Back to the Beach

When I read "Those Who Save Us" by Jenna Blum, I was hooked from the first sentence. I especially loved the way Blum portrayed each character's multiple facets; kind and cruel, good and evil, strong and weak. I have recommended this book to everyone.

In my "beach book" mode this summer, I have read far too many books with one-dimensional characters. So, when I saw that Blum had written a new book, "The Stormchasers", I was thrilled. This time, Blum tells the story of twins. When the book opens, they have not seen each other for twenty years, much to the dismay of Karena, a reporter. She is always searching for her brother Charles, a stormchaser who is bipolar and refuses to take medication. She cons her paper into sending her on assignment with a group of stormchasers in order to find Charles. First, Karena finds love with stormchaser Kevin, and then she finds Charles. The scenes between Kevin and Karena are tender and sweet, and their romance is easy to feel. The book never succeeds for me, however, because I found nothing to care about in Charles. It goes without saying that anyone who suffers from severe mental illness has a tragic life. And Blum makes Charles unable to tolerate medications, so that his illness is life-long. But,even when Charles is on his "good" behavior he is not a character I could care about. In fact, I found him boring, and hoped he would get lost for another twenty years.

A few years ago, there was a great holiday movie, "Love, Actually". It was comprised of all kinds of love stories and one of them concerned the devotion a sister has for her mentally ill brother. I remember thinking, when I watched it, that the sister was simply avoiding her own life by being so devoted to her brother.

I felt the same way about Karena's obsession for Charles. As Blum portrayed him, he simply wasn't worth all the time, love, worry, and angst that Karena spent on him. He also constantly addressed her as "sistah", which was as annoying as Kevin calling her "Laredo". These are perhaps small points, but they kept the characters one-dimensional, the last thing I would have expected from Jenna Blum.

So, I went back to the beach, specifically Nantucket, and a new book by one of my favorite authors, Nancy Thayer, called "Beachcombers". This is Thayer's twentieth published novel. Her writing is smooth and comfortable, her characters are people I want to meet, the places she mentions are places I want to see. Take this one on your vacation, no matter where you go.

There once was a book about Nantucket.....

As I suspected I would, I read all of the Elin Hildebrand books I could find on the library shelves...."Nantucket Nights" about a woman who disappears while swimming at night, "Castaways", about a couple who disappears while sailing and a woman still reeling from her twin's death on 9/11, "Barefoot", about a woman undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer and a young man still dealing with his mother's suicide, and "The Blue Bistro", about a hot restaurant's final year because...yes, the chef is dying. So, I endured the terrible heat wave reading about people on Nantucket while our two little air conditioners bravely tried to keep two little rooms cool...but what I was really reading about were rich people and death. Beach books about the dead and dying must be a new type of literature..."buried in the sand lit"??

These are not books that made me think but entertained me. The young couples in "Castaways" (except for one rich duo)have jobs including police chief, teacher, farmer, restaurant hostess and musician, yet they take group vacations without the kids to Vegas, Mexico, South Beach, England, and "The Point", which is the most expensive resort in the Adirondacks. (I just checked, and rooms for two are either $1,350 or $1,850 per night.) Plus, they own real estate on Nantucket! The assistant restaurant manager in "Blue Bistro", who arrives in Nantucket penniless, can almost immediately afford Jimmy Choo and Kate Spade shoes. In the world Hildebrand creates there are no poor or unattractive people. There I was, sweltering in my size fourteen shorts from Boscov's, drinking ginger ale out of a plastic cup hoping for a trip to "Cracker Barrel" and reading about elegance and beauty and beaches and...oh yeah, death.

As I read about the beautiful people in Hildebrand's Nantucket, my memory pulled me to our visits to Misquamicut Beach on the coast of Rhode Island. There, everyone seemed to have a minimum of three tattoos and though the women were "plus size" they proudly wore two piece bathing suits. The men smoked cigarettes non-stop and swilled cold beers, and the kids wore loaded pull-ups and ate french fries with a side of cotton candy, the kind that comes in a plastic bag. (I just checked, and an entire house in that area can be rented for $1,500 per week.) I know I would read a book about the folks who vacation there, because right now I am reading a book of short stories about just these people. The stories are funny, beautiful, thought-provoking, deeply sad, and make me wish, more than anything, that I had the author's gift. The book is "Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-eyed Stranger" and the author is my idol, Lee Smith.

Enjoy all the beach books you want this summer...but when you want to think and feel and be happy just to be alive, read one of Lee Smith's new stories.