ASK Musings

No matter where you go, there you are.

Monthly Archive: April 2021

Sunday

25

April 2021

0

COMMENTS

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Five Stars

Best for:
Those interested in how corporations and the government have failed us. Those who enjoy a little bit of schadenfreude (though, in my opinion, not nearly enough).

In a nutshell:
The Sackler family, obsessed with their reputation and ‘good name,’ help 400,000 people to their deaths via the opioid epidemic.

Why I chose it:
I loved the author’s book ‘Say Nothing’ about The Troubles in Northern Ireland and searched for other work. Saw this was being released in April so ordered it right away.

Review:
What is a name, really? Is philanthropy truly a gift if it comes with so many strings, including the need to have one’s name splashed across all the things? How do we hold accountable the leaders of corporations that cause pain and suffering for millions?

Author Keefe explores all these themes in his excellent book that focuses on the Sackler family, the name behind the billion-dollar pain empire via one of the ventures they chose not to put their name on, Purdue Pharma. If you’re not familiar, Purdue Pharma patented OxiContin, the extraordinarily strong opioid pain reliever introduced in the 1990s.

The book opens with a deposition in the late 2010s, but immediately jumps back to the early 1900s so we can follow three generations of the Sackler family, starting with boys Arthur, Raymund, and Mortimer. Arthur took the lead as the first born to take a bunch of jobs, supporting his family. He and his brothers all went to medical school, and all married (some of them multiple times). Over time Arthur especially starts to build the empire with medical marketing, then the purchase of Purdue Frederick and Purdue Pharma.

Each successive generation seems to be obsessed with putting their names on EVERYTHING. It kind of reminds me of the Trump family – there’s just this deep, almost pathological, need to piss all over the place. I don’t understand obsessions with names and legacy. Maybe it’s because I’m not having kids? To my mind, one’s legacy should be doing good things because they should be done, not because one wants credit and a fancy plaque at the entrance to a museum gallery.

The Sacklers do not ever get what they deserve – though the very last chapter does have a slight sense of comeuppance. They are helped in many ways by the FDA — who should have shut down OxiContin’s claims from the start — but also by the Trump DOJ, who chose not the prosecute the individual family members in addition to the privately owned company. The family made billions off of the addiction of others, essentially creating not just the opioid epidemic but, when they changed the formulation, helping push those individuals on to heroin.

They are evil. And while they do get to sleep on their giant pillows of ill-gotten money, at least one thing is now true: they have completely ruined the name they hold so dear. Museums and universities they donated to have started to strip their name from it (the Louvre, most notably, as well as medical programs at NYU and Tufts), as they don’t want to be associated with such immoral, vile individuals. But it still won’t bring back the lives lost at their hands.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Pass to a Friend

Friday

16

April 2021

0

COMMENTS

Knife Edge by Simon Mayo

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

Best for:
People who like thrillers.

In a nutshell:
In one morning in London the entire seven member investigations team from a national news network is murdered, individually, at knife point. Who did it? And why?

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
Paperback sale.

Review:
Famie is a journalist at IPS in London, and she not too long ago had applied to be a member of the investigations team but lost out on the gig. Lucky for her, because that entire team is murdered on their commutes in to work one morning. Famie has connections to a few members as friends, but one is also a former boyfriend.

No one claims responsibility – so why were they killed? What were they working on? Two months before their murders, the entire team has stopped storing any work on their work computers.

To complicate things, someone is communicating with Famie. The reader learns who that person is, as we learn more about the motivations behind the murders. But we also learn that another attack is planned, so the book swirls around whether Famie and her colleagues can use their journalistic backgrounds to investigate the murders and potentially save more people from peril.

I read the first chapter before going to sleep on Tuesday and realized if I kept reading I’d never go to sleep. I only waiting two more days to finish it because I had plans on Wednesday. It’s that kind of entertaining that you don’t want to stop reading. This was a mostly thrilling read, with a mostly satisfying ending. It’s only not five stars because I’m still not entirely, 100% sure exactly what happened. But don’t let that put you off.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it

Tuesday

13

April 2021

0

COMMENTS

Dear Leader by Jang Jin-Sung

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

Best for:
Those interested in learning more about the recent history of North Korea from an inside perspective, set against the suspense of someone seeking asylum.

In a nutshell:
Jang Jin-Sung rose high within the North Korean ruling class as a poet, but eventually fled the country.

Worth quoting:
A lot, but I listened while running so didn’t have a chance to take note.

Why I chose it:
I stumbled across Michael Palin’s show about his visit to North Korea (https://www.natgeotv.com/me/michael-palin-in-north-korea/videos/michael-palin-in-north-korea) and realized I know next to nothing about life in North Korea.

Review:
This is an interesting book.

The book opens with a description of Jang being summoned for an audience with Kim Jong-Il, and just that is enough to realize we are not operating in a realm of what we would consider normality. The phone call comes in the middle of the night with no information other than a place to meet by 1AM. Jang is then driven with others in circles before boarding a train at a private railway station, being instructed to sleep for the two hour ride, then boarding a boat to an island, where the meet with Kim’s … dog. And Kim as well.

From there, the description of North Korea grows. At times it matches the very little I know about North Korea – the hunger, the inability to choose one’s own career – but also it fascinates me. There was an entire department of people who were allowed to view South Korean popular culture (books, poems, newspapers) so they could take on the voice of a South Korean, write books and poems praising North Korea, then distributing it through illegal means within South Korea as a form of propaganda.

Jang is relatively lucky from a young age – he is accepted to a performing arts school for music, but eventually is tutored by a famous poet and wins an award from the leader that includes, essentially a favor. Jang asks that he be allowed to pursue a career in writing instead of the required musical performance / composing career that his education would insist. The leader decrees it, and so Jang becomes a writer. And a very successful one, considering that meeting with Kim Jong-Il described up top happened when he was in his late 20s.

Due to sharing some of the South Korea materials with a friend, and the friend then losing those materials, Jang and his friend decide to run. We know, given he is writing this book, that Jang is ultimately successful, but the how — and the uncertainty around his friend — remains. The experience Jang shares is utterly harrowing. In some ways, he is very lucky in the people he encounters, but others either ignore him outright or actively threaten him with a promise to report him to the authorities.

Interspersed within what could work solely as an escape book is a description of North Korea, including Kim Jong-Il’s taking power from his father, the extreme poverty and danger in the provinces; and the challenges of everyday life in North Korea. He shares one story of returning to visit his home after living in Pyongyang for many years and discovering it changed, including so many laws and rules that, if broken, result in a quick public ‘trial’ and immediate execution.

Obviously one cannot learn all about one country from just one memoir, but this one was engrossing, fascinating, and heartbreaking.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep it (audiobook)

Sunday

11

April 2021

0

COMMENTS

The Better Liar by Tanen Jones

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

Best for:
Those who like stories told from multiple perspectives; those who relish a good, feasible but not totally telescoped twist.

In a nutshell:
Leslie’s dad has died, and the only way she can get her inheritance is to show up with her sister at the executor’s office. But Leslie has just visited her sister for the first time in ten years, finding her dead. How can she get the inheritance? Perhaps with the help of Mary, a woman who is willing to play a role for a certain amount of money.

Worth quoting:
“But liars are always specific. People who are telling the truth don’t bother to try to convince you.”

Why I chose it:
Part of an Easter paperback sale at Foyles. Plus, I’m trying to read more fiction.

Review:
Hoo boy. While I read the first 20 pages yesterday, I basically spent all of today reading the final 280, because I wanted to know what was going to happen.

The book alternates between the perspectives of Leslie, Robin’s ghost (Leslie’s dead sister), and Mary, the waitress Leslie meets in Vegas after she sees her sister Robin’s body. Leslie is desperate for her $50,000 inheritance, and tells Mary it’s because she’s lost her job and going to lose her house. But Mary learns Leslie still has her job, house is fine. Leslie has a one-year-old baby, and her husband Dave might be cheating on her, so Mary become very curious about why Leslie lied to her, and what she is hiding.

This is a well-told story. There are some moments that slightly beggar belief, but they soon make sense in the broader context of the story. There are twists, there are cringe-worthy moments, and there are moment when the reader genuinely feels for Leslie while also perhaps judging her a bit for her choices.

I won’t spoil the book, but I think it’s important to share a broader content note around mental health issues; the author provides more exploration of the specific mental health issue addressed in the book at the end in a way I haven’t seen before, and appreciated.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Pass to a friend.

Thursday

8

April 2021

0

COMMENTS

Sisters

Written by , Posted in Uncategorized

I think I realized I had a pretty cool sister when she gave me what is probably the best birthday gift ever:

A 2-liter bottle of Crystal Pepsi and a Steve Urkel puzzle.

I think I was turning 14, and I recall her handing me these gifts early in the morning. I believe she wrapped them together in the dust rag my mother kept on the vacuum.

Soda AND a puzzle? What did I do to deserve this?

***

About 80% of people in the US have a sibling, and those relationships can vary dramatically. Some siblings are so close in age that they grew up fighting constantly over everything, including friends. Some are so far apart in age that they are basically strangers to each other. Some have nothing in common, so while they are civil, they don’t, like, chat on the phone every week or two. I am four years younger than my sister, which means that I was just young enough to be annoying, but not so young that she had to, like, help raise me. I had my own friends, but I’m certain that if she had a friend over and I didn’t, I was probably bugging them.

It’s National Sibling Day on April 10th, and while having such a great sibling is something I’m sure I’ve repeatedly taken for granted, I know that having a sister — and having this sister, specifically — has improved my life in ways I’m continuing to discover.

My sister and I mostly got along when growing up, though there is evidence of the occasional fight. The biggest reminder is the broken bathroom doorknob at the vacation condo my parents own. We grew up super lucky, spending basically the whole of August at the lake, with friends visiting. We’d go to the beach or the pool most days, then spend what seemed like hours at the local video store picking out a movie to watch with the sitter who would come while my parents went out (that’s right, kiddos, we are old enough to remember VHS). My sister’s room had a door that led directly to our shared bathroom; I needed to enter from the hallway. One particularly nasty fight, I kept pushing to get in, she kept pushing me out, and boom. Doorknob broken. Whoops.

But those types of incidents were definitely not the norm, and that four year age difference proved to be kind of perfect, as we were never sharing friends or competing for the same … anything, really. My parents did everything to make sure we both felt treated equally. We both did sports, we both participated in the arts, and we even had the exact same value for our gifts at Christmas (my mom was adamant on that one – she didn’t want us to perceive any favoritism).

One area that could have been fraught is the fact that she is very tall and very thin; I am very tall and at times have been very much … less thin. That could have been a serious challenge growing up – I’ve heard of larger siblings being tormented by their thinner siblings. My sister has never said such a thing to me. She’s never looked at me eating dessert, or having other sweets and said ‘hey, maybe put that down.’ She’s listened when I’ve complained about gaining weight, but she’s never made me feel like I am more or less worthy of anything based on the number on the scale.

Her leaving for college just as I started high school was a bummer in some ways, but perfect in others, as during my brattiest years, I was essentially an only child, and didn’t take it out on her. As I got older, I could go visit her at her university – I remember one weekend where we went to see L.A. Story and halfway through she asked if there was more than one white guy in the movie. There were three, actually, but in fairness, they were pretty much visually interchangeable. Ugh, that was a boring movie.

When I got to university, she was living in LA, and then took a year-long trip to Australia. That was the hardest, because international texting wasn’t a thing then (shoot, I don’t even know if domestic texting was a thing). We had email, but it’s not like she kept a laptop with her, or had free wifi or a smart phone. I’d hope to get a call from her on a prepaid calling card on occasion, but it sucked, her being so far away without an easy way to communicate.

Since then, however, and until the pandemic, that was about the longest we went without seeing each other. I visited her when she was living in Los Angeles, and then made multiple trips when she was in Texas and then Florida. I’d often try to visit over my birthday, as it was usually close to a three-day weekend. One visit we had what I still consider to be the best restaurant dinner I’ve ever had (the perfect pork chop with this ridiculous potato dish), followed by a Jason Mraz concert. My sister is thoughtful like that — years earlier, when my family visited her in D.C., she figured out it coincided with No Doubt performing not that far out of town, so she got us tickets. There was a lightning storm, they had us all crowd in the actual seating area under cover (we had lawn tickets), and then we just … never left the fancy area. Best concert.

She’s visited me in every apartment I’ve ever lived in (except two – one because we only lived there for five months and one because PANDEMIC), and I’ve visited her. We got cupcakes together at Magnolia bakery when she visited me in NYC. We rode the Staten Island Ferry and went to the strangest museum with a lot of stuffed birds.

I’ve stayed with her a few times in Boston, and she’s always made it such a great time – last time we went to tea at the public library, and it was just delightful.

We’ve also traveled together as adults, once to Berlin, and another time to Iceland with our partners. Both times were fun in different ways. For Berlin I think I did most of the planning, and also ended up with a wicked cold for most of the trip (but I powered through!).

She did basically 100% of the Iceland planning, and it was so much fun. I knew next to nothing, so it was nice to just sort of sit back and have someone else in charge, especially someone who would know what I would and would not be interested in doing.

Traveling together is fun, but we can also just sit and hang out and talk. We once spent like two hours watching YouTube videos of 80s and 90s TV theme songs, dying with laughter while my partner looked on, eventually retreating to another room because while our laughter is infectious to each other, it’s not necessarily contagious to others. I’m sure that’s annoying, as is our ability to beat literally anyone at Taboo.

 

As we get older, and our parents get older, our relationship has shifted a bit, because we have to think and talk more about unpleasant things. We’re lucky in that our parents are both still healthy (and fully vaccinated now, woo hoo!), but they live in the house we grew up in, and are getting older, so we know that things won’t stay the same forever. And while our parents are seriously really good parents, we all have things that bother us, right? I have a very understanding partner, but he didn’t grow up in my house, so he can’t fully know exactly what I mean when I speak about my folks. But my sister gets it completely.

Texting and WhatsApp calls have made living overseas a lot easier, in part because I can still dash a quick text off to my sister regardless of the time of day, and know I’ll hear back from her when she has free time. It’s also allowed me to do things like give her a video tour of our new apartment, and properly sing happy birthday.

Those of you who don’t have siblings have I’m sure had wonderful life experiences that I’ll never have — having the full attention of one’s parents, not having any internalized competition with another kid in your house, not having hand-me-downs — and many probably love being an only child. I think that’s great! But I’ve only ever known a life with a sibling, and I feel so lucky.

So this National Siblings Day, if you have as great a sibling as I do, be sure to let them know.

Monday

5

April 2021

0

COMMENTS

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Five Stars

Best for:
People interested in a deep look into just a few lives – their potential, their reality, their what-could-have-beens. People who like novels that aren’t conventional but aren’t totally out there.

In a nutshell:
Five generations of one family experience the 19th century, stopping and restarting along the way.

Worth quoting:
“She’d been able to remake her thinking from scratch, but not her family history.”

“Before striding off on a new path, must one not have acquired a profound understanding of what was wrong with the old one?”

“At many points during her life she had done something for the last time without knowing it. Did that mean that death was not a moment but a front, one that was as long as life?”

Why I chose it:
This was a birthday gift from my partner.

Review:
This review will contain some mild spoilers for the first part o the book.

The premise of this book is what a life might be like should certain events not have happened. I thought it might be a reset at birth each time, but no. The first section looks at the lives of the characters if the daughter (no one has names) dies around eight months. Everyone is destroyed in different ways – the father makes a decision that I find shocking and fascinated; the mother ends up completely shutting down.

In the intermission, we look at what would have happened if, when the baby wasn’t breathing, someone had done something to startle the baby back to life, and follows the family until the baby is a young woman. They all are experiencing pain due to WWI and famine, and there is now a second, younger daughter. The main daughter is traumatized and does not want to live, and, this story ends with her death at 19.

It goes on for there, with five total lives / continuations of life, following the great grandmother, grandmother, mother, daughter, and son. No one has names. No one has an easy life.

It’s an interesting idea, seeing how something going a little different might alter the course of one’s life but also the lives of everyone around one. It’s been done so many different ways, but this way feels … dark but also refreshing. It is a book that both feels totally originally and also extremely familiar.

Something that has struck me throughout the book is just the heaviness of everyone’s lives, and the fact that we don’t know what other people are going through. In this book, the grandmother of the daughter carries a secret with her that affects both her and her daughter. The daughter gathers her own secrets that impact her son. There is generational trauma, and things these family members experience that no one else in their family knows, let alone understands. There’s so much pain held inside. How many of the people we know well, or just encounter on a daily basis, are holding onto a pain we’ll never know about?

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Pass to a friend.

Sunday

4

April 2021

0

COMMENTS

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

Best for:
Fans of the TV show Call the Midwife; anyone interested in life in London in the 1950s.

In a nutshell:
Midwife Jennifer Worth recounts stories of her time working in the East End of London, soon after the creation of the National Health Service (NHS).

Worth quoting:
N/A (Audio Book)

Why I chose it:
I very much enjoy the TV show Call the Midwife, and have been eying the book in shops for a couple of years now. Finally decided it might be fun to listen to the stories.

Review:
First things first: this book is much more descriptive when it comes to births than the TV show. The show does, I think, a great job of showing how messy and challenging childbirth can be, but hearing all the aspects of it described? That might be a bit much for someone who hasn’t given birth. I have not given birth, but found the descriptions of the different situations to be fascinating.

Jennifer Worth is assigned to work at Nonnatus House, which is an order of nuns who focus on providing nursing and midwifery to the community. She shares her experiences of the East End of London, which includes living conditions that many of us would find nearly unbelievable and definitely shocking were we to encounter it as the norm today. Worth is honest in her reactions (and at times revulsions), and I think that helps the reader understand what life was like for some people. And while Worth is often judgmental when she encounters new situations, by the end of each story she seems to have recognized either where her judgment has been wrong, or at least come to have more understanding and compassion for people who are in a different life situation than she is.

As someone who enjoys the TV show, I couldn’t help but superimpose the actors who play these individuals onto them, which is a challenge when the description is fairly different from the character on TV (this is especially true for Fred). I had to remind myself a few times that the stories she’s sharing, which of course will have shifted due to the passage of time and the fallibility of human memory, are essentially about real people, and real lives, lived not so long ago.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep it (Audio Book)