Neshama’s Choices for December 2

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The Hearing Test by Elizabeth Callahan

What’s it like when a sense most of us take for granted suddenly starts to fail? The narrator takes us on her painful journey step by step, starting with weird noises, and then a scary diagnosis with no apparent remedy. She lives alone with a little dog and chronicles her challenges and frustrations with trenchant observations. She also brings in reflections on the positive aspects of silence from the realms of philosophy and the arts. Like the reference to John Cage, who composed a piece called 4 minutes 33 seconds in which the pianist comes out and just sits there quietly for the duration. From her acknowledgments, I deduced that she was writing about personal experience.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

North Dakota is the setting, where agribusiness is fueling the economy and destroying the environment. A dramatic cast of characters act out the struggles, including Crystal who drives a truck hauling sugar beets. It’s grueling work and that vegetable is one of the worst depredators. Her daughter is about to marry Gary, the son of a big land-owning family, but another suitor, her old childhood friend Hugo who’s huge, odd, and very smart, wants to claim her. I found aspects of the book somewhat heavy-handed; for example, Crystal’s daughter’s name is Kismet Poe. But I was swept along by the story and glad Erdrich is beating a critical drum to increase consciousness about that devastating practice.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Sadie (not her real name) says she comes from a California town that’s a dot on the map with zero population. But what do they know in rural France, where she’s arrived to infiltrate a commune preparing to demonstrate against the development of a huge artificial lake? She’s a spy for hire, very clever, manipulative, and cold-blooded. Among the locals is Bruno, an old hermit who lives in a cave and has lots of theories about the nature of Neanderthals; he believes they might have been superior to the current homo sapiens who are making such a mess of things. I watched Sadie do her seductive dirty work with horror fascination and, as often happens on the page, I found myself hoping she’d survive the mess she’d added to. (Read it and find out…)

Guilty Creatures by Mikita Brotman

Subtitled: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida. What’s not to love? It’s a guilty pleasure of mine, along with the legions of fans who tune into true crime podcasts. The wrinkle in this one: how God plays into it. The two couples, Mike and Denise and Kathy and Brian were good friends and devout Southern Baptists. Mike disappeared on a supposedly solo hunting trip, Brian and Kathy divorced, and Brian married Mike’s widow Denise who’d been his lover. Mike’s body never surfaced. Had he been devoured by an alligator? The perpetrators somehow managed to bypass their guilty consciences through denial and the belief that this was what it meant to happen and God forgave them. After 17 years Brian, who did the deed, finally cracked. Through a plea deal, he didn’t face murder charges, but his inamorata Denise was judged guilty as an accessory. Mike’s mother Crystal never stopped searching for her son but hoped against hope that he was alive somewhere. The author is also a psychoanalyst, which adds another dimension to this riveting, lurid tale.