The Keeper of Happy Endings

 

The Keeper of Happy Endings – by Barbara Davis

A Kindle Unlimited (i.e. free) deal that I tried because it received an awful lot of high ratings. In summary, this book was a tad too “chick flick-ish” for me.  I know, I know – it’s not a movie, it’s a book. But I think you know what I mean. This is a book written by a woman mainly for women readers. I hesitate saying that as such a statement can get one in a lot of trouble in today’s climate of political correct-ness and not stereotyping the genders. But I stand by my assessment.

The story starts in the mid 1980s. We meet a 20-ish single woman named Rory whose life has already had some nasty turns. Rory is a “privileged” child who is constantly fighting and arguing with her “privileged” mother, Camilla. Camilla has gobs of money and prestige, and for her, life is never about doing what you want, but rather doing things that other wealthy people will be impressed by; no matter how miserable it might make you. So as far as Rory’s future goes, she definitely has different ideas and plans that what her mother wishes.

Without going into too much detail, our story allows Rory to meet an older woman named Soline. This book is equally about Soline as it is about Rory. Soline was Rory’s age during World War II, and was a native of France when the Nazi’s invaded in 1940. We go back in this book plenty of times to that tumultuous time in 1940, and read about Soline’s life, and how hard it was for a young single woman to survive during the Nazi occupation. So all of these years later, these two women develop a bond that neither of them quite understand, but seem to welcome.

Well, there’s a lot more to the plot, but I won’t go into it here. I will say that whereas I enjoyed the book overall, it was a tad too “descriptive” for me. By “descriptive”, I’m not referring to unpleasant things, but the tendency of the author to go into far too much detail when the women are doing something as arbitrary as trying on clothes. Again, maybe women enjoy reading about such things.  There’s a lot of trauma, secrets, and history going on here, and whereas such elements can be welcome in a story, everything here seemed to be a tad forced.  Too many things happen that are coincidental and contrived, and characters seem to radically change within the literal turn of a page.  At times I felt like, had the people in this story knew that they were fictional characters, they would have gotten mad at the author for pulling them kicking and screaming towards a happy ending.

The book was well written, and I suppose that there probably is a large body of readers who would enjoy a story like this far better than I would, so I can’t fault the author in that aspect. I honestly wish, though, that there had been a bit more imagination written into the story – especially during the last 75 pages or so when the author was trying to hard to wrap everything in a nice pretty package.  A keeper of a happy ending indeed.

The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels

 

The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels – by Jon Meacham

As a citizen of the United States in the first couple of decades of the 21^st century, it’s awfully tempting to look around at the political environment and think “How can things possibly be worse?”  When Donald Trump became the 45^th president, author Jon Meacham probably decided to take a deep breath, not panic, and remind the citizens that although this seems like a preposterous joke, our country has been through this sort of nightmare before, and good has always prevailed at the end of whatever seamless catastrophe the nation seems to be facing.

Despite what many people today think about our country’s past, America was NEVER “great” as Mr. Trump claims. Oh sure, we’ve done some great things, but that should never give us a free pass for the many transgressions we’ve made as a nation. Yes, people will always be tainted by the atmosphere around them – but when we look back on our history, we shouldn’t try to cover up our sins.  Confessing our sins, as Jesus commanded, would be much more appropriate and do a whole lot of good.  Sadly, a lot of people who claim to be followers of Jesus still haven’t figured that out yet. They would rather “cover up” than “confess”. No, we’ve never been a “Christian” nation, yet Christians have always made up the majority of the population, and yet after almost 250 years as a nation, we still haven’t figured out how to be Christ-like. We’d rather wave a large American flag, keep foreigners out of our country, and tell poor people that it’s their own fault for being poor.

Now, what I’ve described isn’t really what this book is about, but I would argue it’s definitely an underlying current if one reads between the lines.  This book describes in detail our country’s faults, especially when it comes to racial matters.  There are times when the author seems to want to tackle other sins, but the book always comes back to race. The Women’s Suffrage moment during the 1910s is only briefly discussed. On the other hand, McCarthyism of the 1950s does get a lot of page space here.  What’s a bit unique (and scary) about the communist scare of the early 1950s, is that the author doesn’t really go into specifics about the witch hunt, but rather WHY Joe McCarthy decided to create such an invisible monster to begin with. McCarthy’s reason? Politics. Pure and simple. McCarthy knew that he never had to do deep homework. All he had to do was point fingers, scream a lot, intimidate people, and the ignorant masses would fall right in behind him. One can easily see how, as a country, we haven’t learned from these mistakes. All one has to do is see how today’s individuals such as Majorie Taylor Greene and Franklin Graham have learned to prey upon America’s gullibility and stupidity.

But again, it’s mainly the racial issues. As far back as Reconstruction, through the prominent years of when the KKK was “legitimate”, all the way up to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, we read about all of it here. It’s mostly embarrassing and unpleasant, but Meacham’s goal is to show us that we DO eventually beat the ignorance, the hatred, and the ugliness that, sadly, enraptures so many fearful U.S. citizens.

I should add as a postscript that this book was written before Donald Trump (with the help of Fox “News”) managed to convince many that the presidential election was “stolen” and try to overthrow the U.S. government via a coup on January 6, 2021. Hindsight tells us that his chances of succeeding were actually higher than many feared.  Even as I type this review (February 2022), there are many who still stand behind this idiotic tyrant and dismiss the whole episode as trivial.  From what I can tell, calmer heads are slowly starting to prevail, and Trump’s popularity seems to be slightly waning. Let’s hope the momentum continues. Let’s hope that there are REAL angels watching over us and giving us far more grace than we deserve as a country. Let’s hope we can learn. Let’s hope that we can somehow put these episodes behind us. We can hope. And pray.

Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution

 

Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution – by Peter Ackroyd

This book was a gem of a find. This is actually part 3 of a (I think) 6-part series where author Peter Ackroyd writes in detail about the history of England. This book was full and rich, yet I must say that I felt there was so much more to tell. I’m guessing the author had to carefully watch the page length. This thing could have easily been about 3-4 times as thick.

The book mainly focuses on the monarchy of England. We read of the histories of James I, Charles I, Charles II, and James II. None of these leaders come across as exceptionally good, and some are flat out awful. In fact, right in the middle of this book is where the civil war in England breaks out where the country is temporarily ruled by non-royalty. This is one of the areas that I think almost deserved its own book. Still, the reader gets enough information to come away with a basic understanding of the mood and the events.

What is interesting, and a bit of a distraction to be honest, is that Ackroyd knows that if he’s going to tell an authentic history, he needs to go beyond the monarchs. So we get chapters woven in about fashion, literature, and other elements of the culture during the time of the 17^th century. It’s all welcome, but there were times when I just wished he would focus on the powers that be and the ongoing conflict. This includes the various parliaments that were formed and destroyed during the time.

There really is a lot to cover here, and I’m sure it was a challenge for the author to keep this narrative detailed yet somewhat brief. There are a lot of names to assimilate, and it doesn’t help when said names are also titles “The Duke of York, etc.”. Maybe if one is more familiar with the English history and geography, it wouldn’t be so overbearing, but it was a bit of a struggle to juggle all the names during the majority of the seventeenth century.  There’s also a lot of politics and religion here, and whereas Ackroyd covers the details as well as he can, there’s only so much of this type of history that one can consider “interesting”.

I should also point out that the “glorious revolution” that happens near the end of this narrative is also quite skimpy in terms of detail.  Minor sins, though, as this thing was an excellent read overall. In fact, I’m eager to now read the other volumes in this series with the hopes of learning even more.  All nations in the history of civilization deserve such a retrospective.