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I was going to review HAMLET and A FINER BALANCE by the end of March, but the book that is due back first is CATCH-22. This is a required reading book for our school system, so I can only keep it a few days. It has been on my request list for some time, so when it became available I picked it up. This means Hamlet will have to remain consumed with grief  for a little bit longer and that the characters in A FINER BALANCE will continue to vex each other.

The Girl on the Train

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins, published by Riverside Books a division on Penguin Books in 2015. This is a psychological thriller set in London and surrounding areas. The book is broken down into three viewpoints, Rachel who is our alcoholic who has been divorced and takes the train past her house, that still belongs to her husband and his new wife and baby, on the way to London. But more importantly, the train stops at the house that is four doors down from her house, she has made a fantasy life for the couple she does not know and has even given them fake names. This commute happens every weekday, while she drinks and watches, catching a glimpse one day of Jess with another man. She is obssessed with her husband as well, calling all the time to speak to him.

Then we have the thoughts of Megan the woman that Rachel calls Jess, and her inability to commit. We learn she has had a troubled past but this is not revealed until close to the end. She unfortunately, disappears the day after Rachel sees her with another man.  But the thoughts we hear are those from earlier in time. Rachel's start Friday, July 5th, 2013 and Megan's start Wednesday, May 16, 2012.

Then late into the book we start getting the thoughts of Anna, the wife to Rachel's ex-husband Tom. She has a baby and is paranoid, especially when it comes to Rachel, who has repeatedly harrassed them when Rachel is drunk, which seems all the time. She would like it if Rachel would just disappear and she constantly asks her husband to take care of it,  She finally decides to let the police know, right after Megan disappears.

Rachel just happens to be in Whitney, near her old home when Megan disappears. She is knock down drunk and gets attacked but she is prone to black-outs so she cannot remember anything. All she remembers is a red haired man. She is interviewed by the police and makes up stories. Then they receive word about her drunkeness and decide to ignore her remarks. So she becomes the unreliable witness.

There are lots of twists and turns and though I am pretty good at solving mysteries, this one had me thinking until the end. I mentioned this before, do not read at bedtime. I kept trying to solve it in my sleep, which led to some pretty graphic dreams. Great book.

My next books

It is March and like all good March days it has decided to go from 65 degrees yesterday to only 45 degrees today. Seems like a good time to write and read. My next three books are:

1. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

I plan to have the first book finished by March 10, because that is when it is due back to the library, but I am pretty sure it will be finished today or Friday. I have to let myself read it during the day, at night before bed gave me nightmares.

Hamlet and A Fine Balance, I hope to have read by the end of March. I am reading Hamlet without notation, so I may have to reread  and get into the tempo of the story, A Fine Balance is 601 pages, so definitley going to take some time, unless of course it is a fast read. I have not found anything recently that has 600 pages to be a fast read. Here's hoping I am wrong.

Hopefully, some of my other must read 100 will be at the library soon, or I will just have to download them.  Happy March Windsday.

Native Son- review

NATIVE SON written by Richard Wright, published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics in 2005. Originally published by Harper & Brothers in 1940. The story is broken down into three sections: Fear, Flight, and Fate. Then there is an author section entitled "How 'Bigger' was Born" written originally for The Saturday Review of Literature, June 1, 1940. It was then added to Mr. Wrights books. I enjoyed reading the character development that Mr. Wright used for Bigger and his nod to the fact it doesn't matter what the skin tone there are always Biggers in the world. He also commented that he had written short stories and it made people weep and think that white people felt the need to crusade, that he wrote this story to combat that feeling. That he did not want people to cry for the characters. Well, I have to say that this book saddened me, maybe because it is 70 some years later, but the characters made me feel that it should have been different for African Americans. I cannot and will not use the words that Mr. Wright used for the blacks portrayed in the book.

So how do you right a synopsis on a book that is still relevant today, in terms of politics, minorities and depressed economies.  When Mr. Wright wrote this book, he could not come up with a beginning, wrote the whole book, except for the beginning and end, went back and edited and then came up with both, tying them together. Let me start with FEAR concept, this does not just show up in the first segment but is what guides Bigger throughout the whole book. His decisions are based solely on fear and anger. He is angry and fearful of his situation in life. He at the age of 20 has to be the sole bread winner for his Mom, sister Vera and his brother Buddy. He and his friends rob from other black people and are thinking of robbing from a white man. But he is afraid that if he does this he might get caught and his Mom and Vera are always nagging on him to go to the job that relief offered him. So to appear bigger to his friends and not caring, he proposes they pull this heist off before he goes for his job interview. He tries to make it seem like his friend Gus is the fearful one, so beats Gus up to get out of the heist and tells him your fear made you late, it is too late to do the job.

So is he afraid to succeed, afraid to fail, afraid to break out of this poverty or afraid what he would do to someone who made him feel bad about himself. It is a combination of these things that make up Bigger. He does go to his interview and comes to work for a man named Henry Dalton, who has a wild daughter, who hangs out with a communist named Jan. On his first night she puts him in several uncomfortable positions and he thinks she is doing it to make him feel that discomfort, but she really is trying to help but her naitvity works against her. The final problem comes when he finds himself alone with Mary Dalton, who is can't stand up drunk, and he is not sure how to get her in the house and to her room. She suggests he carries her and she passes out. Mom, who is blind, comes in the room and instead of explaining, because black men are not supposed to be in white a white woman's bedroom, he becomes fearful and sticks a pillow over her face and holds her down. She dies.

The rest of the story is him hiding the body, pretending that someone else was at fault, being found out, evading police, getting caught and being put on trial and being represented by a communist lawyer. All throughout these sequences Bigger acts on fear and anger, except in the end.

He lived in a one room apartment with his Mom, brother and sister. They lived in what is called Chicago's Black Belt. Though there were buildings just outside the Black Belt they could not live in them because they were for white folk and had been abandoned for the most part because they were to close to the Black Belt. This is a historical fact about the region. In addition, the black community was always the first rounded up when there was a crime, especially if it involved a white woman. It seems that the authorities always added rape to any crime committed, because it was a crime punishable by death. Not a time I would want to live in, but then have we remained the same in some instances do we still jump to conclusions, act irrationally depending on race. As Mr. Wright pointed out in his book, there are Bigger's who let fear and anger control them and they come in all races. But do we only hear about the African American races.

Many questions, many feelings were aroused by this book. Especially, reading why Mr. Wright, a communist, wrote the book.