This nonfiction account of the life and work of Paul Farmer raised a number of questions for me. Paul Farmer is a doctor who could have cashed in his degree from Harvard Medical School for a lucrative practice anywhere in the U.S. Instead he chose to start a clinic in a small town in Haiti, a poor area even for that impoverished country. He started out treating tuberculosis and AIDS but soon realised that he also had to deal with source causes such as poor housing and lack of education. Through the foundation he started, Partners in Health, Farmer and his close associates went on to start programs in countries like Peru and Russia, as well as addressing global health concerns in fora like the World Health Organization.

Tracy Kidder’s prose is as absorbing as any novel. I particularly appreciated the structure of the book. It starts with Kidder’s first meeting with Farmer and chronologically follows from there, with detours as appropriate. Kidder folded in background information on Farmer and his associates just when I as a reader wanted it.

One of the questions that Kidder raised was the inefficiency of Farmer’s methods. We discussed the book in my book club, and one member believed that Farmer’s intensive hands-on approach to health care—Kidder described Farmer taking a whole day hiking out to make a single house call—limited the scope of his achievements. Farmer could have used his growing renown to better purpose by devoting himself to global health concerns or by institutionalizing his work. Several people believed that Farmer’s work would not live on without him. But another person said that Farmer’s practice of dealing with the patient in front of him grounded him and enabled him to accomplish as much as he did.

Kidder described Farmer sacrificing his entire life to his work, which raised questions for me. Being married to a genius or a saint is no picnic. Farmer had a wife and child living in Paris, but we didn’t hear much about them and it sounded as though Farmer rarely saw them. He never seemed to relax either, spending all of his time seeing patients, traveling extensively, and raising funds. Do you have to give up everything else in order to do good work? I’ve tried to make Emerson’s motto “To think is to act” my own, but how far can you, should you take right action?

One member of my book club said that the book made her aware of the luxury and waste in her life. She thought she should sell everything she owned and give it where it might do some good. Of course, it would just be a miniscule drop of what was needed and might accomplish little. However, I did think that an unsung hero of the book was Tom White who devoted his entire fortune to financing Farmer’s ventures. Without White’s money, Farmer would not have gotten very far. And I most admired the way Farmer was undeterred by how the problems he addressed were huge and ultimately unsolvable.

On the other hand, self-sacrifice can be a trap. In The Birds of Paradise —a remarkable novel and one of my favorites—Paul Scott wrote about how seductive it could be to make a burnt offering of yourself. Not only can it feed the illusion of your own importance, but it becomes a way of avoiding other decisions and other responsibilities. However, if Kidder’s account was accurate, then Farmer was not concerned with his own glory, only with the health of the patient in front of him, a single person, not a theory or the public’s acclaim. My friend was right: that is the way to stay grounded.

A good read. Lippman spins a complex tale featuring her PI, Tess Monaghan, and finishes it off with an ending that satisfies my need for resolution while leaving some threads intriguingly loose—hurry up with that next book!

At the same time, she plays a bit with the conventions of the mystery form. For example, Spenser may have Hawk, but Tess’s sidekick is a truly frightening preppie princess from Greenspring Valley. Hilarious. Also, in this book Lippman foregoes the now almost obligatory physical assault on the PI, substituting a form of attack that is more realistic and—for me—much scarier.

She keeps the pace brisk without sacrificing the characters and sense of place that make her books so interesting. Of course it helps that they are set in Baltimore. The places she talks about are places I frequent and (in most cases) have frequented since the days when the only Lippman I’d heard of was her father.

Why is it so much fun to read a book set in a place I know? A familiar setting helps bring the story to life, especially when (as in this book) the author mentions recognizable local events and people. Certainly it’s easier for me to visualise a scene in a coffeehouse where I’ve spent way too much time or a park where I’ve walked my dog.

Most of all, I find it immensely satisfying to have my own observations reinforced. Lippman, like Anne Tyler, like David Simon, like John Waters (hey, my mom said to say hi to yours), like Barry Levinson, portray the Baltimore I know. You may think some of their characters and stories are off-beat, but I’m telling you, it happens here.

Okay, enough about motherhood already. I picked up this book because it had been recommended to me as a mystery. A hundred pages in, with no mystery having appeared, I set it aside. That’s twice as many pages as I usually give a book that doesn’t grab me, but I found parts of it funny and hoped it would get better.

Set in Hollywood, the book is about two men whose paths keep intersecting. Frank Bones is an on-the-verge-of-failing comic who is obsessed with sex, drugs and the Kennedy assassination. Lloyd Melnick is an insecure sitcom writer, obsessed with sex, status and not embarrassing himself.

These unattractive main characters simply did not interest me. I didn’t care what happened to them. And the satire about Hollywood—though occasionally quite funny—was too broad to keep me reading. I’m sure if I knew more about television shows I would have picked up more references, recognised more caricatures of Hollywood celebrities, and found the book more amusing.

I don’t get the whole celebrity thing. Who cares? I remember visiting my sister in L.A. many years ago. She invited her friends over to meet me, but all they could talk about were what celebrities they had seen around town, like kids trading baseball cards. They told me that if I was REALLY lucky, I might catch a glimpse of Jack Lemmon crossing the street. Oh boy.

I have looked at some of the gossip shows on tv, but couldn’t work up much interest. Anyway, knowing too much about actors distracts me when I’m trying to watch their films. There are few actors who can actually make me forget who they are and what other roles they have played. I don’t want to be thinking about their love lives or fashion sense when I’m sitting in the movie theatre.

Even though this book was not to my taste, I’m sure it is to others’ or it wouldn’t have been recommended to me. I’ll donate it to the library or put it on the book exchange shelf at the coffeeshop.

Now a motion picture, I first read this book when it came out and reread it recently. I’ve always enjoyed mysteries by P.D. James, their texture and intelligence. This book was equally well-written and I certainly found the premise interesting. However, by the end, I was disappointed to find the symbolism a bit heavy-handed.

The details of what a world without children might be like seemed completely believable, particularly the women who pretended dolls were their babies. What is this need to reproduce? I had both my children before I was twenty-five and—if circumstances had been different—could easily have gone on to have or adopt a half dozen more. It wasn’t that I wanted someone to love. Just the opposite, in fact; I was horrified to find that I would have to pay attention to another being every single minute of the day and night. Nor was it the reason some of my pregnant eighth-graders cited: “I want someone who will always love me.” Hoo-wee, I thought, are you in for a surprise!

My reason for having children was that the picture I had of my life—what I wanted my life to be like—included them. Of course, it also included a farm in the mountains, which I don’t have, but there you go. I expected to like my kids. What I didn’t expect was that I would adore them, each of them a miracle.

There are also all kinds of side benefits. Children gave me a great excuse to haul out my favorite picture books, play duck-duck-goose, and ride merry-go-rounds. Of course, the kids also took me on the roller coaster at Hershey Park, which scared the socks off me, but you get the bad with the good. Reliving childhood, a childhood that I could create, delighted me. Luckily for me, my kids not only went along with my crazy games but also were smart enough to ask me questions I couldn’t answer. As grown-ups, they’re pretty great to have around too.

If I hadn’t had children, I probably would be a morose and self-centered drama queen. Kudos to James for being able to imagine a world without children. It chills my bones just to think about it.

A series of letters from a woman to her husband, parents of a boy responsible for a massacre at his high school—I half-expected this book to be impossible to read. However, the narrator’s voice drew me in. Her ambivalence about becoming a parent seemed believable. The fact that she made a lot more money than her husband, yet had to be the one to stay home with the baby immediately attracted my sympathy. She seemed like someone I might know, one of my friends, although outside of a novel I probably would have gotten tired of her relentless self-centeredness.

I’m pretty gullible, completely snowed by people in books and in life, so I assume a narrator to be reliable unless overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary. Here there’s not enough evidence either way to decide. Was the mother correct that her son was born bad? Or was the father right that the child was normal but twisted by his mother’s distrust, no, dislike? I always blamed children’s behavior on their parents, until I had kids of my own and saw what strong personalities they had, right from day one. So I could believe either proposition about Kevin.

I know parents—my own mother being a prime example—who believe that all small children are out to get their parents and every interaction is a power struggle. Equally, I know two families where the parents—reasonable and pleasant people—have a child who from birth was at war with society in general and the parents in particular. Since the other kids are reasonable and pleasant, I have to absolve the parents of blame. Of course, one sibling’s upbringing can be very different from another’s.

We can never really know what goes on inside another family. That’s one reason I’m grateful for novels like this one that describe lives I haven’t lived. Even Kevin tugged at my sympathies. His explanation to the reporter for the murders (whether phony—as his mother believed—or not) reminded me of the monologue at the beginning of Trainspotting which also made me see the world a little differently. What seemed most real to me in this book was the way that Kevin was the only one who truly understood his mother.

By the way, those two wayward children I mentioned? Both have come around to having a loving relationship with parents and siblings. So, who knows?

These essays were first published in 1976; the 1986 edition I read included footnotes updating some of the issues. I first read this book in the late 70’s when I had two toddlers and was involved with the Women’s Movement. Already one of my favorite poets, Adrienne Rich seemed to be speaking directly to me in these essays about motherhood.

In rereading it now, I was afraid the book would seem dated—thirty years after its original publication and much has changed about women’s roles in society—but it still seemed fresh and even relevant. Yes, thankfully, we have more choices today about how we give birth and how we spend our lives.

Also, for many, parenting itself has changed; children are overscheduled with activities and overseen by “helicopter parents” who constantly hover around them, unlike when I was a child and a young mother when children ran free most of the time, supervised lightly if at all. Most days my mother had no idea where I was or what I was doing, and I had only slightly more insight into my children’s activities.

But the dynamics of motherhood do not seem to me to have changed. It doesn’t seem to matter which generation you talk to. I know some new graduates struggling to carve out independent lives, and a few elderly people still complaining about childhood mistreatment by their mothers. I even see middle-aged men and women engaged in sibling rivalry for a mother’s love.

Rich’s perceptive essays lay bare some of what is going on here, exploring literature and history to understand the dynamics of this potent bond. In this season, with so many celebrations about the birth of a child, it’s hard not to think about the mother, and the relationship of the mother and son.

In this first novel, a college student from Detroit goes to Mississippi to help register voters during Freedom Summer (1964 for those who’ve lost count). Nicholas brings to life the culture of racism in that time and place. Yes, there is plenty of racism today, but it was different then, more overt and acceptable. She also gives us a brilliant yet unromanticised rendering of the African-American community in Pineyville, the small town where Celeste spends the summer. Even the minor characters are fully drawn. We see the dissensions among them as well as the way they support each other.

I had forgotten what it was like back then. It seems incredible now that when I first went to school, I got in trouble for drinking out of the “colored” fountain (I thought the water would be blue and purple and green). Incredible that communities like Pineyville could decide on their own who could vote and what tests they had to pass before being allowed to register. That a man, a minister, could be beaten by the sheriff for daring to walk into the courthouse by the front door.

It is no easy thing to write about situations that outrage us. How to describe appalling injustices without ranting? How to relate the unbelievable so that we believe it? Nicholas uses three techniques, and manages them so effectively that it’s hard to believe this is her first novel.

First, she presents a rich portrait of Celeste’s life—teaching the children in Freedom School, complaining about having to use an outhouse, falling in love with another volunteer—and then drops in the moments of horror. Also, we experience those injustices through Celeste’s eyes and her genuine, yet mixed emotions: surprise, confusion, fear, anger. Finally, Nicholas anchors Celeste’s story with real incidents we all remember: the Birmingham church bombing, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the discovery of the bodies of the three murdered volunteers (James Earl Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman).

There were several times when I was so upset that I had to set the book aside, but then couldn’t resist picking it up again. Has it really been forty-two years? So much has changed since then. Not enough, but still, a lot.

Another mystery, this one set in Derbyshire where a prisoner has just been released after serving the mandatory thirteen years of his life sentence. Unrepentant, Mansell Quinn turns his back on the plans his probation officer has made and heads home. His ex-wife and old mates are still living in a cluster of villages—Edendale, Aston, Castleton, Ashbourne—within the area policed by DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry. I enjoyed the previous book in this series, Blind to the Bones especially the accuracy of his portrayal of morris dancers, both border morris and Cotswold. I found this book equally full of local color and fueled by a complex puzzle. I could have used a map, though, to help me keep clear the names of the villages and their relationship to each other.

In the opening chapter, Ben Cooper discovers that he is claustrophobic. He’s volunteered to help out with a cave rescue simulation in Peak Cavern, a tourist spot with many caves too dangerous for tourists. One of my brothers and his partner teach cave rescue. I haven’t run this book by them, but they did tell me that Nevada Barr’s Blind Descent (much of which was based on a real rescue in Lechiguilla in which my brother participated) was very accurate. Ben’s experience certainly felt real to me.

The way a phobia can come on suddenly in adulthood is interesting. For me it was acrophobia. After a childhood of climbing trees and walking along cliffs, I found myself at 36 at the top of Durham Cathedral, utterly unable to walk back down the stairs. Just looking down them made me feel faint. I was beginning to think I would have to spend the rest of my life up there, when a young boy—maybe seven or eight years old—came puffing up the stairs in his shorts and blazer. After letting him take a good look around, I asked if he would help me down the stairs, which he did, politely leading me by the hand while I kept my eyes closed.

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that at least one factor in this adult-onset phobia is that as adults we know all too well the risks we are taking. We’ve lost that childish sense of invulnerability. I believe it was Martina Navratilova (one of my idols) who mentioned in an interview that she no longer played all-out like the young tennis wonders because she was too conscious of the possibility of injury. That strategy has paid off for her by enabling her to continue competing long after the age when others retire. However, she hasn’t lost any of her competitive spirit, as I saw when she played in Pam Shriver’s Tennis Challenge this week. Although they were just exhibition matches (to benefit children’s charities), Martina couldn’t seem to resist slamming a winner across the net or fussing with herself for missing a shot.

Well, it’s a long way from a cave in Derbyshire to a tennis match in Baltimore, but how to handle fear, how much to give in to it, how to weigh the risks against the rewards—something to think about.

BJ is a friend of a friend who gave me a copy of her book a few weeks ago when a group of us met for dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Shepherdstown, WV. Actually she traded it for a copy of my book of poetry. Her book is a refreshing memoir about visiting a woman in a nearby nursing home.

Berry Morgan is a writer, whose books Pursuit and The Mystic Adventures of Roxie Stoner both received Houghton Mifflin Litereary Fellowship Awards. She also wrote fiction for The New Yorker between 1966 and 1988. BJ helps Berry by transcribing a memoir and some stories that Berry dictates, while at the same time Berry becomes a mentor to BJ, teaching her to write.

Among other things, Berry keeps saying to BJ: “You’re trying to do too many things at once” and “I wish you would just write.” Between part-time jobs, volunteer work, and trying to start a series of classes, BJ is always busy.

Berry’s advice resonated with me. For one reason or another, many of my regular activities have been suspended for the last few weeks, and I have found myself writing much more. It has not so much been that I’ve had more time to write as that I’ve been better able to concentrate when I do sit down to work.

I mentioned Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled a few weeks ago. After finishing the book, I read a review of it in the London Review of Books where Frank Kermode compared the fractured and frantic narrative to the distractions that pull a writer one way and another. And not just a successful writer like Ishiguro, though of course fame brings additional distractions.

I’m not willing to give up my other activities permanently—some of them are part of my exercise regimen and others give me a chance to get away from the computer and socialise—but I can sharpen my focus. Set the to-do list aside. Stop trying to do too much. Especially this time of year when the calendar quickly fills up with holiday traditions, social occasions and other, er, entertainment options.

Both of these special issues look at creative nonfiction/memoir, in the wake of the Jonathan Frey shipwreck. The Antioch Review's issue is subtitled Memoirs True and False. Editor Robert S. Fogarty in his introductory essay reminds us that this is not a new controversy, citing the reaction to Lillian Hellman’s Pentimento. He goes on to describe a number of memoirs, demonstrating their range and diversity. The essays that make up the bulk of the volume are also diverse, some giving an extraordinarily vivid view of an experience, others musing on the role of memory and memoirs. Creative Nonfiction's editor, Lee Gutkind, on the other hand, devotes the issue to explaining what the genre is and exploring some of the ethical issues faced by CNF writers.

One of these is how to handle dialogue. I know there are many readers who will not tolerate any dialogue whatsoever in a memoir, since it cannot be word-for-word accurate unless—like my son’s friend Lorne—the writer carried around a journal and transcribed every conversation as it happened. Other readers accept dialogue because it brings the scene to life and conveys an emotional truth.

Count me in the emotional truth camp. Picking up a memoir is, for me, like sitting down in a theatre. I know that the living room on the stage with its coral-striped rugs is not a real living room, and the deck with shells on the railing is not a real deck, but I’m willing to suspend my disbelief in order to enter into the story. If I want the facts about an event, I’ll go to the newspapers and history books, accepting even there the inevitable distortions. I go to a memoir for one person’s understanding of what happened. Obviously that person’s understanding is going to be skewed by the things s/he has selected to remember and the way those memories have been twisted by time, photographs, other people’s stories, etc.

There is substantial literary artifice involved in writing a memoir, even without the use of dialogue, if only in the selecting and ordering of events to create a narrative out of the chaos of a life lived. No writer—even a journalist—gives you every detail of a person’s appearance or every word that comes out of that person’s mouth. The writer selects details and quotes that support the narrative.

The further literary artifice of dialogue in a memoir doesn’t bother me. I trust that the writer is giving me the emotional truth of a conversation as the writer understands it. I trust that the writer is making a good faith effort to present not just dialogue but the events of the narrative as accurately as possible given the constraints of time and memory. Of course, sometimes that trust is betrayed. I personally draw the line at deliberate distortions such as creating composite characters and rearranging the chronology of events.

In a memoir, I don’t expect proclamations of truth handed down by an omniscient being. I expect to enter into the experience of another flawed human being, and welcome literary devices like dialogue that enhance that experience.