The post publication controversy surrounding this novel seems to stem from the question of who has the right to tell migrant stories, and how to depict the countries they are leaving. The author Jeanine Cummins is neither Mexican nor a migrant. Cummins acknowledges this in the author’s notes at the back of the novel, “I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it.” But the advice she gets from a colleague is, I think, sound “We need as many voices as we can get, telling this story.”

The book has also been criticised for reinforcing cliches of Mexico as a lawless, corrupt place made dangerous by drug cartels. But again, this is unfair; Lydia frequently reflects on how beautiful a place her home town, Aculpulco, was before the violence started; she had not contemplated leaving until her family was targeted and she had few other options for survival. The journey she undertakes with her son is harrowing; they witness brutality, corruption, murder and sexual violence but also acts of extroadinary kindness by ordinary Mexican people. It would be interesting to hear whether or not their journey feels authentic to someone who has survived it; for the rest of us, who haven’t, it’s a compellingly story and an important reminder to remain compassionate.

Of course I have a few minor quibbles. The child character of Beto seems a little too well adjusted to be true. And Cummins states in her author’s notes that her husband was for many years an undocumented migrant; she fails to mention he is from Ireland. My assumption that he was from Latin America perhaps reflects my own cliqued notions of undocumented migrants in the USA. Is she a bit remiss here, or am I? And isn’t it good to ask these questions, to examine ourselves? Isn’t that exactly what a good book should make us do? Ignore the controversy; read it and reflect. 4 stars.

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I get it, I do; their longing is not actually about the house. It’s a longing for their absent mother and a longing for tenderness from their late father and a longing for the lives they should have been living, all together in the Dutch House. But still, you do want to shake them sometimes when they are going on about the portraits in the lounge room and suggest they get over it. It’s difficult to feel sorry for these people when they don’t seem to have enough self knowledge to realise what they actually missed out on was adequate parenting. And inadequate parenting would most likely have happened with or without the Dutch House. Their mother was frequently absent; mental health problems are hinted at but it seems clear she was always more comfortable taking care of strangers than her own children. Of course it is unfair that women are judged more harshly for leaving their children than men, but it does seem particularly cruel that she later lived near her children for many years without trying to contact them, even after she was aware their father had died. Their father was uncommunicative and awkward throughout Danny and Maeve’s  childhoods; uncomfortable in his role as a parent and dismissive of his daughter. Still, Danny and Maeve were genuinely loved and cared for by the women who worked in the house and forged lifelong connections with them. They had a very strong bond with one another. Did they really believe they needed a house with a ballroom on the third floor?

And Danny is downright chilling when listing the reasons why he finally decided to marry his former girlfriend, Celeste; “I came to see her willingness to not be a distraction as something that took effort. I didn’t even know to be grateful for it until I was with other women who wanted to read me articles from the paper in the morning while I was studying or read me their horoscope, or explain their feelings to me while crying over the fact that I had never explained my feelings to them…[Celeste] would peel a peach and cut it up in a dish, or make me a sandwich and leave it on the table without comment the way Sandy and Jocelyn used to do.”

Sandy and Jocelyn, by the way, were the cook and the housekeeper at the Dutch House. You’ll note Danny’s list of his future wife’s attributes does not include reference to her character or intelligence, to who she is or what she wants; she is only defined in relationship to her usefulness to him. Celeste never troubled him with trying to share her thoughts or her feelings; he might well have been choosing a new and compliant housekeeper instead of a wife.

I started finding this book quite tedious about halfway through. Getting the Dutch House back into the possession of Danny’s family should feel like a triumphant finale but instead it’s just a relief that the book has ended. And feeling relief that a book has ended is never a great recommendation.

Patchett has produced so many finer novels; do read Commonwealth or Bel Canto instead.

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There are echoes here of every kind of misogyny, cruelty, religious and social oppression and general fucked-up-edness humankind has engaged in towards other humans, and continues to engage in. As noted in the beginnning, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”  Or as Aunt Lydia notes about concentration-like camps in the early days of Gilead; “the same wailings from the new arrivals, the same barking and shouts from the guards. How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment. It’s always the same plot.”

I for one will be forever grateful to the wily and wise Margaret Atwood for granting us a SPOILER ALERT happy ending. God knows we need one.

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”While you’re down there…..”

The first comment was made to me by my boss, the owner of a trucking business, in 1994, when I was 22 years old and supplemented my income as a pizza chef by cleaning trucks.

The second comment was made to me by a Senior Counsel when I bent over to collect some legal documents from the floor of a courtroom. It was 2003. I was 31 years old and a solicitor.

When the first comment was made I told my boss you can’t say that to me! And he said “OK. Sorry.”

When the second comment was made I was so shocked I didn’t say anything. In case you’re unaware, a man saying while you’re down there to a woman whose head is below his waist level means while you’re down there, give me a blow job.

I had heard of it because the female solicitors in my office joked about how it was the sort of appalling thing the less evolved men in our office might say. But the men in our office had never said that to me, nor to anyone else, to my knowledge. A visiting Senior Counsel had. In court. In front of me and a junior barrister.

Later the same day the junior barrister came to me and quietly apologised on behalf of the Senior Counsel. He said, “That was way out of line. He (the Senior Counsel) should know that I’m the one who makes sleazy jokes around here, not him.”

Reading Whisper Network inevitably makes you reflect on your own experiences of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace. I was not shocked when the first comment was made to me; I was a woman in a male dominated workplace and the men I worked amongst were not politically correct. I accepted my boss’ apology as genuine and he never made a sleazy comment in front of me again.

The second comment, coming from a Senior Counsel, shocked me to the core. The Senior Counsel was an educated man and surely aware of the concept of sexual harassment in the workforce. In addition, the ethics of working as a senior barrister surely obliged him to behave in a professional manner. I expected better of him and I got worse.

I wish I’d said something in response. As women, we always wish we’d said something in response. The regret stays with us; we dwell on it. We feel as if we’ve somehow failed ourselves and other women by not speaking up. As if it is us who should be ashamed.

In Whisper Network, women working in a legal company in Dallas compile a list of BAD (Beware of Asshole Dallas) Men and email it to other women in the office, particularly junior employees. A man’s name can be added to the list anonymously, with a brief description of his inappropriate sexual behaviour. Turns out the personal trainers in the office gym have a similar list, with the names of male clients highlighted in red if they aren’t to be trusted with female personal trainers.

One such man whose name is highlighted in red is Ames. Ames is touted as the company’s next CEO. His name is also on the BAD Men’s list, courtesy of one of the novel’s protagonists, Sloane. After witnessing Ames’ suspect behaviour towards a new female employee, Sloane and her two friends and co-workers, Ardie and Grace, file a civil suit against Ames for sexual harrasssment, and against the company they are employed by, for providing an unsafe work environment.

When Ames dies shortly afterwards in an apparent suicide, Sloane, Ardie and Grace are counter-sued for Ames’s wrongful death. Things look bleak, especially when Katherine, the co-worker whom they sought to protect from Ames, comes out swinging for the opposite side. The three women stand to lose the lawsuit, a great deal of money and their jobs, plus being publicly condemned as a coven of malicious bitches who drove an innocent man to suicide.

I won’t spoil the ending, except to say there’s many reasons why the perspective of Rosalita, one of the office cleaners, is included. One is to remind us of the inherent privilege of these three women. They are educated and wealthy; if they’re fired they can undoubtedly get another well renumerated job. Two of them have supportive husbands;  all of them have lovely homes and each other. They have choices Rosalita never had. The second reason Rosalita’s perspective is included is far more integral to the plot.

Chandler Baker nails it fairly often in this book. Ames’ attitude to women is neatly captured in one phrase; “He hated having to listen to someone he didn’t enjoy looking at.” She also nails the double standards applied to parents in the workplace; “A man could say he was taking the day off to go fishing with his son, while a mother was usually better off hiding the fact that she took a long lunch to run her child to the doctor’s office. Children turned men into heroes and mothers into lesser employees.”

And this, on recognising the moment when the line is crossed; “How did we know when behaviour was inappropriate? We just did. Any woman over the age of fourteen probably did. Believe it or not, we didn’t want to be offended. We weren’t sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for someone to show up and offend us so that we would have something to do that day. In fact, we made dozens of excuses not to be. We gave the benefit of the doubt….But trust that by the time we were working, our meters had been tested dozens of times over. We were experts in our field.”

In the end what happened to Ames is less interesting than the truths of womens’ experience laid bare along the way. Give Whisper Network to a female friend and it’s like giving a bunch of flowers with a bomb inside. You cannot turn away. You cannot help but stop and reflect on your own experiences and on those of others.

And I know this is probably not the lesson intended to be learned from the novel and it’s a form of vigilante justice and could be used to slander good men without granting them a right of reply etc etc etc, but apart from that – isn’t having a BAD Men’s list, relevant to wherever your workplace is, kind of a good idea? I certainly would have added the Senior Counsel’s name to that list if such a list had been circulating in 2003.

Anyway, do read Whisper Network. Pass it on to your female friends. Get the males in your life to read it. Start the conversation, and keep it going. As Madeleine Albright once said (and this is quoted in the novel), “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

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I have tried to read Gilbert’s famous Eat Pray Love several times but tossed it away each time: it strikes me as the most reprehensible kind of chick lit. The Signature of All Things was such an entirely different and intelligent read, it’s hard to believe they were by the same author. And City of Girls is again an entirely different creature although it does have the same strong sense of character: a female protagonist who does her own thing regardless of the times she lives in. Who can resist a book that begins: “In the summer of 1940, when I was nineteen years old and an idiot….”

Don’t resist it, is my advice. It’s quite delicious. Read it with relish. Just try not to finish it in a public place.

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Like The Great Gatsby/

But with explicit sex scenes/

Unforgettable.

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Binding is a process whereby a person’s distressing memories are removed from their mind by a binder and transformed into book form. The person who has been bound retains none of distressing memory. The binder is supposed to keep the book safe – guarded and unread- but unethical binders have been known to sell them for entertainment. As such – and because of their otherworldly powers- binders are regarded with suspicion and hostility.

Young Emmett, a farm boy, has been through a binding himself and it seems his experience marks him out as suitable to become a binder. He is taken as an apprentice into the household of an old lady binder who seems remarkably reluctant to teach him anything useful about his trade. And then she dies, and the real trouble begins.

This book is essentially a love story, but a very long drawn out one involving an uneccesary amount of swooning, confusion, shirt tearing and staggering about. It’s beautiful to look at and to touch and deeply original, but really, what’s it all for? Fans of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpeant will probably appreciate it, but the Brontes remain my top girls as far as Gothic fiction goes.

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This is such a readable and intelligent book; a long lament against conservatism and hypocrisy with a compelling plot. One minor quibble is there are too many characters outside the family to keep track of: people aligned with the production of the show who aren’t intrinsic to the story, but other than that it’s quite a beautiful read. Go Essie.

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Sophie McCarthy, an obsessive high achiever, now lives in constant pain following a car accident caused by the negligence of Aidan Ryan. While Sophie was in hospital recovering from the accident, she and Aidan acted on their unexpected attraction to one another, and now they live together. Which is a bit controversial because Aidan was married when they met and has a young child, Jasmin. And Jasmin is going through some difficulties at home. And Sophie secretly loathes children in general and resents Jasmin in particular. And Sophie’s father is incandescent with rage towards Aidan because of the injuries he inflicted on Sophie, and he has a burning desire to see Aidan pay. And and and… underlying it is all is the fact that the human heart and mind are complicated places, and sometimes lives intertwine in ways that become toxic.

The central question is this; is Sophie McCarthy missing some pieces as a result of the accident, or was she missing some essential pieces of what it means to be a decent human being well before then? An incident from Sophie’s past can perhaps supply an answer….

I love that no one in this book is a complete villain (though Sophie arguably comes close); it’s just a collection of human beings dealing with life and one another. And it’s very, very good.

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