Intimacies: A Novel by Katie Kitamura is about an interpreter who has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities is finally looking for a place to call home.

Intimacies: A Novel is the second book by Ms. Kitamura that I have read this year. The multiple intimacies of the novel overlap and at times seem confusing, but in the end, it makes sense even if it is unclear how or where she will live the next phase of her life. A Separation is also written hypnotic, making it difficult to stop reading.

I not only highly recommend Intimacies: A Novel but have become a fan of Katie Kitamura and look forward to reading more of her books.

Goodreads summary provides a good overview.

She’s drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim’s sister. And she’s pulled into explosive political fires: her work interpreting for a former president accused of war crimes becomes precarious as their relationship is unbound by shifting language and meaning.

This woman is the voice in the ear of many, but what command does that give her, and how vulnerable does that leave her? Her coolly impassioned views on power, love, and violence, are tested, both in her personal intimacies and in her role at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her; it is her drive towards truth, and love, that throws into stark relief what she wants from her life.

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“Autocorrect” by Etgar Keret, a prominent figure in Israeli literature and film, is a darkly humorous collection of stories that delves into themes of identity, reality, and meaning. These narratives resonate with our current times, characterized by uncertainty and fragility, marked by misunderstandings and miscommunications, as we seek reasons and the strength to foster hope.

Etgar Keret‘s stories reveal the fault lines and uncomfortable truths in our society, all delivered in a style that is uniquely his own. He is the world’s most renowned living Israeli writer, known for his lean and accessible short stories that often blend whimsy, surrealism, and dark humor. Keret’s work explores the most minor and seemingly mundane aspects of life in profound and unusual ways.

The characters in his fiction face relatable challenges in work and relationships. They inhabit a world filled with rapidly advancing technology, yet the base nature of human passions and brutality repeatedly undermines this world. For instance, one character’s partner is a reality show contestant from a parallel dimension. At the same time, another discovers that the asteroid he paid to have named after his wife is on a collision course with Earth. In another story, an elderly widow persuades a popular AI program to commit suicide.

Etgar Keret, born in Ramat Gan in 1967, is a prominent figure in Israeli literature and film. Translated into more than forty languages, his writing has appeared in well-known publications such as The New York Times, Le Monde, and The New Yorker. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, the Charles Bronfman Prize in 2016, and the esteemed Sapir Prize in 2018.

More than a hundred captivating short films and several remarkable feature films have brought his stories to life on the big screen. Keret teaches creative writing at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Since 2021, he has also been publishing a weekly newsletter titled “Alphabet Soup” on Substack.

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Diane Frank, a poet and author of “Prayer to the Invisible,” was a childhood friend of my wife, Jan, in Springfield, NJ. Both were gifted and talented young women who excelled as students and were also musicians, dreamers, and diarists. I met Diane at a poetry reading in NYC, where Jan insisted that we meet her brilliant friend. Diane often referred to Jan as her “Angel.”

In her luminous 9th collection, Prayer to the Invisible, poet Diane Frank fully unmasks her wild and loving imagination. With a river-deep range in subject matter and voice, Frank guides us through terrains both difficult and joyous – her Jewish mother’s love of Christmas carols, a grace-filled visitation from a victim of ethnic violence, a ballerina-in-disguise on public transit, and many transcendent visions from dreams. According to Prartho Sereno, Poet Laureate Emerita of Marin County, California. Author of Starfall in the Temple, “Diane Frank is the wise and wonder-struck, barefoot-dancing companion we all long for in these precarious times.”

Each poem was thought-provoking and a blessing for these uncertain times. The title poem, “Prayer to the Invisible,” was written in memory of Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, who died during the attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018. He was a fellow alumnus of Jonathan Dayton Regional High School, as were Diane and my wife. The poem is a moving tribute to Dr. Rabinowitz as its words brought tears to my eyes.

The poem is a moving tribute that brought tears to my eyes for Dr. Rabinowitz, and one stanza echoed how I felt when my wife died.

I carry your spirit on my shoulders
as I walk into the synagogue
where we played music for you,
as I follow an eclipse north
as I walk into a dream.
I write your name in the sky after midnight
in the Leonid meteor showers,
in the penumbra of an eclipse
of the wolf moon.

Diane Frank is a poet and musician, author of nine books of poems, three novels, and a photo memoir of her 400-mile trek in the Nepal Himalayas. Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems won the 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Poetry. She is the editor of three bestselling anthologies: River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the Twenty-First Century; Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here; and Pandemic Puzzle Poems. Her first novel, Blackberries in the Dream House, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

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Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel by Bonnie Garmus is a must-read book as it reimagines the gender dynamics of the 1950s and early 1960s. Elizabeth Zott, a chemist, struggles in a male-dominated world where her work is not taken seriously until she meets Calvin Evans. She describes their relationship, “Calvin and I were soulmates,” like Jan and I viewed ours.

What underlies their love affair was “a mutual respect for the other’s capabilities.” “Do you know how extraordinary that is?” she said. That a man would treat his lover’s work as seriously as his own?” Of course, every relationship should be based on the same dynamics, but even after seventy years, we still struggle to achieve equality in our society.

I highly recommend this novel. Reading the story, the Zott/Evans relationship reminded me of the love that Jan and I shared. I know that Jan would have loved this book.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist. Like Jan, Elizabeth Zott, the protagonist, would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman.

Although Jan and Elizabeth had much in common, I felt Madeline (aka Mad), Elizabeth’s daughter, was Jan’s alter ego in this novel. Jan was smart and ahead of her classmates, just like Mad was. She was breaking barriers when she was Mad’s age.

I also connected to Six Thirty, the dog. Like Oscar, Six Thirty was more intelligent than the average dog.

Lessons in Chemistry has been the number one best-selling book in the New York Times for thirty-four weeks.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

It’s the early 1960s and Elizabeth Zott’s all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize-nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

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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This morning, I completed reading Octavia E. Butler‘s acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel Parable of the Sower and immediately started reading its sequel, Parable of the Talents, initially published in 1998. This second book is even more relevant today than it was back then. The novel’s timely message of hope and resistance in the face of fanaticism is shockingly prescient.

In 2032, Lauren Olamina survived the destruction of her home and family. She envisioned a peaceful community in Northern California, which she established based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed. This new settlement provides a haven for outcasts who face persecution following the election of an ultra-conservative president. The new president pledges to “make America great again,” but the country becomes increasingly divided and dangerous. Lauren’s subversive colony, a minority religious faction led by a young black woman, becomes a target for President Jarret’s oppressive regime characterized by terror and discrimination.

In the future, Asha Vere discovers the journals of her mother, Lauren Olamina, whom she never met. As she delves into her mother’s writings, she grapples with the conflict between Lauren’s responsibilities to her chosen family and her mission to guide humanity toward a brighter tomorrow.

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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Today, I started reading Dogs and Monsters: Stories by Mark Haddon. The collection features eight captivating and imaginative stories that blend Greek myths with contemporary dystopian narratives. The stories explore themes of mortality, moral choices, and various forms of love, including romantic, familial, and self-love. Haddon’s clear-eyed vision is infused with deep empathy.

In addition, Haddon’s fluid prose showcases his remarkable powers of observation, both of the physical world and the inner workings of the human psyche. Greek myths have fascinated people for millennia with their timeless appeal and enduring lessons about fate, hubris, and life’s uncertainties. In Dogs and Monsters: Stories, Mark Haddon delves into the heart of these ancient fables and presents them in a fresh light. For instance, in one story, the dawn goddess Eos requests that Zeus grant her lover Tithonus eternal life but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In “The Quiet Limit of the World,” Haddon imagines Tithonus’s life as he ages over thousands of years, transforming this cautionary tale about tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on observing death from the outside. This tale ultimately explores how carnal love evolves into something more profound and poignant over time.

In “The Mother‘s Story,” Haddon reinterprets the myth of the Minotaur, born of the monstrous lust of King Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë. He turns it into a heartbreaking parable of a mother’s love for a damaged child and the more tangible monstrosities of patriarchy. In “D.O.G.Z.,” the story of Actaeon, who was transformed into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and was subsequently torn apart by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor for the continuum of human and animal behavior.

Other stories in Dogs and Monsters: Stories play with contemporary mythic tropes—such as genetic engineering, attempts to escape the future, and the cruelty of adolescent ostracism. These stories showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that concerned the Greeks but in a fresh and intriguing light. Haddon‘s tales cover a wide range of themes, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, and explore love alongside stories of cruelty. They take readers from battlefields to bed and breakfasts and from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all bound together by profound sympathy and an insight into how human beings think, feel, and act when pushed to their limits.