How to Read a Book, by Monica Wood

The cover of Monica Wood’s How to Read a Book is warm and inviting, especially to a lover of books and reading. It shows the exterior of a cozy bookstore from the sidewalk, beckoning readers to come on in. What follows is a highly engaging and uplifting story full of quirky and complex characters, difficult situations, emotional highs and lows, growth and redemption, and resilience. Is there a bookstore in the novel? Yes – but there’s so much more! 

There’s Harriett, a.k.a. “Bookie,” who runs a book club inside a women’s prison in Maine. She is dedicated to sharing the power of literature with every member of the group, helping them know their worth and express their feelings as they read aloud, react, discuss, write, and make connections to themselves and others. Wood does not sugar-coat their voices as they express powerlessness, rage, longing, resentment, distrust, love and more. We get to know each member of the group as they support one another through a very meager existence.  

But if the cover of the book showed a prison, it would not suggest that one of the youngest inmates, 22-year-old-Violet, is suddenly freed at the beginning of the book. In fact, the bulk of the story is arguably hers as she tries to navigate life as an ex-con “on the outs” where she never had a chance to live independently before being locked up. We watch as she goes from a tense reunion with her sister to a chance meeting with Harriett (at the bookstore!) and another fraught reunion with Frank, the husband of the woman she killed in the drunk driving accident that landed her in prison. Through much effort she lands a job for which she has “affinity,” a word that provides fledgling self-esteem, documenting research on talking parrots in a university lab – where the birds themselves are characters, as well as her ill-tempered, manipulative boss. 

Perhaps a bird would have made a good cover image, since the birds, too, were captives. And in addition to Violet’s work with the birds, the inmates give a gift of a small, knitted bird to Harriett as a token of their appreciation. She keeps it, though she’s been warned not to accept anything from them, and not without consequence. This repetition of birds seems symbolic, and yet a bird on the cover wouldn’t adequately represent Frank, a third major character who longs for a relationship with Harriett while feeling terrible about his true feelings around the death of his wife. No spoilers, but it’s not what you’d think. In addition, we get to see his rocky relationship with his daughter and his brilliance as a retired machinist-turned-handyman….at the bookstore. 

So, maybe the bookstore is the thing that ties everything together and is the best choice for the cover after all. As a member of our group observed, avid readers are drawn to books that have bookstores on the cover, and an avid reader would thoroughly enjoy this book. Also, its marketing had the intended effect. It looked like it would be an easy and enjoyable read, and it was, while still being intricately well-written.

As a bonus, our book club happens to include several people who have spent time volunteering at a women’s prison in Mitchellville, Iowa, as well as providing support to women who have recently been released. While there are some differences between the systems in Iowa and Maine, and it’s clear that some details were added to advance the story (such as Violet being outfitted with a fully stocked apartment upon her release – a lucky break that is very unlikely in reality), their general take was that the overall tone of the prison aspect of this book was spot-on. If any Iowa area readers are so inspired, check out Women at the Well for ways to get involved with helping women who are incarcerated and recently released.  

We were glad to have found and read this book, and glad that it left us feeling hopeful. It was also a good reminder of this: 

“The line between this and that, you and her, us and them. The line is thin.” 

— Julie Feirer

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

This is an exquisite book—112 lovingly designed pages of thoughtful commentary, elegant language, and engaging drawings. It’s essentially an essay packed with a call to reconsider capitalism by injecting it with what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls the gift economy.

The back cover, with a luscious drawing of hands brimming with purple and red fruit, carries the message we’re to take with us: “All Flourishing is Mutual.”

Kimmerer uses a simple springtime fruit, the serviceberry (also called a juneberry, shadbush, wild plum, saskatoon and a litany of other names), as a metaphor for the difference between indigenous beliefs and capitalism. (Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomie Nation, professor at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and director of its Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.)

A gift economy, she writes, is built on sharing and recycling. When the serviceberry produces too much fruit for one family, the tradition is to give the remainder to neighbors and friends. In a capitalist approach based on concerns of scarcity, the rest might be hoarded or sold. There is no room in a gift economy for hoarding; great wealth is frowned upon because indigenous societies value reciprocity over accumulation.

It’s a system in which everybody gets a bit of the bounty, nobody goes hungry, but all involved—insects, birds, humans—reciprocate. “Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them,” she writes.  “If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind.”

Kimmerer uses multiple examples of current gift economies, including Little Free Libraries, and the larger public version on which they are based; sites such as Buy Nothing, which digitally connect neighbors who give away household items they no longer need; and recycling stores like The Freestore in Des Moines.

She acknowledges problems in the system, and points to the Tragedy of the Commons, in which those wishing to make a profit take control of community resources. In one case, a neighbor puts up a “free farm stand” full of fresh produce to share, and somebody steals the entire stand. (Kimmerer acknowledges that it was, in all fairness, advertised as free.) In response, an Eagle Scout replaces the stand and organizes other members to build similar structures in their communities.

The book is an easy, pleasant read that allowed us to dip our toes in economic theory, making it accessible and almost fun. It’s an antidote to the greed that is currently the operating philosophy in our government.

— Patricia Prijatel

The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish

Readers in search of good historical fiction may question whether they really want to learn about the everyday life and challenges of Jewish immigrants in London in the 17th century, but The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish quickly draws the reader into a compelling, atmospheric and skillfully written account of the period surrounding the Great Plague of 1665 alongside its impact and meaning to the professional and personal lives of two historical researchers in the 21st century.

In The Weight of Ink, the story moves back and forth, chapter by chapter, between the late 1660s and modern day London – between the household of Rabbi HaCoen Mendes who has followed his flock from Amsterdam, now, after Cromwell’s abdication, a somewhat more accepting place for Jews to practice their religion, and Helen Watt, professor and historical researcher who, at the end of her university career, is battling Parkinson’s disease and her brash, American assistant Aaron Levy.

Rabbi HaCoen Mendes is a survivor of the Inquisition, who was blinded as a concession for renouncing his faith, otherwise to die in agony on the rack. Also in the HaCoen Mendes household is Ester Valazquez, an Amsterdam orphan. She has a brilliant, open and inquisitive mind along with a strong aversion to the arid state of marriage.  Ester becomes the rabbi’s scribe by default, since she had been educated alongside her brothers, despite cultural norms against it. This work frees her from household drudgery, the only culturally acceptable alternative to marriage for a young woman.

Helen is a brilliant researcher and seemingly revered teacher, but she is lonely and emotionally repressed, having retreated from her first and only love and “…wasted her life fleeing from it ” (p. 452).  Aaron is obnoxious, arrogant and immature, but a highly intelligent graduate student whose dissertation on some minutia of Shakespeare’s Influence has stalled, likely irretrievably.  The personalities of these two accomplished researchers clash again and again until a seemingly terminal confrontation initiated by Aaron clears the air and marks the beginning of an unconventional friendship.   

But the main character of the narrative is a trove of old documents discovered during the 21st century renovation of the former Mendes, now historic HaLevy house. The narrative thereafter shuttles back and forth, chapter by chapter from one century to the other as Helen and Aaron decipher, analyze and puzzle over the documents. In alternate chapters the story of Ester, the originator of many of the documents as the rabbi’s scribe, is gradually revealed in fascinating detail, including vivid descriptions of life in London in the late 17th century.

Description is indeed the author’s strong point. Just one example – not long after Ester’s arrival in London, the rabbi sends her out into the city alone on an errand.  At first terrified by the jostling crowd,–“She was in a crush of English strangers and her breath came quick with fear – but their unfamiliar smells and rough fabrics and stout limbs carried her and the heat of their bodies warmed her” (p. 132) –and she soon comes to recognize a strong desire for life drives existence in London and in her – desire, strong enough to override the cultural conventions constricting her.  Ester’s craving for a life centered on books and ideas and how she addresses this life force through her work as a scribe is a major theme of the narrative and one shrouded in mystery.

Although The Weight of Ink would not be classified as a mystery, it reveals the secrets of the documents in a gradual way that nourishes suspense and propels the reader through the narrative. Two revelations near the end are especially surprising – one involving what momentarily seems like a contradiction of Ester’s desire for a life of the mind and the other that raises, but does not resolve, a mystery about her origins. This final jaw-dropping revelation also offers a profound gift to Aaron.

The book club enjoyed The Weight of Ink, and deemed it well written, especially the vivid descriptions, but the consensus was it would benefit from a thorough editing of its 559 pages.

— Sue Martin