What I Read in June
When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank
5/5 Stars
Ronit was six years old when her mother left her and her four-year-old sister for India to follow a guru. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose commune was responsible for the largest biological attack on U.S. soil, preached that children were hindrances and encouraged sterilizations among his followers. Luckily Ronit's father, who'd left the family the previous year, stepped up and brought the girls to live with him first in Newark, New Jersey, and later in Flushing, Queens. On the surface, his nurturing was the balm Ronit sought, but she soon paid a second emotional price, taking on the role of partner and confidant to him, and substitute mother to her sister. By the end of her childhood, Ronit would discover she had lost her mother and the close and trusting relationship she once had with her father.
This is a really heartbreaking yet redemptive story of childhood resilience. Despite the events in the book, Ronit writes from a place of sympathy and desire to understand her parents, which is so commendable. Working through how her mother's abandonment of Ronit and her family affected her world view was tragic and yet fascinating. I just wanted to hug young Ronit!
This was also an interesting look at communal living. Ronit compared one relatively favorable experience growing up on the Kibbutz in Israel with the extreme anti-children attitude on the Rajneesh commune. I liked that both were presented, rather than a one-sided argument of traditional home = good, commune = bad.
One thing to note: this is not a story about the Rajneesh cult. It has a spectral presence in the memoir, but the real heart of the book is Ronit's ability to build her own childhood while her mother was away.
K2: Triumph and Tragedy by Jim Curran
5/5 Stars
K2, "the savage mountain", is the second-highest peak in the world - and the most difficult to climb. In 1986, it was the site of both dazzling triumph and great loss as twenty-seven men and women reached the top but thirteen died trying. Curran was there to record it all in words and photographs as a climbing cameraman with an unsuccessful British expedition.
I'm a huge fan of mountaineering books, and this one didn't disappoint. The storytelling is straightforward and gripping at times, although I had a tough time keeping all the names straight. Curran does a great job of describing the mountain, the routes, and the terrain so I could easily picture it.
I appreciated the section in the book where Curran tries to identify a common thread through all the accidents of that season. It's like a detective novel where we have all these facts and first-hand accounts and must deduce what happened. I think that's what makes mountaineering so interesting to me: even without the weather or the mountain as factors, there are so many human errors, emotional biases, and communication variables that can affect an expedition.
Curran, although not objective, takes a moral stance that people can't be held guilty for leaving others to die on the mountain. It's interesting that in 1986 this wasn't the attitude, and people thought it was "unsportsmanlike" to do so. But in Into Thin Air, which takes place 10 years later, it seems understood that saving someone else poses a huge danger to the rescuer, and when put in such an extreme survival circumstance, saving yourself is the difficult choice most people would make.
There's an interesting tidbit in the very last appendix "The Stranger on the Shoulder" which you should definitely read! Mind-blowing!
My one criticism of this book is that it refers to 40-year-old women as "the girls" and an entire team of Koreans don't have names until the back half of the book. Every other white team gets an introduction to at least their foremost climber, some stats on their previous accomplishments, and a description of their appearance. I know there was a language barrier and Curran didn't spend much time with them on the mountain, which is fair enough. But he couldn't be bothered to research them after the fact for his book? Were these experienced climbers? What had they climbed before? What were they like? Guess not worth writing about…
Haven Point by Virginia Hume
3/5 Stars
A sweeping debut novel about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on Maine's rocky coastline.
Solidly woven family drama about intergenerational relationships and class tensions. I liked the Maine setting and the characters all felt fully developed. The writing was stable although not dazzling, but it made the story easy to follow.
However, I felt like this is your generic family drama, like I had heard this story before somewhere. I didn't feel like these characters were particularly special or memorable.
Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
3/5 Stars
A satirical novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems.
I lost patience with this one. Obviously I know the book is criticizing toxic work culture, toxic masculinity, and racism, but that doesn't make it any less painful to read. Especially the toxic masculinity and weird, random sexism/objectification. In one argument between the main character and his girlfriend, the narrator says something like "Her crossed arms pushed up her breasts like they were two ripe melons." Like A) why, and B) that's cliche and unoriginal. Melons for boobs? Groundbreaking.
Despite obnoxious characters, the plot was interesting enough. I was rooting for "Buck" even though red flags that this place is a cult were glaringly obvious. But the pace held up all the way through, so if you want a fast-paced read about toxic work culture and racism, this might be for you.
Impostor Syndrome by Kathy Wang
4/5 Stars
In 2006 Julia Lerner is living in Moscow when she’s recruited by Russia’s largest intelligence agency. By 2018 she’s in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America’s most famous technology companies, where she funnels intelligence back to the motherland. But now Russia's asking for more, and Julia’s getting nervous.
Alice Lu is a low-level employee who, while performing a server check, discovers some unusual activity, and now she’s burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine’s privacy settings aren’t as rigorous as the company claims they are, and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself.
The closer Alice gets to Julia, the more Julia questions her own loyalties. Russia may have placed her in the Valley, but she's the one who built her career; isn’t she entitled to protect the lifestyle she’s earned?
Overall a very well-written cat-and-mouse tale set in Silicon Valley. I liked the power struggle between the two main women, even though they actually never really confront each other. The characters were intriguing and the plot kept up the pace all the way through, but I do wish the plot had been pushed to more conflict. In a lot of ways, the characters get let off the hook. We seem to be building toward big confrontations, but they never come.
