"This is the Story of a Happy Marriage" by Ann Patchett

I like to come to a book with a blank slate: no preconceived notions, no spoilers, no expectations. That statement is completely true. But it is also true that I like to read books by authors whose previous works I have appreciated, or books that Sam recommends to me, or books that my mom does not recommend to me . . . which kind of means that I do like to have preconceived notions and expectations about my future reads. This sounds contradictory, but it all makes sense together when you think about it this way: I don't want to know about the plot or characters ahead of time, but I do want to know that I'm likely to enjoy the book. 

Funny thing is, sometimes coming to a book with no preconceived notions means the book turns out to be something completely different from what I thought it would be. That happened to me with This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. I did expect a memoir-style book rather than fiction (although the possibility of fiction did cross my mind), so that wasn't the issue; where the incongruity lay was in the fact that I actually thought the book would be about marriage. When I saw the title listed inside the front cover of The Dutch House, I thought, Oh how sweet, Ann Patchett has had a happy marriage like mine, and she's written a book about it. So of course I wanted to read it, because all happy marriages are alike, right? So surely reading this book would be like looking in a mirror and seeing me and Sam reflected back. 

Surprise! This is a book of short stories, and the title comes from just one of them. Throughout most of the book, marriage is barely mentioned. In fact, after the first few stories I started to wonder whether the titular "happy marriage" referred to Patchett's relationship to writing. (I still think that's a plausible interpretation.) But this surprise was quickly revealed to not be a disappointing one, because I enjoyed reading this book so much. Most of it comprises essays and articles that Patchett wrote for various magazines over the years, and it's such a treat to read them all together like this, because I never would have come across so many of them on my own. 

And you'll never believe this. When my copy of this book arrived, Sam said, "But I already gave you that book for Christmas!" and after a little bit of "no you didn't" and "yes I did" we discovered that Sam was right. (What more can you expect from a literary amnesiac?) Ah, well. It's a really good book and it deserved to be bought twice. 

"Census" by Jesse Ball

Here's a book that caught my eye at (can you guess?) Half Price Books. I'd never heard of it before, or its author, and at this point I really can't remember what drew me to it, unless it was these two sentences on the back cover: "Wrenching and beautiful, Census is a novel about free will, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love. It is also an indictment of the cruelties of our society by a major writer." 

Well, to be honest, now that I've read the book, I find I never would have described it that way. Maybe I've let too much time lapse since I finished reading, but I don't remember anything in it about free will, though I do remember a conversation with friends about determinism from the evening of June 12, 2021. And I don't remember anything in it about the power of memory, though that may be due more to the weakness of my own. And while the book centers on the narrator's relationship with his child, I would call his love kind, gentle, maybe slightly bemused, but never ferocious. And while at times he brushes up against the cruelties of our society, "indictment" is a pretty strong word for what is presented here. 

Census is the story of a widower who has had a successful career as a surgeon but who has just been told that he has a terminal illness. He needs to figure out how he wants to spend the brief remainder of his life, and who will care for his disabled son when he is gone. So he decides to become a census-taker, traveling through neighboring towns (from A to Z) with his son. This census is somewhat different from what you're used to: people are counted, yes, but then rather than gathering further demographic information, census-takers gather stories and impressions, asking questions that probe a person's essence rather than just collecting facts about them. And then each individual is given a tattoo on the correct rib to show that they have been counted. Kinda weird. 

Even more weird is the narrator's late wife's profession. She was what he calls a clown, but the description is not like any clown I've ever seen. I guess a more appropriate name for it would be "performance artist." I found myself searching for a point to these weirdnesses and not finding one. 

The power of this book lies in the very last chapter. "The train has left . . ." I had to step away from the book for a little while at that point . . . kind of return to real life and take a few deep breaths. But I gotta say that truly the best thing about this book was that I read most of it at the beach.