Two Books and a TV Movie

A Selection for My Sister’s Book Club

This is an adventure story centered on a woman much older than the usual heroine of a novel. When a persecuted (or at least mistreated) character takes charge of her life and gets even with her tormentors, it’s a fun read. When the character is 69 years old and her family have tried to see that she has a premature end, at least as a drugged resident of a nursing home — if not an actual untimely death  — it’s even more satisfying. I appreciate the creation of this exceptional character who defeats the forces that are trying to betray her, to get their greedy hands on her money (inherited from her recently deceased husband) and destroy her independence. Here’s the narrator’s summary of the first half of What Rose Forgot by Nevada Barr (published 2019) —

“She’s lost her husband. She’s been locked away in an Alzheimer’s ward. She’s had the flu. She’s been in a brawl with a big nurse. She has slithered beneath a planting of hostas like a cottonmouth, to watch for a person who might come to kill her. Drugs she doesn’t even know the names of still enjoy half-lives in her tissues. Prescriptions she’s been on for years have been scrubbed from her system by time and illness. Her brain floats in a chemical soup concocted by evil toddlers in a devil’s pharmacy.” (p. 165)

And a kind of meditation on plot —

“What is it about human beings that so loves violence? Gladiators, football, war, hunting, cockfighting, books and television and movies filled with bombs, guns, and gigantic beasts of various origins all wreaking the most horrific havoc: people love it.” (p. 239)

The adventures of Rose — as she became an escapee from the clutches of the evil nurse named Karen — is kind of zany, with escape episodes on a rooftop, petty revenge on the nasty and unlikeable tormentors. You can’t avoid loving an all around settling of scores with unsympathetic people, though never really ugly violence. 

As well, you can’t resist the wisdom at the very end that Rose imparts to her granddaughter Mel. It was Mel who was complicit in her effort to escape from the “facility.”

“Do you think Granddad will come back?” Mel asks softly. “I do,” Rose says. “You’ll have to become a vegetarian,” Mel says, “so you won’t accidentally eat him.” “It’s not like he’ll come back as a pig or a chicken.” Rose spreads her arms out. “He’ll be, you know … one with everything.” “Granddad is coming back as a hot dog?”  (p. 287)

To be more complete, here is the Kirkus Review of the book:

There’s a lot of stuff Rose Dennis doesn’t know. She doesn’t know when and how she got out of Longwood or when and how she arrived there in the first place. She’s surprised and pained when people remind her that although she grew up in New Orleans, she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, with Harley, her husband of 15 years, and that he’s died. At one point she’s not even sure whether she’s 68 years old or 103. After a pair of orderlies hustle her back to Longwood, however, Rose resolves that it’s the medications she’s being fed that are sapping her powers of mind and will and vows to stop taking them and escape again, this time for keeps. Fortunately, her second attempt takes her to the home of Melanie Dennis, Harley’s levelheaded, resourceful 13-year-old granddaughter, who’s more than ready to do whatever it takes to keep Gigi, as she calls Rose, two steps ahead of her pursuers. Unfortunately, one of those pursuers, a shadowy man armed with a knife, breaks into the old house where Rose is hiding out and tries to kill her. More adventures follow, some of them involving Rose’s hermitlike sister, Marion Bliss, who offers all the help a life spent online allows, some involving Karen Black, the hapless Longwood nurse Rose gets the better of on three separate occasions. It’s both a nuisance and a personal triumph when the media get hold of Rose’s story and label her “Gun Granny.” (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nevada-barr/what-rose-forgot/)

Another Story of an Asylum 

What Rose Forgot reminds me a little of another novel set in a facility like this one, though One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (published in 1962) is in fact in an actual insane asylum, not just a place for inconvenient elders with coveted money. Ken Kesey’s character Big Nurse is totally unforgettable: also as a character in the film. But Nevada Barr’s Karen — at least once called “a big nurse” —  is pretty memorable as well.

Here is a summary of the plot of Kesey’s book: “Set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative serves as a study of institutional processes and the human mind, including a critique of psychiatry and a tribute to individualistic principles.” (source: Wikipedia)

I don’t think that Nevada Barr is anywhere near as good as Ken Kesey. However, I think the comparison is deserved between the books. While I didn’t pick up any overt references to Kesey in What Rose Forgot I think it’s fair to make the connection. 

Published AND Purchased September 15

Brand new: the book I am reading next;
We Chase Shadows by Richard Osman. Review coming soon!

A Sweet and Sentimental Movie (But OK)

I read the book in March, 2025. The movie did a good job with the story, I think.

Blog post © 2026 mae sander

What do American Gods Eat?

Of course I mean the food of the gods of Neil Gaiman's great book American Gods. I just enjoyed rereading this for around the third time. I don't reread many books, and in this case, I was gratified at the way I could focus on some of the details because I wasn't distracted by wanting to know how the plot wrapped up.*

Gaiman is a highly inventive writer, with lots of variation in his choice of details, and in how he portrays the characters' reactions to minor events. Of course I was especially interested in what and where the central character Shadow and all the gods ate. Being a typical midwestern American, Shadow tends to eat hamburgers and fries, sometimes with a bowl of chili. Or an "all day full breakfast -- it came with hush puppies." (p. 192) 

Shadow generally likes basic midwestern food, whatever the region -- if it's not badly cooked. As he roamed he shared a funeral meal for a black woman while briefly staying with some Egyptian gods of the dead in Cairo, Illinois. That meal included  a kitchen filled with "tubs and with saucepans and with Tupperware." And "a table... laden high with coleslaw and beans and cornmeal hush puppies and chicken and ribs and black-eyed peas." (p. 222)

A depressing Christmas lunch takes place at a "hall-like family restaurant in northern central Wisconsin. Shadow picked cheerlessly at the dry turkey, jam-sweet red lumps of cranberry sauce, tough-as-wood roasted potatoes, and violently green canned peas. From the way he attacked it, and the way he smacked his lips, Wednesday seemed to be enjoying the food." Wednesday's real enthusiasm, though, turns out to be for the underage waitress. (p. 234)

Michigan Pasties (source)

While hiding out in a Wisconsin town near Ironwood, MI in the Upper Peninsula, Shadow meets Mabel, who has a diner. She offers him a pasty: "Shadow had no idea what a pasty was, but he said that would be fine, and in a few moments Mabel returned with a plate with what looked like a folded-over pie on it... . Shadow ... bit into it: it was warm and filled with meat, potatoes, carrots, onions. 'First pasty I've ever had,' he said. 'It's real good.'" (p. 266)

More myth-like was Shadow and Wednesday's earlier meal in Chicago, cooked by a woman named Zorya Vechernayaya, shared with her sisters, also named Zorya, and their relative Czernobog, a god so obscure I had to look him up -- he's Slavic. His bargain with Shadow, made during the meal, is important. There's an absent relative named Bielebog too. 

But I'm focused on the food. The meal took place at a small table in the living room of the small apartment:

"Zorya Vechernayaya took five wooden bowls and placed an unpeeled boiled potato in each, then ladled in a healthy serving of a ferociously crimson borscht. She plopped a spoonful of white sour cream in, and handed the bowls to each of them... The borscht was vinegary and tasted like pickled beets. The boiled potato was mealy.  

"The next course was a leathery pot roast, accompanied by greens of some description -- although they had been boiled so long and so thoroughly that they were no longer by any stretch of the imagination greens, and were well on their way to becoming browns. 

"Then there were cabbage leaves  stuffed with ground meat and rice, cabbage leaves of such a toughness that they were almost impossible to cut without spattering gound meat and rice all over the carpet... At the end of the meal Shadow was still hungry. Prison food had been pretty bad, and prison food was better than this. 

"'Good food,' said Wednesday, who had cleaned his plate with every evidence of enjoyment." (p. 84-85)

On another jaunt with Wednesday, Shadow finds himself in San Francisco. A beautiful woman named Easter offers them: "Eggs, roast chicken, chicken curry, chicken salad, and ... lapin -- rabbit, actually, but cold rabbit is a delight, and in that bowl over there is jugged hare." And says: "On my festival days they still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent rebirth and copulation." But Wednesday remarks that despite the continuation of some practices, even hunting eggs, they no longer know who Easter herself is. (p. 309-310)

Some of Shadow's acquaintances have more complicated foodways -- for example two sisters who invite him to dinner next door to his Wisconsin  hideout. Marguerite offers Shadow "a steaming bowl of spaghetti... crusty garlic bread, thick red sauce, spicy meatballs." To his compliment she replies that its "from the Corsican side of the family." He wonders, "I thought you were Native American." She describes her parents, and how her sister was born after they split up. And her sister adds, "my mom's family were European Jewish... from one of those places that used to be communist and now are just chaos. I think she liked the idea of being married to a Cherokee. Fry bread and chopped liver." (p. 390)

6th century bronze with dancing Odin --
used as a die for decorating Viking helmets (source)

Gaiman uses tons of other devices for portraying his enormous cast of characters. I've selected food because I always select food -- and his descriptions are  so enjoyable to read. He seems to nail something essential every time, and he doesn't neglect to mention, often, the process of cleaning up the dishes and pots and pans that were used for cooking and serving. Fantasy, yes, but rooted very much in this real world.

* If you haven't read American Gods -- which by the way will soon be a TV series as well as my book club's September selection -- here's my excessively brief summary:

At the beginning, a man named Shadow is in jail. He's made time pass by practicing coin tricks and also has learned to keep himself safe. Shadow gets out two days early because his wife Laura has been killed in a freeway accident. Soon after her funeral Laura is brought back from the dead -- or at least she's re-animated even though still dead. Thus she plays a significant role in Shadow's adventures. 

Immediately after his release, even before he gets home for Laura's funeral, events begin to have a surrealist (or maybe magical realist) tinge, particularly his encounter with a Mr. Wednesday, later revealed to be the Norse god known as Odin, Votan, or the All-Father. Mr. Wednesday's associate, a leprechaun, demonstrates some really impressive coin tricks -- first indication that not all is realistic. He makes a bargain to work for Wednesday -- and later makes a few other bargains as well.

In a complicated series of plot twists Shadow encounters many more mythological figures from Norse, American Indian, Eastern European (including a Rabbi with a Golem), Asian (especially the Indians Kali and Ganesha, who likes to cook), African (above all, Mr.Nancy who is the spider god Anansi) and other traditions. The gods generally express their frustration at having lost their worshippers. In the New World their godly powers only serve them for rather mundane survival. Mr. Wednesday, for example, needing money, involves Shadow in an ingenious bank robbery.

All of these gods are roughly connected to one another, and they are especially aware of the sacred sites America offers: sites that are mainly known to the general public as roadside attractions. All the gods and minor mythological characters are nervously expecting "a storm." As Shadow becomes more and more aware of this, he has dramatic dreams, including one dream of the mighty thunderbirds of Indian myth. His dream is so dramatic that all the sacred or formerly sacred figures can sense what is happening in it.  

Shadow's dreamlike states become strongly part of his reality as he becomes increasingly aware of who all the gods are, what they are up to, and what it has to do with him and the un-dead Laura. Shadow ultimately participates in a final battle among the gods on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga. It's a fascinating plot, and I've scarcely summarized any of the nearly 600 exciting pages.