Book Reviews

We are better than this. No, really.

Many of us read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in school. On one level, it’s an adventure tale about a group of British school boys marooned on a tropical island. The island is a paradise, providing everything they need to survive, but through their fears of an imagined “beastie,” they slowly descend into savagery. The novel appeared in 1954, less than a decade after the Second World War, where much of the world had descended into real-time savagery, killing between 70 and 85 million people. Golding’s novel became a dark allegory on human nature.

In 1965, six boys from Tonga became shipwrecked on a far less hospitable island. Presumed dead, they survived for more than a year by working together. This real-life account of survival through cooperation stands as a stark counter-argument to Golding’s pessimistic tale and provides the starting point for Dutch historian Rutger Bregman’s case that humanity is fundamentally good. Bregman (Utopia for Realists) argues that our capacity to cooperate, to trust and work together has been basic to our species’ survival and evolution. Over the millennia, we have learned that it’s in our best self-interest to get along. It’s in our DNA.

Yet much of Western thought has led us to believe that people are basically sinful, selfish creatures, not to be trusted. Bregman contends that we are better than this, and who we believe ourselves to be affects how we act. Offering evidence from anthropology, archaeology, social science, and yesterday’s news, he suggests humanity’s default mode has been cooperation rather than competition.

In advocating on behalf of the better angels of our nature, Humankind becomes a welcome antidote to the easy cynicism and debilitating despair many of us are feeling today. Which is not to deny the darker angels ever whispering their fears of a “beastie” in our ears. As social animals, we want to please, to belong, to be accepted. Paradoxically, these same ingrained traits have also contributed to the dark side of tribalism, too often pitting Us against Them, and resulting in the brutal wars, cruelties, and massacres that have been part of human history.

He offers a parable: An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil—angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good—peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’ After a moment, the boy asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’ The old man smiles. ‘The one you feed.’

Mind, still the ultimate mystery.

In college, I would often finish a course with a daunting sense of how much more I didn’t understand about a subject now than when I’d started. I had this same sense when reading Michael Pollan’s latest book. Pollan is a lucid and entertaining writer (How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore’s Dilemma), and here he tackles the knotty concept of consciousness.

He notes “it doesn’t help that scientists and philosophers who work on the problem don’t agree on what they mean by the word consciousness or on what, exactly, they are trying to explain.”

His “journey” into this realm is more like wandering in some carnival’s Fun House of Mirrors—at turns, disorienting, startling, thrilling.

He interviews these thinkers who are exploring a number of ancient ideas that have been translated into contemporary (scientific) language, including panpsychism (the idea that everything, down to subatomic particles, has some degree of consciousness); idealism (that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, and precedes matter); and illusionism (that our consciousness—that which seems most real to us—is actually an illusion. Think Poe: “All that we see and seem is a dream within a dream.”)

He talks to plant neurobiologists who demonstrate sentience in plants—being able to respond to one’s environment with some intentionality in ways that, say, a rock can’t. (But, in fairness, the views of the rock lobby were not represented in this book.) With psychedelics, we may not be seeing the world differently, but rather experiencing a different world entirely.

He speaks with physicists in quantum theory, some who argue that consciousness creates reality, upsetting the materialist tradition on which Western science has been founded (i.e., everything can be reduced to matter). In this formulation, consciousness becomes the software to the brain’s hardware—the brain doesn’t create consciousness, but “receives” it, much like the TV doesn’t create the program you’re watching.

His explorations take him to current developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the prospect of the Singularity, “the moment when the capabilities of machines outstrip those of humans and it becomes possible to transcend human mortality by uploading our minds onto silicon.” This is considered progress by some.

We tag along on Pollan’s curiosity through this Fun House of Mirrors, increasingly baffled and bedazzled, maybe not finding ultimate answers, but better appreciating the breadth, depth, and complexity of the questions.

It is often in the nature of such journeys that we don’t finally solve the great mysteries, but instead experience a sense of joyous awe and wonder in attempting to plumb them.

Poetry can save us. 

Probably few people would dispute that we are living in perilous times. I would enumerate the perils—economic, political, environmental, social, spiritual—but this column is limited to 400 words, and besides, you already know them. During such trying times, we naturally turn to…um, poetry?

Yes, argues Tracy K. Smith, 22^nd Poet Laureate of the United States. She says we’ve come to find ourselves “in a climate of language—I’d call it a national vocabulary—grounded in fear, derision, and the notion of an intractably divided nation.” We need to change the climate.

Given this, I was expecting an anthology of inspirational verse offering psychological insight (maybe Kahlil Gibran’s “Fear”), or recalling our roots (Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again”), or finding tranquility amid the daily madness (“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry).

But, no, Smith is talking about how poetry—writing and reading it—can calm us, center us, and help us engage and dialogue with our fears; indeed, how poetry can save us from ourselves.

Of the current American crisis, she writes, “I had found myself thinking, Poetry wouldn’t allow us to behave this way.” Poems have the potential “to reawaken us to the miracle and the mystery of our lives”—which is 180 degrees from the numbing and dumbing-down of social media’s incessant click-bait and rage-fests.

To help us understand how, she digs into a number of poems. Harryette Mullen’s bitingly satirical “We Are Not Responsible” (2002) seems ready-made for the current administrative state (We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives. We cannot guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions…)

But most of the poems are non-political, inviting us to look more deeply into our lives, to make space and time for reflection, such as Robert Hayden’s moving “Those Winter Sundays” (1962), a poem of memory, gratitude, grief, and delayed understanding (Sundays too my father got up early/ and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,/ then with cracked hands that ached/ from labor in the weekday weather made/ banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him…)

Like meditation, like true prayer, poetry can safeguard us from mobs and madness.

So, during this National Poetry Month, pick up a book of poems—or a pad and pen to write them—and become centered once again, reminding yourself amid the noise and haste, of what’s important, what matters, what’s basic to living well…even in perilous times.

Bright stories for dark times.

My thought as I finished reading this book was Thanks, I needed that.

First published in 2022, Remarkably Bright Creatures was recently recommended by a friend. It’s a feel-good book like Frank Capra’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a feel-good movie. They possess many of the same qualities: heartwarming and humorous, life-affirming, celebrating basic human decency against the coarse and corrosive forces that would cheapen and “monetize” life. Both are set in small towns— Capra’s fictional Bedford Falls and the book’s fictional Sowell Bay on Puget Sound—lifting up the importance of community where neighbors know, help, and care for each other.

Both include fantastical elements. Where the film has Clarence, the hapless angel trying to earn his wings, the novel features a Great Pacific Octopus named Marcellus who lives in the local aquarium. A sign on his tank notes that octopuses are “remarkably bright creatures.” Indeed, Marcellus is so intelligent that he has learned how to escape his chamber for a midnight snack on the sea cucumbers in the next tank. He also offers a running commentary on the strange human creatures he observes.

His favorite is Tova Sullivan, a 70-year-old widow who nightly cleans the aquarium. She talks to him, and over time they have developed an inter-species friendship. Marcellus knows of the recent death of Tova’s husband, and the mysterious disappearance of her son Erik thirty years ago.

Joining them is Cameron Cassmore, a young drifter. Abandoned by his addict mother when he was nine, he drifts into Sowell Bay in search of the father he never knew. Their three stories will become entwined through the themes of aging and death, of loss and grief, and of seeking one’s home.

Both book and film suggest how dark times bring out the best and the worst in people. We can despair at the daily dismantling of decency and democratic norms of civility, honesty, and mutual respect. We can feel helpless before the brutish power politics of the unsupervised playground. Yet such stories—about caring for our neighbors, about the bonds of family, familiarity and friendship, about welcoming the stranger in our midst—remind us of the better souls we know we are capable of becoming. They remind us that in even the darkest times, we can be light-bearers.

We are left with Marcellus’ parting words: “Humans. For the most part you are dull and blundering. But occasionally you can be remarkably bright creatures.”

Soul-trying times.

These are the times that try men’s souls…

When Thomas Paine wrote those words in December 1776, things were looking pretty bleak for the American colonies in their war with England. The goal of the rebellion had changed since Lexington and Concord (1775), “from a demand to be fully British in rights and privileges, to not being British at all but, rather, a free, independent people.”

This is the second volume of Rick Atkinson’s Revolution Trilogy, following The British Are Coming (2019), covering the years 1777 to 1780. Through his vivid storytelling, Atkinson plunges us into those soul-trying times.

Making extensive use of people’s diaries and letters, he brings a visceral immediacy to events. Periwigged portraits become living, breathing persons with their personal faults and individual genius, their egotism and idealism, their griefs and grudges. Benjamin Franklin is in Paris, playing America’s Artful Dodger and diplomat, patiently charming and scheming to induce the French into allying with the American cause. (The French didn’t necessarily want the Americans to win; they just wanted the British to lose.) His grasp of their language was “ungrammatical if fearless”—“If you Frenchmen would only talk no more than four at a time, I might understand you.”

Among the many colorful characters is Prussian Baron von Steuben. Without knowing a word of English, he shaped the continental soldiers into a disciplined army. Escaping scandal at home, he had requested “compensation only for his expenses and for the loss of his European income, declining to mention that he had none.” There is also the fabulously wealthy 19-year-old Gilbert du Motier, better known to us as the Marquis de Lafayette, inflamed with revolutionary ideals. And towering over them all is George Washington, embodying the classical virtues of integrity, prudence, and dedication to his country, if not exactly brilliant generalship. “In an era of great men, he already was in the front rank.”

Atkinson describes the heroism and courage on both sides, along with unimaginable brutality. Diseases ravaged the troops more than bullets and cannonballs—not surprising since “fewer than 1 percent of musket balls fired in combat typically hit their target.” Desertion remained an ongoing issue, causing Washington to lament, “We shall be obliged to detach one-half of the army to bring back the other.”

In reading history, there is often an Of-course-ness to the past. History as foregone conclusion, history as fate. But Atkinson captures the precariousness and uncertainty of that time, how close the colonies come to losing the war. History before it was written.

Along with his many fans, I eagerly await Atkinson’s third and final volume to see how it’s all going to end.

Maybe death isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Every soul is allowed seven moons to wander the In Between. To recall past lives. And then, to forget. They want you to forget. Because, when you forget, nothing changes.

This is an extraordinary book. It has been on my To-Be-Read list since 2022, when it won the Booker Prize. It is a book of ideas—profound ideas, comical ideas, terrifying ideas—all wrapped in the guise of a murder mystery that’s also a ghost story that’s also a satire on the human condition. Not surprising, it’s also a challenging read.

It takes place in Colombo in 1989, during the brutal Sri Lankan civil war. This is familiar Joseph Conrad territory (The Heart of Darkness) echoing humanity’s timeless lament, “The horror, the horror.” It’s rarely good guys vs. bad guys, just people doing terrible things to other people, and taking turns being victims.

Maali Almeida is a dead war photographer who can’t remember how he died or who killed him. He had taken photos of massacres, incriminating both sides, and now has seven moons (days) to solve the mystery of his murder and to guide the living to where he hid the photos.

He does this in the Bardo, the in-between state in Tibetan culture between life and death. It is a realm filled with grieving, vengeful, and vindictive spirits. Maali is led, sometimes misled, by guides—the immediately past dead, various spirits and demons. Time here is not linear; it turns back, leaps forward, twists in upon itself.

There’s a lot of humor, although a bleak, sardonic kind of humor: Maali encounters a drag queen who committed suicide. She explains, “I did it because I was sad. That’s what most of us are, you see. But I also did it because I was Buddhist. I thought reincarnation was cheaper than paying for a sex change.”

This book will probably be enjoyed most by those who remember their dreams, because it has the structure, logic, and feel of a dream, at once familiar and bizarre, surreal and revelatory. Like most magic realism, it’s a trip without drugs. Think Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or the works of Gabriel Garcia Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude).

Peppered throughout are tantalizing ideas, on history (“History is people with ships and weapons wiping out those who forgot to invent them”), on the soul and personal identity (“You are not the you that you think you are…You are everything you have thought and done and been and seen.”), on the perpetual and perpetuating religious conflicts (“Everyone should pray to Whoever [i.e., one generic name for the divine] Then no one gets offended.”)

And perhaps the most unsettling idea of all: that death is not final. That the horror doesn’t end with one’s dying.

A classic is a book that has never stopped saying what it has to say. Written in a specific time, it remains relevant, speaking to each age anew in new ways. Last month, I called for favorite classics beloved by readers of this column, books that had struck a personal chord at a certain age, books that had been formative, maybe transformative, and that they would recommend to other readers.

Jan Bono (Long Beach) recommends Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. “Possibly the first and last time I enjoyed a science fiction novel,” she writes. “It answered all my ‘meaning of life’ questions back then.” Heinlein’s classic made the same revelatory impact on me as a teenager. But the “meaning of life” questions kept changing.

Science fiction was also important to Fred Hudgin (Ariel) when he was a young man, especially Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, inspiration for the classic 1982 film, “Blade Runner.” “I thought and dreamed about that book for years,” as he began writing his own science fiction, “hoping mine would someday be as good.”

Andre Stepankowsky (Longview) was deeply influenced by Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, both its lament that “most men live lives of quiet desperation," and its exhortation to live life deliberately.

The Good Earth first inspired Elaine Cockrell (Coal Creek Road) to read about China, and then all the other books written by Pearl Buck.

Turning to the East, Stewart Dall (Longview) recommends The Art of War by Sun Tzu, for its “profound simplicity” beyond its military application. It’s about so much more than war.

Mary Putka (Kalama) taught Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to eighth graders for many years. It still remains her favorite, with the humane, noble Atticus Finch observing, “I think there’s just one kind of folks, folks.”

Dean Takko (Longview) didn’t read many classics until he was an adult, which he thinks is an advantage. “You can reflect on your own life experiences and understand the pain or happiness the character is experiencing.” Among his favorites are the short stories of Ernest Hemingway, especially “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”

What about Children’s Lit? Tiffany Dickinson (Longview) recommends Matilda by Roald Dahl. “It was one of the first books I'd ever read that made me laugh out loud (kid's books were always so SERIOUS). I loved Matilda's resilience and pep, that the villains get their due, and she lives happily ever after.” Husband Paul Dickinson read Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes in eighth grade and counts it as a “kind of coming of age.” “It was the first time I started seeing things from the point of view of an adult”—and without happily-ever-after endings.

Ned Piper’s (Longview) favorite is Albert Camus’ existentialist novel, The Stranger, opening with the memorable line, “Mother died today…or was it yesterday?” When I first read the book in high school, I was perplexed and frustrated by its lack of moral clarity. It was unlike anything I had ever read before. I remain haunted still by its idea of the "benign indifference of the universe."

Although admitting that George Eliot’s Middlemarch is his all-time favorite, Hal Calbom (Seattle) recommends Body and Soul by Frank Conroy, a book which “over the years I’ve purchased for friends and perpetrated on people. It intertwines culture and music and urban life and childhood with a splendid tone and narrative drive.”

Some readers recommended lesser known works by favorite authors. Instead of The Catcher in the Rye, Portland writer Jeff Stookey recommends J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, which profoundly touched him as a teenager with its human pathos and introduced him to Eastern philosophy and mysticism, expanding his understanding of spirituality.

Instead of The Egg and I, Mary Stone (Castle Rock) recommends Betty MacDonald’s memoir of growing up in the Great Depression, Anybody Can Do Anything, which Mary found “refreshingly humorous,” and also helpful as she herself was learning to write.

Hermann Hesse is perhaps best known for the cult classic Siddhartha, but Ed Putka (Kalama) prefers Hesse’s masterpiece, The Glass Bead Game (also published as Magister Ludi), finding it “a brilliant examination of what constitutes a meaningful life.”

So, as bleak November slides us into winter, consider cuddling up with a classic, wrapped in your warm blanket, maybe accompanied by a cup of hot cider or glass of wine (or whiskey, if you’re reading Hemingway). Slow down time, taking a break from our frenetic TikTok existence with its Instagram attention spans. Turn off the TV, put away your phone, and settle in for a quiet evening with a companion who can transport you to a different time and place, perhaps even induce in you new and wondrous states of being.

I’m always interested in what people are reading. Recently, a friend told me her book club had just finished My Antonia (1918). She had suggested it, remembering how much she enjoyed Willa Cather’s novel when she was younger. And I wondered: Why don’t we read the classics more?

Probably many of us were introduced to them too early. I’ve never fully recovered from having to read George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss in eighth grade. Such assigned works came with an implicit message that they were supposed to be “good for you,” making them the literary equivalent of asparagus, broccoli, and other inedible foods in the young person’s mind. I suspect we weren’t ready for some of the books. We hadn’t lived enough, hadn’t experienced enough to appreciate them. (Middlemarch. Definitely, Middlemarch.)

And yet, some persist in our memories, sentimental favorites—Treasure Island, Little Women, The Secret Garden, David Copperfield—like warm recollections of a childhood friendship.

Italo Calvino said, "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say." These are books that have stood the test of time. They speak to each new age, offering truths and insights into the human condition that continue to be relevant today. They are books that stay with us, long after we’ve finished them. In contrast, there is something ephemeral about contemporary fiction. Always has been—Fun activity for a rainy Sunday afternoon: Google the list of Pulitzer Prize-winning novels of the last hundred years. I’m betting you’ve never heard of most of them; very few are read today. And beware the book reviewer who proclaims some new novel “an instant classic.” Mmm, yeah, probably not.

Maybe it’s just me. After a summer of fun, frothy, easily forgettable beach reads, one craves something meatier. Like hungering for something more substantial after eating lots of cotton candy. In my novel, The Legacy of Emily Hargraves (yet to be declared a classic) the bibliophile Ashley recommends reading one classic each year. You don’t need to lead with the heavy hitters, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Start with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. You may appreciate her sly, wry social commentary that you missed in high school.

Or like my friend, re-read (and maybe re-discover) a favorite from your childhood (Charlotte’s Web, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) or from when you were a teen (The Hobbit, The Count of Monte Cristo, Great Expectations.) If you liked Dickens, try his unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood—I remember racing through that book to see how it doesn’t end—and then pick up Dan Simmons’ Drood (2009) which plays with the novel’s mysteries in the context of the great novelist’s final days.

Or try Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then read Percival Everett’s James (2024), which tells Twain’s classic tale from the viewpoint of the enslaved Jim. Want something to steady and center you in these unsteady times? Try Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. He was one of the great and few good Roman emperors, probably the closest humanity has come to a philosopher king. Feeling lusty? Try D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). Somewhat tame by today’s standards, it was banned for obscenity and not published in the US until 1959.

Here’s an idea: Read classic works that were published one hundred years ago in 1925. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, then watch Baz Luhrmann’s lush film adaptation with Leonardo DiCaprio; or read Mrs. Dalloway, following it up with The Hours (1998), Michael Cunningham’s creative riff on Virginia Woolf’s ground-breaking novel.

Some works are definitely challenging. For my classic last year, I tackled Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (1924). It's one of those great masterpieces of Western literature that everyone should read before they die, or die trying, or maybe die from trying. Consider it a chance to practice your skim-reflex, and it’s still less habit forming than most over-the-counter sleep aids.

For next year, you could consider works published in 1926: Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Franz Kafka’s The Castle (Kafka seems increasingly relevant these days) or maybe  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.

With each book, step into a different world and into a different age. You may need to adjust to a different pace, a different style of expression, a different sense of time—time is experienced differently when traveling in horse-drawn carriages than in cars. By doing this, you may also realize how many of today’s so-called historical TV dramas are really just modern sensibilities and attitudes dressed up in period costumes (I’m looking at you, “Bridgerton”!) Choose one classic and devote yourself to it, dig into it. Ask yourself: Why is this book considered a classic? Why have people continued to read it? What might it have to say about life in this 21^st century?

Try it. It will be good for you.

 

 

An immigrant story for our time.

We are a nation of immigrant stories, those family tales of how our ancestors came to this country from Ireland, or from Italy, from Mexico or Moldavia, from China, or Lagos or Laos. Each story is different, unique to a particular family and its origin culture. Yet there are similarities, too: these immigrants were usually driven by dreams and/or desperation. They experienced disorientation, needing to adapt to different customs, to a different language, often to different values, while also trying to hold on to their own cultural heritage.

The Bad Muslim Discount is a more recent immigrant story, a novel set in 2016, that is timely, touching, and poignant. It’s also very funny. Anvar, the son of Pakistani immigrants, has grown up and been educated in the US, and is now an attorney. A product of American and Pakistani cultures, he often finds himself suspended uncomfortably between the two. Irreverent and endlessly joking, he is frequently at odds with his family's traditional values and more somber outlook (he's the "bad Muslim" of the title).

Family and friends express concern that he is losing touch with his religion. “I’m just trying to make sure you don’t endanger your soul,” a friend tells him. Anvar replies, “Don’t worry about it. They made me give it up when I passed the bar.” His mother comments, “This one thinks he is funny…He’s the only one who thinks so.”

A second, more serious story is told by Safwa, a young Iraqi woman from war-torn Baghdad. She is living with her conservative father and abusive fiancé. For her, culture is a prison, and this new country may offer her an escape. But she lacks proper documents.

Anvar and Safwa’s stories also reflect the immigrant experience in 21st century America. A presidential campaign is underway where one of the candidates is stoking anti-immigrant, and particularly anti-Muslim, sentiment, as a way to boost his campaign and fire up his base. Safwa worries at the increasingly hate-filled rhetoric. But Anvar reassures her. He has lived here much of his life. He knows this country. This man will never be elected, he tells her. The American people are better than that. Ouch!

Throughout the book, Anvar struggles with his faith, in God and in humanity, eventually coming to an uneasy peace for his soul that allows him to proceed amid life’s many complexities and uncertainties—“I no longer believed that I believed, though I did have faith without knowing what I had faith in.”

These wild and precious lives.

The Swedish writer Fredrik Backman is the author of the international bestseller, A Man Called Ove (2012). His wry, dry Nordic humor is again on display in his latest novel, titled simply My Friends. It’s a celebration of the healing, redemptive qualities of art and friendship.

Louisa, an eighteen-year-old aspiring artist and social outcast, is fascinated by a world-famous painting—a picture of the sea with three young people sitting at the end of a long pier—and she seeks to learn the story behind it.

She meets Ted, one of the three teens in the painting who’s now an adult. As her grumpy guide, he slowly unwinds the tale of them and of their friend, “the artist,” who painted the picture. (Like Ove, Ted is one of those lovable curmudgeons Backman does so well). Louisa returns with him to the scene of the painting and learns what became of the four teenagers.

With homes defined by abuse, grief, and loss, their friendship was a refuge from the brutality and bleakness of their lives, when “they lay on the pier and drank cheap sodas and watched the sunset for free.” They were fourteen, a magical time of terrible jokes and silly adventures and fights bringing them close to not speaking to each other ever again, only to return the next day the best of friends.

At the heart of the story is the gifted and disturbed teen artist, his life both tormented and made transcendent by “art that is a joy so overwhelming you almost can’t bear it.”  (“There’s something very wrong with him, he wants to say, and the only time he doesn’t hate himself is when he’s painting…That’s the only time he ever feels like himself.” Perhaps not surprising, Backman writes in an afterword, “Telling stories is the only time I really like myself.”)

The novel has a timeless, fable-like quality. We don’t know where it takes place, or in what age—there are trains and cars, so it’s a modern setting—but it has a Once-upon-a-time feel to it. And as with all fables, there are little drops of wisdom dispensed along the way which help the characters (and the readers) make it through the often daunting and lonely experience of living.

One of these is the Mary Oliver poem, “The Summer Day,” which ends Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?

In this modern fable on art and friendship, Backman reminds us that, whatever our age, we have one wild and precious life, and asks “What do you plan to do with it?”