December 2024 Book Marks
Ho ho ho. The big man will soon be coming down the chimney and the Hanukkah gifts are ready to be wrapped. We all know it’s more fun to give than to receive, but I hope there’s a book with your name on it somewhere this holiday season. Curl up by the fire and let a story take you away. Here are a few suggestions for this month and a few out early in January, and remember to support your independent bookstores.
Non-Fiction:
The Cure for Women by Lydia Reeder
This timely book explores the life of Mary Putnam Jacobi, a female doctor who persisted in a man’s world, challenging Victorian medical norms around women’s health that would change the course of women’s lives. The belief at the time, echoed in books and by the medical establishment, was that women’s menstrual cycles made them perpetually sick, therefore unfit to hold jobs and go to medical school. The terminology and thinking around pregnancy as an “illness” or “weakened condition,” persisted well into the 20th century, a legacy that only recently began to change. Jacobi was the first woman to be accepted to the Sorbonne Medical School in Paris and we she returned to New York, she fought hard to create the first data backed scientific research on women’s reproduction and biology. I was shocked to learn that it was the end of the 19th century before science and medicine discovered that it took both a male and female to equally create life. It had been believed that a woman was simply a vessel, waiting to be impregnated by a man, whose seed determined life. It’s a highly readable book about an extraordinary woman, her life and challenges, her loves as losses and the bravery it took to challenge a system.
Fiction:
Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar
This debut book sat on my nightstand for too long, and after it made many “best books” lists for 2024, I finally cracked it open. Protagonist Cyrus Shams is an addict, a drunk and a poet with a past drenched in violence. When he was young, the plane his mother was on was shot down in the Persian Gulf and his father had a menial job killing chickens on a farm. Cyrus’s Uncle was a legend in Iran, and this knowledge has created his fascination with martyrs. When he discovers a painting in a Brooklyn art gallery, Cyrus sets out on a journey of discovery, led by artists, kings, poets and a world of wonders. This book investigates the many things that make the human heart tick, while delivering a powerful story along the way.
Fiction:
Playground by Richard Powers
Power’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel “The Overstory,” captivated me in multiple ways, describing the interconnectivity of nature and the disruption of humans in our natural world. In this new book, Powers turns to the connectivity and fragility of life underseas through the perspectives of multiple characters. Young Evie Beaulieu is afraid of water until her father literally throws her into the deep to cure her of her fear. She grows up to be a heroic female version of Jacques Cousteau, navigating one of the world’s first aqualungs and more comfortable in the water with creatures than on land with people. Ina Aroita lives on a remote South Pacific Island, which will become a pawn in the future dominance of the world as humanity’s next giant adventure. The two key characters, Rafi Young and Todd Keane, come from different worlds in Chicago, but forge a friendship from their keen minds and love of games. One will end up living through literature and the other as one of the wealthiest men alive as the founder of an AI breakthrough. The world’s largest ocean is the backdrop for this cautionary tale that looks at geopolitics, the beauty and mystery of life undersea, and the complexity of our vast humanity.
Non-Fiction:
Blood on Their Hands – Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty by Mandy Matney
Long before the twisted and tragic story of the Murdaugh family became a media sensation, journalist Mandy Matney understood the grip this generational family had on South Carolina’s Lowcountry. Mandy and her reporting partner began investigating a fatal boat crash where a teen girl died when young Paul Murdaugh was driving impaired. From that story, she digs into a greater web of death surrounding the family’s housekeeper, and the inconsistencies of a young man killed in a hit and run. The brutal double murder of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh throws the story onto center stage, making Mandy an expert on the sordid elements of this corrupt family and their hold over so many. When she starts a podcast from her kitchen table, it rises to number one as the story becomes more bizarre. This look behind the scenes on investigative journalism takes us into the corridors of power to look at a system that enables criminals who have money, and the good old boy network based on privilege and power.
Fiction:
A Gorgeous Excitement by Cynthia Weiner
The “Preppy Murder” was all anyone could talk about in 1986 New York, when the college and post-college center of the world revolved around a few cozy bars on the Upper East Side. Nina is the female protagonist in this fictionalized story of real events, and she’s determined to lose her virginity before she goes off to Vanderbilt in the fall. It doesn’t help that Nina is Jewish in a rarified world of long-legged blonde Spence girls, with summer houses in the Hamptons. But with enough alcohol and prescription drugs pilfered from her parent’s medicine cabinet, Nina feels like she can fit in with the girls who orbit the boys with swagger. At the top of the “it” list is handsome bad boy Gardner Reed, desired by all but nursing a dark side and some very sketchy habits. As Nina’s mother battles depression and mental illness, the pressure mounts to escape her apartment. Her fascination with cocaine brings her closer to Gardner, which could have lethal consequences. The story is a page turner, with a twisty ending and well-drawn characters that brought me back to 80’s era NY in vivid color.
Historical Fiction:
The Many Lives & Loves of Hazel Lavery by Lois Cahall
I love books that introduce us to undiscovered historical figures. Author Lois Cahall has unearthed the colorful life of Lady Hazel Lavery, a Victorian-era American socialite who lived a colorful life on two continents. Born in Boston to Irish roots, Hazel moves to Chicago and became an active socialite. When life brings her to London, she meets and marries Sir John Lavery, a well-known portrait painter to royalty, and she assumes her title. But when Hazel comes in contact with Michael Collins, the famed Irish rebel fighting for independence, she loses her heart. Hazel’s story is part of a love triangle that resounded throughout the highest corridors of power as she rubbed elbows with the likes of Winston Churchill, and George Bernard Shaw. Using letters and other historical records, Cahall has crafted an entertaining story of an incredible period in time through the eyes of an incredible woman.
Fiction:
The English Problem by Beena Kamlani
This debut novel, set in1931, sweeps across history, geography and racial and gender boundaries. It begins with 18-year old Shiv, personally chosen by Gandhi to travel to England and learn the laws, and the ways of the British, so that he can return home and help drive the Empire out of India. Before he leaves, he marries a woman arranged by his family, as was the custom. Once in cold London, the racist culture built on colonialism is as pervasive as the rain to Shiv, seeping into everything he encounters, from literature to relationships. And yet the longer he stays, the more Shiv finds himself drawn to the very people from whom he is hoping to be liberated. Set against the backdrop of the Indian Independence movement, at a time when “the sun never set on the British Empire,” this book is an engrossing look at a period of time on the cusp of change.
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