The Memory Monster by Yashai Sarid
169 pages

What’s it about?
 This novel is written as a letter from an employee to his mentor explaining the events that led up to him punching a client in the face.  The narrator lives in Israel and hopes to work for the state department.  When this door is closed on him he takes his love for history, and through circumstance, becomes a leading historian on the Holocaust.  In particular he is an expert on Polish concentration camps.  As he spends more and more time in Poland at the camps, away from his wife and child, he begins to see human possibilities through the lens of the Nazi's. When leading a student group he thinks,   "A weak flicker in my mind tells me that these wild types are capable of murder, but they have a hard time with commands.  They know how to reject them, evade them, manipulating their way out of them, smuggling little bottles of vodka into their rooms, making noise in the middle of the night, but perhaps on the deciding day they wouldn't turn in their neighbor, refusing orders, unlike the good kids, who would obey immediately, because for them a law is a law." 

What did it make me think about?
 What is each individual capable of?  How do we process the horrors we inflict on each other? How do we honor the victims without sensationalizing  history and turning it into a drama? 

Should I read it?
 This short book was pretty brutal- but to do justice to history it would have to be difficult to read.  It asks so many interesting questions.  Many questions to Israel itself.  Does the rise in nationalism lead us to this place again?  Does violence begat violence?  Is everything about power?   Because it asks tough questions, this beautiful and thoughtful book  would not be for every reader.

Quote-
"I spread my arms and said human beings are capable of anything, especially murder.  They relied on ideology or religion."

If you liked this try-
In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen
Love & Treasure by Ayelet Waldman
Apeirogon by Colum McCann​

8 stars

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Barry
186 pages

What’s it about?
 Hannah Coulter is a twice widowed woman in her later years.  She tells the story of her life through the lens of her age.  She ruminates on loss, raising a family, and how her rural Kentucky community has changed over the years.

What did it make me think about?
This was a book about being of a particular time and place.  How rooted people used to be in the actual land that supported them.  It was a story of a time when people lived and died in one community.  It also describes some of the reasons we moved away from that way of life, and some of the costs of that move.

Should I read it?
This was such an old fashioned book and quite different than anything I have picked up in awhile. It is a part of a series of books that Wendell Berry wrote about the town of Port William, Kentucky. Hannah Coulter's remembrances of rural Kentucky were insightful, if at times slightly moralistic.    When looking for a quote I had lots of pages earmarked with interesting thoughts.  I enjoyed this book- but can't say I loved it.  

Quote-
"I have this love for Mattie.  It was formed in me as he himself was formed.  It has his shape, you might say.  He fits it.  He fits into it as he fits into his clothes.  He will always fit into it.  When he gets out of the car and I meet him and hug him, there he is, him himself, something of my own forever, and my love for him goes all around him just sit did when he was a baby and a little boy and a young man grown.
​He fits my love, but he no longer fits the place or our life or the knowledge of anything here.  Since a long time ago, when he comes back he has come as a stranger."

If you liked this try-
​Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson
Driftless by David Rhodes

7 1/2 stars

The Searcher by Tana French
451 pages

What’s it about?
 Cal Hooper is a retired Chicago cop who's recent divorce has led him to find a new life in the countryside of Ireland.  Cal is busy working on his new fixer-upper home when a kid (Trey) starts showing up around his house.  He soon finds that Trey's brother has gone missing and Trey wants some outside help to find out what happened.  

What did it make me think about?
 Ireland must have a beautiful landscape.  Tana French's description of the countryside is captivating.

Should I read it?
I have loved Tana French novels ever since I picked up "Into the Woods".  For me this book was slower than her previous novels, and had a different tone to it.  The writing is descriptive and beautiful, but the mystery was slow to pull me in.  I enjoyed it but in a different way than I was expecting.  My presumption with a Tana French novel is that I will not be able to put it down.  Not so true with The Searcher- but again, it could have been my mood.

Quote-
​     " 'Sure, they oughtn't to give you gun anyway,' Barty the barman told him, when he pointed this out.
     'Why not?'
     'Because you're American.   We're all mental with the guns, over there.   Shooting them off at the drop of a hat.  Blowing some fella away because he bought the last packet of Twinkies in the shop.  The rest of us wouldn't be safe.' "

If you liked this try-
​The Loney by Micahel Andrew Hurley
​Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
​Long Bright River by Liz Moore
The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey

​7 1/2 stars