This Week

New pot of succulents joins my cactus.
I’m sharing this and other things in my life with the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.

Watched the Olympics Opening Ceremony

Olympics in our living room…yes to Paris in July! A favorite moment: when they tolled the bells of Notre Dame for the first time since the catastrophic fire.

The bridge was decorated with new murals to celebrate the Olympics.
80 boats carried the Olympic Athletes for a 4-mile trip down the Seine River to the Eiffel Tower
for the final march with the flags of all nations. Best ever opening ceremony!

The torch is lit.

We watched the entire 4-hour ceremony.

Family Visit July 18-23

Miriam finds interesting critters on her run. Time for Eileen’s critters.

We made our traditional pilgrimage to DQ for blizzards.

A fabulous seafood dinner.

One last breakfast before their 9-hour drive.

Time to say goodbye!

What I’m Reading This Week

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a satisfying book. It’s funny and serious at the same time. The main characters are wonderful and memorable (but I'm not going to describe them). Just one example: this description of a very minor character:

“Bernice was also the proud mother of, at last count, eight children, all of whom looked more or less like Bernice in varying degrees of skin color from light-skinned to dark. That was not a bad thing. Nor was it a good thing. Everybody knew Bernice had the kind of face that would make a man wire home for money. The question was, who was the man and where was the money?” (p. 94)

In this novel, good people mostly end up with good things happening to them. Quite a few bad people end up not so happy, maybe even satisfyingly dead. Good individuals from several mistreated or unlucky groups are often rewarded — Jews, blacks, Italians, other immigrants, disabled people, poor people, people who can’t read, people with a secret past, and more. But nobody is a stereotype. 

What saves this book from being a cloying mess of well-meaning fake optimism? It’s hard to say how the author manages, but somehow the evil doers get their just deserts, the survivors don’t gloat, and there is exactly enough revenge on the bad ones and rewards for the good ones.

Vivid writing also is absolutely a key to why this is such a lovable book. Like this description of the sounds heard in a hideously cruel home for mentally and physically disabled people: “moanings, groanings, coos, burps, sighs, growls, yells, chirps, yelps, chortles, cacklings, farts, chatterings, and howlings …” (p. 266)

The NPR reviewer described the writing thus: “McBride's roving narrator is, by turns, astute, withering, giddy, damning and jubilant. He has a fine appreciation for the human comedy: in particular, the surreal situation of African Americans and immigrant Jews in a early-to-mid-20th-century America that celebrates itself as a color-blind, welcoming Land of Liberty.” (source)

The New York Times reviewer describes The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store as:  “a murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel.” (source) From The Atlantic: “In McBride’s work, digging deep into the tangled roots of complicated communities is the antidote to misplaced blame and false history.” (source)

I enjoyed reading this Great American Novel. Totally. I’m grateful to my sister who gave it to me as a gift.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander