Three Birthday Blessings

My wife had asked me to read – The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – on several occasions. When we first met, we both liked to read fiction and non-fiction. As we aged, I focused almost exclusively on non-fiction, and she focused on fiction. Since her passing, I have started reading more of both genres. We could now have a book club!

Both Jan and I have always enjoyed books and movies about time travel. If I could travel back in time, there are tens of thousands of days I would love to spend with her again. But time travel is not possible. Or is it? Her spirit returns to me whenever I am paralyzed and encourages me to dust myself off and keep going. Maybe one day we will time travel together!

I enjoyed reading this book, even if it was difficult to keep track of the periods. It is very much the type of time-traveling book that both of us would have liked to read, and it has helped me to imagine a world in which Jan and I will meet again.

But what if it is not time travel as imagined by H. G. Wells. As the Hasidic story foretold, God split our souls at birth and placed one part of my soul in her body and placed the rest into my body. Very few people are lucky enough to find the person who has the other half of their soul, and Jan and I did.

When my life ends, what if God takes a portion of our two souls and places them into new bodies. Each of their souls would include a part of each of us. Those two new people would have to find each other in the future to connect as we did. They might not see each other and forever hunger for true love. Whatever happened, they would not know that they once were very much in love.

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Richard W. Brown

After almost 48 years, I recently lost my wife, Jan Lilien. Like The Little Prince, Jan and I believed that “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” This blog is a collection of my random thoughts on love, grief, life, and all things considered.

The Faraway World: Stories by Patricia Engel was released six days ago. The Faraway World is an exquisite collection of ten haunting, award-winning short stories set across the Americas and linked by themes of migration, sacrifice, and moral compromise. I highly recommend this collection of short stories. All ten are ones I would read again. As Leigh Newman wrote in her review in the NYTimes, The Faraway World is “a collection about the Latin American diaspora.”

In addition, Leigh Newman described The Faraway World proves that Engel, like one of her characters, is capable of noticing “that between two people, a look reveals more than a fingerprint.” The first story in the collection, “Aida,” is about two twins, one of whom goes missing. Once I read this story, I could not stop until I had read all ten.

The stories are based in Cuba, Colombia, and the US. I know a few NJ settings that gave more meaning to these stories. I felt like I was in Cuba and Colombia, which I had never visited.

NPR interviewed Patricia Engel. She described how she wrote the stories.

They came to me at different points when I was thinking about other things. But of course, they are connected by this – the motivating force for change, desire, and the ever-changing conditions of identity and movements and changing geography and landscape and diaspora. Those are things that I explore in all my writing, and it’s something that I explore in my life. So, of course, it permeates my stories.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Two Colombian ex-pats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother’s bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami to life-altering ends.

The Faraway World is a collection of arresting stories from The New York Times bestselling author of Infinite Country, Patricia Engel, “a gifted storyteller whose writing shines even in the darkest corners” (The Washington Post). Intimate and panoramic, these stories bring to life the liminality of regret, the vibrancy of the community, and the epic deeds and quiet moments of love.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

Richard W. Brown

After almost 48 years, I recently lost my wife, Jan Lilien. Like The Little Prince, Jan and I believed that “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” This blog is a collection of my random thoughts on love, grief, life, and all things considered.

Tonight I read Zenith Man by Jennifer Haigh. A 911 call begins the story. A man reports his wife had died, but no one knew he had a wife. For thirty-two years, they had been married, and only one person had seen her, but only for a minute when she said: “supper was ready.” I read the first page and immediately found myself with a short page-turner that I could not stop reading. I recommend Zenith Man.

Actual events inspired this story. For many decades, many acquaintances of Jan and mine had no idea we were married. Once they found out, the response was, “we should have known as the two of you are perfect for each other.” But they knew we were married and had met both of us.

Being a widow, I found this phrase in the story emotional and very moving.

“She was a good woman,” Harold told Cob Krug. “I was lucky to have her. I promised to keep her in sickness and in health, and that’s what I did.”

Is there anything more that can summarize the love between two people?

I highly recommend Zenith Man, part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each Inheritance piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. Zenith Man is the fourth one in the series I have read. The previous three were Everything My Mother Taught Me, Can You Feel This?, and The Lion’s Den.

I have enjoyed all four and look forward to reading the final one.

Now that I have read Ms. Haigh’s short story, I have added her newest novel, Mercy Street, to my queue.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Whatever had been going on inside the shuttered old house, the couple who lived there kept it to themselves. Among the locals, there’s only chilling speculation.

Neighbors are shocked when Harold Pardee reports his wife dead. No one even knew the eccentric TV repairman was married. Within hours, horrible rumors spread about what that poor woman must have endured for thirty years. Until the Pardees’ carefully guarded world is exposed. New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh delivers an endearing short story about our misguided perception of strangers, the nature of love, and the need for secrets.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

Richard W. Brown

After almost 48 years, I recently lost my wife, Jan Lilien. Like The Little Prince, Jan and I believed that “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” This blog is a collection of my random thoughts on love, grief, life, and all things considered.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore was a 2020 NPR Books We Love Selection. It’s a contemporary novel about the opioid epidemic, it’s a novel about sisters and families, it’s a book about the police and how they fall short of the communities they serve, and it’s a well-plotted crime novel. Its main story revolves around Mickey, a patrol officer raising a young son in a working-class neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia, and her missing sister, who’s addicted to drugs. Both women are the children of addicts, raised by a strict grandmother.

Despite Long Bright River being selected by NPR and others as one of the best books, I was not sure what to expect. My doubts evaporated on page one. Mickey’s narration, including her description of Kensignton, made this a page-turner.

Mickey and Kacey’s lives became so realistic that I could not put the book down. One night, I stayed up to finish reading for the first time in almost a decade.

As much as it focuses on the opioid epidemic and the shortcomings of policing, its proper focus is on sisters and families. My love of family has become more important to me than ever since the loss of Jan, the love of my life.

Ms. Moore brings it all together in the ending but leaves enough doubt as to the future relationship of the sisters that we can feel the harsh reality of life itself. Long Bright River is the first but not the last book by this author that I will read.

Goodreads has an overview if you need more convincing.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don’t speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey’s district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit–and her sister–before it’s too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.

I highly recommend this book.

Richard W. Brown

After almost 48 years, I recently lost my wife, Jan Lilien. Like The Little Prince, Jan and I believed that “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” This blog is a collection of my random thoughts on love, grief, life, and all things considered.

Today, I started reading “Kala: A Novel” by Colin Walsh, a gripping literary page-turner from a rising Irish talent. Former friends, estranged for twenty years, reckon with the terrifying events of the summer that changed their lives. Three old friends are reunited in the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, for the first time in years.

Helen, Joe, and Mush were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot center. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.

Now it’s fifteen years later:

• Helen has reluctantly returned to Ireland for her father’s wedding.
• Joe is a world-famous musician who is newly back in town.
• Mush has never left, too scared to venture beyond the counter of his mother’s café.

But human remains are discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their involvement in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance.

Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its secrets, in a story that builds from a smolder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging and the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.

Richard W. Brown

After almost 48 years, I recently lost my wife, Jan Lilien. Like The Little Prince, Jan and I believed that “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” This blog is a collection of my random thoughts on love, grief, life, and all things considered.

The Shadow King: A Novel by Maaza Mengiste is a book happened to offer two often overlooked threads of history. The first is Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. The second one I am most interested in is the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. I highly recommend The Shadow King. It is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power and what it means to be a woman at war.

Hirut and Aster come alive in Maaza Mengiste talented writing. Their struggles to be seen as equal in a society at war is engaging. Hirut’s plan to create a shadow kingpin the absence of Emperor Haile Selassie is one that turns defeat into victory.

Goodreads provides a good overview of the book.

With the threat of Mussolini’s army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid in Kidane and his wife Aster’s household. Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army, rushes to mobilize his most muscular men before the Italians invaded. His initial kindness to Hirut shifts into flinty cruelty when she resists his advances. Hirut finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, betrayals, and overwhelming rage. Meanwhile, Mussolini’s technologically advanced army prepared for an easy victory. Hundreds of thousands of Italians―Jewish photographer Ettore among them―march on Ethiopia seeking adventure.

As the war begins in earnest, Hirut, Aster, and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, Hirut offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take arms against the Italians. But how could she have predicted her war as a prisoner of one of Italy’s most vicious officers, who would force her to pose before Ettore’s camera?

What follows is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, with Hirut as the fierce, original, and brilliant voice at its heart. In incandescent, lyrical prose, Maaza Mengiste breathes life into complicated characters on both sides of the battle line, shaping a heartrending, unforgettable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.

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When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

Richard W. Brown

After almost 48 years, I recently lost my wife, Jan Lilien. Like The Little Prince, Jan and I believed that “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” This blog is a collection of my random thoughts on love, grief, life, and all things considered.