure I agree. Despite their faults, I sympathized with "Normal People" 's Connell and Marianne and found myself rooting for them, despite their annoying habit of pushing each other away and then coming back together, over and over again. The characters here simply didn't grab me in the same way (although there were echoes of "Normal People" in some of the characters' backgrounds and traits and plotlines -- or I guess that should be the other way around, since this book actually came first? There's even a minor character named Marianne here, a friend of Frances's.  And, of course, it's also set in Dublin.). 

The story involves two former school friends turned lovers turned friends again, Frances and Bobbi, whose lives become strangely intertwined with with an older married couple, Melissa and Nick, a writer/photographer and actor. None of the characters are particularly likeable -- although I did gain some sympathy for Frances as the story progressed. (Hey, she's just 21 -- I did some pretty dumb things at that age too.)  I found Bobbi especially irritating -- maybe because I've known too many girls like her?  

But it's still very well written -- an impressive debut for such a young writer. (Rooney was just 26 when "Conversations With Friends" was published.) I did find myself more engaged in the book towards the end. 

I understand a TV adaptation is in the works, in the wake of "Normal People" (the TV series)'s smash success. Maybe it will flesh out the book for me and enhance my appreciation of it, in the same way that the TV version of "Normal People" did? 

I rated "Normal People" four stars. Since I didn't like this one quite as much, I'm not sure I can give it four stars too. So I'm giving it three stars on Goodreads, but really closer to 3.5, particularly taking the last one-third of the book into account.  :) 

*** *** *** 

ALI alert:  Frances's gynecological issues might be somewhat triggering for some readers. 

And I marked this passage from the book with a sticky note, near the end. I thought it kind of spoke to the moment we're all living in right now -- but it could also apply to infertility too:   

Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen. (p. 276) 

This was Book #23 read to date in 2020 (Book #5 finished in July). I'm currently at 77% of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books, and am (for the moment, anyway...!) 7 books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2020 tagged as "2020 books."  

Move over, moms -- bring on the Auntifa ;)

When I first heard about the "wall of moms" protecting demonstrators in Portland, Oregon (and getting tear-gassed for their trouble), my first thought was, "Good for them!" 

My second impulse was to roll my eyes. Because of course, "moms" are going to save the world, right?  

Does anyone else see the irony that a group of women demonstrating for democracy and great inclusion for people of colour, are doing so under a banner ("moms") that excludes a significant and growing segment of the female population (who are NOT moms and never will be, whether by choice or chance)?? 

So I was happy to see a tweet from writer Jill Filipovic at the top of my feed these morning,  expressing admiration . It's worth reading her entire thread, because she says it much better than I can.  Here's a screenshot of the first post in the thread: 

Among the points Filipovic makes: 

It’s premised on the idea that motherhood makes you more moral, more nurturing, more sensitive to suffering. And also that mothers are usually apolitical, and soft, and non-threatening (until they’re fierce mama bears). In other words, lots of sexist stereotypes to make this work.

She also says: 

It also suggests that women who aren’t mothers have less of a role in advocacy. It relies on the presumed respectability of (white) motherhood for legitimacy.

As you might imagine, she is getting a LOT of pushback in the comments. (Including from some other feminist writers -- who are mothers -- that I respect/admire, such as Jessica Valenti.) Some thoughtful points made, and a few childless & childfree people chiming in -- but still a lot of moms singing their own praises, some self-righteous indignation, and flat-out dismissal ("you're being too sensitive," "moms is just a label, everyone is welcome," etc.). 

My favourite response(s):  ;)  

Thoughts? 

#MicroblogMondays: Happy birthday, Dad

I'm a bit late with my #MM post today (although I did post a book review this morning). I'm feeling a bit melancholy today, and wasn't sure what I could or should post about. I commented on Mel's #MM post earlier, and that actually gave me the inspiration for what to write about: how I'm feeling today & why.

I know I've written about this several times in recent months (and I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record...), and now the day (one of them, anyway) is here:  it's my dad's 81st birthday today, and Wednesday will be my parents' 60th (!) wedding anniversary.  And even though I'm almost always there on or around these dates to celebrate with them, I can't this year, because of COVID-19, interprovincial travel restrictions and quarantine requirements. :( 

My sister is on vacation this week, and will be there tonight with a cake for dad, and on Wednesday, she'll invite Parents' Neighbours' Daughter & her family and a few of the neighbours over for a socially distanced gathering on the patio/lawn, where another (larger) cake will be served. So at least the days will be marked in some way with at least one daughter there, and we’re chipping in together on a gift (a new weed-whacker for my dad, and some badly needed new tires for the car for both of them — I said 25 is silver, 50 is gold and 60 is rubber, lol). And my sister has promised there will be pictures.

But it still sucks that we can't all be together. :( 

When you don't have kids, those opportunities for "milestone" celebrations become further & fewer in between. The ones you do get to have -- including celebrating your aging parents' birthdays & anniversaries, as well as your own milestone events -- become all the more special. (And 60 years is definitely special!)  Let's face it, who knows how many more anniversaries and birthdays and Christmases I'm going to be able to celebrate with them? 

I called my dad tonight to wish him a happy birthday (and wiped away a few tears after hanging up). I'll call again on Wednesday. And just keep hoping that things improve in time for me to be there for Christmas...

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

"Too Much and Never Enough" by Mary L. Trump

Yes, I read it. ;)  (I couldn't resist, lol.)

"Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" by Mary L. Trump, is just a little more than 200 pages -- but it explains a lot about the current president of the United States -- the author's uncle -- and how his upbringing influenced the man he is today.

The book is part memoir (Mary's experience of growing up as a Trump), part Trump family history, and part psychological analysis of the current President and the strange dynamics of the dysfunctional family he (and Mary) grew up in.

(I was reminded of Ann Patchett's novel "The Dutch House," which I read earlier this year, which also focuses on a dysfunctional family whose patriarch makes a fortune in real estate. Mary refers to the Trump family home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, New York City, as "the House" (with a capital H), and as in the Patchett novel, "the House" essentially becomes a character in the story itself.)

Much as I am not a fan of the current president, I'm inclined to agree with Washington Post reviewer Carlos Lozada, who observes, "The real villain of Mary Trump’s family tell-all isn’t Donald. It’s Fred."  That would be Donald's father and Mary's grandfather, Fred Trump, whom she describes as a "high-functioning sociopath." Fred ruled his family with an iron-handed mixture of fear and neglect. (His wife, also named Mary, suffered from numerous health issues and was largely absent -- literally and emotionally -- from her children's lives.)

“Abuse can be quiet and insidious just as often as, or even more often than, it is loud and violent," Mary writes. "As far as I know, my grandfather wasn’t a physically violent man or even a particularly angry one. He didn’t have to be; he expected to get what he wanted and almost always did.” (Sound familiar?)

“In some ways, I've been extremely fortunate," Mary says in the book's prologue. "I attended excellent private schools and had the security of first-rate medical insurance for much of my life. There was also, though, a built-in sense of scarcity that applied to all of us, except Donald."

The children (aside from Donald) were trained not to ask for anything, ever -- that would mean admitting weakness.  Fred Trump may have been a multi-millionaire -- and he bankrolled Donald's businesses, far more than the President has ever acknowledged -- but Mary's parents, Fred Jr. (known as Freddy) and Linda, lived in a damp, drafty apartment in one of Fred's buildings, their requests for repairs going unanswered (to the point that Freddy wound up in the hospital with pneumonia).  When Freddy (now divorced) moved back in with his parents after going through rehab, he lived for a time in the attic of the House, sleeping on a cot amid piles of storage boxes and old toys. When Mary lost her typewriter when her student apartment was burgled, she asked her grandfather (through an associate) for an advance on her allowance to buy a new one -- and was told to get a job instead. (Her grandmother wound up writing her a cheque.)  It's telling little details like these -- as well as the touches of wry humour that Mary brings to the story -- that kept me turning the pages.

Freddy never measured up to his father's expectations -- and yet he did summon up the strength of character to leave the family business for a time and follow his own ambitions to become a pilot.  Fred never forgave his oldest son for this betrayal, and instead focused his ambitions on his middle son, Donald. It's painful to read about Freddy's sad decline into alcoholism and his premature death at the age of 42, when Mary was just 16.

After Fred Sr.'s death in 1999, Mary and her brother Fritz found themselves essentially cut out of their grandfather's will.  They sued -- and Mary later gave documents about the Trump empire that she received during that lawsuit to New York Times reporters investigating the family's finances. Their investigation showed Mary that her family's fortune was much larger than she and her brother had been led to believe.

No doubt Mary Trump wants some revenge for the way she & her brother (and, earlier, their father) have been treated by their family. But she also fears for the future of her country, and feels that her uncle has gotten away with far too much for far too long. "No one knows how Donald came to be who he is better than his own family. Unfortunately, almost all of them remain silent out of loyalty or fear. I'm not hindered by either of those."

She does have a unique perspective to add, and I'm glad she chose to tell her story.

I debated whether this was a four or five-star read. I settled on five stars on Goodreads, because I really did enjoy reading it. It's well written, highly readable and highly insightful. It explains a lot. 

This was Book #22 read to date in 2020 (Book #4 finished in July). I'm currently at 73% of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books, and am (for the moment, anyway...!) 6 books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2020 tagged as "2020 books."  

(This isn't my #MicroblogMondays post... hoping to get one of those posted later!) 

"White Rage" by Carol Anderson

"White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide" by Carol Anderson had been languishing in my TBR (to be read) pile for a while. I reached for it in early June, shortly after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as Black Lives Matter protests sprang up across the United States and around the world.

As an overview of how we got to this point, it was probably a good book to start with, although not an easy one (but then, what book on this complex, painful topic is "easy," right?). 

Anderson, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, explains in the prologue about how the book came to be, in her observations about the protests and looting after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (and, earlier, the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo by New York City police). 

"Again and again, across America's ideological spectrum, from Fox News to MSNBC, the issue was framed in terms of black rage, which, it seemed to me, entirely missed the point," Anderson writes, laying out the book's thesis. 

"...What was really at work here was white rage. With so much attention focused on the flames, everyone had ignored the logs, the kindling. In some ways, it is easy to see why. White rage is not about visible violence, but rather it works its way through the courts, the legislatures, and a range of government bureaucracies. It wreaks havoc subtly, almost imperceptibly. Too imperceptibly, certainly, for a nation consistently drawn to the spectacular—to what it can see. It’s not the Klan. White rage doesn’t have to wear sheets, burn crosses, or take to the streets. Working the halls of power, it can achieve its ends far more effectively, far more destructively... 

"The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship...

“The truth is, white rage has undermined democracy, warped the Constitution, weakened the nation’s ability to compete economically, squandered billions of dollars on baseless incarceration, rendered an entire region sick, poor, and woefully undereducated, and left cities nothing less than decimated. All this havoc has been wreaked simply because African Americans wanted to work, get an education, live in decent communities, raise their families, and vote. Because they were unwilling to take no for an answer.”

Anderson takes us more or less chronologically, step by step, through 150 years of American history -- from the Civil War and Reconstruction through Plessy vs Ferguson, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, Brown vs Board of Education, the civil rights movement of the 1950s & 60s and the Voting Rights Act to the election of (and backlash against) Barack Obama and, in a new afterword written for the paperback edition, the election of Donald Trump. Along the way, she demonstrates how hard-won black progress has been consistently met with rage and resistance from the white majority through the institutions of power that it controls.  

I knew some of the history that Anderson recounts here, but certainly not all of it, and not all of the details -- which can become overwhelming at times, and which is probably why it took me a full month to work my way through this book. (I was startled to read, for example, on page 22:  "Indeed, such was Mississippi's obstinacy that it delayed ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment [which abolished slavery in the United States] until 2013." !!!)  The book is just 287 pages -- including a mere 178 pages of text -- and well documented, with 62 (!) pages of footnotes.  It was cited on many critics' lists as one of the best books of 2016.  I can see why.  While the material may sometimes be difficult, it's thoughtfully and well written and well argued. 

Four stars on Goodreads.

This was Book #21 read to date in 2020 (Book #3 finished in July). I'm currently at 70% of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books, and am (for the moment, anyway...!) 5 books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2020 tagged as "2020 books."  

#MicroblogMondays: Annoying things & small pleasures

Annoying things:

• Saturday night partygoers whooping it up somewhere outside our building while we were trying to get to sleep. :p  #condoliving #toooldforthiscrap
• Not getting to see little Great-Nephew this weekend. :( 
• (No new photos on social media from his parents or grandparents in more than a week either.) :(  
• How little wine it takes these days for me to start feeling fuzzy. :p  (My 20-year-old self would scoff, lol.)  
• Deciding not to go through the hassle of trying to return/exchange the black ribbed tank top that Old Navy sent me (instead of the package of masks I'd ordered) and just add the thing to my wardrobe... only to discover, when I unfolded it & took a good look at it, that it was a CHILD's top!! (It's now going into the bag destined for the thrift store...!) 
• Parents on Twitter complaining about being sick of parenting in this pandemic (which, okay, I can sympathize with to some extent)... but then tacking on an additional complaint that "non-parents have no idea how hard it's been." Seriously?? I daresay you have no idea how hard our lives can be either... :p  (I was pleased to see how many people -- both childfree and childless-not-by-choice -- called him out on his post -- and, to his credit, the guy did apologize later.) 

Small pleasures: 

• A brief respite from the unrelenting heat & humidity of the past few weeks -- enough to have the balcony door open for a while in the morning, anyway. 
• Lots of good and even great hair days since (finally!) getting a haircut two weeks ago. :)  
• The season's first gelato, on our wedding anniversary last Monday. :) 
• My mom told me she & my dad spent our 35th wedding anniversary watching the video of our wedding day (something I haven't looked at in years myself!)... and my dad apparently remarked that I was "a very pretty bride," which really tickled me.  :)  
• Getting my 2021 week-on-two-pages Filofax insert in the mail last week (ordered via Amazon). (Yes, I still use a paper calendar... and I'd be lost without it!) 
• Hoping that those days will be filled with activities other than staying holed up at home, away from others, and trying to avoid a pandemic... :(  (but not entirely hopeful that will happen by then...) 
• (And, speaking of mail...) Finally getting the last 5-pack of cloth masks I'd ordered from Old Navy (some of them in fun animal prints!) -- 1.5 months and five packages after I first ordered them!). 
• Dh's face when he saw them: "I'm not wearing those!"  (lol)  I assured him these were for me, and that we had plenty of other masks in plain/dark colours that he could wear instead, lol. 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Odds & ends

• Thank you for your anniversary wishes! As I said, it wasn't the anniversary we would have planned, pre-COVID, but it wasn't a bad day overall. We went out that afternoon for gelato -- wearing masks & eating outside. Our favourite Italian restaurant is closed on Mondays (!) but we got takeout dinner from another favourite restaurant that recently reopened -- including a bottle of wine. :) 
• In between, we stopped at the supermarket & the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions -- and I ventured into both places (wearing masks), for the first time since March 12th! (= four months!)  I didn't want to wait for dh outside in a hot car (even with the windows open), I was curious (I'll admit!), and... I wanted to pick up a new points card. 
• I'm not sure I wrote about this at the time, but my old points card was hacked and I had 60,000 points (worth $60 in groceries) stolen just as this pandemic started unfolding. I promptly reported it (and did get my points back) -- was told to change my password (which I did) and pick up a new card on my next visit to link to my online profile. I'd asked dh to pick up one for me on one of his grocery runs, a couple of times -- but using cards for points is not his thing and he never remembered...!  
• I found the experience stressful and weird. Normally I love to spend time wandering up & down the aisles at  leisurely pace, checking out sales and finding things that might not necessarily have been on my shopping list but that I might be able to use or would like to try. This time around, I was trying to get in & out as quickly as possible (touching as few things as possible and grabbing only the things I could carry that were at the top of my list).  Trying to avoid other people, standing in distanced lineups, following arrows up & down aisles (at the drugstore albeit not the supermarket), speaking to the cashier from behind plexiglass... Plus there are still swaths of shelves that are, if not empty, picked over. There was toilet paper, for example, but still lots of empty shelf space -- not a big selection of brands or package sizes. 
• We also went into the city's midtown last week for a long-scheduled appointment with my optometrist, to check on the status of my wonky eyes. One year plus later, I'm still seeing occasional flashes, but mostly when I turn out the lights at night... and I had to pause when he asked me about floaters. They're still there, but I haven't noticed or thought about them in quite a while now. 
• The office actually called me a few weeks ago to ask if I would mind moving my appointment  back 20 minutes to allow for social distancing -- and to remind me to wear a mask. Dh stayed in the car in the parking lot across the street (windows cranked open -- it was another sweltering hot day) while I went in. (I was glad it was a fairly short appointment with only a short wait.) The waiting room is normally packed, but I was the only person there, and the chairs were well spaced out instead of crammed together. The receptionists were behind plexiglass, albeit there was a window through which one of them took my temperature. I had to sign in and fill out a questionnaire about COVID symptoms.  The doctor spritzed down his equipment and the chair with disinfectant/alcohol before inviting me to sit down. He wore both an N95 mask AND a face shield. Normally, he would get inches from my face to shine lights in my eyes, etc., but he did it from a distance this time. There was a clear plastic shield covering part of his equipment. You know the thing that looks kind of like binoculars that you look through? and he changes the lenses back & forth & asks you to read a line on the screen on the wall, and which setting looks clearer?  I had to admit to him it was hard to tell because between the shield over the equipment and the mask I was wearing, the lenses were fogging up, lol.  
• Next appointment in January.  
• It's been horribly hot & humid for most of the past two weeks. We've barely stuck our nose out the screen door to the balcony, and (sadly) we've had to abandon our walking routine for now (just as I was starting to feel like I was getting a handle on it!). Between COVID & the weather, we're both going a bit stir crazy :(  (although I think I'm a little better at entertaining myself than dh is). 
• We're missing little Great-Nephew this weekend. :(  Walking that fine line between wanting to see him (always a highlight in our otherwise mundane lives, especially right now with COVID...!) -- but not wanting to be pests either. 
• We popped by last weekend for a brief visit, unannounced -- BIL was not around but the kids were, so we went straight down to their basement apartment (they have a separate walkout entrance in the back yard). They were going out for the afternoon, so we didn't stay long, but we got to watch Great-Nephew have a post-nap snack before we left (getting as much of it on himself as into his mouth, lol). (SIL was actually home upstairs, and we stopped by to say hello to her too on our way out.) 
• BIL is always telling us that we're an important part of the family and like another set of grandparents for the baby (nice to hear), and that we don't need an invitation to come over (even though we almost always wait for one).  BUT dh got a call from him the next day & a lecture about respecting the kids' privacy, etc.  I think it was more BIL talking than Older Nephew -- he was surprised but seemed genuinely happy to see us. But the call left both of us feeling a bit guilty and, yes, hurt.  Dh said, "We won't be doing that again soon..." :(  
• A few notable items to share from our ALI community (and the childless corner of it in particular):  
• I recommended this post for a "second helping" on Mel's Friday Roundup post recently, and I'm noting it here too because it's just so, so good:  "I Wish Someone Would Ask Me..." 
• Pamela shares another pointed critique of the IVF industry on Silent Sorority: "IVF Industry Can’t Have it Both Ways."  (Any blog post that begins with a meme out of "Casablanca" deserves to be read, lol.)  
• I have not listened to the latest episode of The Full Stop podcast, which just dropped this weekend, but the topic is very timely -- "Facing Up To Change." The regular hosts are joined by author and speaker Yvonne John, with her guests Haneefah Muhammad, Krista Cooper, Bindi Shah and Civilla Morgan "to talk about the murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and how childlessness and racism have impacted their lives. More importantly, what we can all do about it."