Monday, March 18, 2024

Review of "The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers: A Novel" by Samuel Burr



Fiftysomething Pippa Allsbrook is an unmarried cruciverbalist (crossword puzzle enthusiast) who longs to socialize with like-minded individuals.



So Pippa starts a club called 'The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers', and recruits a variety of puzzlers, including: a codebreaker, an arithmetician; a trivialist; a jigsaw puzzle maker; an inventor of mechanical puzzles; a maze-designer; etc.



All the puzzlemakers - and the folks they meet - are engaging, each with his/her individual history, personality, and quirks. For instance, Sir Derek Wadlow, a codebreaker, was part of the team that built the Enigma machine at Bletchley Park;



Earl Vosey is a personable maze-maker whose wife has cancer;



Nancy Stone is a cab driver who excels at trivia;



Hector Haywood is a quiet artist turned jigsaw designer;



Angel, a housekeeper/cook, means well but causes chaos; and more.



In time the puzzlers become a kind of family, and decide to share a big house in the country, with a room for each resident, and studios and outbuildings where the puzzlemakers can work. The members, who make money from their puzzles, contribute to the household expenses.



Pippa never had a child, and she feels an absence in her life.



Then one day a miracle happens. A black leather hatbox with gold trim is left on the doorstep of the Fellowship residence. Inside the box is a baby boy, only a few days old.





Pippa becomes the boy's guardian, and all the puzzlemakers help raise the little fellow, who's named Clayton Stumper. Clayton is very happy at the Fellowship, though he's curious about his history: Who are his parents? Why did they give him away? Clayton can't seem to get any answers.



Then when Clayton is twenty-five, Pippa dies and leaves Clayton a series of puzzles to solve. The puzzles are actually a kind of treasure hunt that provides clues about Clayton's parents. The crosswords and riddles take Clayton to London.......



.....and then to the continent, and Clayton, who was very sheltered at the Fellowship, makes new friends along the way.



The story is told in dual timelines, so that Clayton's adventures in the present alternate with flashbacks to the past, when the puzzlemakers come together, establish their fellowship, 'adopt' Clayton, and so on.

I enjoyed this charming story, which shows that a diverse group of people can become a family; and that love can fluorish in unexpected places. As a bonus, the enthusiastic reader can try to solve the puzzles along with Clayton (they're not so easy).



Thanks to Netgalley, Samuel Burr, and Doubleday for a copy of the book.


Rating: 3.5 stars

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Review of "Camp Zero: A Climate-Fiction Novel" by Michelle Min Sterling



By the year 2049 global warming has wrought extensive damage to the environment, and much of the Earth is nearly uninhabitable.




Of course wealthy people suffer less than the general population, and a luxurious manufactured habitat in Boston Harbor, called 'The Floating City', is home to rich citizens.



Working class people are hired to do service jobs in The Floating City, and there's much competition for these positions.



One of the richest people on The Floating City is a man called Damien, who invented a tech device called the 'Flick.'



The Flick is inserted behind every infant's ear at birth, and it's essentially a tiny computer. People can use the Flick to see movies, listen to music, look things up, etc. In addition, the Flick records the wearer's activities, memories, and so on, which can be called up at any time.



The Flick has made Damien VERY RICH, and he plans to build a city in Dominion Lake in northern Canada - which is still relatively balmy. The city will have a university at it's hub, and the whole shebang is under construction right now, for the Americans who'll be moving there.



*****

The story is narrated from three points of view:

⦿ Grant - Twentysomething Grant comes from a billionaire family that made it's fortune drilling oil. Fossil fuels were responsible for destroying Earth's ecology, and Grant wants to get away from his relatives. Thus Grant has accepted a job teaching English at the nascent college in Dominion Lake.



When Grant arrives at his 'job', he learns that his only students are diggers working on the construction site, who aren't the most enthusiastic pupils.

Moreover, Grant's quarters are relatively sparse and the food at the facility, which Grant thought would be fine dining, is more like prison grub. Still, Grant makes the best of his situation while pining for his old girlfriend Jane.



*****

⦿ Rose - Rose is a beautiful woman who has a Korean mother and an American father.



Rose is one of six 'blooms' or prostitutes, who've been named for flowers (Iris, Jasmine, Violet, Fleur, Rose, and Willow). The blooms have been hired to provide company for the executives at Dominion Lake, and - for the most part - each bloom cultivates one client.



Unknown to everyone, the bloom called Rose is 'undercover', having been sent by Damien to spy on an American architect named Meyer. Meyer is in charge of the operations at Dominion Lake, and Rose seduces him with a nice meal to make sure he'll be her client.



The blooms live in an abandoned mall, where they can roam freely, but are restricted in their outside movements. For the most part, the blooms are treated well, as their 'madam', named Judith, doesn't permit any rough stuff from the johns.

*****

⦿ The third narrator is the collective voice of a group of women with varying specialties (botanist, biologist, cartographer, engineer, geographer, meteorologist, programmer, and security specialist). The females are doing climate research at a facility called White Alice, at the northern tip of Canada, a few hours from Dominion Lake.



*****

In the course of the story it becomes clear that there's some hidden agenda at Dominion Lake, but very few people there seem to know what it is. Moreover, White Alice - which relies on periodic shipments of essentials (food, fuel, guns, ammunition, etc.) from the American government - is very vulnerable if things go wrong. It's enlightening to see how the women, who are fearless and clever, deal with this kind of situation.



There are time shifts in the book, that don't come to light until the story is well underway, which is jarring. I also found the action at the end of the book confusing. However, the climate-fiction aspects of the novel are important. People need to open their eyes and acknowledge the ecological crisis we're causing.

Rating: 3 stars

Friday, March 15, 2024

Review of "Goyhood: A Novel" by Reuven Fenton


In the mid 1990s, when 12-year-old Marty Belkin was living in Moab, Georgia, no one would have predicted he'd grow up to be a Talmud scholar. While Marty's mother Ida Mae entertained men in the house, Marty and his fraternal twin brother David would ride around on their battered Schwinn bikes, eat convenience store ice cream sandwiches, and smoke cigarettes.




When the 'Chabad of Moab' appeared in town, with a huge menorah in front, Marty recognized the candelabrum as something to do with Jews, and wondered if any Jews lived in Moab.



Marty and David soon learned that they themselves were Jews. A rabbi called Yossi Kugel came to their house, having found them by looking for Jewish-sounding names in the phone book. Much to the boys' surprise, their mom Ida Mae acknowledged that her mother was Jewish, which meant that (in Jewish law) Ida Mae and the boys were Jewish as well.



Marty and David had bar mitzvahs, and Ida Mae got a job as Rabbi Kugel's secretary.



Being a Jew was REALLY meaningful to Marty (now called Mayer), and he left Moab at the age of thirteen, to study Talmud at a top yeshiva in Brooklyn, New York.



Skip ahead almost three decades and forty-year-old Mayer is still studying Talmud....



and has been married to Sarah for eighteen years.



Sarah is the daughter of the revered Jewish Talmudist Yaakov Drezner, who arranged the marriage himself.



While Mayer was living as an Orthodox Jew, his brother David was doing the exact opposite. As a young man David used illegal drugs, stole cars, got into bar fights, slept with lots of women, contracted STDs, and more.



Afterwards, David tried various get-rich-quick schemes, all of which failed, and got into trouble with moneylenders. Now that David is forty, though, his luck has changed, and he's become wealthy from the e-cigarette business.



Forty-year-olds Mayer and David haven't seen each other for eight years when a tragedy draws them together. Their mother Ida Mae, who's 'clinically obese and two teagaritas away from a liver transplant,' commits suicide.

This incident turns Mayer's life upside-down. When Mayer flies to Georgia for his mother's funeral, a suicide letter from Ida Mae reveals that her mother was NOT Jewish, and in fact was descended from Nazis.

This means Mayer is not Jewish, Sarah is not his wife, and Sarah will be distraught when she learns she's been living with a gentile (and one-eighth Nazi) all these years. The solution: Mayer will secretly convert to Judaism. The ritual, scheduled to take place in New York in one week's time, will (presumably) ease the pain when Mayer has to confess everything to Sarah and her father.



The situation sparks an idea in David's mind. Now that Mayer is a gentile, David insists the brothers take a road trip through the South 'on their way' to New York. So Ida Mae is cremated, and Mayer, David, and Ida Mae (in an urn) embark on a kind of 'Rumspringa' jaunt through the Confederate states.



The trip is something to remember!



In Mississippi, the brothers rescue a one-eyed dog called Popeye, whom they find starving, tethered to a pole.



And in New Orleans, David's acquaintance Charlayne, an African-American social media influencer who plans to hike the Appalachian Trail, hitches a ride north.



The travelers' adventures, which range from amusing to life-threatening, lead to brotherly bonding, new friends, and Mayer learning about life outside his sheltered Orthodox community. Through it all, Mayer, though technically not Jewish, does his best to stick to Jewish laws. He won't touch a woman, even to shake hands, and he eats kosher crackers and sardines from Publix.....



......when David and Charlayne dine on cheeseburgers and sweet potato fries.



Though Mayer is uncomfortable traveling with a woman, he and Charlayne bond over their shared interest in bird-watching, and Charlayne gives Mayer helpful advice when she suggests, 'When you go back to your old-slash new life, make it a point to ask God why he did this to you.....God did this to you with full intent, and it was good intent.'

The author's descriptions of the southern flora, fauna, and geography add a nice touch to the novel, and the ancillary characters - including a white supremacist called Clete and a woman rabbi named Debbie Teitelbaum - are authentic and compelling.





One of my favorite characters is Popeye the dog, who turns out to be a hero.

You don't need to be Jewish to enjoy the novel, though you might want to Google some of the terms. I would have liked a little more resolution at the end of the story, but that's a minor quibble. This is a very good book, highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley, Reuven Fenton, and Central Avenue Publishing for a copy of the book.

Rating: 4 stars