Spring 2023 ~~ Hooked on Contemporary Books

“Sometimes it’s easier to read than write. Sometimes reading inspires me to write.”   –B. Lynn Goodwin, who is the author of these reviews

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• One More Day
• By Diane Chiddister
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1633375529
• Columbus Press (October 2021)

Future Days

Most young people feel immortal. They believe they’ll live forever. Someday they’ll begin wondering what it’s like to be old. Later still, if they’re lucky, they’ll find out firsthand. As the body begins to wear out, though, and as the mind sometimes disintegrates, people often shift their beliefs about this life and the possibility of  another one. Diane Chiddister’s One More Day explores the aging process from the points of view of both patients and caregivers at the Grace Woods Care Center.

Beth, the executive in charge, cares very much for her residents. So does Sally, a lonely woman who connects with her patients and falls in love with a maintenance man working at the center. Thomas, a retired anthropology professor, approaches the end of life and the idea of crossing over with a great deal of curiosity. He sees visions of his deceased wife that surprise him since he doesn’t believe in an afterlife. He’s eager to be on the other side if he can be with her. Lillian has dementia and we get an inside look at how she sees the world and what she’s consistently seeking. The woman who comes to see her and claims to be her daughter couldn’t be Anna, because in her mind, Anna is a little girl. Her only solution is to run, and she does so often, despite repeated warnings from those in charge of Grace Woods Caregiver Center.

Author Diane Chiddister is a journalist and the editor of the Yellow Springs Journal in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She’s also a short story writer and 1981 MFA graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow.

This is a beautifully written and insightful look inside the thoughts, hopes, and fears of the staff and residents. I wish it had been available during my mother’s last days. It would have given me a much more enlightened perspective and it would have helped me understand the toll that caring for my mother was taking on me. I’ve read many books about the end of life, and this is one of the best. Wherever you are in your life’s journey, you should read this book to gain insight and perspective.

•  The Algorithm Will See You Now
• Written by J.L. Lycette
• ISBN-13 ‏: ‎ 978-1685131494
• Black Rose Writing (March 2, 2023)

AI and the Human Factor

Medicine could be pure science if it weren’t for the human factor, but it’s the human factor that drives most men and women to become good doctors. Most. Occasionally a person can be manipulated by dishonest actions or guilt or a craving for power. In JL Lycette’s novel The Algorithm Will See You Now, power struggles and a craving to do the right thing prevail. They live in the shadow of AI, which determines who deserves treatment and who will be a “non-responder.”

Dr. Hope Kestrel’s signs up to work for PRIMA in the hopes of finding ways to save people that were not available when her mother died of cancer during the year she turned 13. She sincerely believes that medical treatment determined by artificial intelligence could revolutionize healthcare.

PRIMA is AI and is able to determine who will respond to treatment and who should be declared untreatable. As she works at PRIMA, Hope discovers PRIMA has a fatal flaw, hidden from all but those at the head of the organization. Those doctors will stop at nothing to dominate the world’s healthcare–and its profits.

Once Hope is made the scapegoat for a patient’s death, only Jacie Stone, a gifted intern with a knack for computer science, is willing to help search for the truth. The program director is plotting to use AI far outside the ethical bounds of her physician’s oath. If she succeeds, she’ll have the God-like ability to make life and death decisions based on PRIMA’s recommendations. What would that do to physicians? You can probably imagine.

Reading this story, which is set in 2035, I can’t help wondering if this is science fiction or prognostication. This medical thriller invites you to take a fresh look at the powers we give AI, the powers people grab for themselves, and the struggles of those caught up in systems beyond their control. The author gives her characters realistic motivations that we all could be facing in a few years. Is this the future? If you read the book, I’d love to know your opinion.  

• Our Missing Hearts
• Written by Celeste Ng
• Penguin Press (October 4, 2022)
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593492543

Prophetic, Dystopian, or Hopeful?

Can a dystopian world creep up without our realizing it? If you’ve been living in the United States for the past 6 years, you might well think so. Or not. Celeste Ng shows us a different way it can be done in her newest novel Our Missing Hearts. In the dystopian world she’s created, children are taken from their parents and re-located if the parents agree with the dominant political point of view, which happens to be racist, sexist, and anti-thought.

Thanks to an organization called PACT (Preserving American Culture and Transitions Act), people  judge everyone else’s beliefs as inferior to their own. When a child is re-located, she or he becomes impossible to find, unless you know the secrets of a group of librarians, stealthily sharing information.

When 12-year-old Bird discovers drawings of cats drawn on a cryptic letter he begins remembering the stories his mother, a Chinese-American woman, told him before she went into a world he knows nothing about. As he tries to locate his mother, Bird learns about the lie that’s protected him from the awful truth in plain view and his mother’s determination to fight it. One of his mother’s poems caught the fancy of rebels, who make the phrase “Our Missing Hearts” their secret code for locating the missing children and reuniting them with their parents.

Bird is torn between his mother’s and father’s worlds, a choice no child should have to make. Can the two parents come together or has the dystopian nature of their world made that impossible?

My AAUW Book Club read this novel. While some of the members felt that things were left unresolved, I decided they were open-ended—much like the future we’re facing today. Is this a prophetic glimpse into a dystopian future; a story about family, race, and the search for unity; or a myth with sociological issues? I’d love to know what you think.

Author Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She graduated from Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan).  Her fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, and many other publications, and she is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors.

I highly recommend this book because it should generate new ideas and questions. It’s also a story of suspense and fear with a lot of hope mixed in. If you like fiction and aren’t afraid of contemplating dystopian possibilities, pick up a copy today.

• The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times
• Written by Jane Goodall, Douglas Abrams, and Gail Hudson
  ISBN #: 978-1250784094
• Celadon Books; 1st edition (October 19, 2021)

The Story of a Living Legend

Jane Goodall was 87 when Douglas Abrams interviewed her about her attitude towards life, nature, survival, and her views on hope. What do you think you might have to say about hope when you turn 90? Ms. Goodall’s answers and her philosophies about life, travel, nature, youth, chimpanzees, the human intellect, and the human spirit are all recorded with great respect for her accomplishments in The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.  Although the pandemic interfered with their meetings, they saw it as an obstacle to conquer rather than an impediment to reaching their goals. Typical Jane Goodall. As she discusses her life’s experiences, we discover several sources of her indomitable spirit.

To speak with Goodall, Abrams traveled first to her home in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and later to a cabin at which she was staying in the Netherlands; the final meeting, planned for Goodall’s family home in Bournemouth, England, took place over Zoom because of the pandemic.

Some of her beliefs are the best recommendation for this book. She knows that no animal “would not destroy its only home” as humans are currently doing, but believes people have the  intelligence to come up with new innovations like “renewable energy, regenerative farming and permaculture, moving toward a plant-based diet.” She sees nature renewing itself as dying species are brought back to life and wants young people to find hope despite the seemingly hopeless conditions of today’s world. Because the human spirit is indomitable, this seems possible—maybe even probable for those who are exposed to her generous spirit.

Goodall’s advice? “Let us use the gift of our lives to make this a better world.” Her hope is contagious for readers who bring an open mind to the book. It certainly beats the alternative.

Embrace possibilities by reading the words of an exceptional environmentalist and the man who interviewed her?

• FORGIVE ME
• Written by Susan Lewis
• ISBN #: 978-0062906625
• William Morrow Paperbacks (January 26, 2021)

Vengeance, Forgiveness, and a Whole Lot of Love

Have you ever wanted to ask someone for forgiveness after a horrible mistake? Have you ever had problems giving forgiveness? If you’re familiar  with either of these situations, you need to read Susan Lewis’s Forgive Me.

Restorative Justice is a program in which a criminal writes to his victim, explaining what he did and why. Dan, a program advocate, encourages Archie, who’s sitting in prison awaiting trial, to write to the previously positive and elegant grandmother who was severely burned by a fire he started when he thought her new house was empty. It’s also the story of a woman fleeing from her abusive husband with her teenage daughter and mother, who happens to be the woman that returned home with a cold and was badly burned.

Will Archie and his victim ever meet face to face? Can the badly scarred grandmother find new hope? Will the abusive husband who vengefully ordered the fire from prison be caught?

Lewis’s story is driven by complex emotional issues that will rivet your attention as four interpretations on two criminal acts and the consequences of bad behavior evolve. Apart from the ex-husband in prison, these are three-dimensional characters coping with a grave situation.

In Susan Lewis’s skilled hands, the situation turns into an emotionally gripping novel about love, trust, forgiveness, and starting over. Her plotting and character development are wonderful, and so is her imagination. A British author, Lewis resides in in the rural county of Gloucestershire, U.K. and is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-nine novels. If you haven’t read this one and you care about forgiveness, grab a copy as soon as you can.