Books: 777

“Are You Happy?”
Lori Ostlund
Astra House
$26

This seemingly innocuous question Ostlund (“After the Parade”) poses has as many cunningly hidden pitfalls as a jungle tiger trap. If “Yes,” then at what cost? If “No,” the same gauge applies. Characters may be straight or queer, suffer from a lack — or presence — of a partner. An airplane crash survivor may find the path to freedom while a settled nighttime Adult Ed teacher draws a stalker. Ranging from California to New Mexico to Minnesota, most of these individuals strive to create a happier future, although others choose willfully to remain mired in the past. Ostlund’s genius is not in describing inevitable gloom but illuminating the mantle of indecision over any decision. One blurb claimed the reader “couldn’t put this book down.” Nor could I.

“The Old Man and the Queer”
Jeff Comerchero and E.J. Radford
Purple Passion Press
$18.99

One, a successful straight businessman, retired City Mayor of Temecula, Calif.; another, young, queer, non-binary, richly tattooed. Father’s Day gift to a men’s hair spa brings the Old Man into the young Queer’s world; not the elder’s cup of tea, but he rethinks his bigotry. A later conversation blossomed into friendship, each accessing the personhood of the other. Having gained personal healing, they decided to reach out together to others, then to write this book. In their literary collaboration, each narrates their life in their own words in alternating sections. The result is neither opposition nor competition, but an exploration of how each human plays the hand they’re dealt and how opening to empathy and compassion can heal. Now they routinely share healing with others as well.

“Anoxia”
Miguel Ángel Hernández tr. Adrian Nathan West
Other Press
$17.99

How do we negotiate our time here on Earth? How do we deal with those who have departed? Grief can be nearly solid or subtly infuse itself within the grief-stricken as intangibly as a puff of smoke. For Dolores Ayala, it’s been a decade since the death of her husband Luis, with whom she had run a photography shop, and she has retreated from much of life. Suddenly, she’s requested to take a portrait the day of the subject’s funeral. This leads to her association with an elderly man who wishes to bring back such mortuary photography. They start such a business project, and Dolores must face not only her reentry into life but also darker secrets about death and grief she’s kept buried for 10 long years.

“Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism”
Sebastian Smee
W. W. Norton & Co.
$35

Summer 1870 through spring 1871 was truly a “Terrible Year” for Paris. While warring with Germans, French troops and citizens retreated into the City confines where they were trapped; besieged, starved to the point of consuming horses, domesticated pets, vermin and, finally, the denizens of both zoos, until reaching a final surrender. No surcease even then, as internal strife erupted, radical republicans creating the Commune, including bloody street battles and central Paris consumed in flames. Against this chaotic background, Smee describes the artists of the time, particularly the careers of young Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas and the indomitable Berthe Morisot. Not merely history, nor yet pure art critique, but more a biological treatment of Impressionism as it evolved from ruin and rubble into splendor.