The Escape Artist

My need to impress my parents trumped my own interests, whatever they were  . . . My mother always insisted on secrecy, as if we would die from the truth.

Helen Fremont’s 2020 memoir about family mysteries, her second such book, following the 1999 publication of After Long Silence, is a Holocaust story with a twist. In observing a clan that colludes to change not just their public identities but their private histories, we see the effect of survivor’s guilt and trauma on the next generation.

Two sisters, taught that their love for each other should trump all, struggle with the hidden legacy of mental illness and an overbearing mother who sees Helen’s efforts at a fuller social life as domestic mutiny. Thus the title, The Escape Artist, as she explains in this interview . Her alienation, ultimately culminating in the mid-life shock of being disowned and declared dead by her beloved father, is the impetus for this saga which spans eighty years and three countries.

Trigger warning: I found this audiobook (at nearly nine hours) to be a suspenseful and soul-searching account of borderline personality disorder, anorexia, and bulimia, with the added suggestion of child molestation.

Transformed

None of life’s experiences are wasted.

Pop culture is not my thing, but I love memoirs. I therefore did not know when I purchased this one that Remi Adeleke was already known to much of America for his acting appearances in such projects as the latest Transformers film, the Plague Ship series, and commercials for Jockey. Hailed as “one of the most beautiful men that God ever created” by Today host Kathie Lee, he went from Nigerian royal to Bronx hustler, Navy Seal, actor, and author in a twenty-five-year span of his young life. The heart of the story, however, is his hard-won journey to become a special forces warrior, the elite of the elite, despite repeated failures along the way.

This testament to the power of hard work and determination then takes a spiritual turn two-thirds of the way into the narrative when he is born again becomes a preacher. Of course, in order for there to be a spiritual transformation, there must be transgression, and his is so big I almost quit listening. He’s a player with a capital P, but he addresses his sexual addiction with sincerity and convincing repentance.  

At just over eleven hours, this memoir, narrated by the author, is visual, entertaining, and provocative. For a quick recap of his unlikely journey, watch this interview and photo montage .

I’m the One that Got Away

Man, woman, child, or beast, it didn’t matter. He could make you his.

Some guys are just bad news. And sadly, they often look like someone lovable—say for instance, Nick Nolte. Such was the narcissistic shadow-dad of Andrea Jarrell’s youth, a smalltime actor with a bigtime ego. Anyone who has ever feared for their welfare or that of a loved one under an abuser’s spell will appreciate this little gem of a memoir. The Audible version, at four-and-a-half hours read by Hilary Huber, will keep you in suspense as Jarrell and her mother alternately embrace and rebuff this man-child alcoholic and she learns to lead a healthy adult life untainted by addictions. For a taste of her vivid writing style, watch this book trailer.  

Dracula

Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.

A blood-sucking monster’s reign ended on November 6. I am, of course, referring to Dracula [depicted here by Bela Lugosi], the vampire in Bram Stoker’s classic of gothic horror. I first read this epistolary novel at thirteen, on the recommendation of a teacher who said it scared her away from her basement laundry room for a week. I didn’t understand all the logistics then, but the lore of the undead was so artfully wrought that I have been drawn to revisit it again and again, most recently in the fifteen-hour Audible recording starring Tim Curry.

The world has changed more than Stoker could have envisioned in the century and a quarter since the Count debuted. International travel is a matter of hours rather than weeks. Women would not stand to be patronized as the heroines Mina and Lucy were. The language is formal to modern ears. Transfusions were so innovative that blood typing was unknown, adding unintended suspense to the plot, as explained in this light-hearted medical article. But therein lies the book’s wonder and charm, the step back into the mists of time feels stranger and stronger now than it did even fifty years ago. There are many long dark nights ahead in this pandemic, just ripe for an escapist scare.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative—whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives.

Oliver Sacks is perhaps the world’s best-known neurologist, largely due to the 1990 Robin Williams film Awakenings, about his surprising results using L-Dopa to treat Parkinson’s patients. Nevertheless, this collection of sympathetic accounts detailing the trials of clinically extreme oddities is no less arresting. Take for example the title subject, a professor of music suffering from visual agnosia, or the inability to recognize ordinary objects and people out of context, as recounted in this 2014 film adaptation.

Other stories address maladies divided into the four categories of loss [involving memory, speech, equilibrium, and the senses]; excess [including Tourette’s Syndrome, fabricated identity, and a condition of heightened flirtation dubbed Cupid’s Disease; transports [such as visions, musical epilepsy, hallucinations, and other escapes]; and the world of the simple [including autistic savants].

These twenty-four essays [243 pages] are written in common parlance that enlightens with enough clinical jargon to satisfy the scientifically curious while still entertaining the merely curious. This is no beach read, but the characters will stay with you regardless.   

Born on a Blue Day

I was born on January 31, 1979—a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing.

Daniel Tammet’s memoir is unlike any other you’re likely to read. He speaks ten world languages and created another. He holds the European record for memorizing the digits in Pi (to 22,514 digits). He also has synesthesia, a blending of the senses that, in his case, imbues numbers and words with shapes and colors. On the flip side, he cannot navigate a subway or start his day without a precisely measured quantity of oatmeal and a meticulous count of the clothes on his back. Nicknamed Brainman for his affinity to the Dustin Hoffman character in Rain Man, Tammet is an autistic savant, albeit a high-functioning one who has attained great professional and personal success in the great and scary world.

This first of several literary titles by him, praised by Booklist magazine for “the clearest prose this side of Hemingway”, is an honest glimpse into the beautiful mind of a tender soul misunderstood by all but his loving and patient parents—an anxious child who calms himself with counting and combs the library for the book with his name on the spine because he believes there is one for each of us somewhere in the collection.

Because Tammet’s condition is seven times more common in creative people than in the general population, his tale will likely resonate with that of someone you know and love. At 226 pages of straightforward narrative, this 2006 breakout title is an engrossing story you will devour in a weekend and recommend to all your friends. Here’s a snippet from his interview with David Letterman, which aired in the run-up to the one-hour Brainman documentary.

The Taster

I saw little of Hitler during the early months of 1944. . . He was surly, irritable, and always directed blame away from himself to those beneath him. Hitler the Infallible could do no wrong. (He) had the uncanny knack of refusing the sound advice of his generals and then excoriating them for losses of men and material. They were doomed by his failure to listen, his belief in his omnipotence.

V.S. Alexander’s historical fiction about the expendable servants who shielded Hitler by tasting his food is not especially quotable, but I replayed this passage of the audiobook numerous times, so struck was I by the chilling parallels to Donald Trump.

Politics aside, here is a measured look at life in the führer’s shadow as told by a young woman reluctantly drawn into his web by the circumstances of war. Part chronicle and part romance involving a traitorous SS officer, this twelve-hour listen is a suspenseful tale of treachery seasoned with a crash course in poisons.

It is always intriguing to ponder where authors get their ideas, and in this case I’m guessing it was the sole-surviving taster of the Hitler regime, Margo Woelk, whose story made a media splash five years before Alexander published her novel. Here is Woelk’s account, as reported on Newsy TV in 2013.

Vinegar Hill

. . . the more she has tried to claim God, the more He has rejected her. She wants to be lost in Him, but He vomits her out again and again, and each time He asks even more from her before He’ll permit her return.

Catholic guilt in the Sixties held together many a floundering marriage, but it might not be strong enough to bind 30-something Ellen in stale servitude to a man who has forgotten how to love his family under the oppressive roof of his parents’ home—where unpardonable secrets lurk behind their parochial edicts.

For a novel where not much happens, there’s a lot of desperate misery and a touch of madness. For that reason, despite the critical praise for A. Manette Ansay’s sensuous prose and vivid characters, and despite Oprah’s endorsement, I cannot recommend this 1994 novel during these times already mired in so much depression.

Washington Black

There are several kinds of happiness . . . Sometimes we don’t understand the one granted to us.

Picture a Caribbean slave boy, alone in a cruel world save for one mercurial mother-figure. Picture him plucked from the fields to assist a scientist, given a pen that unlocks his artistic genius. Picture him hideously disfigured, whisked away in a hot-air balloon, and taken to the Arctic only to be abandoned by his “savior”. Picture him on the run from bounty hunters and his own guilt at beating destiny as he searches for his identity and finds love. Picture yourself transported by a tale that is anything but predictable. Equal parts Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens and Jules Verne, it’s not hard to picture why Esi Edugyan’s 2018 genre-defying fiction Washington Black won Canada’s Giller Prize and was shortlisted for The Man Booker.

Despite the book’s tremendous success, there are detractors who ask what it’s all about, but don’t let that dissuade you from embarking on the adventure. Sometimes the reason for what happens is that there is no reason, and that too is a fine premise for a story. Regardless, Wash’s story will ensnare you with its imagination and contemplative quest. Curious about the author’s intent? Watch is Waterstones Interview with the author.

One Man’s Wilderness

The most exciting part of the adventure was putting self-reliance on trial. . . a man has missed a very deep feeling of satisfaction if he has never created or at least completed something with his own two hands.

I seem to be on a survivalist kick this year. If the pandemic has given you cabin fever too, imagine living alone in a log cabin for thirty years—in southern Alaska! That’s the story of Richard Proenneke, perhaps the world’s most fastidious bachelor builder.

In 1968 he hand-crafted a picture-perfection dwelling in just four months, documenting the process on film to create the Alone in the Wilderness documentaries and a best-selling memoir about his first year, written by his good friend Sam Keith in 1973.The 1999 rerelease then went on to win won the National Outdoor Book Award.

Pioneer living never looked so appealing or attainable until Proenneke broke down the process of fitting together his Lincoln logs with nothing but finely honed hand tools, the handles of which he made himself upon arrival. He created a stone fireplace emblazoned with a cast of a wolf’s paw. He fished year-round, hiked the mountains, tamed the birds, courted a wolverine, marveled at avalanches, and escaped an encounter with a charging bear. A tempest of energy, he kept himself going on a simple diet consisting mainly of sourdough and beans, and kept his home showplace-ready. Each day at a desk with a picture window he logged the day’s temperatures, from eighty to minus forty-five degrees, and ice—up to three feet thick. This is a refreshingly quick and cool read for the dog days of August. Keith’s writing is straightforward and simple, but the photos are endlessly intriguing.