Shakespeare's Kitchen by Lore Segal

This book is beautifully written, made me want to be part of the characters' world, and leaves the reader with questions about the nature of friendship and truth. In many ways, Shakespeare's Kitchen feels "of a different time" because everyone is so happy in academia. The community of support the characters enjoy feels permanent, constant, and totally tenured much like their positions. Once I realized it was set in academia, I worried it would wax poetic or present too Hallmarky, but never once did I feel it was too saccharine. The ups and downs, relationships and winding paths taken by the characters are those that anyone can experience in any walk of life, not just those in academia. Because of this, these characters and their stories came alive for me. The stories are funny, sad, wistful, curious, and fun. 

However, there was a revelation near the end that I didn't love. It felt too predictable. I didn't see it coming but once it came it seemed like "of course this was going to happen." And I wish it hadn't. I want to read complex, intertwined stories of realistic characters moving through life and love without lies and deceit as an accepted, inevitable component of those stories. The plot didn't need the lies and deceit to keep moving. Of course it is possible for one singular choice to be both good and bad, and of course real people and their real lives are complex. Novels and stories can mimic real life and this is part of what I love about Shakespeare's Kitchen. But novels and stories always take a side, always send a message, and always have a last word. And the last word in Shakespeare's Kitchen values individual pursuits at the expense of the greater whole, and that selfishness runs contrary to the ethos of the rest of the book. It undermines so much of the beautiful friendships this book showcased on nearly every other page. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott

Imperfect Birds is the third book in the "Rosie" series and one I appreciated for its tension. Rosie and her parents are having two very different experiences for most of the book and it's not clear who is right and who is wrong. Rosie is a good kid, but she's also making some dangerous choices. Elizabeth and James love her and want her to thrive, but their efforts sometimes miss the mark. I admired how we were kept in the middle; there was no clear winner in all their conflicts. Sometimes Rosie is right, sometimes her parents are right, and that push and pull is what being a teenager, and raising a teenager, is about in so many ways.  It's because I loved that the reader gets to see the best and worst of each character that I had a strong aversion to the ending. I think the ending suggests someone was right and someone was wrong and I disagree. Imperfect Birds is where we see Rosie most grown up, Elizabeth and James most a team; I wanted to end our time together ...
Read more

The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke

Sam Bush gave me this book for Christmas-- I believe it was a blind recommendation from a bookstore employee-- and I'm grateful to them both for a memorable read. Written by a doctor, this book pieces together the story of a heart transplant from one child to another. It introduces readers to the families, the tragedies, the hospital stays, the medical challenges, and the sweeping developments in medicine that culminated in a few tense hours in an operating room, saving one life by sharing another.  While parts of this book are all history and do well explaining complex medical procedures in lay person's terms, the heart of this book is very human. Clarke always brings us back to the two kids involved, one donor and one recipient. She includes their parents and siblings and the very hard truth at the heart of transplant medicine; part of one person's body goes into another and in a heart transplant, this means one person is dead. When both the donor and the recipient are ch...
Read more

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

 Josh got me this book for Christmas 2023 when he gifted me several dog-centered books. He wanted to find books that were well-written and centered on dogs, without being overly sentimental. The Friend is not overly sentimental, and it is well-written, but it is not really centered on dogs. It's much more about writing and suicide than it is about dogs, even though Apollo, the dog in the book, is one of the few characters with a name.  It still has thoughtful meditations on a dog's emotional life, how dogs manage the inevitable changes and stress that come their way because they depend on humans for security and sustenance, and the narrator in the book loves Apollo and is dedicated to him in ways I respect and understand. I said aloud several times that the author is doing tricky things with the writing, and maybe she did do tricky things. The Friend features a dog, but the dog is less a character or theme in and of himself than a conduit to illustrate other ideas- mostly idea...
Read more