The News Where You Are

Finished June 2

The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn

Set in England, this book follows a middle-aged man as he worries about his mom, tries to protect his father's legacy from disappearing, and tries to remember those whom it seems no one else is remembering. Frank Allcroft is a presenter for a program called Heart of England Report that does stories on local news for a large area of England. Frank has been in this role nearly twenty years, and was a reporter prior to that. His father was an architect of the mid-twentieth century, lots of concrete and streamlined shapes and as the book opens the second last of the buildings that he designed has been slated for destruction. Frank's dad died when he was only eleven, but their relationship wasn't a close one. Frank's mom is living in a retirement home and seems disengaged with life, and negative in attitude. 

Frank's eight-year-old daughter Mo, is a lively part of this book, trying to find ways to cheer her grandmother up, looking at things with a viewpoint Frank finds constantly surprising, and generally being a kid who cares about the world around her. 

Some of the stories at Frank's work are about people who died and weren't discovered right away. He has started keeping track of these forgotten people, going to their funerals, and trying to remember them in some way. He can't even really explain why he does it. He's made an acquaintance with a woman who worked in the coroner's office who tried to find next of kin for these people and arranged the clearing out of their belongings.

Frank's predecessor, a charismatic, somewhat self-centered man, named Phil, who had moved on to other shows, was killed a few months ago in a hit and run accident that remains unsolved. 

As we discover more about Frank and about Phil, we see how different they are and how the people that interacted with them both see them. 

One man who came up recently in the news, found dead on a park bench, was Michael Church, a man that Jo is trying to find family for. Frank recognizes Michael's face and works his memory to place how he knew him. Once he does that, he finds himself trying to find out more about Michael, following up various clues to this quiet man. 

I found this book fascinating, joining Frank in wanting to know more about Michael and hoping that his mother would find something that would pull her out of her mindset. It has you thinking about the legacies that people leave when they die, how others remember them, and the lives that they touch. 

My Discovery of America

Finished June 30
My Discovery of America by Farley Mowat

This short book is the story of a few days in the spring of 1985 when Mowat attempted to fly to the United States for a planned book tour and speaking engagement at a private college. At the airport, he cleared customs and immigration and was waiting at his gate when an immigration agent came to him and asked him to return to the immigration area. After an interview, he was denied entry with no explanation.
He didn't just return home. He contacted his publishers, and went to their office in Toronto, and he worked with them to find out what was happening and why. It turned out that the McCarran Act, enacted in the McCarthy era to keep certain types of visitors to the United States out with no transparency was still on the books, and that under Reagan, its use have been revived. Despite being told various stories of past actions dating back to 1968, Mowat had visited the U.S. many times, including other book tours. Perhaps it was the topic of his most recent book, Sea of Slaughter, that drew new attention, but the government wasn't going into details.
There are a lot of echoes here of more recent U.S. immigration barriers and attitudes, including one immigration staffer who was on record as saying "We also exclude rapists, drug pushers and terrorists -- not just Canadians." When I read that I was reminded of Trumps remarks about Mexican immigrants.
Mowat received extensive media coverage, in Canada, the United States and internationally. He also received many letters from individual Americans, and it is this discovery that the title refers to. With the exception of three letters, every letter he received was apologetic, embarassed, or otherwise unhappy with their government's actions. It is this that he discovered, that Americans are not necessarily the government that represents them.
One can only hope that that is still true.

Don't I Know You?

Finished May 4
Don't I Know You? by Marni Jackson

This novel follows a woman, Rose McEwan from the age of seventeen to middle age. Rose keeps having encounters with famous people. As it begins the encounters seem to fit into her life in a normal way. The first encounter is when Rose takes a summer creative-writing course and John Updike (a young man at the time) is the instructor. A few years later, backpacking around Europe with her boyfriend, she encounters Joni Mitchell when camping in caves near a small Greek town. The encounters are generally pleasant ones, with the celebrities coming across as normal people. As the book moved forward though, the celebrities began to be doing things that you wouldn't expect them to do and meet up with other celebrities that seem unlikely.
As the book got stranger, I began to enjoy it less. Jackson certainly has an imagination, but I found myself unable to suspend disbelief after a certain point. It was also at this point that the plot disappeared for me.

Gone Girl

Finished July 3
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, read by Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne

This thriller is one of the creepiest books I've ever read. Why? Because you think that maybe there are really people like this out there.
On their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne arrives home after a neighbour's call to find his front door wide open, his living room a mess, and his wife Amy gone. After a panicky search, he calls the police.
Nick doesn't display the usual emotions that come with such a disappearance though, and his voice shows that their marriage wasn't doing well. As the days move forward in the investigation, and Amy remains missing, we discover Nick is hiding some things too, and he begins to realize that Amy knows him better than he ever realized.
Juxtaposed to his voice as the days move forward are earlier entries from Amy diaries. They portray a perfectionist, eager-to-please woman, but paint Nick in a bad light. 
Halfway through the book, things suddenly change. The reader does get some hints of this, but the reality is still somewhat shocking.
This is a story about a marriage, about expectations in relationships, about how we try to portray our better self to others, but not always to those we are most intimate with. It raises some interesting issues around relationships, and society. It deals with society's fascination with true crime and the media hoopla that accompanies certain cases.
I'd love to discuss this book with others who've read it.