Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino, and Shanghai by Joseph Kanon, Historical Novel set in the late 1930s.

 

The Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino, December 17, 2024; Minotaur Books/NetGalley

Genre: detective novel, Tokyo

The body of Ryota Uetsuji was found floating in Tokyo Bay, and a suspect is his girlfriend Sonoka, but Sonoka was away in Kyoto at the time of the death and has an alibi. 

The themes of adoption and finding one's family years later is prevalent. The themes found in Sonoka's story of adoption are also threaded into the story of a police consultant, the brilliant physicist Yukawa. Misguided and misinformed individuals also make mistaken assumptions in this compelling story of family connections. 

I enjoyed the storyline and the easy way of writing by Higashino that made this detective novel enjoyable and also suspenseful. Another excellent book by Higashino and the fifth in the Detective Galileo series.

Shanghai by Joseph Kanon, June 25, 2024; Scribner

Genre: historical fiction, thriller, China

I just started this historical novel of Shanghia before WWII in the late 1930s. Daniel Lohr has escaped Germany on a boat heading for China, where refugees from the Nazis in Europe can find safety if they find their own way there.

Daniel meets another Jewish refugee, Leah and her mother Clara, on the ship heading east. He also meets a member of the Japanese military police, Colonel Yamada, who is keeping a close watch on the ship's passengers, all heading to Shanghai's international settlement, a section not under the control of the Japanese who invaded Shanghai and parts of China in 1937. 

The history of refugees in Shanghai from all over Europe and even from Russia has been covered in historical fiction and memoirs, and nonfiction. Kanon's book is the latest and I am reading it with interest in that period in China.

Update: my review of Shanghai.

Some other books I've read on Shanghai in the 1930s include:

Bernardine's Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China by Susan Blumberg-Kasoff

The Jewish salon host in 1930s Shanghai who brought together Chinese and expats around the arts as civil war erupted and World War II loomed on the horizon. (publisher)

The Far Side of the Sky by Daniel Kalla

 In November 1938 after a night of terror for Jews across Germany, Dr. Franz Adler, a surgeon in Vienna, flees to Shanghai, China with his young daughter Hannah and his brother's widow, Esther. 

The Far Side of the Sky focuses on a short but extraordinary period of Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish history when cultures converged and heroic sacrifices were part of a quest for survival. (publisher)

White Shanghai by Elvira Baryakina. The title refers to the White Russians, those fleeing the "Reds," the Russian revolution. 

Among the refugees is Klim Rogov, a journalist whose life and marriage have been destroyed by the Russian revolution - all he has left are his quick wits and a keen worldliness that will serve him well in the lawless jungle of Shanghai.  (publisher)

China to Me by Emily Hahn, a memoir.

 The American journalist/traveler Emily Hahn wrote about her own experiences living in Shanghai, Chungking, and Hong Kong from 1935 to 1943. Her book about revolution and war in China and how it affected the local people and foreigners alike is titled China to Me: A Partial Autobiography, first printed in 1944. It's fascinating reading.

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. October 30, 2001, Knopf Doubleday Publishing

My 2017 review: 

"A book I have wanted to look at again. Set in the 1930s, it's about a young English detective with a faulty memory who returns to wartime Shanghai in 1937 to find his parents who had disappeared there years ago when he was about nine years old. As he is an unreliable narrator, readers have to figure out the puzzle of his past and become detectives themselves to decide what is fact and what is fiction.  Christopher meets a Japanese soldier in Shanghai who may or may not be his playmate from years ago, before the war. How Christopher reacts or doesn't react to him and how he ignores his surroundings in Shanghai during the Japanese invasion is part of his strange, delusional persona. This book intrigued me so much, I want to try again to get the hard facts of Christopher's journey, which may not be possible, given his inaccurate memory. Ishiguro, born in Nagasaki, Japan and now a British citizen living in London, is also author of The Remains of the Day, a Booker Prize-winning novel made into the award winning film with Anthony Hopkins." I'll just add now that on reading it again the past two days, I found the narrator Christopher to be a kind of English/European version of the Ugly American, representing the tunnel vision that ignored the reality of what was going on in Shanghai before and during WWII. These are some of the books I read or featured on my blog about Shanghai pre and during WWII. I would suggest looking at some of them before reading Kanon's book, Shanghai , as Kanon seems to assume his readers of the novel will already know the history.  What books are you reading this week?  Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves

COMING OF AGE WITH COOKING: Colorful Palete by Raj Tawney and Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson

Happy Thanksgiving coming up, everyone! Enjoy!  Here are two books about the love of cooking and baking

Colorful Palate: A Flavorful Journey Through a Mixed American Experience by Raj Tawney

Published October 3, 2023; Empire State Editions 

I loved reading about the author's growing up in the Bronx with the influence of his Puerto Rican grandmother and her tasty dishes that include an Italian recipe or two. His love of cooking multiple types of food also came from his PuertoRican-Italian mother who cooked Indian dishes at home for the family and his Indian father.

It was interesting to see how a family with three different cultural influences brought up the sons - the author and his older brother, who nevertheless grew up going their own way to develop their own American identities. The coming of age memoir is a cheerful one, with happy overtones in spite of his parents' alienation from each other. I find it notable that the couple were estranged but continued to live in the same home.

The recipes included in the book are mostly Indian recipes, delicious sounding but requiring many steps and varieties of ingredients and spices. I liked the simple Italian recipe of spaghetti and meatballs that his grandmother used to prepare.

I enjoyed reading this well written, easy to read book and would recommend it to foodies and those interested in the dynamics of multicultural families.

 Sweetness in the Skin: a Novel by Ishi Robinson

Publication: April 23, 2024; Harper

Genre: coming of age, multicultural, food, baking

I was happy to find this ARC of a coming of age book set in Jamaica, about a young girl with the ability to bake the delicious Jamaican pastries, cakes, and snacks that I remember enjoying when I was growing up on the island.

I am in the middle of reading the novel, eager to see how the 13-year-old girl living in relative poverty with a largely absent and hostile mother, how she will escape through her baking skills, and realize her dream of being with her aunt in France. It sounds far fetched, but so far, Pumkin seems to be handling obstacles, one by one, and getting closer to her dream.

Publisher description: 

 A winning debut novel about a young teenage girl in Jamaica determined to bake her way out of her dysfunctional family and into the opportunity of a lifetime. Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother, her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her distant, hostile mother Paulette (who’s rarely home).

What's on your reading schedule this week and/or the rest of the month?inly202

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday.

I Can't Save You: A Memoir by Anthony Chin-Quee

 Memoir

I Can't Save You: A Memoir by Anthony Chin-Quee

Genre: memoir, medical, nonfiction

Publication: April 4, 2023; Riverhead Books

My comments:

I thought that Anthony Chin-Quee, a Black surgeon, wrote this revealing and honest memoir with distinct audiences in mind. The medical community, for one, starting with those at the very top who make and keep the policies that affect the wellbeing of the others - the doctors, medical students, would-be medical students, hospital staff, and the patients themselves. 

Then there are the very personal parts in the memoir that tackle his relationships with others, whether while training and working as a surgeon, in his personal life or in the dysfunctional, multi-racial West Indian family in which he grew up.

I view the book as a wake up call to the medical community in how they train and treat their staff and what they expect that may be just too much - the long hours working without sleep that could endanger both patient and doctor, for instance. The writing is intense as the author describes in a brutally honest way what he had to face with his patients, with other doctors and staff members, in the operating room, and in the hospital while working dangerously long shifts. Granted, some of his descriptions have some humor, in a kind of way. 

And the other wake up call is to the society at large, which continues, based on his experiences, to seriously undermine and underestimate  people of color, and their abilities and potential. 

This book is a must read also, as I see it, for would be doctors, or for those already in the middle of their profession. It's an eye opener for newbies that is frank and honest, even in its brutal, no holds barred descriptions. 

At the end of the book, I was happy for the author that he found his true path, benefiting from his grueling and challenging training to do what he truly loves - writing and using his way with words, leaving behind a debilitating profession, a toxic family member, and forming his own perfect family.

I finished the book with more appreciation for my own doctors and specialists, realizing what they must have gone through, the gauntlets they have to run, to reach and stay where they are. 

About the Author

Anthony Chin-Quee, M.D., is a board-certified otolaryngologist with degrees from Harvard University and Emory University School of Medicine. An award-winning storyteller with The Moth, he has been on the writing staff of FOX’s The Resident and a medical adviser for ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: A Mystery and a Memoir

 Just read: 

Now You See Us by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Published March 7, 2023; William Morrow & Company

Genre: mystery thriller, fiction, Asia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The experiences of three Filipina domestic workers in Singapore in this novel are quite different. 

Corazon works for a wealthy woman who treats her as a family member; Donita is abused physically and mentally by an overly demanding and insulting woman who aspires to rise in society; Angel likes her job as caretaker for a disabled man but is shunted aside when a nurse is hired in her place.

The novel was an eye opener on the varied conditions of Filipina domestic workers abroad, in this case in Singapore. The book is made even more interesting when the three workers get together to clear the name of one of their friends in the murder of her female employer.

Revealing and informative as social commentary, and entertaining as a mystery novel, the book is interesting and important on many levels.

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong

Publication: May 16, 2023; Tin House Books

Genre: memoir, nonfiction, Asian American literature

I liked the poetic prose that Jane Wong, a poet and creative writer, uses for much of this memoir. She has a poet's acute and perceptive reaction to her life experiences. 

 
I think of the book as a very personal memoir of her despair and agonies in growing up among those who don't understand or accept her - in school, university, in Atlantic City, where her parents ran a restaurant until her father deserted the family. Of having to field stereotyping, microaggressions, outright hostility, and more.

Her mother is the force that bolsters her as she goes through one heartbreak after another in her life and in her failed relationships with boyfriends. The author does not dwell as much on her rise as a poet and on her academic career as an associate professor of creative writing. But I recall betrayals on her road to that position as well.

In this very honest memoir, the heartache comes through, as does her remarkably resilient self, and her mother who sees Jane through all her responses of dejection and grief.

I was heartened to see that the author is a successful poet, writer, and teacher because of or in spite of all she went through.

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted byThe Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: New Asian American Memoir/Short Stories and a Book on Censorship

New Books:

I've discovered another memoir by an Asian American/Chinese American who grew up in a restaurant family in the U.S. (See my review of Curtis Chin's memoir set in Detroit in the 1980s) Jane Wong's book is set in Atlantic City, NJ.

 

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City: A Memoir by Jane Wong

Publication: May 16, 2023, Tin House Books

Genre: memoir, nonfiction, Asian American literature

In her debut memoir, Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story, as she writes about making do with what you have―and what you don’t.

This is a memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore. (publisher)

See my review of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City on goodreads. 

Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So

Published August 3, 2021; Ecco

Genre: short stories, Cambodian American literature, gay/lesbian fiction

I read the first three of nine stories so far, of the lives of young Cambodian Americans at home, school, work - their checquered  lives, many on the lower income level, their families surviving as relatively recent immigrants and refugees from the Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge in the mid 1970s, a war called the Cambodian Genocide.

This war and their family history are still alive among these families, as they try to find their way in a new country, sometimes worried about the past finding its way into their present and future. The stories are set in a community in California.

In the first story, "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts," a single mother of two girls works 24 hours a day in her donut shop, part of her divorce settlement from her Cambodian husband. 

The second story, "Superking Son Scores Again," has a badminton genius doing what he loves best - coaching the high school badminton team, while he does what he hates most, managing his parents' grocery store. 

In a third story, "Maly, Maly, Maly" a young gay Cambodian bonds with his cousin, but when she starts growing into a young woman following her traditions in the community, he is left feeling very alone.   

I'm eager to read the other stories by So, this talented,  award-winning Cambodian writer, who sadly died, possibly of drug complications, in his late 20s. 

About the writer: Anthony Veasna So was a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in fiction at Syracuse University.  

In my mailbox:

Stifled Laughter: One Woman's Story about Fighting Censorship

by Claudia Johnson

March 14, 2023, Fulcrum Publishing

About: Pulitzer Prize Nominated Winner of the 1993 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award for Claudia Johnson’s extraordinary efforts to restore banned literary classics from Florida classrooms. 

Stifled Laughter is the story of one woman's efforts to restore literary classics to the classrooms of rural north Florida. 

Thanks to Wiley Saichek/ Saichek Publicity for a review copy

What are you reading this week?

 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted byThe Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: The New Person by Loretta Nyhan

 A five star review: 

The New Person: A Novel by Loretta Nyhan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publication: November 29, 2022; Lake Union Publishing

Genre: women's fiction, family drama, contemporary fiction

Single mother Roxy, desperate for money to fight for joint custody of her child, becomes a surrogate for Owen and Nora, after their former surrogate suffered a miscarriage and was unable to carry their biological child to term. 

The novel focuses on these three individuals - surrogate and would be parents - their hopes, their conflicts, and their total dependence on one other for the desired outcome. 

The supporting characters in the story, Roxy's nine-year-old son, Aero; her ex Caleb and his media loving wife Liv; and a new friend and romantic interest for Roxy fill out the story in interesting and unusual ways.

I liked that the ending is not predictable and that the three find a conclusion that brings them to a new place, making a new person of each of them.Nothing is sugar coated, and I liked the realism as well as the compassion that went into the exploration of this subject matter - surrogates and the couples who rely on them.

In my mailbox:

Death on a Winter Stroll

(A Merry Folger Nantucket Mystery #7)

by 

Francine Mathews 

Publication: November 1, 2022; Soho Press

Genre: mystery, crime fiction

In this new mystery from Francine Mathews, Nantucket detective Merry Folger must face her toughest adversaries yet when wannabe Hollywood stars take over the island in the midst of quarantine.

Chief among Nantucket Island’s cherished traditions is Winter Stroll, when evergreen trees line Main Street and tourists and islanders share the spirit of the season in shops and restaurants gilded with firelight. This year, however, is different—the pandemic still threatens the lives of everyone determined to spend a long weekend thirty miles out at sea, with the closest ICU a helicopter flight away. (publisher)

Currently reading:

Ways to Die in Tokyo

by 

Thomas Ran Garver

Genre: thriller

Published: April 2022; ebook from NetGalley

For years Hank Fisher has chased his dream of becoming a mixed martial arts champion. Now he's on a losing streak in his adopted home of Tokyo, Japan, and realizing maybe the dream was never meant to be.

Broke, divorced, and alone, he hasn't seen his ex-wife and twin sons in two years and has no idea where they are. He also finds himself on the run from ruthless gangsters. (publisher)

Also reading:

I Spy China: Irreverent Insights from an Ex-Expat

by 

Antonia Petniunas

Published July 7, 2021; ebook from NetGalley 

Genre; memoir of an expat, nonfiction, travel

Called "laugh out loud funny, touching, sometimes stomach-churning," by reviewers, this genre-bending book reveals what it was like to live in a big, smoggy, industrial town in China before the twin plagues of Trump and COVID-19. (goodreads)

I'm eager to see what it's like to be an expat in a country where you don't know the language, are unfamiliar with the place, but approach the experience with a good sense of humor.

What are you reading this week?

 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Stay True: A Memoir / Disorientation: Contemporary Fiction

 Reviewed:

Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publication: September 27, 2022; Doubleday

My review:

  

This memoir is written by the author to remember and honor a college friend, Ken, who died in a mugging and senseless kidnapping while in his third year at UCLA. Hua thinks of the What Ifs that could have saved Ken from that death - what if he had gone swing dancing as Ken had wanted that night, what if he had gone back to Ken's party in the early morning so Ken would not have been alone during that mugging.

The book focuses on the many reasons Hua and Ken became friends even though they were such different personalities. Both Asian Americans, yet one was Taiwanese American and a new immigrant, the other a Japanese American with deep roots established in the U.S. Their love of different kinds of music and movies, and their interest in analyzing everything for fun and intellectual sharing are only some of the aspects of this college friendship.

Deeply moving in parts, Stay True, the memoir, delves into the minds and hearts of a group of young university people in search of meaning and identity.

Library Find:  

Disorientation

by 

Elaine Hsieh Chou

Published March 22, 2022; Penguin Press

Genre: Asian American fiction, contemporary novel, academia

About: 

A Taiwanese American woman’s coming of consciousness ignites eye-opening revelations and chaos on a college campus.

An uproarious and bighearted satire, alive with sharp edges, immense warmth, and a cast of unforgettable characters, Disorientation is both a blistering send-up of white supremacy in academia, and a profound reckoning of a Taiwanese American woman’s complicity and unspoken rage. 

Chou asks who gets to tell our stories—and how the story changes when we finally tell it ourselves (publisher)

View all my reviews

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Book Beginning: Paris, A Life Less Ordinary, A Memoir by Krystal Kenney

 Another book of Paris: 

Paris: A Life Less Ordinary, a Memoir by Krystal Kenney, December 1, 2020, Kindle Unlimited 

Publisher description: Krystal Kenney sets out to conquer her dream of living abroad and starting her photography business in the city of light. She falls in love with Paris, but quickly learns that Paris does not love her back..., forcing her to fall apart before she can... build herself into a modern independent woman

Book beginning: It's pouring rain, dark and cold, and I'm sitting on the front stoop of a church in Paris. Tears stream down my face, falling harder than the rain. I'm crying so hard, it scares me. It's the type of crying where you have a hard time catching your breath, that's been waiting to unload from months of stress and self-induced trauma.

Page 56: I'm always nervous about wearing any revealing clothing in Paris because I know it's dangerous here. 

Would you read on?

The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice.
Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Guest Post by Sherry Quan Lee, author of Septuagenarian

 A poetic memoir

Poetic Book Tours presents a guest post on writing, by poet and memoirist, Sherry Quan Lee. 

Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die is a memoir in poetic form. It is the author’s journey from being a mixed-race girl who passed for white to being a woman in her seventies who understands and accepts her complex intersectional identity; and no longer has to imagine love.

 It is a follow-up to the author’s previous memoir (prose), Love Imagined: a mixed-race memoir, A Minnesota Book Award finalist.

The Writing Process by Sherry Quan Lee, guest post

 A student once said to me that she appreciated me telling the class to keep everything.  Keep each and every draft of your writing, your manuscript.  Did I say that?

 Actually, I save nothing.  Okay, next to nothing.  When did I start letting go? It’s not about keeping what brings me joy.  My writing isn’t joyful.  Although, someone once said it had sass.

 I have always decluttered.  Every two or three months I purge-this includes not only things, but sometimes people (sometimes they purge me).  But since the Pandemic, actually even before, I started a momentous purge—maybe it was when I turned 70 and knew any day now could be my last and why make my children go through my things, things they wouldn’t want. 

 My office files are fairly pristine.  Sorted, labeled, shelved:  insurance, taxes, car, condo, publications—mine and those of my friends.  Yet, as the piles of my essays and poems thin, I am heart struck to notice a journey of words that repeat, that sail forth, that bring me to my writing/life today at the age of 73.

 Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die was published March 2021. Now that’s a scary title if not understood as a metaphor.  The mock-up of the cover has the sub-title in small font size.  What does that mean?  Are we afraid of death?  Actually, the title came from a poem within the manuscript and it stuck, the line in the title, not the poem.  It’s a metaphor.  Clarissa Pinkola Estés said What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? I say, what must I let go of to generate love, be love, give love, get love.

 As I fumble through boxes of what I have not yet been able to discard, I discover a few poems that haven’t yet found their way to the trash.  One poem in particular, but there are others, starts out like this:

 

“I woke up knowing I was dead.  The first thing I’ve been sure of all my life.  The marks stretched, some visible and some invisible.  Stretched past cardboard boxes.  None of them empty,  Each box filled with an arm or a leg.”

 

The two-page poem contain boxes each labeled by a decade. It ends with:  “This was love.  She had finally gotten what she wanted.  But she was no longer who she was. She didn’t recognize herself….”

 The poem was dated October 15, 1999.  Only three years after I earned an MFA. There are hand-written revisions.  There is a short version printed in red.  A note says Vulva Riot.  There is a chorus that reads:  “Stretch marks, mark time, highway marks, passing marks, remarks, earmarks, market, marker, question marks, magic markers, grave markers, stretch marks.”

 Sometimes we don’t know why we say things, do things, save things—write things.  But there is significance to our actions.  I am glad I saved this poem. If I had come across it earlier, it would be in my book.  It would be the Introduction, the Foreword.  I am going to edit the poem.  This poem will not be discarded.  There are no rules I told my students.  Save all your drafts or don’t.  Discard everything so future generations won’t be bothered, or save what has been your life line and hope someone will embrace it.

 WRITING EXERCISE:  choose a word, such as mark and explore it and all related words by sound, by meaning, or both.  Create a chorus/a short verse.  Let it be the pattern that emerges.  How do you fill the empty spaces in-between?  Are they boxes marked by decades such as:

 “One box, marked 1953-1963, contained Hostess Cup Cakes.  Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.  Barbie dolls.  Captain, May I.  Sorry.  Sugar and Spice.  Axel and His Dog. Captain Kangaroo. Nancy Drew. Bobbsey Twins.  The Little Engine That Could.  Pop Beads,  Roller Skates.  Crinolines. Hula Hoops.  Red Rover.  Pony Tails.  Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. Kool Aide. “Go Tell Aunt Rhody the Ol’ Gray Goose Is Dead”. The Salvation Army Book Store on Nicollet Island. Government Surplus.  A metal Grocery Cart.  Trading Cards.  Air Raid Drills.  Standish Elementary School.  Woolworths.  Wonder Bread.” 

I probably did tell the student to save all of her writing.  I probably meant it.  Much of my writing, however, my former life was left behind when I made, yet another relationship move.  This one sudden.  Sometimes things aren’t saved because we can’t take them with us.  But sometimes, a book authored and signed by you to another poet will show up on a Google search and you know not everything is lost, it just might have found a new home. 

Sherry Quan Lee

June 26, 2021

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon