Two great recent reads that create heart-warming characters while challenging you to think
This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel is definitely one of the best books I have read this year, the novel tackles the complicated lives of a family with a transgender child. One morning when he is five years old, Claude comes down to breakfast in a dress with earrings and he wants to take a purse to school. He also declares that he wants to be a princess when he grows up. Thus begins a ten year odyssey for the Walsh-Adams clan (Mom Rosie, Dad Penn and the five boys) as they try to embrace the choices of this youngest child whom they love while protecting him/her from a culture that is less supportive. Rosie and Penn have repeated discussions to determine the right course of action. Early on, they consider how difficult a life Claude might have and whether they should dissuade him. “’Easy is nice, but it’s not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe. . .Having children, helping people, making art, inventing anything, leading the way, tackling the world’s problems, overcoming your own. I don’t know. Not much of what I value in our lives is easy’” Penn tells his wife .“’But it’s terrifying,’ she whispered. ‘If it were the right thing to do, wouldn’t we know it?’” (84) Penn reminds her that they never know if they are doing the right thing in regard to their children. “’You never have enough information. You don’t get to see the future’” (84) She responds, “So the comfort you can offer me about sending our son to school next week dressed as a girl fairy is that it seems like a good guess’” (85). This is an abbreviated version of the conversation, but it captures so accurately the complexity of parenting and the constant second-guessing that parents do. It only gets harder when the stakes are high.
Claude shows up at school in his fairy attire and “The kindergarteners were unfazed. Very little is unalterable as far as five year olds are concerned. Very little doesn’t change” (90). But of course “the older kids had some questions” and the taunting begins. The family decides to leave Ann Arbor and, after exhaustive research by Rosie on liberal communities, decides on Seattle. Claude becomes Poppy and no one in their new town is the wiser, which leads to a consideration of secrets and the difficulty in keeping them. Eventually, Poppy is outed and there’s a bit of a mystery about who spilled the beans. In the last third of the book, Poppy is an adolescent starting to deal with the harshness of the outer world from which her family has protected her for so long.
The book is somewhat based on the author’s own experience, however she states in an afterword, “This book is fiction. My child is neither Poppy nor Claude. I am not Rosie. . .this book is an act of imagination, an exercise in wish fulfillment. . .We imagine the world we hope for and endeavor, with the greatest power we have, to bring that world into being.” This would suggest that perhaps the world of the novel is slightly more forgiving, the choices a bit easier. Still, it never shies away from presenting the challenge of navigating the world for a child and her family in which one doesn’t conform to the mold. It’s a book that makes you laugh, tear up and mostly think.
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout is a follow-up to Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009, this second volume returns to Crosby, Maine, the small town in which Olive lives. Like the first book, the story is told through a series of interconnected short stories in which Olive is either the protagonist or, in a few cases, a minor character. In the first book, we meet Olive, a retired math teacher married to Henry, a man who sees his marriage to Olive as both a blessing and a curse. Olive appears to the reader as a bit of a curmudgeon who doesn’t like change and who often alienates people with her matter-of-fact manner. As the second book begins, Olive is in her 70’s, now a widow, and estranged from her only son, Christopher, who is married to Ann, a woman Olive doesn’t much like. There’s an awkward visit from Christopher and Ann and their children, two of whom are Ann’s from a previous marriage. Olive is only interested in the child that is biologically related to her, presenting him with a scarf she has knitted for him while the other children get nothing. This is typical of Olive’s blind spots; she doesn’t understand why anyone would expect her to provide gifts for children who are not technically her son’s.
Olive is wooed by a widower Jack Kennison, a man with a receding hairline and a large belly, who seems beneath her notice until she slowly recognizes a kindred spirit, one who, like herself, is lonely. Olive finds love again with Jack but in private moments, reminisces about Henry, and Jack talks frequently of his wife, Betsy. Reconciling the past and the present is a motif that runs through the stories. Strout does a good job of showing that old age is every bit as complex as adolescence. As society gradually turns a dismissive eye toward the geriatric crowd, old people are still lovers, dreamers, and thinkers who must now deal with the betrayal of their bodies and reckon with decades of choices.
The effect of occasionally shifting Olive to the background is to provide the reader with a different perspective of the title character, which is central to one of the book’s main themes, that of Olive coming to terms with the disparity between how she sees herself and the world and an outer reality. One memorable story involves a woman whom Olive taught as a child who went on to become a poet laureate, but who now seems down on her luck. Olive meets her in a coffee shop and they talk and Olive tells her that she, the poet, has always been a lonely person, even as a child. Later, someone gives Olive a copy of a magazine that includes the woman’s latest poem which, turns out to be about the conversation with Olive and what a lonely old woman Olive is. The unflattering portrait that the poet creates startles Olive but also leads her to reflect on the truths that sit before her on the page.
For all of her crotchety behavior, Olive is also warm-hearted and can be unfailing kind as demonstrated in a chapter in which she regularly visits a very ill woman she had not really known before. She also sees beauty in a sunset, in the smell of the forest, and in the blooming of flowers. “Boy did that make her happy, the sight of that new fresh rosebud.” Although Olive is described as a big woman – tall and large-boned, not fat – I picture her as Mrs. Maguire, a small, rounder woman, in the Masterpiece series Grantchester. In the show, Mrs. M, like Olive, is judgmental, hard-headed and often frustrating to be around, but underneath there is a warmth and loyalty to those she loves. You don’t have to have read the first book to enjoy this one, but it is a richer experience if you are able to see the transformation of Olive over several decades.
