Elderly Women Prime Targets for Cons
Found this fascinating article this morning on AOL News/finance There was a time when I worked with transitional homeless people, helping them to find ways to re-enter the mainstream. A percentage of them didn’t want to enter the mainstream, they didn’t like rules, and they were looking for an easier way. One of the paths was by being part of the elder-worker force. I would watch them take a job and then work their way into a position of dominance in an elderly person’s life. Partly, the elderly were lonely, and thrived on the new attention, and interpreted it as caring.
Then would come the sob stories. School starting and not enough money to buy shoes and books for the children. A broken-down car, and funds needed to get it fixed so she can get to her job. Once it starts, it never ends.
The key to prevention is staying engaged with friends, neighbors and family who are paying attention, and can give perspective to this new relationship. The one question I asked is “if there were not money involved, would this relationship exist?”
Elder Abuse: How to Protect Grandma From Con Men and Thieves
By Sheryl Nance-Nash Posted 9:00AM 06/03/11 Retirement, People, MetLife
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/lXHooJ
Who would pick the pocket of your grandma or grandpa? Apparently, any number of people. Older Americans are losing $2.9 billion annually to elder financial abuse, a 12% increase from the $2.6 billion estimated in 2008, according to The MetLife Study of Elder Financial Abuse: Crimes of Occasion, Desperation, and Predation Against America’s Elders, released Wednesday.
According to the study, 51% of these abusers are strangers, but 34% of the perpetrators were family, friends and neighbors. As for “trusted advisers,” exploitation from the business sector accounted for 12% of reported cases. Medicare and Medicaid fraud accounts for 4% of reported cases. As a subset, the percentage of robberies and crimes classified as “scams perpetrated by strangers” increased from 9% to 28% from 2008 to 2010.
Who’s on the top of the target list? Women. The study, produced by the MetLife (MET) Mature Market Institute in collaboration with the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse and the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, shows women were nearly twice as likely to be victims of elder financial abuse as men.
Also prime for the picking were people between the ages of 80 and 89 who lived alone and required some help with either health care or home maintenance. Primarily, men were the menace: Nearly 60% of perpetrators were males, mostly between ages 30 and 59.
Predators lie in wait, watching: In the most common scenarios, strangers targeted victims who were out shopping, driving or managing the financial affairs, and often looked for particular flags of vulnerability like handicapped tags on cars, canes or displays of confusion. Crimes included cons, purse snatchings and associated physical assaults.
But that even those closest to an elderly person can give in to temptation or desperation. In cases involving a person known to the victim, trusted helpers like caretakers, handymen, friends, “sweethearts,” children, lawyers and others seized upon opportunities to forge checks, steal credit cards, pilfer bank accounts, transfer assets and generally decimate elders’ finances, the study revealed. The holidays apparently bring out the worst in people: At that time of year, overall dollar losses due to family and friends were higher than any other category.
Married to the Con Job
People can get quite creative with abuse. One unusual method — caregivers secretly marrying their elderly charges, says Susan Slater-Jansen, an attorney at Kurzman Eisenberg Corbin & Lever.
There have been numerous lawsuits over cases in which a caregiver married a mentally incapacitated older patient and the patient’s family didn’t learn about it until after the patient had died. Once a person is dead, it’s too late — in all but three states, you can’t void a marriage if one spouse has died, says Slater-Jansen. To help lower the odds of such a thing happening to your parent, adult children should make sure they receive duplicate monthly statements from all bank and brokerage accounts; install nanny cams; carefully and thoroughly check references for all caregivers; visit parents often, both while the caregiver is there and when they are not; and discuss with your parents the treatment they are receiving from caregivers.
If you discover such a fraudulent marriage has taken place, act quickly to get it annulled.
After the parent dies, heirs can sue to recover money from the “spouse.” More and more, courts have found ways to deny spouses if the marriage was fraudulent, says Slater-Jansen.
“The most flagrant abuse is perpetrated on the elder by the hired caregiver, neighbor, or ‘new’ friend,” warns Karen Maarse Fitzgerald, a principal in her own elder law practice. “A simple power of attorney signed by the elder can give to the “agent” broad and sweeping powers over the elder’s life savings. I have seen bank accounts drained within days, the money and perpetrator vanishing to another country.”
Protection Yourself and Your Relatives
The worst forms of elder abuse go beyond money: There can be physical abuse and sexual violence as well. “The vigilance of friends and family can help protect elders from those who are predatory, which may, unfortunately, include strangers or even other loved ones,” said Sandra Timmermann, Ed.D., director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute, in a prepared statement.
What can the elderly do to protect themselves? Among the guidance offered by the report’s authors:
“Stay active and engage with others; socialize with your family members and friends. Avoid isolation, as it can lead to loneliness, depression, and make you more vulnerable to financial abuse or exploitation.”
“Use direct deposit for Social Security and other payments to prevent mail theft. Sign your own checks whenever possible.”
“Stay organized and keep important papers and legal documents in a safe, secure location.”
“Review your legal documents (i.e., wills, trusts, and power of attorney), as well as other important documents (i.e., insurance policies) at least annually, to make certain they continue to represent your wishes.”
Ted Sarenski, who chairs the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Elder Planning Task Force, would add to that list. His tips:
Subscribe to national and state Do Not Call lists;
Keep Social Security cards in a safe place;
Remove mail promptly from the mailbox;
Shred all confidential and financial information prior to discarding.
“Consider allowing the bank to send a duplicate copy of your bank statement to a trusted family member,” advises attorney Andrew Stoltmann, who has a large client base of seniors. “Usually, most financial elder exploitation cases are only reported or discovered six to 12 months after the initial losses have occurred.”
Elders whose sight is failing are at even greater risk because they may rely upon the very person who is stealing from them to ensure that their financial transactions are in order, says Stoltmann. “An independent pair of eyes that is able to review bank statements every 30 days will be able to catch suspicious activities in the early stages and cut it off. This is crucial.”
Advance Planning Can Help Dodge Dangers
When you are the responsible caregiver, know too, that your prudence can go a long way in preventing financial abuse.
Have some tough conversations. You need to know whether there is a will or a durable power of attorney, and where such documents are. Does your parent have a living will? If so, does it give you clarity about what your loved one’s wishes are? A health care power of attorney would permit a trusted individual make medical decisions if your elderly relative was unable to.
It’s important not to wait until the eleventh hour to have these talks. Ideally, those documents should be drawn up when your relative is of sound mind and body. It’s not a bad idea either, to have a trusted adviser, not only know where the documents are kept, but be able to get to them if needed.
Beware of the appearance on the scene of the “trusted new friend.” If mom and dad have a neighbor, caregiver or other outsider who is suddenly their best pal, running errands, going to the bank, and generally being around all the time when they never were before, it can be a warning sign that someone is taking advantage, warns Sarenski.
“Elder financial abuse invariably results in losses of human rights and dignity,” said Karen A. Roberto, Ph.D., director of the Center for Gerontology, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. ” Despite growing public awareness from a parade of high-profile financial abuse victims, it remains under reported, under-recognized, and under-prosecuted. The 2010 Passage of the Elder Justice Act may bring more attention and resources to this crime leading to prevention among the expanding older population.”
The bottom line, says Maarse Fitzgerald: “Protect elders from isolation, which allows the perpetrators to take control of our elder’s lives.”
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/lXHooJ
Oral Sex More Lethal to Men than Women
This article from AOL Health News makes the point that while all females in the USA are encouraged to be vaccinated against HPV, young men, who are statistically more vulnerable, have not been vaccinated. Many women find themselves unexpectedly at risk when they are exposed to HPV by an unfaithful husband or boyfriend who has picked it up during oral sex.
Research: Oral Sex Puts Men at Risk for Oral Cancer
Mara Gay
Contributor
Rates of oral cancer are on the rise among men, and researchers say the culprit isn’t the devil you might think.
The rising rates of oral cancer aren’t being caused by tobacco, experts say, but by HPV, the same sexually transmitted virus responsible for the vast majority of cases of cervical cancer in women.
Millions of women and girls have been vaccinated against HPV, or human papillomavirus, but doctors now say men exposed to the STD during oral sex are at risk as well and may have higher chances of developing oral cancer.
About 65 percent of oral cancer tumors were linked to HPV in 2007, according to the National Cancer Institute. And the uptick isn’t occurring among tobacco smokers.
“We’re looking at non-smokers who are predominantly white, upper middle class, college-educated men,” Brian Hill, the executive director of the Oral Cancer Foundation, told AOL News by phone.
Tobacco use has declined over the past decade, but rates of HPV infections have risen and affect at least 50 percent of the sexually active American population, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
HPV-16, the strain of the virus that causes cervical cancer in women, has become the leading cause of oral cancer in non-smoking men, Hill said, citing research in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“When the No. 1 cause of your disease goes down [tobacco use], you would expect that the incidence of disease would go down, but that hasn’t happened,” he said. “In our world, this is an epidemic.”
Dr. Jennifer Grandis, the vice chairwoman for research at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on head and neck cancers, said doctors have been seeing the HPV virus in most oral cancer tumors. She said the massive push to vaccinate girls and women between the ages of 11 and 26 against HPV should have included boys and men from the beginning. Gardasil, one of the two major vaccines used to prevent HPV, wasn’t approved for use in males in the United States until 2009, three years after it was approved for women.
“The thinking is changing,” Grandis told AOL News in a phone interview. “But at the time [the vaccine] was licensed, there wasn’t such an awareness about head or oral cancers or a willingness to accept that males played a part in the transmission of the virus,” she said. “I think this idea that we only protect our daughters with the vaccine is nuts anyway, particularly because they’re having sex with our boys.”
Men have a greater chance of contracting the HPV virus from oral sex than women do from the same behavior, though researchers aren’t exactly sure why. Oral cancer has a low survival rate because it is generally not discovered until it has spread to other areas, according to the CDC. Only half of people who’ve been diagnosed with oral cancer will live longer than five years.
Lunch in Paris (A Love Story With Recipes) by Elizabeth Bond
I just finished this book, and I need to review it so that I can pass it along to my daughter-in-law, who sees France, as I do, through eyes of love. Americans either love France or hate it, for some reason France evokes strong emotions one way or the other.
This author is a New Yorker, and her experiences are not my experiences, because her culture is not my culture. New York is a culture all its own. On the other hand, her experiences as an expat are universal, and her insecurity with the language, the culture and the customs are magnified by her commitment to marrying a French man and living in France for the rest of her life.
For the record, I really loved this book.
Can you read a recipe and have a pretty good idea what it is going to look like and how it will taste? In my family, we read cook books for fun. The recipes Elizabeth Bond has included are great recipes, a great start on French cooking the simple and fresh way. Even someone who has never cooked French food can make most of the dishes she creates in this book. In my very favorite chapter, A New Year’s Feast, there are several recipes for North African dishes I have eaten and loved – and oh, I am eager to try these! Chicken Tajine with Two Kinds of Lemon! Tajine with Meatballs and Spiced Apricots! Oh, YUMMMM!
In one part of the book, the author talks about some very basic differences between how Americans approach life and how the French view life:
I watched the couples walking around the lake. “Maybe it’s the New Yorker in me. I’m too used to rushing around. But everyone here is so relaxed, it’s like they’re moving in slow motion.”
“Why should they rush? They’re not going to get anywhere.”
Sometimes I really have no idea what he is taling about.
“You will never understand. You come from a place where everything is possible.” We lay side by side on the grass, our eyes half closed.
“It’s Henry Miller that said, ‘In America, every man is potentially a president. Here, every man is potentially a zero.’ ”
And then he told me a story.
“When I was sixteen it was time to decide what kind of studies I would pursue. I was the best in the class in Math and Physics, but also the best in Literature. I went to the school library and the woman behind the desk gave me a book. It was called All the Jobs in the World. I looked through it. I found two things I liked: scientific researcher and film director. I brought the book to the front and showed her my choices. ‘Ah non,’ she said, ‘You forgot to look at the key.’ And she pointed to the top of the page. Next to each job were the dollar signs – three dollar signs if the job paid a lot of money, one dollar sign if it paid very little. Next to the dollar sign was a door. If the door was wide open it was very easy to tet this job, if the door was open just a little bit, it was very hard. ‘Regard,‘ she said, ‘You have picked only jobs with no dollar signs and a closed door. Tu n’y arriveras jamais. You will never get there.”
‘You should become an engineer,’ she said. My parents never met anyone who did these other things. We don’t come from that world. They had no friends they could call to get me a job. They were afraid I would fail and they couldn’t help me. They were afraid I would have no place in the society. And I didn’t have the force to do it myself. I didn’t want to disappoint them. So I became an engineer.”
“It’s just like that here. If you want to do something different, if you head sticks up just a little, they cut it off. It’s been like that since the Revolution. You know the saying, Liberte,’ Egalite,’ Fraternite,’ equality is right in the middle. Everyone has got to be the same.
Of all the stories Gwendal has told me, before or since, this one shocked me the most. Never in my life, not once, had anyone ever told me there was something I couldn’t do, couldn’t be.
Have you ever known an expat wife (a woman who has married a man of another culture and lived in his country)? Expat wives are some of the bravest women I have ever met. No matter how long you have been married to a man of another culture, you can still be surprised.
The expat wives I have known have been smart, gifted people, woman who have been blessed to see the world through the eyes of more than one culture, and it changes everything. Their children are amazing – most will speak – and think – in more than one language. They have a sort of international fluidity, as well as intercultural fluency. It isn’t everyone’s choice, but those who chose it often live lives you and I can only begin to imagine. Elizabeth Bond has opened the door a little, and shared some of those experiences with us.
The book I bought has Reader’s Groups questions in the back, and they are good questions. Read the questions first; it gives you food for thought as you read through her experiences.
Alexander McCall Smith and The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
Just back from a wonderful two day trip to Botswana, visiting my dear and beloved friend Precious Ramotswe, who owns the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. For her, I make an exception to the paperback book rule (buy paperbacks because hard covers can hurt you if you fall asleep and they fall over) and get on the pre-publication order list so that Amazon will send me the book as soon as it comes out.
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party arrived Wednesday night. My husband was expecting a friend, and when the doorbell rang I thought “oh my, he is really early!” but it was the UPS guy, who had left a book-sized package on my doorstep. I had just finished an easy but fun book (The Map Thief by Heather Terrell) and was at odd ends as to what to read next, and this was an easy answer. As my husband drank Arabic coffee and sweet sweet Arabic tea, and ate delicate Middle Eastern treats downstairs, I got to start The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party.
You know the books. They aren’t difficult to read, but while you are reading, you are transported to another world. Precious Ramotswe’s Botswana is not a world without problems, but the solutions to the problems are often found in softer gentler ways, ways that would seem counter-intuitive in our culture, but make total sense when you are raised in Botswana. There is a value placed on peaceable interaction, and maintaining relationships, on forgiveness, and going to extra mile. It’s a sweet world, and a great escape.
As usual, there are several intertwining plot lines with ingenious and unexpected solutions. I suspect that is what keeps me glued to this series – I cannot anticipate the solutions. That, and the gentleness of her outlook, the sweetness of life in Botswana, and the dignity and integrity of McCall’s primary characters.
I don’t know how McCall manages to keep the series fresh, but he avoids the formulaic and I find each book a treat. My favorite part of this book is how Mma Potokwane manages to wangle and invitation to Mma Makutsi’s wedding:
Mma Potokwane noticed the other woman’s uncertainty. “Yes,” she continued. “There’s that problem. And then there’s another problem. Problems come in threes, I find, Mma. So the next one – Problem number two, so to speak – is the cooking of food. You know what I find, Mma, it is this: the people doing the cooking never have enough pots. They say they do, but they do not. And right at the last moment they discover that there are not enough pots, or, more likely, the pots they have are too small. A pot may be big enough to cook your meat and pap at home, just for a family, but do not imagine that it will be big enough to cook for a couple of hundred people. You need big, catering-size pots for that.”
She was now warming to her theme. “And the third problem is the food itself. You may think that you have enough for the feast, and you may be right when it comes to the meat. People usually have enough meat – often rather too much, in fact. But they forget that after their guests have eaten a lot of meat, they need something sweet, and often they have made no arrangements for that. A wedding cake? Yes, but there will only be one small piece of that for each guest – usually not enough. So people find themselves wishing that they had had the foresight to get a supply of ordinary cake for the guests to eat with their tea. And where is this cake? Not there, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mma Makutsi; this was not the way to speak to a nervous bride, she thought. “I’m sure that everything will work out well,” she said reassuringly. “And if there are any problems, they will surely just be small ones – nothing to worry about.”
Mma Potokwane looked doubtful. “I hope so,” she said. “But in my experience, it never works out like that. I think it’s better to be realistic about these things.”
Mma Makutsi picked up her pencil to add something to her list. “You said something about pots, Mma. Where would I be able to get these big, catering-size pots?”
Mma Potokwane examined her fingernails. “Well, we have them at the orphan farm. Each of the house mothers has a very large pot. I’m sure that we could do something . . . ”
Run to your bookstore and buy The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party!
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Someone in my book club in Qatar mentioned this book, Cutting for Stone, a while back, and I bought it, but it has sat for months on my to-read shelf (LOL, there are actually several, but one with the most important books, and another with the ‘guilty pleasures,’ the ones I am addicted to and save as a reward for good behavior, like vacuuming.)
When a good friend said she was reading it, and that it was good, I decided to move it up in priority, sort of like taking medicine, read a book that is good for you.
Oh WOW.
First, it is a great, absorbing story. Twin boys are born, totally unexpected, to an Indian Catholic nun and an English surgeon, working in Addis Ababa. How they were conceived is a mystery. The mother dies in childbirth, the father flees in horror, the children are born conjoined at the head and must be separated. The boys are adopted by an Indian couple, doctors at the hospital, and are raised with love and happiness.
That’s just the beginning!
I’ve always wanted to go to Ethiopia and Eritrea. I want to visit Lalibela, and some of the oldest Christian churches in the world. When my father was sick, he had a home health aid from Ethiopia, Esaiahs, who told me about the customs in his church, and how Ethiopian Christianity is very close to Judaism, with men and women separated in the church, and eating pork forbidden.
Reading this book, I felt like I had lived there, and I want to go back. The author captures the feelings, the smells, the visuals, the sounds, and if I awoke in a bungalow at the MIssing (Mission) Hospital, I would say “Ah yes! I remember this!”
I kept marking sections of this book that I loved. Here is one:
They parked at Ghosh’s bungalow and walked to the rear or Missing, where the bottlebrush was so laden with flowers that it looked as if it had caught fire. The property edge was marked by the acacias, their flat tops forming a jagged line against the sky. Missing’s far west corner was a promontory looking over a vast valley. That acreage as far as the eye could see belonged to a ras – a duke – who was relative of His Majesty, Haile Selassie.
A brook, hidden by boulders, burbled; sheep grazed under the eye of a boy who sat polishing his teeth with a twig, his staff near by. He squinted at Matron and Ghosh and then waved. Just like in the days of David, he carried a slingshot. It was a goatherd like him, centuries before, who had noticed how frisky his animals became after chewing a particuar red berry. From that serendipitous discovery, the coffee habit and trade spread to Yemen, Amsterdam, the Caribbean, South America, and the world, but it had all begun in Ethiopia, in a field like this.
We live inside the hearts and minds of doctors, some practicing under the worst possible conditions, and learn how they make their decisions and why. Verghese is a compassionate author; while his characters may be flawed, they are forgivable and forgiven.
Another section I loved, the man speaking is Ghosh, the man who adopted the twins with Hema, another doctor:
“My genius was to know long ago that money alone wouldn’t make me happy. Or maybe that’s my excuse for not leaving you a huge fortune! I certainly could have made more money if that had been my goal. But one thing I won’t have is regrets. My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they’ll leave in people’s hearts. They realize that no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.”
Things in Ethiopia get sticky, politically, and one of the twins is forced to flee, implicated in an airplane hijacking only because he was raised with a young woman involved. He is spirited into Eritrea, where he awaits his ride out to Kenya, and he helps the Eritrean rebels when large numbers of wounded are brought into his area. When the time comes to leave, his thoughts will strike a chord in anyone who has ever been an expat:
Two days later I took leave of Solomon. There were dark rings under his eyes and he looked ready to fall over. There was no questioning his purpose or dedication. Solomon said “Go and good luck to you. This isn’t your fight. I’d go if I were in your shoes. Tell the world about us.”
This isn’t your fight. I thought about that as I trekked to the border with two escorts. What did Solomon mean? Did he see me as being on the Ethiopian side, on the side of the occupiers? No, I think he saw me as an expatriate, someone without a stake in this war. Despite being born in the same compound as Genet, despite speaking Amharic like a native, and going to medical school with him, to Solomon I was a ferengi – a foreigner. Perhaps he was right, even though I was loath to admit it. If I were a patriotic Ethiopian, would I not have gone underground and joined the royalists, or others who were trying to topple Sergeant Mengistu? If I cared about my country, shouldn’t I have been willing to die for it?
The book has a lot of observations about coming to America; some of which made me laugh, some which made me groan. Coming back is always a shock to people who have lived abroad for a time, but it is a huge shock to those coming for the first time:
The black suited drivers led their passengers to sleek black cars, but myman led me to a big yellow taxi. In no time we were driving out of Kennedy Airport, heading to the Bronx. We merged at what I thought was a dangerous speed onto a freeway and into the slipstream of racing vehicles. “Marion, jet travel has damaged your eardrums,” I said to myself, because the silence was unreal. In Africa, cars ran not on petrol but on the squawk and blare of their horns. Not so here; the cars were near silent, like a school of fish. All I heard was the whish of rubber on concrete or asphalt.
As I neared the end, I read more slowly, unwilling for this book to end. It is one of the most vivid and moving books I have ever read. AdventureMan has gone online to find the nearest Ethiopian restaurant so we can have some injera and wot.
Oral Sex Linked to Rise in Throat Cancers
You can read this report on NPR News/Health
Virus Passed During Oral Sex Tops Tobacco As Throat Cancer Cause
by PEGGY GIRSHMAN
If you’re keeping score, here’s even more evidence that HPV causes oral, head and neck cancers and that vaccines may be able to prevent it.
Researchers studying the human papillomavirus say that in the United States HPV causes 64 percent of oropharynxl cancers. In the rest of the world, tobacco remains the leading cause of oral cancer, Dr. Maura Gillison of Ohio State University told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this past weekend.
And the more oral sex someone has had — and the more partners they’ve had — the greater their risk of getting these cancers, which grow in the middle part of the throat. “An individual who has six or more lifetime partners — on whom they’ve performed oral sex – has an eightfold increase in risk compared to someone who has never performed oral sex,” she said.
The recent rise in oropharnx cancer is predominantly among young, white men, she noted, though she says no one has figured out why yet. About 37,000 people in the United States were diagnosed with oral cancer in 2010, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation.
People with HPV-related throat cancer are more likely to survive their cancer than those who were heavy smokers or drinkers, the other big risk factors.
The message may be more critical for teens according to Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. She has studied 600 adolescents over 10 years and found that oral sex is much more common than vaginal sex and that “teens don’t consider oral sex to be sex,” that they think “it’s not that big a deal.” She adds: “Parents and health educators are not talking to teens about oral sex. Period.”
Worldwide, HPV-related cancers seem to be increasing. Gillison said that Swedish researchers looking back over 30 years found that 23 percent of oral cancer tumors in 1970 were positive for HPV, but in 2005, that number had risen to 93 percent.
The British newspaper The Guardian noted that Gillison said that “every birth cohort appears to be at greater risk from HPV and oral cancers than the group born before them.”
Over the past five years, health officials have been urging parents to make sure their daughters are vaccinated against HPV to help prevent cervical cancer. But these new results suggest that young men could also benefit from vaccination, though the costs would be substantial.
While none of the researchers could say definitively that the vaccines against HPV, Gardasil and Cervarix, would prevent throat cancer, they thought it could was reasonable to think the vaccine could reduce risks as well.
Note: Some of Gillison’s research is funded by Merck, the pharmaceutical company that makes Gardasil.
Single Awareness Day
“Oh! What a gorgeous dinner,” I said to our friends, “so romantic, a perfect Valentine’s Day feast.” It truly was – even though it was Valentine’s Eve, every detail was perfect, an outdoor fire, a beautiful red-velvet cake with white chocolate decorations, all in a delicate white and pink icing, a meal to die for . . .
“Happy Valentine’s Day!” we chirped.
“Happy Single Awareness Day,” their son grumped. He is astute and articulate, and AdventureMan and I have been married for so long that we’d forgotten what it is like to have Valentine’s Day without a sweetheart. 😦
Valentine’s Day really is mostly – in my opinion – about marketing. Selling greeting cards, selling flowers, selling candy, selling photos . . . . and it does make one acutely aware of being alone. It also puts pressure on couples to remember each other, oh aaarrgh. (Yes, AdventureMan remembered and bought me a great card. 🙂 ) The marketing mania for Valentine’s Day is not so great if you are in the middle of a fight or the relationship is going through one of those rocky periods. Or single.
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
This was another find passed along by either Big Diamond or Little Diamond, via my Mom, and oh, what a find. Audrey Niffenegger wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife, a highly unusual book which hit the best seller list like a hurricane. This book, Her Fearful Symmetry, solidifies the perception that this author has real talent, thinks way outside the box, and creates characters and situations that, while unlikely, are likable and who become real enough for us to identify with them.
The title is based on a poem by William Blake, a poem I have always liked:
The Tiger
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies 5
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 10
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp 15
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee? 20
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
While this tale is a great yarn, it helps to know this poem, there are a lot of literary references in the novel and the title is just one of them.
As the story begins, there is a death, a will, and a set of mirror-image twins who inherit a flat in London overlooking a famous cemetery. The flat is in a building and has an upstairs neighbor, a man succumbing to obsessive-compulsive disease, and a downstairs neighbor, an aging bachelor, all a little eccentric in the nicest, English sort of way. The twins, Valentina and Julia, are twenty years old, and waif-like, still dressing alike, doing almost everything together.
There is also a ghost. No, wait! Two ghosts, and a kitten ghost. No, wait! I forgot! Lots of ghosts!
What I love about Audrey Niffenegger is that she takes what we perceive as reality and gives it a twist, and once you buy the twist, you are off on a wild ride. This book is a wild ride, with unforgettable characters and some unexpected kinks and thrills, as well as more than a couple shudders and chills.
Room by Emma Donoghue
Hardly ever do I order a book in hardcover; they weigh too much, I do a lot of reading when flying, I prefer paperbacks so I can pass them on when I am finished (and no, I do not yet have a Kindle, because I like to pass my books along.) I made an exception for Room when I heard a review on National Public Radio. It sounded so different, and I wondered how it could be written without it being so horrible I couldn’t read it.
The story is told from the point of view of a five year old boy who lives in Room, an 11 x 11 foot space. He was born there, he has never been out of there.
As you read, you gain such huge admiration for the human spirit. Jake’s mother was abducted off the streets and kept in this room, which is totally soundproofed, surrounded by a chain metal cage, and can be entered and exited only by a door with a code entry lock. She raises Jake as best she can, keeping him hidden from her abductor. She teaches him reading and math, she tries to raise him eating nutritious foods, they have hygiene rules and daily physical education. Every now and then, she has a day when she is “gone”, when Jake wakes up and his mother won’t ‘switch on’ and just stays in her bed, sleeping all day. On those days, he feeds himself and plays quietly, knowing that his Mom will be back ‘on’ the next day – or so. He doesn’t understand his Mother’s despair, and she shelters him from it as best she can.
And then comes the time when she realizes that life is only going to get more and more difficult as Jake gets older. She makes a plan, a plan that relies on Jake, a desperate plan.
The book is fascinating. I have already passed it along; once I read it, I wanted to share it. In many ways, it is a cross-cultural book, because the culture Jake spends his first five years in is so insular, so enclosed. Emma Donoghue did a great job describing his world from his point of view, and dealing with the aftermath. I can’t tell you much more without spoiling the book for you in a major way. 🙂
There is a Reader’s Guide section at the back, and this book would be an excellent selection for a book club.
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
You know how wonderful it is when you start a book, and immediately you are hooked? This is not that kind of book. This is a book you start reading and you think “Why am I reading this? I don’t like ANY of the characters!”
And yet, somehow, I kept reading. And slowly, slowly, the hook was set, I could not stop reading.
Actually, I read the book several months ago, and I am still thinking about it. That’s a good book. 🙂
We meet one of the main characters as he stands waiting for a train to arrive, carrying his bride-to-be. As we stand waiting with the man, we discover that he is not very likable. We also learn that winters in his part of the country are long and hard, and very strange things happen to people cooped up together during these long, hard winters. It is a very bleak beginnning.
Then we are riding in the train with a woman who is answering an ad placed by the first man who was advertising for a wife. We get a few clues that she is misrepresenting herself, but . . . isn’t a little misrepresentation part of the mating process? Do we really show all our less attractive features to the person to whom we want to be married? And does she know what she is getting in for with this rather cold and distant man?
Do you really want to read this book?
It gets better. So much better. People are complicated, and they lead complicated lives. Sometimes evil leads only downward, and to more evil, and from time to time, there is a gleam of hope and the slim promise of redemption. It gives a clear slice of time from the early 1900’s, and a much earlier time in America. For anyone with the illusions that life in that turn-of-the-century America was a better, simpler, more moral time, this book is a reality check.
Nothing in the beginning of this book is quite what it seems, and yet every word is finely crafted to give a clue as to where the book is going. Will you be able to figure it out before you get there?
(I did not.)
There are so many good books out there. This one is slow to start, but builds steadily to an unforgettable ending. It is worth a read.
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