Hi everyone, The next SSCL Adult Book Club will be held, via Zoom, on Friday, July 10 at 2:00 p.m.
Our July read is Where The Crawdad’s Sing by Delia Owens
If you’ve registered for previous Adult Book Club gatherings, you’ll receive an email with the Zoom link for July.
If you’re new to the SSCL Adult Book Club, welcome! You can sign up for the July Book Club by going to the calendar page on the library’s website, found via the following link:
Online! Adult Book Club: “Where The Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens
And on to the May Adult Book Club Notes!
May Selection: We Live in Water: Stories by Jess Walter: There are twelve short stories in this collection, plus a bonus story titled Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, which features the author ruminating on what the stats say about his hometown of Spokane, Washington. The short stories all focus on challenged male characters, most of whom have made monumentally bad choices in their lives; and who come to realize that no matter what they do that cannot completely overcome those choices. The stories are a bit stark, but feature well written characters, and offer a glimpse at how some of the poorer members of our society live.
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Anything Helps: A story about Bit, a homeless man who has been kicked out of a shelter because he didn’t adhere to the rules. Bit is an experienced panhandler whose sign says, “Anything Helps.” Bit uses the money he has obtained by working at the homeless shelter and panhandling, to buy a book for his son who is in foster care. Bit wants to give his son the book, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, as a belated birthday gift. When Bit takes the book to the boy’s foster home and asks to see his son, his son’s foster parents tell him that if he comes to their house again, they will call the police. And as Bit is walking away from the house, his son rides up on a bike and they talk. The boy has already read the book during summer camp the previous year, and is obviously doing very well living with his foster parents. In the aftermath of the meeting, Bit realizes he can’t really make up for not being there for his son and that the boy is better of with his foster parents – which is a bitter pill to swallow.
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We Live in Water: The title story relates the tale of a father and son in two time period. Opening in 1958, a small-town crook and philanderer name Oren Dessen is driving a car with his young son Michael sitting the backseat. Oren gained custody of his son so he could save on making alimony payments to his ex-wife. And it turns out that Oren is in trouble! Oren has both stolen money from a prominent local crook named Bannen, and had an affair with Banne’s wife. Oren misreads the situation and believes he can go see Bannen and smooth everything over. So, he arranges to meet with Bannen at a roadhouse, and leaves Michael in the car when he goes in to talk to Bannen. Things go south very quickly, Oren is beaten and his belief in his own ability to talk his way out of the situation is shattered. Oren realizes if he doesn’t escape from the roadhouse, he is a dead man. So, he manages to break out of the bar and as he is running, he realizes
A. His son Michael is still in his car in the roadhouse parking lot
B. That he loves his son and
C. That if he doesn’t go back to the roadhouse, Bannen may harm or kill Michael in retaliation for Oren’s actions
So, Oren goes back and gives himself up to Bannen and his men, saving his son but losing his life.
Years later a grown Michael, also a philanderer with a failed marriage, returns to that same town looking for his father and, although he doesn’t find his father, he does realize just how much his behavior, running around with other women and losing his family, is due to both to his past and his self-centered behavior as an adult.
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Thief: Thief relays the story of Wayne, a working-class guy, who lives with his wife and three kids in a middle-class neighborhood, in the nineteen seventies. Wayne’s family keeps a large aquarium sized change jar, where he puts his spare change at the end of each day so the saved money can be used for a family vacation every other year or so. And Wayne has discovered, one of his three kids has started to regularly take a few coins out of the family’s vacation jar.
Wayne obsesses over the theft of the coins, wanting to know which of his kids is swiping the money, and fuming over the question of how one of his kids is capable of stealing from their family.
So, to discover who the thief is, Wayne hides in his house, when his kids think he is at work, and waits to see if he can catch the thief. While he is hiding alone in his darkened bedroom, waiting for the thief to make an appearance, he recalls when he was a kid and stole twenty cents from his family’s vacation fund jar; for they saved money for vacations in the same manner the adult Wayne’s family does. And when Wayne’s parents took their family on a vacation the summer after he stole the twenty cents from his childhood vacation jar, he was frightened during the entire trip, desperately concerned that his family would run out of money before they returned home. Thus, Wayne determined never to steal anything again. And all these years later, Wayne is sitting in his bedroom with the lights off, remembering that childhood incident, how scared he was about the theft of two dimes, and, pondering why that old fear has made him so determined to catch one of his children in the act of taking a couple of coins for a jar. In the end, Wayne hears the door to his room open and someone taking coins from the vacation jar, but does not look to see which of his children is the pocket-change thief.
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Can a Corn: Can a Corn is the story of step-son Tommy trying to take his step-father Ken from the Pine Lodge Correctional Facility, with the intent to drop him off for dialysis and then later pick him up and return him to the Pine Lodge Correctional Facility.
Tommy picks Ken up and as they are riding in the car, Ken says he doesn’t want to go for dialysis, instead, he wants to go fishing. Tommy says no to that request, but as Tommy stops the car for a red light, Ken grabs a fishing pole from the back seat, gets out of the car and walks toward the Spokane River looking for a good spot to fish. Tommy drives his truck down the road, driving beside Kevin, and tells him to get back in the truck so he can take him to his dialysis appointment. Ken wants no part of the appointment, he insists he wants to fish. An exasperated Tommy drives away, leaving Ken on his own, and goes back to his auto repair shop. Once back at work, Tommy decides that if Ken really wants to fish at this late stage of his life, he should fish. So, Tommy drives backs toward the river, gets out of his truck and walks with his tackle box looking for Ken. He finds Ken fishing under a bridge. Tommy properly sets up the pole for Ken and they hang out while fishing until it is time for Ken to go back to the Pine Lodge Correctional Facility.
The final gist of the story being that Ken is a dying old man, and Tommy decided if he wanted to fish, while he still had the strength to do so, that should be his call even though Ken wasn’t a top-notch step-father.
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Virgo: Virgo tells a sad story of mental illness. The story focuses on Trent, who came from a challenged background and who recently was kicked out of his apartment by his girlfriend Tanya. Shortly after Trent moved out of Tanya’s apartment, he becomes obsessed with her and her new boyfriend Mark, who was also Tanya’s old boyfriend. Trent sits outside her apartment building and watches Tanya and Mark, only to be issued a restraining order. He obsesses over the fact that Tanya doesn’t want him and prefers Mark; then he retaliates by publishing sinister horoscopes for the paper where he works as an editor, because he knows Tanya reads her newspaper horoscope every day. And when Trent finds out Tanya is going to marry Mark, he goes to her apartment building, sits in his car where he can see the entrance, and then, when he sees Tanya and Mark walking down the street, he runs them down with his car leading to tragedy for all concerned.
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Helpless Little Things: A con man who has more than one-scheme in the works, recruits two young adults to help him run a scam accepting donations for Greenpeace, when in fact the money is all going back to the con man. The con-man’s two youthful Greenpeace scammers are Kevin and Julie. Kevin is smooth and gregarious and is good at getting people to donate money. And at first Julie, with her earnest manner, is better at getting money than Kevin, stellular in fact. And then, after the con man does a strip search of both Kevin and Julie to make sure they are not coning him out of money, Julie seems to lose confidence and takes in much less money.
In the end, the biggest con is inflicted on the con man himself, as Julie has learned the con game too well, and cons him out of his Christmas time profits and disappears. The con man humorously appreciates Julie’s skill in coning him and carries on with his life. A short time later one of the con man’s distributor’s rats him out and he is busted and goes to jail.
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Please: Tommy goes to his ex-wife Carla’s house to pick up their son, sends the boy out to his truck and has a chat with Carla about the fact that although he is supposed to have custodial visits with their son every Saturday, this is the first time in three weeks that Carla has been home so Tommy can see their son. Carla replies that she’d been visiting her parents and they had pleaded with her to prolong her visit.
As Tommy is leaving, he looks over at Carla’s boyfriend Jeff who is sitting on the sofa staring at the TV and says to Carla that he looks “chalked up.” Carla denies this and says Jeff is fine.
When Tommy gets out to his car and talks to his son, he realizes t Carla lied to him, when she said that she’d been visiting her parents, and he also realizes from the story his son tells him, that wasn’t at his grandparent’s house but instead went with Carla, Jeff and a group of people to grocery stores where the stole cold medicines assumedly to make meth.
When Tommy takes his son back to Carla’s house, he has the boy wait in the car, while he goes in to talk to Carla and Jeff. He shoves Jeff against the wall and tells him – that he is not to take his son on any future con artist jobs. Tommy then turns to leave and says to Carla “Leave the kid with me if you’re gonna do that sit.” And Walter’s ends the story with this – “And then he said –Please.”
So, Tommy is forceful but polite in dealing with Carla and Jeff, which in a reading between the lines sort of way indicates Tommy is insecure on some level.
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Don’t Eat Cat: This one is a post-apocalyptic tale, set in the not too distant future, at a time when a person’s genetic profile determines, by government edict, whether or not that person can have a child or receive medical treatment; and at a time when scores of people are so depressed that they have have become addicted to a mind numbing drug called Replexen, which soothes away their depression along with most of their intelligence.
The Replexen addicts, nicknamed zombies, are no longer capable of doing high skilled jobs and are, instead, re-trained to do low skill jobs with middling success.
The story opens with the protagonist ordering a soy latte at a Starbucks where two “zombies” are working, one a cashier, named Brando, and another a coffee clerk who is supposed to make the specialty coffee drinks. The manager is a regular human, and it becomes apparent that the cashier can’t figure out how to use the computer to enter the order for a soy latte and the coffee clerk can’t manage to make a latte. The manager tries to help, the patrons gets impatient as they’re waiting during the rush hour and the protagonist shouts at the coffee clerk, who is burning his latte and then both Brando and the girl steaming the latte, lose it and chaos ensues as Brando tries to strangle the store manager. The police come and restrain Brando.
Then the protagonist then remembers his girlfriend Marci who left him, took Replexen, and went to live in the zombie part of town, Z-Town, so she too could escape the dark and stressful world they live in. At the end of the tale, the protagonist has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, denied treatment by the government and he escapes to Z-Town and takes refuge with a girl he knows isn’t Marci but that with the help of the mind-numbing Replexen he knows he’ll believe is Marci.
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The New Frontier: Nick, who has recently failed the bar exam and whose past includes a recent divorce after both he and his ex-wife cheated on each other, accompanies his high school friend, Bobby Rausch, to Las Vegas to search for Bobby’s step-sister Lisa. Bobby believes Lisa is prostitute in Las Vegas, based on a playing card he received with her photo, indicating she could be purchased for the evening, and he is determined to find her and rescue her from that lifestyle. Once in Vegas, Nick gambles each day, and then in the evening he accompanies Bobby as they halfheartedly search clubs for Lisa.
Narrator Nick reminisces to himself about the time he lost his virginity to Lisa during high school, and eventually decides that the trip is pointless as they are never going to find Lisa by simply asking around. He tells Bobby, he’s going home and shares the fact that he came on the trip because Lisa was the first girl he ever slept with. But before the Nick leaves town, he remembers Lisa’s mother’s maiden name and simply finds Lisa by looking her up in the phone book. Nicks meets with Lisa and discovers that A. She’s never been a stripper or prostitute but did pose for one of those raunchy cards for a former boyfriend who was a photographer and B. that her mother and Bobby’s father split up because Bobby became obsessed with her. It is revealed that Lisa slept with Bobby when she was twelve, their parents found out and took them to counseling. However, Bobby never got over the fact that Lisa didn’t want him. So, he beat up Lisa’s high school boyfriends and stalked her to such a degree that their parents divorced, and Lisa got a restraining order against Bobby. Thus, Nick decides not to tell Bobby where Lisa is, he only relays to his friend that she is fine.
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The Brakes: A story about one of Walter’s favorite characters Tommy, who as the story opens is driving away from his stepfather Ken’s funeral. Tommy’s young son is in the car with him and asks him questions about his stepfather which Tommy answers with the politically correct answers, while thinking just the opposite. Tommy takes his son back to work with him at his auto repair shop, and finds an old “racist lady” has brought her car in again to have the breaks repaired, and she doesn’t remember that she brought the car in for the same work a week ago. Tommy calls the obnoxious, racist old lady’s niece because he is concerned about her and the niece says, “Senile old bitch” and hangs up. Tommy’s crew have previously, and with his approval, changed the women for work that wasn’t needed or done – and this time Tommy, pondering right from wrong, decides they are not going to do that anymore and tells his staff member Andy that if he tries to cheat the woman now or in the future, that Tommy will call the police. The story ends with Tommy sitting down next to his son and saying “You know it doesn’t matter who your mom marries, right? I ain’t going nowhere.” The gist of the story being Tommy’s reflecting on what is right, wrong and how important it is to be there for your kids, in the aftermath of Ken’s funeral.
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The Wolf and the Wild: Opens with a group of prisoners picking up trash along the highway. Wade McAdam, an embezzler, is the somewhat self-destructive protagonist – he is notably a white collar criminal with a great deal of money in the bank. Wade was arrested for embezzlement, and in the aftermath, wound up in jail, divorced with his kids shunning him and tasked with doing community service and going for group therapy. Wade is released after sixteen months, gets an apartment and participates in a new community service program reading books to kids four hours a day for four days a week, alternating working with sophomores and second graders.
Drew, a second grader, brings the same book for Wayne to read each time, The Wolf and the Wild. And when Wade asks him if he doesn’t want to read another book Drew says, “But I don’t know what’s in those other books.” To which Wade replies “Isn’t that the fun, finding out?” “Drew looked dubious.” The last five pages of the book are blank and show a boy walking through the woods and eventually, when he meets his friend the wolf, laying down and resting with his head on the wolf. Drew doesn’t want to read any other books and keeps trying to sit on Wade’s lap, which is not allowed. Even so Drew bonds with Wade, and at the end of the story, Wade has Drew sitting on his lap while reading a book and the teacher and vice principal are walking toward them to terminate their relationship, and Wayne is in trouble yet again.
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Wheelbarrow Kings: Daryl, is homeless, hungry and dreaming of a meal of fish and chips. Daryl’s friend Mitch knows a guy who just bought a TV and is game to give him the old one so he can sell it. Mitch tells Daryl he’ll give him half the proceeds if he helps him take the TV to the pawn shop. Daryl and Mitch are given the TV to dispose of and then steal a wheelbarrow to transport the heavy TV to a pawn shop as it is too heavy to cart blocks on foot. The homeless pair struggle to take the TV to the pawn shop, only to discover when they get to the shop, that the TV is too old, and the pawn shop won’t buy it. The pawn shop owner instead wants to buy the wheelbarrow – and they get $15 for the wheelbarrow and for the pawn shop owner taking the old TV off their hands. And $15, split between to friends, isn’t enough to buy a real meal for both of them, never mind the fish and chips Daryl has been craving.
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Statistical Abstract for My Hometown: Author Jess Walter offers his take on what the statistics say about his hometown of Spokane, Washington.
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And those are the Book Club Notes for May 2020!
Have a great day everyone,
Linda Reimer, SSCL
