Following an unlikely segue of venues, Piper Kerman graduated from Smith College, got involved in international drug trafficking and a decade later, went to jail. Piper’s Sapphic college days brought her under the witchy spell of drug-smuggling Nora who “looked a bit like a French bulldog, or maybe a white Eartha Kitt” – becoming her boss and lover. But later Nora ratted her out, sending Kerman into Danbury Prison’s differently -dorm’ed scene teeming with colorful prisoners; the vulnerable and the ghetto-tough, young mothers and jailbird grandmas. With her sharp eye and hip wit, (she says she’d only experienced handcuffs ‘in the boudoir’) Kerman gives us dialogue-delicious characters who enact their battles and loyalties, bonding together against the punitive guards, fearing the terrifying slide into Solitary, often mandated quite arbitrarily. Breezily resilient, ‘inside’ for only fifteen months, a hard working prison electrician, Kerman runs up to ten miles a day- a model prisoner with a B.A. She also has Larry, her fiancé who visits faithfully-along with family and friends. Kerman is observant and highly descriptive, and develops genuine relationships with prisoners less lucky than herself. Later shackled and at gunpoint she is airlifted to another jail temporarily; an absolutely terrifying hellhole. And there she meets Nora again, with interestingly nuanced resolutions.

From Page 100:

“At Smith College the pervasive obsession with food was expressed at candlelight dinners and at Friday afternoon faculty teas; in Danbury it was via microwave cooking and stolen food. In many ways I was more prepared to live in close quarters with a bunchy of women than some of my fellow prisoners who were driven crazy by communal female living. There was less bulimia and more fights than I had known as an undergrad, but the same feminine ethos was present—empathetic camaraderie and bawdy humor on good days, and histrionic dramas coupled with meddling, malicious gossip on bad days.”

The felicitous confluence of bonds that brought two well-known local writers –Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp- into such deep friendship included: being-single, rowing in sculls on The Charles, sobriety, Caldwell becoming so earlier; Knapp achieving it later, and famously. All that and their respective literary sensibilities. And though childless, they were both passionately dogfull; Gail had, Clementine, Caroline’s was Lucille. Endlessly walking their dogs, rowing, and talking, they were also both inward sorts: Caroline wore “her reserve like silken armor.”
One day Caroline said out loud “I’m the merry recluse! And Gail is the cheerful depressive.” These paradoxical styles complemented each other well, and the two soulmates found a connection different from romantic love. Friendship is a language, and they spoke theirs on
leisurely, life-inquiring strolls around Fresh Pond. But then along came that cloud in the sky to interrupt it all: cancer, rapid decline, death. An ongoing battle had been about Caroline’s smoking, and here was its extreme punishment. But her fading afforded a new intimacy, and we get the gracefulness of Caldwell’s musings about the painfully odd emptiness of losing a best friend. And then this: Clementine gets attacked by a pitbull, and we see that loss has other zingers up its sleeve.

From page 123:

“Once she referred to the core ambiguities of life as “the dark side of joy,” and here, these days, has been the reverse: a happy limbo in which I have brought her along on the journey. The writer’s self-imposed fugue state. She has been thoroughly alive in the meadows and woods with the dogs, through each rowing lesson and argument and carefree phone call. Her death these days is somewhere down the hall, behind a closed but unlocked door. But for now she is river-tan and laughing, and pretty soon the phone will ring and one of us will say What are you doing”? and it will all begin again.”

Known as a ghost town, Dogtown comprises a brooding 3,000-acre area of abandoned woodland in Gloucester. Its thrilling eeriness casts a mesh of myth over the place for centuries. For painter Marsden Hartley who characterized the place as “Druidic”, mulching his spirit in Dogtown represented “casting off a wearisome chrysalis” as he painted landscapes of the woodlands’ ominously gigantic rocks (up to 20 feet high), including a huge Whale’s Jaw . Some were engraved by Bible-thumping millionaire Roger Babson in Depression times, who admonished severely : Use Your Head, Never Try, Never Win, Help Mother . Much earlier, when Gloucester’s fishing industry was booming, pirates trolled the waters and bloody murder ensued with decapitated heads hanging on the mast; in response, residents retreated into Dogtown. A witch, confounded with a crow, died here magically. The book‘s modern day thread follows the l984 of a popular teacher ; suspect Peter Hodgkins, was a moody local weirdo, and occasional exhibitionist. The trial, and Hodgkin’s many-faceted oddities that the small town both tolerated and finally feared, is shivery to read. Hypnotized by the place, East spins out the murder’s aftermath shiveringly. The book’s literary flavor broods on the way Dogtown’s aura—including history, the supernatural, art, murder-feels haunted, and haunting.

page 26

“That is how, like Dante’s Virgil, Marsden Hartley had led me to the edge of these woods, where the air smelled of thousands of crisping autumn leaves. The sky was oceanic with clouds as light and foamy as cresting waves. Wind stirred the treetops, ruffling the heavy silence. The map identified a shooting range immediately south of Dogtown, but sounds of gunfire ricocheted from all around. It seemed as if the wind had grabbed this sound and was tossing it back and forth, and occasionally dropping it like a ball.”

The title “Lit” tilts two ways—referring both to drunkenness and to literature. Beginning her career as poet and memoirist, Karr who’s married to an upper class poet and the mother of baby Dev, begins to drink like a fish. But this fish – like a colorful, tropical fish- can swim in the English language with extraordinary fluidity. Karr’s downward swoop into alcohol scares her little boy and brings understandably taut distancing from her husband. Her crazy mother, made famous in The Liar’s Club adds more spice. Some salty living, a suicide attempt, and a downward slide into a hospital darken the landscape; then, finally, along comes AA. But Karr is wildly resistant to it, even comically so; the Steps, the “G” word, prayer. Somehow, though, Karr stands away from her own willfully stubborn drinking self with skepticism, as if she’s at once a rebellious teenager and her own stern critic. A guardian pal she names “Joan the Bone” sticks by her, delivering deadpan wisdom that Karr refutes and mocks, but her disturbing irreverence is rendered with poetic wit. This tension between the two women, and within herself, gradually does its bumpy work and eventually sobriety does come bringing, surprisingly, Catholicism along with it.

Page 261:

“Suicide as an idea seeps into your lungs like nerve gas. No precipitating event prompts my fixation on dying, just the dull racket of my head’s own Chihuahua-like bark—death, death, death. It becomes the one rabbit hole that will hide me. I can just cease to be. Picking up a drink would betray everybody who’s poured effort into my sobriety—like my suicide wouldn’t? But death-now, there’s a one-stop-shopping idea. Over the months, I start to convince myself that Dev’ll be better off without me (a grotesquely self-indulgent notion no parent can afford).

The fate of a mysterious volume lost for six centuries.

Will Piper, ex-FBI Agent, of the earlier “Secret of the Seventh Son”, is a curious guy, in both senses of the word. A cad and a drinker, and bad ex-husband, he’s supposedly chastened in his new marriage and fatherhood. But the return of a thrilling case involving an ultra-secret government installation in Nevada, where an ancient library is buried , lures him out of retirement. One particular book has enticingly escaped from that literary tomb, and a London auction brings it into Will’s hands. Dated l527, the book ominously alludes to 9, Feb. 2027—then very distant, now very near. Predictions made way back when eerily foretell the death dates of people living today. Cooper’s prose roams across centuries; in the modern thriller era he delivers the arid language of ‘downloads’ and ‘databases’ and some hip sarkiness. But then in the l300-l500’s parts he makes the luscious antique words and sensibilities of monks, Nostradamus, and Shakespeare himself blossom forth out of discovered manuscripts.The most compelling part of the book takes place at Cantwell Hall where the auctioned book came from. Still-naughty Will connects with Isabelle, granddaughter of the owner of that Stately Home, and amid, yes, sex and drinking they follow clues hidden in candlesticks and behind tiles in musty, scary nooks revealing secrets and treasures.

“A melancholy was descending. He was tired, he was disappointed that he was getting his old cravings back. The bottle of scotch was still up in his room. As his mind wandered so did his eyes. One of the blue-and-white Delft tiles lining the fireplace caught his eye. It was a charming scene of a mother walking through a field with a bundle of twigs under one arm and her toddler son on the other. She looked perfectly happy. She probably wasn’t married to a bastard like him, he thought.” — Page l59

Strolling through vast historical landscapes, often in a mood of colorful inquiry, Fraser and Rimas explore the ways food has been produced over centuries. Nature’s whims –droughts and flooding and famine-and a sometimes-fatal blindness to the bigger agricultural picture have afflicted what they call “food empires” from the Middle Ages on through currently-strapped California. Whether discussing l0th century monks brewing beer, Italians collecting African wheat-or the clear-cutting of forests, troubling the soil while planting waves of grain, the authors combine a keen appreciation for the resourcefulness of agriculturalists over the ages, while also fixing stern eyes on the horizon of possible, even probable, disaster. It took l9 people, usually slaves, in Rome, to feed one urban citizen. Deforested lands, intensive grain cultivation, soil exhaustion, lengthy trading routes lead to “landscape vulnerability”-and an ecosystem that ‘flips’ in misfortune . Nowadays, the problematic methods darkening the picture include monocultures (one crop-rather than balanced-portfolios,) alarming pesticides and genetically modified crops Fraser and Rimas explore contemporary food production dilemmas and solutions. They reveal the idealistic upside of Fair Trade practiced by Starbucks, but also reveal the downside of its limited success. These momentous stories full of fascinating characters are sprinkled with poetic language.

“The leafhopper, scourge of the Japanese, is making a comeback and is likely to be the recurring villain of the upcoming seasons. It is naturally imperious to the defensive toxins spewed by the new Chinese rice. When the crop is planted, the leafhopper smiles, twirls its moustache, and wraps a bib around its spiny throat.” PAGE 278

Norman De Ratour,  Director of the Museum of Man is in a sticky spot as the pompously named Heinrich von Grumh , an honorary curator, has been found dead near his museum. The gun is Norman’s. In this labyrinthine mystery, sparkling with urbane wit, the ‘who’ in the ‘dunnit’  waxes and relaxes as Museum characters strut their academic narcissism and their struggles for power. One woman, formerly a man, is so obsessed with victimization, and her museum exhibits highlighting it, that she doesn’t recognize her own  humorless control-freaking.  Another wants to makes the Museum into a mausoleum, a Hereafter-Destination for the rich dead. Museum coins are found to be fakes. Regarding the murder, Norman’s wife Diantha had a brief affair with the dead man, and Norman– half-lackadaisically– thinks he may even have killed the guy. But the most arresting character is Alphus, a chimpanzee who’s been scientifically enhanced to near-humanhood; he can type and do sign language. As Norman’s sidekick he’s a wry and very astute bystander, almost a philosopher, and an observant sleuth of the murder mystery.

As suspects are interviewed, this chimp’s uncanny moral radar catches the nuances, which he delivers to Norman.

Alphus reads Herodotus and comics, combining Alcorn’s rendering of him as both serious and laugh -out -loud funny.

Page  l05

“We packed Alphus’s belongings—a lot of CD’s, books, and clothes, including some shirts, two ties, and a suit jacket. When I noticed him carefully wrapping a bottle of single-malt Scotch, I looked quizzically at Millicent. But she just shrugged. I won’t deny I found it unsettling to have a chimpanzee sitting next to me in my ancient Renault with his seat belt buckled on.”

Veterinarian Nick Trout wears his heart on his sleeve . He even, defying biology, seems to wear about four. Though he works with the highest- tech equipment at Angell, where animals receive treatments fit for a human king, it’s Trout’s deep engagement with his dogs and their owners that’s so striking. He follows two real life dramas here, in his novelistic way. In one, Sandi-the mother, and  daughter Sonja have a tensely fraught relationship. While Sonja is caring for her mother’s beloved dog Cleo, she gets injured, and so guilty Sonja secretly whisks doggy from Bermuda to Boston for surgery . But in spite of Trout and his colleagues’

extreme measures, Cleo dies on the operating table. Trout’s empathy is like an accordion, stretching wide.

This surrogate daughter-dog had been both a symbol of competition and an object –at last-of joint affection. And now she’s gone. To his relief, Sandi forgives the tormented Trout, and suggests that Cleo’s spirit can serve as an amulet of sorts for future sick animals. Which indeed happens when another dog, Helen, has cancer surgery, and appears to be possibly doomed

But Trout discovers that the dog has in fact lived, and in  a romantically rich discourse on love and loss, explores and the warp and-yes-woof of animal to owner connection.

Quote Page  l80:

“Essentially I’m working construction. I’m the guy splicing wires, welding pipes, shoring up support beams, and generally renovating the house. All the other stuff, the important stuff, I cannot influence. These are the intangibles, the memories, the history, the bonds, the things that make the difference between a house and a home, the things that make the difference between the body covered in scales or feathers or fur and our pet. It is this everything that eludes me. This everything else is the spirit of the animal.”

The shocker here swirls quickly, taking you by surprise: a man murders his wife and wounds one of his daughters. Those little sisters, responsible, serious Lulu and needy, loving Merry, become the surviving family duo, and provide the alternating voices of the book. With their father in jail, their two sets of disturbing grandparents–,colorfully rough in style–play out their respective loyalties and miseries in ways that hardly cushion the girls. Then they’re kicked off to an orphanage where Dickensian horrors , girl-style prevail. In the next phase, a Jewish family semi-adopts them. Meyers delivers a nuanced picture of  this  new milieu with its dignified, socially conscious and intellectual tone, so different from their family or the orphanage. Charitably taken in, they nevertheless feel out of place. The story continues into their grownup years with  Dr Lulu, married with daughters, while Merry floats more chaotically, finally working in the domestic violence field. A therapeutic undertaking at first, Merry’s reactions to her clients roil with interesting complexity.The sisters’ lifelong conflict focuses on Dad. Merry yearningly visits him in jail for years; Lulu protects herself by completely cutting him off, inside and out. Meyers makes the voices of each sister and their different ways of feeling and dealing novelistically rich., and their dilemmas poignant. The book is venue-various and she covers a lot of ground.

”They  might release your father. It could be as soon as this spring.”
“My father’s been saying that crap forever. He’s not going anywhere.”
“And if he does?” Drew followed me into the bathroom. “What then, Lulu?”
“Then nothing. He’s still dead to us.”
“He’s not dead to Merry.”
“Fine.” I reached over and turned on the shower. “She can have him.”
Drew stepped in front of me a I trued to push back the shower curtain. “What about the girls? You can’t ignore that he’s their grandfather.”
I pushed past him and got into the tub. “Their grandfather is as gone as their father.”
I turned the showerhead to pulsate. ”He died along with my mother. Drop it.”
Drew pulled the shower curtain aside. “You can’t wish someone dead. You have to deal with this.” Water soaked into the sleeve of his cotton sweater.
“No, I don’t.” I felt as though I were on the top of a roller coaster about to drop “If you can’t accept it, then maybe you have to leave.”
“You’d choose me leaving over dealing with your father? Is that what you’re saying?” –  page 222

This irreplaceable moment – and all moments are fleeting-may in fact be a painful one. So maybe you’d rather zoom past it, wolfing it down like a bad-tasting meal, but also missing its meaning. The practice of Mindfulness helps you appreciate both aspects of such paradoxes, helping you notice gorgeous, pleasurable, all-too-brief, dimensions of experience, while simultaneously inviting you to explore the variety and fluidity of negative things. “Having sadness in our lives,” Siegel writes, “doesn’t just make it possible to recognize joy. It make it possible to feel joy.” Deny pain, and you ‘dampen’ pleasure. Emotional and physical pain have two ‘arrows’-the actual sensation of it, and the anxiety we add to it-and those can be separated. Siegel offers slow-Down and Open-Up exercises, beginning with that old pal, your breath, revealing the inter-connectedness of pleasure and pain, which actually has a varied palette –stinging, burning, pinching– or even just interesting. He describes exercises with meditative themes: imagine you are an eternal mountain surrounded by the flickering changes of the trees and the seasons ; this helps widen the landscape, and by inviting curiosity, changes the bluntness of good and bad. Couples, in another exercise, can be mindful together, face to face, each magically imagining the other at all phases of life, from childhood, through right now, onto old age. “Be aware that your partner has had thousands of moments of joy and sorrow, fear and anger, longing and fulfillment-just like you.” Walking Meditation helps you to notice in the slowest of slow motion the incredible fullness we have-if we notice it-in each step we take.

“I remember vividly my first extended meditation retreat…I wasn’t expecting what happened and could scarcely believe what I felt. I stepped into an ordinary shower stall and found that the sensations of thousands of water drops hitting my skin, combined with the slippery, sensual soap gliding over my body, was almost overwhelming.” page 60