The Fifth Avenue Story Society ~ my review

When five New Yorkers accept a mysterious, anonymous invitation to a story society, they begin a journey they could not have imagined and didn’t know they needed. Rachel Hauck’s five main characters arrive at a charming, historic library for the Fifth Avenue Story Society’s first meeting on September 9. They work past initial awkwardness, then meet weekly; and by March they have become trusted friends. During this time, they reveal secrets that have kept them stuck both personally and professionally.

In The Fifth Avenue Story Society, each modern-day participant’s backstory is compelling and each journey riveting. Hauck switches among five points of view every few pages. Usually, an author’s changing POV drives me crazy, but in this novel, Hauck’s doing so made the book unputdownable. I would just be falling deep into Jett’s personal grief or steaming over Lexa’s work frustrations or waxing nostalgic with Ed’s memories when I’d get interrupted by Coral’s plummeting profits or Chuck’s divorce drama. I was eager to read on to get back to progress in Jett's, Lexa's, and Ed's stories. But then I was eager to get back to Coral's and Chuck's, too.

Challenges for each of the five are multi-faceted. For example, Jett grapples with multiple family issues, a failed marriage, and a moral professional dilemma. This complexity added to my interest as well. Characters are well-rounded, and their emotions run true. I got impatient with two of the characters’ stall tactics, but apparently, stubbornness in relationships is one of Hauck’s themes in this novel.

Other themes in The Fifth Avenue Story Society include betrayal, moral compromise, anger, guilt, grief, honesty, love, courage, cowardice, and God’s love through Jesus Christ. The novel contains both romance and mystery. Each main character gets set free from his or her secrets, but the reveal for each is worth the reader's wait. The overarching mystery is who chose and invited them all to weave their stories together.

100 Years of Photos

Continuing the story of our family's celebration last week of my mother's 100th birthday ...

The grandchildren got together for a Google Hangout video chat with Mom. I understand Mom got to see the great-grandchildren during this call as well.

Also, my brother and his daughter gathered photos, letters, anecdotes, and memories to compile a video and a slideshow tribute.

Here is my niece's intro to her video gift:

We hope you thoroughly enjoy this video tribute to your 100 years walking this earth. And we hope you feel all our love radiating into your room as you watch!

https://youtu.be/lym5E-jjxmg

Thank you to everyone who took the time to share stories, memories, memorabilia, and pictures. I hope everyone enjoys the final product!

Here is a link to my brother's slideshow:
Happy 100th Birthday 

Slideshow and video are six-ish minutes each. Enjoy!

The Good, the Sad, and the Mixed Bag

When I heard 2020 called “a dumpster fire of a year,” I laughed at this funny description of oh-so-apt disbelief and despair. Yet … thanks to heroic efforts of many people, so many of us remain healthy enough to accept new challenges and celebrate lives of our loved ones. Maybe some garbage in our lives needs to burn to give clearer focus to higher priorities. That will require further reflection now and later in every heart. Right now I want to reflect on the good, the sad, and the mixed bag of yesterday’s high priority, my mother’s 100^th birthday.

Since COVID confinement began in March, three family birthdays were celebrated without fanfare, but Mom’s 100^th would not be one of them. Although our family members have our differences, we agree that the matriarch of our family is an extraordinary woman, uniquely worthy of honor on the occasion of this milestone. How to honor her within pandemic restrictions was the question. Her nursing home provided one answer, and technology provided another.

We were glad that the home began allowing in-person outdoor visits in time for Mom’s birthday. Only fifteen masked minutes, only one or two visitors, and six supervised feet apart. An aide wheeled her out to the gazebo, and we got to shout through double-layered cotton masks and over roaring nearby lawn mowers. The good—seeing her in person, receiving the twinkle of her blue eyes and her air-blown kisses as the aide whisked her away. The sad—no hugging, not hearing each other well enough to have an intimate conversation. The mixed bag—having visual proof of her signature elegance but preferring audio proof of her alert, strong, interesting mind. My mother has always had a regal bearing, carefully coiffed hair, beautifully polished fingernails, stylish clothing, and ever-present earrings. I can see and hear, unfortunately not simultaneously, that despite four months of isolation, she has chosen to thrive. After yesterday’s visual visit, today I find myself longing for a phone conversation with my mother.

Thanks to the organizational genius of my sister, we sent Mom flowers, brought her gifts, ordered a cake, and alerted about forty of Mom’s friends about her approaching 100^th and what contact methods the nursing home allowed. The good—the organizational genius of my sister, flowers, gifts, cake. The sad—not enjoying the bouquet’s beauty with her, not oohing and aahing over her gifts and cards, not sitting around together with cream-cheese frosting mustaches. Also sad for me, and I imagine for my sisters as well, was not being able to help Mom position, rearrange, trim back, and keep the bouquet watered. We didn’t get to reach for a scissors to help Mom’s weak fingers open her gifts and then discard wrapping paper and ribbons. We couldn’t arrange her birthday cards just-so or clean up the cake detritus. Maybe it sounds odd, but we always took pleasure in helping Mom nest. Now an aide helps her. And if Mom had to open gifts alone, and did not have anyone to smile at when she saw what the present was, oh boy, I feel  super-sad. The mixed bag—doing the best we could under the circumstances. See above photo. The nursing home helped tremendously. The staff sang Happy Birthday to her inside. We sang Happy Birthday to her outside. Everybody clapped.

Technological togetherness happened yesterday due to the tech-savvy of my brother and Mom’s grandchildren. When I figure out how to share this in my blog, I will do so.   

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is said to have based this coming-of-age novel on his own life early in the 1800s. Beginning with what he has been told of his birth, young adult David Copperfield records events and reflects on his orphaned childhood, schooling, employment, friendships, and loves. I found parts of this novel heartbreaking and parts hilarious, but always thoughtfully described.

Even as a young boy, David Copperfield’s sensitive observations are extraordinary. At ten, he wonders how he could have been “so easily thrown away.” Also at ten, he has the presence of mind to understand the source of his despair. “No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I … felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man crushed in my bosom.” [page 155 in my edition]

The situation eliciting these emotions is caused by the cruelty of his controlling stepfather, Mr. Murdstone. Another clear villain in the novel is Uriah Heep. David would not learn the extent of Heep’s vile schemes until he was in his twenties, but even as a boy, he intuits something untrustworthy in Heep. For example, after Heep says David’s aunt is a sweet lady, David observes, “He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was very ugly; and which diverted my attention from the compliment he had paid my relation, to the snaky twistings of his throat and body.” [page 235]

As a young boy abandoned to harsh realities, David is naïve. I cringed every time a new person took advantage of him. So many did, I’m surprised he does not grow up to be bitter; rather, he grows up to be respectful. As an older teen, he learns to discern how and when to protect himself as he moves toward people who might exploit him.

I feel the trajectory of character James Steerforth represents David’s maturity in the area of trust. Eight-year-old David does not recognize the contempt in his schoolmate’s nickname for him: Daisy. Steerforth’s villainy is narcissism, at first admired by David and later loathed for the hurt it inflicts on people. “If any one had told me, then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was worthless to him and next minute thrown away: I say, if any one had told me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my indignation would have found a vent!” [pages 310, 311]

My heroine in this novel is not any of David’s paramours. A more loyal, loving mother figure than his nurse Clara Peggotty cannot be found; I certainly was grateful for her. But to my mind, his Aunt Betsey Trotwood rules! Although she rejects David at birth for not being born a girl, she proves to be his champion for the rest of his life. She recognizes Mr. Murdstone’s torment of David, and when she in a fiery discourse dismisses him from her cottage, I jumped up and cheered. Her subsequent actions and those of her simple-minded boarder, Mr. Dick, were for me the delights of this novel.

In David Copperfield, Dickens gives us flawed characters, most richly portrayed, and vivid, sensory descriptions. I could easily picture scenes. Humor comes in the forms of observational irony (Mr. Dick’s kite, Dora's dog), dialogue (Mr. Micawber’s blustery attempts at eloquence), descriptions (Thomas Traddles’ “hearth-broomy” hair), and quaint characterizations (Dora’s aunts Miss Clarissa and Miss Lavinia). David Copperfield contains many other humorous examples, some laugh-out-loud funny. Life’s tragedies and sadness are plentiful, too. I found the novel emotionally engaging and David’s journey from childhood to manhood admirable.