I'm Sorry for My Loss by Rebecca Little and Colleen Long

I’m Sorry for My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America by Rebecca Little and Colleen Long is a multi-faceted portrait of pregnancy loss. The authors write, “It’s about the hope that no one else ends up almost dead from a miscarriage before medicine will intervene or feels lost and isolated in a confusing knot of grief, or knows nothing of pregnancy loss until it happens to them.” Little and Long are journalists who met in fourth grade. Rebecca Little is a freelance writer and former contributing editor for Chicago Magazine who has written for the Chicago Tribune and other publications. Colleen Long is an Associated Press White House reporter and a former New York City police reporter. 

In addition to their professional credentials, both women experienced pregnancy loss as they explain early in the book. “Rebecca has been pregnant six times. She is raising three boys and buried three others. She had a chemical pregnancy, a missed miscarriage at eight weeks, and following this a stillbirth experience in 2014. She would go on to have a medical termination at twenty-three weeks with identical twin boys who had a fatal heart condition in 2015. That delivery would go catastrophically wrong and end with a uterine rupture, a near-fatal hemorrhage, and an emergency hysterectomy.” Colleen, who was living in New York and was six months pregnant, went with her husband for a sonogram and “a doctor she didn’t know came in and told them the baby was dead and she should go see her own doctor. They were quickly shuttled into a taxi and up Manhattan’s West Side Highway, the goop still smeared on her abdomen.”  She was told she could wait to go into labor or because she was still within the legal limit in New York State, she could go to an abortion clinic. “They chose the clinic mainly because Colleen felt like if she had to deliver a dead baby, she’d never be able to handle being pregnant again. Colleen’s two subsequent, successful pregnancies “were defined by anxious months of sadness and dread.” 

“Different circumstances, different cities, and different women, but very similar emotional and traumatic side effects as we would soon discover.” Their research for the book began with text messages as they continually supported each other. The difference between these two women and other women dealing with such overwhelming loss was that these two were accomplished journalists who began using their skills to bring the sad state of pregnancy loss in America to light. Their research is impeccable, yet they write with humor that makes the book extraordinarily readable. They acknowledge this: “The Venn diagram of laughter, rage, and sorrow is our wheelhouse. We hope to meet you there.” At that, they are eminently successful. While their research, footnotes, stories of other women who experienced loss, and medical explanations fuel this book, it’s their accessibility and snarkiness that made the book most appealing to me. I felt like I was sitting in the room as my daughter and her friends, who had fertility issues, used gallows humor to survive despite their fears. While Little and Long offer their personal feelings, they also cite statistics, lots of statistics, that show why we need to learn about and address our unique problem. They note: “America is the only developed nation where maternal mortality rates are actually increasing. The U.S. has 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, the highest in the developed world. Maternal deaths across the U.S. more than doubled over the course of two decades.” And it’s getting worse. 

They also talk about the terms we use and how they influence us. “Nobody throws a fetus shower. Fetus is a medical word devoid of any emotion. But baby? Now that’s evocative. But what’s considered a baby? An infant that’s emerged from the womb? A fetus past twenty weeks gestation? Whatever’s brewing up when the stick turns pink? Or that embryo you are rooting to make it to day five blastocyst at the IVF lab?” Yes, the words we use matter, and Little and Long give us the medical and historical information we need to understand what's at stake in our failing maternal healthcare culture. 

Despite all their outstanding research and the numerous interviews they did with women, in the end, for me, it was their Appendix that broke my heart, made me chuckle, and helped me feel that there's hope. The Appendix has two sections of lists: One is titled “Did You Seriously Just Say That To Me?” The other is “Here’s What to Do and Say Instead.” This is where their humor makes us pay attention. One example is their advice on responding to someone saying, “You can always try again/have another baby. You don't know that's true. And whether it is or not is none of your business. Also, babies aren't mufflers; you don't swap one out for another.” I loved this book.

Summing it Up: Read I’m Sorry for My Loss for an intimate, yet fact-based exploration of the deteriorating state of reproductive care in America. Savor it for the way Colleen Long and Rebecca Little make you feel like they're bringing you into their real, wry, irreverent, and heartfelt conversations. This book is important and everyone should read it. Luckily, these women are outstanding writers so their words will capture your attention. You won’t be able to put it down. Select it for your book club and you'll talk for hours.

Additional Information: Rebecca Little and Colleen Long grew up just a few miles from me. Rebecca’s mother-in-law is my friend and Colleen’s mother owns Dunning’s Market, everyone’s favorite deli and catering restaurant, where I buy my chicken salad (which was my husband’s favorite) and my beloved Prairie Breeze cheese. 

On October 12, there will be two opportunities to meet the authors, ask them questions, purchase the book, and have them sign it. 

The Rock Shop, 18109 Dixie Highway, Homewood, IL, Talk and Signing, Saturday, October 12 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Books available for sale. Tickets are free but limited. For information, call 708-960-4053. 

Dunning’s Market, 1050 Sterling, Flossmoor, IL, Open House and Signing, Saturday, October 12 from 2 to 5 p.m. Books available for purchase. Light refreshments served. Come anytime during the open house.

Rating: 5 Stars

Publication Date: September 24, 2024

Category: Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Nonfiction, Super Nutrition, Sushi with Green Tea Sorbet, Book Club

Author Website: https://www.alittlelong.com/

Interview: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2024/09/23/im-sorry-for-my-loss/ 

What Others are Saying: 

National Public Radio (WBEZ): https://www.wbez.org/books/2024/09/26/pregnancy-loss-stillbirth-book-rebecca-little-colleen-long 

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/rebecca-little/im-sorry-for-my-loss/ 

“Sobering and well researched, this book lays bare major fault lines in a maternal reproductive care system in dire need of radical transformation.... Necessary, thoughtful, and heartfelt." — Kirkus Reviews

California Bear by Duane Swierczynski

California Bear by twice Edgar-nominated Duane Swierczynski is my first of Swierczynski’s books, but it won't be my last. I can't wait to read everything he’s written. The mystery begins when Jack Queen, who’s served ten years in prison for a supposed revenge killing of running over a man implicated in Queen’s wife's death, is released from prison. Cato Hightower, a wild ex-cop, spearheaded the effort to overturn Jack’s conviction and Hightower expects Queen to reward him by helping him blackmail the infamous “California Bear.”

The book begins with the Bear himself ruminating: 

“The California Bear, a serial torturer-murderer who had eluded justice for close to four decades, wanted a cookie.

He really shouldn't. Not with the diabetes and all. And he knew his wife would kill him if she found out he had raided her secret stash. But what was life without the little indulgences?

The man was seventy-two years old. Back when he was the Bear, he liked to bind his victims with ligatures he found around their homes (extension cords, shoe laces, medical tubing) and beat them senseless with his meaty fists. But right now, all this man cared about was pushing aside the rows of grease-flecked cookbooks on the top shelf over the fridge to gain access to the motherlode: a family-size package of Nutter Butters—his wife’s favorite.”

Jack Queen’s only desire is to see his fourteen-year-old daughter Matilda who’s in the hospital after recently being diagnosed with leukemia. Matilda, a genius who refers to herself as “The Girl Detective,” doesn't know if her dad is a killer:

“And when the Girl Detective looked him in the eyes in a couple of days, she would ask him the question she’d been too young (and too frightened) to ask at the time of his trial:

Did you do it?

To truly believe him, however, and repair their fractured relationship, the Girl Detective would have to discover the truth for herself.”

Queen and Hightower are inept blackmailers and the California Bear seems likely to escape their “gang that can't shoot straight” attempts to get the money Hightower thinks the Bear possesses until a twist that only someone with Swierczynski’s talent and creativity could imagine takes place. 

Summing it Up:

Each character in this tour de force is unique, entertaining, and like no other you've encountered. This phenomenal, intelligent mystery has enough plot twists, engaging characters, and “aha” moments filled with both compassion and desert-dry humor to please even the most discerning reader. And that ending: it's clever, kind, and exceptional. I’m begging Mr. Swierczynski for a sequel with Matilda in the starring role. 

Rating: 5 Stars 

Publication Date: January 9, 2024

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Mysteries and Thrillers, Sushi with Green Tea Sorbet, Book Club

Author Blog: http://secretdead.blogspot.com/

What Others are Saying:

Library Journal: https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/california-bear-1802499 

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780316382977

“This book was written straight from the heart and I won't ever forget it.” Eli Cranor, author of Don’t Know Tough and Ozark Dogs 

Tandem by Andy Mozina

In the opening pages of Andy Mozina’s Tandem, the satirical, darkly comedic glimpse at ethics and redemption, Mike Kovacs, a recently divorced economics professor, kills two bicyclists while driving drunk and then removes the broken pieces of his car lying near the crashed tandem bike, applies windshield wiper fluid from his trunk to eliminate the paint marks on the bike, and drives off into the night toward the safety of his home in Kalamazoo, Michigan. You want to hate him, but Mozina presents him as a complicated human being you need to understand. It’s rare that a novel makes you want to know more about someone otherwise portrayed as a villain.

Reading Mike’s inner thoughts feels slightly voyeuristic, yet the narrative compels you to learn if Mike will decide to turn himself in and his self-absorbed justifications, while abhorrent, demand your attention. “Nothing could be done. They were completely and irrevocably dead.” “He dimly grasped that his instinct for self-excuse was limitless. He gave himself a sort of credit for this dim grasping. As Dave [his friend] had explained the distinction years ago, psychopaths were not self-aware; he was, at worst, a sociopath. The only thing he knew for sure was that he didn’t want to go to prison and lose all his money.” 

Mike soon learns that the girl he killed is the daughter of neighbors, people he knows, and he’s drawn to the victim’s mother Claire. “If she were not married and if he had not killed her daughter, yes, he would be perfectly happy to ask her out. But she was married and he had killed her daughter. And yet . . .”

And yet, they do connect as Claire’s marriage suffers under the weight of the tragedy and Mike seems to be the only person who understands how Claire is suffering. Their magnetic attraction seems inevitable, while also being absolutely impossible and ridiculous. Only Mozina’s skill at enveloping the reader in this original dark comedy could make such a plot device work. But, work it does, pulling the reader in and refusing to let go. 

As Mike wrestles with his conscience, he visits a Catholic Church, confesses his crime, and seeks advice. In Mozina’s pitch-perfect, wry rendering, the priest tells him he isn’t a therapist and angers Mike by stating: “You want absolution, but you don’t want to be a member of the church.” Mike leaves the confessional enraged that the priest won’t advise him. He considers going to priests in different parishes, something of “A Pilgrimage for Penance.” “Maybe he would only visit churches named after Mary, where the outlook might be more merciful.” 

In this Edgar Allan Poe meets John Irving novel of just over 200 pages, Kalamazoo College literature and creative writing Professor Andy Mozina deftly exercises a form of Poe’s use of unreliable narrators via both Mike and Claire and thus closes the distance between their faults and the reader’s ability to connect with them. He also reminds this reader of John Irving in his demonstration of ironic situations that disrupt and ruin lives. 

Summing It Up: Read this short, sharp novel to find yourself unexpectedly empathizing with a drunk driver who kills a young couple and rationalizes his need to escape prosecution because it’s unlike anything else you’ll encounter.  Follow Mike Kovac’s thoughts as he attempts to determine how to make amends and lead a better life. Observe the effects of the accident on the families of the victims. Fall under the spell of the dark comedy that thoroughly captures you despite your misgivings. A must for book clubs!

Rating: 5 Stars 

Publication Date: October 24, 2023

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Sushi with Green Tea Sorbet, Book Club

Author Website: https://andymozina.com/

Author Events and Readings: https://andymozina.com/events-and-readings/ 

What Others are Saying:

"[A] delicate web of intrigue. Fans of Kimberly Belle, Alex Kiester, and Greg Olear will appreciate Mozina's ability to blend the drama of a domestic thriller with the heartbreak of loss in many forms: death, divorce, and distance."—Booklist

“Reading Tandem is an education in crime, punishment, and the dark side of human compassion —and somehow it also manages to be hilarious. Mozina’s signature hapless characters, through no fault of their own foolish decisions, can only manage to make difficult circumstances worse as they move from guilt to absurdity.  A psychological tour de force!” Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River and The Waters and a finalist for The National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

“Tandem is gripping, propulsive literary fiction at its finest. When economics professor Mike Kovacs causes a deadly accident, leading to an unconscionable crime, we’re ushered into a morality tale of the highest order. Mozina shows expert control over a shocking range of moods and motivations. By turns sad, frightening, disturbing, haunting, and and—most surprisingly —funny, this novel wrecked me in all the best ways. Tandem is at times difficult to read, yet even more difficult to stop reading.”   —Darrin Doyle, author of The Bear in Aisle 34

“A glimmering masterpiece about the slippery nature of truth and redemption,  Tandem is at once riveting and contemplative, moving and hilarious, devastating and tender. It does what the best novels do: forever change how we see the world. —Erica Ferencik, bestselling author of Girl in Ice, and Into the Jungle The River at Night

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Lessons in Chemistry is the book I’ve been dreaming of since I finished Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser last year. It’s just the quirky, wry, sharp, complex story we all need when the world seems both chaotic and frightening. When I was reading Lessons in Chemistry, I laughed out loud, I cheered on the protagonist, and as the book ended, I sighed over how little progress women have made since the 1960s.

The novel takes place primarily in the 1960s when Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist blacklisted from getting a Ph.D. after being sexually assaulted, takes a job at Hastings, a private lab, and meets Calvin Evans, the lab’s most prominent chemist. They fall deeply in love and she moves into Calvin’s home. They’re ecstatically happy together when Calvin dies in a freak accident. Elizabeth soon learns that she’s pregnant and the lab’s director fires her. Desperate for money to support herself and her baby, Elizabeth takes a job hosting Supper at Six, a TV cooking show. She isn’t happy, but the ratings are good so she makes more money than she did as a chemist. She closes each show with “Children, set the table, your mother needs a moment to herself.”

She had wanted to continue her research in abiogenesis, but Donatti, the director of Chemistry at Hastings, hated her and despite funding for her passion, he didn’t want her around. Garmus’s treatment of characters like Donatti showcases both the novel’s comedic sense and the depiction of the times: 

“Elizabeth Zott. He didn’t like Zott. She was pushy, smart, opinionated. Worse, she had terrible taste in men. Unlike so many others, though, he did not find Zott attractive. He glanced down at a silver-framed photograph of his family: three big-eared boys bracketed by the sharp-beaked Edith and himself. He and Edith were a team the way couples were meant to be a team—not by sharing hobbies like rowing for fuck’s sake—but in the way their sexes deemed socially and physically appropriate. He brought home the bacon; she pumped out the babies. It was a normal, productive, God-approved marriage. Did he sleep with other women? What a question. Didn’t everyone?”

Bonnie Garmus makes Elizabeth Zott, her daughter, her dog, her neighbor, and every single character in this novel come alive. The novel celebrates smart women and girls with humor while showing how good men also make a difference. Calvin’s childhood secrets and the mysterious foundation funding Hastings offer subplots that keep the action moving in this propulsive page-turner. Everything in the universe seems to be conspiring against Elizabeth, yet she triumphs and that my friends is exactly what we need to see and salute in this strange world that seems to be working to reduce women’s rights. 

Summing it Up: Read Lessons in Chemistry for a fast-paced, character-driven tale that’s long on humor and filled with wisdom and nuance. Chuckle as the gifted Elizabeth refuses to act dumb to get ahead and cheer as the bad guys get their comeuppance. Smile at Elizabeth’s brilliant, protective dog and celebrate authors like Bonnie Garmus.

Rating: 5 Stars

Publication Date: April 5, 2022

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Dessert, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Pigeon Pie, Sushi, Book Club

Author Website: https://www.bonniegarmus.com/

Read an Excerpt: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/677234/lessons-in-chemistry-by-bonnie-garmus/

What Others Are Saying: 

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/bonnie-garmus/lessons-chemistry/

New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/books/lessons-in-chemistry-bonnie-garmus.html

Publishers Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780385547345

A book that sparks joy with every page. . . It had me laughing one minute and air-punching the next. Elizabeth Day, author of “How to Fail”

“Elizabeth and Calvin’s prickly, funny and odd love story leaps off the page. The two are truly soul mates, and their happiness should be ordained, but life and this novel are far more complicated than that ... becomes a witty and sharp dramedy about resilience and found families ... The scope of what this iconoclastic woman goes through is breathtaking ... Not one moment of Elizabeth’s story rings false; every detail is a well-documented component of the time period yet specific to her experience. Readers won’t be able to get enough of Elizabeth and her makeshift family. Lessons in Chemistry is a story to return to again and again.” —Bookpage

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper

 

Many of you are delving into cozy mysteries because they offer ingenious twists without gratuitous gore. Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper is just what you need to escape the third-winter-of-the-pandemic doldrums. It’s a clever treat hidden in a survival guide replete with instructions and Edmund Gorey-like illustrations. Maureen Johnson is the best-selling author of numerous young adult novels. Illustrator Jay Cooper is best known as an illustrator of children’s books and his dive into the world of unsettling, edgy, darkly Victorian drawings is a delicious diversion from real life. That both have collaborated on this departure from the world of young adult and children’s books is such a gift for bored adults. 

Your Guide… offers a brief interlude for dreary days with its wry humor that’s guaranteed to make jaded readers smile. It’s quite short and you’ll finish it quickly, but blimey, it’s brilliant.

Summing it Up: Beware of the Vicar! 

Rating: 4 Stars

Categories: Dessert, Sushi, Tapas

Author Website: https://www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/

Author/Illustrator Website: https://www.jaycooperbooks.com/

Fight Night by Miriam Toews

Fight Night, a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, is extraordinarily funny and is poignant and pensive as well. It’s a novel centered around suicide, a subject Toews addressed remarkably well in her magnificent All My Puny Sorrows that borrowed from her own experience with her sister’s suicide. It may be difficult to envision that a book with suicide as a prominent theme could also be whimsical and humorous, but Fight Night is just that. 

Three generations of women: nine-year-old Swiv, her pregnant mother, and the novel’s star her 86-year-old grandmother Elvira have lost close family members to suicide and Swiv’s mother fears a genetic tendency will be their undoing. With precocious Swiv narrating the book as a letter to her absent father, Toews captures the unpredictable thoughts of a child regarding what could otherwise be a depressing subject. 

Swiv has recently been suspended from school for fighting—something Elvira admires in Swiv. “You're a small thing,” Grandma writes, “and you must learn to fight.”  Swiv is supposedly under her grandmother’s care, yet it’s Swiv who administers the nitroglycerin spray when her grandmother needs it and Swiv who goes to the pharmacy to refill prescriptions. Her grandmother is “teaching” her with one math lesson centering on the death of a man in their former church who abused his wife. Grandma poses the problem:

“If it takes five years to kill a guy with prayer, and it takes six people a day to pray, then how many prayers of pissed off women praying every day for five years does it take to pray a guy to death?” 

The family, like Toews herself, and the women in her last novel Women Talking have been damaged by the misogyny of their Mennonite sect and the powerful man controlling it. Toews never tells the reader that Willit Braun is evil, instead, she reveals his deeds through Swiv’s observations and Elvira’s satirical comments about them. 

It takes a while to acclimate yourself to Fight Night’s style, but once you fall into the rhythm of Swiv and her grandmother’s conversations and antics, the novel won’t let you go. When the book ends, you’ll feel a part of the family. 

The Los Angeles Times calls Fight Night “the Ted Lasso of novels” and it is in that it’s packed with one-liners and is as the Times notes a reminder “of what’s worth fighting for.” It’s also similar because the comedy sits atop grief and trauma. 

Summing it Up: Read Fight Night for a rollicking, imaginative tale with two impossible-to-forget characters whose wry dialogue belies the difficulties they face. Read it and every novel by Miriam Toews for a master class in subtle plotting, underlying themes that beg for discussion, and always, always a great story. 

I just listened to an excerpt of the audio book and the narrator reads in a clear, no-nonsense voice. I feared they might make her sound cute. This would be a fabulous audio book.

Rating: 5 Stars

Categories: Fiction, Five Stars, Road Food, Sushi, Book Club

Publication Date: October 5, 2021

Watch an Interview with the Author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QXquHw2XrY 

What Others are Saying:

Globe and Mail: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-miriam-toews-new-novel-fight-night-pays-tribute-to-her-mother/ 

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/miriam-toews/fight-night/ 

Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-10-06/review-miriam-toews-fight-night-is-the-ted-lasso-of-novels-for-better-and-worse 

New York Times:https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/books/review/miriam-toews-fight-night.html  

Publishers Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-63557-817-1

USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2021/10/03/fight-night-miriam-toews-wise-wonderful-book-celebrates-women/5823997001/