Books: A Long Way From Home By Peter Carey (2018)

"Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in southeastern Australia. Together they enter the 1954 Redex Trial, a weeks-long endurance contest of a car race that circles the entire continent. With them is their lanky, fair-haired navigator: deposed quiz show champion and failed schoolteacher Willie Bachhuber. If they win the Redex, the Bobs name alone will get them a dealership, and Willie will have recharged a life currently ground to a halt. But before any of that might happen, their official strip maps will lead them, without warning, out of the comfortable white Australia they know so well"

A Long Way From Home is often hilarious, heartbreaking and eyeopening, as it’s Peter Carey’s attempt to come to terms with the true history of Australia’s founding and confront, as he’s noted, that “You can’t be a white Australian writer and spend your whole life ignoring the greatest, most important aspect of our history, and that is that we – I – have been the beneficiaries of a genocide.”

The novel unfolds in alternating first-person narrative. We meet Irene Bobs, a spunky, petite you woman married to the equally diminutive Titch –who has an amiable personality and has dreams of running a local Ford dealership. Still, he lives in fear of his domineering father, “Dangerous” Dan. But being the father that Dan is, he makes a deal with General Motors Holden in their town of Bacchus Marsh. The other narrator is Willie Bachhuber, who is fair haired and son of a preacher and who seemly has fled to Bacchus Marsh due a faithless wife. Or so it seems. He also brings with him his books and maps of his beloved Germany. To help fund their dreams (and despite what his father is doing), Titch and Irene attempt to win the Redex Trial, a round-Australia rally. They enlist Willie as their navigator. And it’s here that Carey is able to give the readers a vivid portrait of Australia and its dark history of racism and destruction of the Aboriginals.

The book peters out long before the end, though. It’s not so much what the author is trying to say, the horrors of that white people did in taking possession of such a timeless culture (and much like Columbus, it seems Captain James Cook was much more a devil than a hero the history books paint him to be), but that beyond Irene and Willie, none of the other characters seem to have a life to them –they’re rather flat and two-dimensional. Titch is amusing at first, but become childish and stupid as the book continues and race becomes less important than Willie’s issue about who he is and where he comes from. And while knowing Willie’s past is important to the narrative structure of the novel, it eventually overwhelms everything else. I’m conflicted if this is good or bad due to what Carey was attempting to confront.

However, I did enjoy the book and Irene is such a great character –you can’t help but love her.

Books: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine By Gail Honeyman (2017)

"Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one." 

For the most part, Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is a dazzling debut novel, filled with darkness, humor, and out- right charm. Eleanor is not original in many senses –she’s like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, combined with Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet, if you please) from Keeping Up Appearances and a few other odd-ball traces we’ve seen on TV and movies over the decades- but she is clearly smart, enduring and very, very damaged.

Honeyman’s prose is addictive and there a number of passages that made me laugh out loud (the whole waxing scene was brilliant comedy gold) while equally there were many parts that were sad (her childhood is slowly revealed as the book goes on, and it is pretty horrible). It takes a good writer to balance the humor –which ping-ponged between broad jokes, observational humor, social cues, and outright snark.

While Eleanor’s back-story slowly comes life (as her present life begins to unravel), you can see where Honeymoon was subtlety dropping hints (and for fans of Jane Austen and Emily Bronte will see where this book was going), but I did guess early on about her relationship with her Mummy and their weekly conversations. I mean, at first it wasn’t obvious, but eventually you catch on here.

And while I did mention Sheldon form the popular TV series, it’s not meant to cast Eleanor as someone on the autism spectrum. I’ve read that some people believed this because she did not pick up social clues, had little or no knowledge of pop culture, but knew a great detail about a lot of odd things. You knew early on she was damaged in some way in her youth, so I felt connected to her because of this,  understood some of things she talked about (like being alone: “Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is there’s something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don’t need anyone, you can take care of yourself”). I can also see why she compartmentalized her life, as this is something I have done about my own childhood and now my adult life. Still, I can talk about it somewhat, but getting over it seems difficult. I’ve never been one to fully understand the part about maintaining a healthy relationship with friends and family. Committing to being fully present is difficult for me, as I’ve been flying on autopilot for the last four decades. It’s not perfect, but for Eleanor, like me it’s best I can do.

Red, White & Royal Blue By Casey McQuiston (2019)

"When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through?"

Surprisingly –at least for this bitter, rude, tired old curmudgeon who hates a lot of pop culture and other stuff- Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston is not a horrible gay romance novel. Yes it does feature a lot of typical clichés you find in these romance book: the roguish, handsome half-White, half-Mexican (some read Jay Bell’s Something Like Summer) son of the first female president (it’s more or less a parallel universe story where a women won the White House and not the Orange Cheeto. It also features a much different Royal Family as well). And there is a prince, of course, but unlike some of the YA titles that have come out over the last few years, this book has a bit more depth (and a lot more sex) than any I’ve read before. So this one is a bit more adult, a bit more polished.

McQuiston’s prose is strong and she really tries to give all her characters some three dimensional life. Alex is honorable, smart, handsome, and knows what he wants his life to be. Henry (the spare heir) is stuck like all Royals, where duty to others and the family legacy come first. But he knows what he is and (eventually) has the confidence to go with it. Still, at times he came off flat, but I’m unsure if that was the subtle intention of the writer (English reserve is also pretty cliché) or she just invested a lot more into Alex.

She also tried to take on a lot of issues –both political and familial - such as racism, equality, and imperialism (and something I found humorous because Henry goes seems to hate the British Royal Empire, yet doesn’t recognize he’s benefited from this monarchy in every way possible). She also adds complicated family relationships that are right out any TV drama, so yeah. I did struggle, rolled my eyes a many of times with the idea that the First Son and a British prince could go almost anywhere without anyone noticing them or taking pictures of them –especially since they would be surrounded by Secret Service Agents and black SUVs. The fact it took well over 300 hundred pages before the secret was out is just one the many rose-colored aspects the book has.

There is a few other things that bothered me, the deus ex machine ending and the unbelievable blackmail sub-plot featuring a Republican running to oust the president and a openly gay congressman who suddenly supports the him. So the book has a very predictable outcome. Still, McQuiston’s humor and some great dialogue salvage the book.

It’s not perfect, it’s (sadly) forgettable, but it’s also a great book to read at the beach, on a plane, or at lunch when at work.

Books: Groucho Marx, Private Detective By Ron Goulart (1999)

"Groucho and Frank aren't enjoying their latest costar, singing child prodigy Polly Pilgrim, a spoiled ingenue. When a prominent Beverly Hills plastic surgeon is found dead in his palatial home, and Polly's mother, the faded actress Frances London, is accused of his murder, Polly's request for Groucho and Frank to help prove her mother's innocence surprises them. She is convinced that Frances has been framed, and despite the mounting evidence against the washed-up performer, the pair takes on the case."

Part of the charm and conceit of this series is Ron Goulart’s ability to mimic Groucho Marx’s broad humor and his innate ability to turn any question or any statement into a string of non sequiturs. It’s that talent that makes this book fun and light read. Groucho Marx, Private Detective is the second book in the six Goulart wrote and is just as funny and odd –well odd, considering Groucho is playing armature detective in a fictional town called Bayside (which seems set somewhere between Malibu and Santa Monica and seems to share a lot of similarities to Veronica Mars' Neptune)- as the first one. It is set in 1937, some six months or so after Groucho Marx, Master Detective,  and has the comedian still working on radio show while awaiting production to begin on the brothers next film, Room Service.

As with Groucho Marx, Master Detective, Goulart shows Hollywood’s dark side and its legendary ability to make or break stars, and cover up the messes they get in, as well. The murder-mystery part is a bit weak, but Groucho's jokes, some fine period details (like learning about a southern portion of Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills that was once known as Little Santa Street –only a few years ago it was rechristened Burton Way) and guests appearances by everyone from Conrad Nagel to Nathanael West help make this a whole lot of fun.