Are You a Romantic?

Every business day, I get a newsletter called “Shelf Awareness” in my e-mail, delivering the latest news from the world of books, bookshops, booksellers, libraries, writers, and publishers. When owner-booksellers retire, a shop either closes or comes under new ownership. Sometimes, beforehand, there’s an announcement of a shop for sale. 

 

I’ve always kind of wondered how the numbers compare, old shops closing vs. new shops opening. It’s hard for me to tell, because I get both kinds of news. Also, shops like mine, selling majority of used books -- or some may sell no new books at all -- often don't get counted. But I can’t help noticing lately how many new shops are opening with a plan to specialize in romance books. 

Romance readers are coming out of the closet, no longer hiding their reading preference as a guilty pleasure. According to the New York Times, print sales of romance books almost doubled in only three years, from “18 million copies in 2020 to 39 million in 2023,” and specialty bookshops have boomed along with the books. 

 

When it comes to genre fiction, I generally reach for mysteries. Although now and then I yield to the temptations of potato chips and “chick lit” (usually stories featuring bookshops or set in Michigan), in general science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance do not usually appeal to me. Don’t get me wrong! I have no quarrel with the readers of these genres. (Some order their books through my shop!) When it comes to escape reading or what I call “comfort books,” there are different roads for different tastes. 

My taste: A country road

My own choices in comfort books tend more in the direction of children’s or teen novels I remember loving years ago (Palmer Brown’s The Silver Nutmeg; Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series; Anne of Green Gables and the sequels; or Farley’s The Black Stallion or Marguerite Henry’s wonderful horse stories) – or, other times, novels or memoirs set in the past (most recently, Mary Webb’s enchanting Precious Bane). Little Women is a book I still find romantic, despite its formulaic construction. When Jo and the professor finally kiss under the umbrella (absolutely NOT in the balcony of a theatre, as one modern film version has it!) and speak their simple words of love to each other, how could any love scene be more moving than that?

At Dog Ears Books TODAY!

Years ago, as the young, stay-at-home mother of a toddler, I fell briefly into a romance habit at an old bookstore in Traverse City, Arnold’s on Union Street. Many will remember the place. Mrs. Arnold had an almost unlimited stock, it seemed, of paperback novels featuring young women in love and newly wed, all written by a writer named Kathleen Norris – not the Kathleen Norris (b. 1947) of Dakota but an earlier KN (b.1880). Those books were definitely like potato chips: always another! After a while, though, I started to become annoyed. All the young, beautiful heroines grew ever younger-looking and more beautiful in their times of trial and poverty! How, I wondered, did that work? But a much more annoying trick of the author’s was her repeated reach for a deus ex machina to dissolve the heroine’s deepest existential problems.

 

Let’s say (as often happened) that the main character married a handsome ne’er-do-well who could not support a family, perhaps even turned out to be an alcoholic. Divorce was unthinkable in the Kathleen Norris code of morals! No, her heroine could absolutely not choose divorce, even with a “Mr. Right” standing in the wings! That left the novelist two possibilities for reaching a happy ending: either the inconvenient husband could die, or it could be discovered that the marriage, for whatever reason, had never been valid in the first place. Either way, the beautiful, long-suffering protagonist was set free to marry the loyal, upstanding man who had loved her so chastely all along. Mighty handy! Perhaps a little too handy?

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(One of the charming side features of Ms. Norris's novels was the California setting. The main character always had a garden and always made wonderful little suppers of fresh vegetables.)

 

Such were the romance novels of the early 20^thcentury. (When I reluctantly confessed this stretch of my reading life to my mother, she shrugged and said airily that she had read many Kathleen Norris books. I had no idea!) Romance readers now expect more in the way of “sizzle,” it seems. A very different, protofeminist view of romance, broadly understood (see below), can be found in the sometimes-strange novels of the sometimes-anonymous Elizabeth von Arnim. 

 

Years ago, when I announced myself to the world as a romantic pragmatist, a fellow philosopher friend said divorce had cured her of romance, but by romantic I didn’t mean hearts and flowers and Valentine’s Day dinners. I had in mind the older, broader sense, that of the Romantic period in art and literature: a return to nature, valuing feelings along with facts, even striving toward “impossible” goals. 

My romantic meadow: native grasses, wildflowers

The Artist understood. Once he and I talked about the most romantic books we’d each read, both having in mind a novel clothed in mystery and something like fantasy (though not ‘fantasy’ as the genre called that is understood today). His was Hudson’s Green Mansions; mine was (I’ll give the English title) The Wanderer, by Alain-Fournier. When I described the French novel to David, it reminded him of Hudson’s book, and when I read Hudson’s Green Mansions for myself, I could see a similarity with The Wanderer, a similarity not in the stories or settings but in a dreamlike mood the two books shared.

 

What does the word ‘romance’ mean to you, and what do you think of as a ‘romance' -- or a 'romantic' novel? Is romance in your mind a narrow genre – and if so, does it appeal to you? If you read in the genre, who is your favorite author, and why? Or do you look for romance in the classics – say, Jane Eyre? Or maybe you see 'romance' as I do, following the period of art and literature known as Romanticism. There are no wrong answers!

 

But heavens! So many questions! Will anyone be brave enough to answer any? I only have one friend who says she never reads fiction, so I won’t expect a comment from her....

 

Next question: What do you think explains this surge in romance reading? I’ll tell you what I think one reason is (not that anyone asked). I think the gruesomeness of American politics at this juncture in our history is sending people of all ages, more and more, to romance and fantasy and all manner of speculative fiction. The real world is too much with us! How can we even sleep at night? As for me, I have now hit my bottom line, and I’m digging in my heels, and here it is: 

 

I’ve refrained from name-calling, treated those whose views oppose mine with respect, sent love to all, but now I’ve reached the end of my rope, because the bottom line as I see it is that no matter what anyone’s most dearly held opinions are about the economy, about immigration, about abortion, about the war in Gaza or the war in Ukraine or equal rights for all Americans, about minimum wage or social security or the cost of health care, affordable housing or the border with Mexico, the composition of the Supreme Court, the existence of the Electoral College, space travel or cryogenics — whatever anyone’s views about any of these or any other issues may be, putting a sociopath in the White House (for the second time!) is not the answer. Crazy is not the solution to a single problem. Crazy rights no wrongs. And if you vote for crazy, you cannot, in truth, call yourself sane or good or righteous, regardless of how often you go to church or pray over your dinner table. 

 

Should I have thought longer about making such a public statement? Crawled back in the closet and prayed about it some more? Kept quiet lest I hurt someone’s feelings or lose a friend or put my business in jeopardy? There is too much at stake.

 

(And by the way, if you vote third party or don’t plan to vote at all — because you think the Democrats’ candidate is “just as bad” or you see her as a warmonger — the effect will be just as if you had voted for crazy, and you know it, so don’t pretend otherwise. You’ll be putting crazy back in the White House, so don’t expect “policies” of any kind.) 

 

So I'll say it again. Crazy is a solution to nothing. Crazy rights no wrongs. Crazy is what the rule of law, with all its human flaws and shortcomings, is designed to prevent. And I am enough of a romantic that I have not given up hope for this country – my country! – that I love and for our beautiful world.

To my Republican friends: 

If your biggest concern is eliminating abortions, and you don’t care about anything else if only you can accomplish it, work toward that end. Devote your money and time and energy to providing pregnant women with support. If you’re most worried about the gun industry's being allowed to continue to market and sell military-style assault weapons to civilians (whether you own stock in the industry or believe you would be able to defend yourself against the U.S. army and U.S. Navy and Air Force if you and the government disagreed — whatever!), spend your time and energy and hard-earned income on that issue. But don’t vote for a lying sociopath and trust him to make your dearest dreams come true. That has never been his mission. It’s HIS dearest dreams that matter to him, and nothing else, and there is more honor among thieves than there is in DJT’s promises.

"Donald Trump is not cognitively fit to be president. The presidency is a position that requires an occupant able to act strategically and carefully. That Trump is not such a person is obvious if you watch the man. And so, for years, his supporters have said: Don’t watch the man. Don’t listen to what he says. Look at the results. But those results reflected the power and ability of others to check Trump, to inhibit him when he could not inhibit himself. It is not just the man who is now unfit; it is the people and institutions that surround him.” - Ezra Klein, “What’s Wrong with Donald Trump?” 10/22/2024

It’s worth looking up and taking the time to read or listen to Ezra Klein’s whole piece. It’s in the New York Times but also available as a podcast from many, many online sites you probably use. His basic point (for those who will not follow through on my suggestion) is that Trump isn’t any different from what he ever was, so it’s not senility we should worry about. The reason there weren’t more disasters during his presidency was that there were people holding him in check and, when necessary, not acting on his orders (e.g., to cut FEMA funds to California because Californians were not his diehard supporters), whereas this time around, should he be elected again, he will be surrounded only by loyalists and sycophants, and there will be little restraint on his impulses. 

 

To all:

You didn’t expect this abrupt change of course in today’s post? Neither did I when I set out to write about the surge in romance novels and bookshops. But here it is, all of it, and there’s a little more on one of my other blogs, “Without a Clear Focus,” a piece on my #1 most beloved philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose birthday was October 18 and someone I take as an exemplar.

There. I've said my piece. Bye-bye for today.

Facts, Truth, Lies, and Fiction: THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON

The surest evidence that the woman in the photo was Jun Do’s mother was the unrelenting way the Orphan Master singled him out for punishment. It could only mean that in Jun Do’s face, the Orphan Master saw the woman in the picture, a daily reminder of the eternal hurt he felt from losing her. Only a father in that kind of pain could take a boy’s shoes in winter. Only a true father, flesh and bone, could burn a son with the smoking end of a coal shovel. - Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son

The Orphan Master’s Son is like no other novel I know. It has been compared to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but the author has not created a future dystopia: the world of this fictional work is a country that really exists in our own time. 

“How much did you know about North Korea before reading The Orphan Master’s Son?” asks the first question in the “Questions and Topics for Discussion” section following the novel’s end. My answer would be “Very little.” That Communist North Korea lost its battle for reunification with South Korea and that its people live under a repressive regime. Little more, except that recently I saw a photograph of a newly opened, antiseptic-looking North Korean bookstore (check it out in this issue of “Shelf Awareness”), with very little offered for sale on its shelves other than various editions of the Collected Works of Kim Jong Il and a paltry handful of translated foreign titles.

The book hadn’t been on my agenda or radar, but it was recommended to me by a friend whose opinion on books I trust. Looking at the last few titles on my “Books Read” list, I saw it was also time for a modern novel, so home with me went the book.

Johnson’s tale, enriched by research into the actual country, opens with two pages of imagined propaganda from the North Korean government, arriving by loudspeaker in every home. Various unrelated statements are made and rumors denied. “What are you going to believe, citizens?” the loudspeaker asks. “Rumors and lies, or your very own eyes?” Immediately I wondered what I was going to believe in this story, where rumors and lies play such an important part and the fiction imagined is based on facts. Knowing full well that I was reading a novel, I quickly gave myself over to belief in Johnson's convincing fictional world.

The protagonist, Jun Do, who grew up in the orphanage administered by his father, was not technically an orphan, but like the other boys he was given an orphan’s name, a name that also echoes for American readers the name John Doe, and he is the North Korean Everyman. He does what he must to survive, whether that means sending other orphans to work in fatally toxic environments, enduring combat duty in completely dark tunnels under the DMZ, or participating in kidnapping expeditions to Japanese shores. “Then the kidnappings ended, as suddenly as they’d begin,” and Jun do is sent to school to learn English. Next he is assigned to intercept and translate American radio transmissions from a North Korean fishing vessel.

Out at sea the young man’s life begins to open up for the first time. He has a taste of freedom in the water and sky surrounding him and gradually learns about family from the captain and crew, while in the dark night, he is given glimpses of another world in the person of the Girl Rower and the manned space station whose location eludes him for so long. Jun Do cannot plan his future, nor can he predict a single one of his “long tomorrows.” He can only hope to keep himself and his friends the fishing crew and captain safe, as each astonishing, improbable turn of events tests his ability to lie convincingly and to suffer torture without recanting his false testimony.

Improbable, yes. How likely is it that just this particular motherless not-an-orphan, also a kidnapper, tunnel soldier, and radio operator, would be chosen as the official translator on a mission to Abilene, Texas, for some “talks before the talks,” an informal meeting with an American senator who will later visit North Korea to make a serious exchange? In an interview at the end of the book, the author addresses the question of what is “real” and what is “invented” in his novel.

If literature is a fiction that tells a deeper truth, I feel my book is a very accurate portrayal of how the tenets of totalitarianism eat away at the things that make us human: freedom, art, choice, identity, expression, love. And because few things about North Korea are verifiable ... this seems to be a realm in which the imaginative reach of literary fiction is our best tool to discover the human dimension of such an elusive a society. But I know what you’re asking.... I have a rationale for every artistic decision I made in the book, but suffice it to say that most of the shocking aspects in my book are sourced from the real world.... What’s fiction is that one person might serve in all these capacities, as my character Jun Do does. But in this case I valued the larger portrait of North Korean society over the plausibility that one person would have such a range of positions.

Stop now and take a deep breath before you read what he says next.

I felt I actually had to tone down much of the real darkness of North Korea, as in the kwan li so gulags, the reports of which were so harrowing—forced abortions, amputations, communal executions—that I invented the blood harvesting as a less savage stand-in, one that was simple and visceral, for the ways that the Kim regime stole every drop of life from citizens it had sentenced to an eternity of slave labor.

To give any kind of adequate review of this book, I would have to discuss Jun Do’s transformation into General Ga and his love affair with the film actress Sun Moon (General Ga’s wife), and I would have to mention her children, too, and his relationship with them. I would also have to discuss the nameless figure of the interrogator, a man who works only at night, whose own parents fear him, who takes pride in his team being different from, more “scientific” than, the Pubyok torturers. What will become of them all? The author says in his interview, “The people there are just as human as we are, driven by the same needs and motivations.” Some of Johnson’s characters become harder as the story unfolds, while in others their humanity cannot help reaching for the light.

But all I really want to do is urge you to read this heartbreaking, horrifying, mesmerizing, and beautifully written, book. Deserving recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize, The Orphan Master's Son has prompted different people to ask: Is it magical realism? A political thriller? Love story and/or a tragedy? Coming-of-age tale? I say that the best of novels, whatever labels critics attach to them, transcend genre boundaries, and Johnson has gone transcendence one better: his novel blends and unites genre categories, and transcends them all.

Reading the first few pages, I wondered if I would be able to “get into” this book; now I think that no one could read very far into it without becoming obsessed by the characters and compelled to continue the voyage. If I were to put together a “Top 100 Novels of My Lifetime,” this would surely be on the list.

Returning the Dear Leader’s gaze, Ga felt no fear looking into the eyes of the man who would get the last word. In fact, Ga was oddly carefree. I’d have felt this my whole life, Ga thought, if you had never existed.

Tragic, yes, but not a tragedy. The central character is not a great man brought low by a tragic flaw but an Everyman who discovers his purpose and finds strength and resolution to fulfill it.

Murder Here, Murder There, Murdered Bodies Everywhere

My sister Deborah with guest author Sara Paretsky at fund-raiser in central Illinois

This spring my sister had an opportunity to meet, in person, Chicago’s Sara Paretsky, creator of the popular V. I. Warshawski novels, in which a feisty female detective (divorced, loves dogs, hates cooking and housework) negotiates the southwest stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline -- urban neighborhoods, scary alleys and industrial settings -- the works! Warshawski takes risks, confronts danger head-on, and brings wrong-doers to justice. It turns out author Paretsky and her husband honeymooned in the Sleeping Bear area (before or after Lakeshore status? I don’t know), and she loves the whole Leelanau/Grand Traverse area. I wonder if she has any idea of the number of fictional murders that take place in these beautiful surroundings.

I asked some Up North murder mystery writers of my acquaintance what drew them to the genre and how they rationalize the high number of local homicides in their novels. The answers were interesting.  Here’s how Robert Underhill, author of the new novel Suttons Bay, responded:

I like puzzles. "Who done it" is a puzzle that has to be answered. Our moral code demands an answer where murder is concerned. A reader is easily convinced of this. Why did Jane decide to become a nurse, is an interesting question, but halfway into a book about the subject one may think, "Maybe I don't need to know that much." A mystery novel fan has to know the who, how and why about a murder. As a kid I read Nancy Drew, and then all of Sherlock, then all of the British classics. It was relaxing, non-demanding reading at bedtime after a busy day. 

One day I complained to Trudy [his wife] that I couldn't find a good mystery of the puzzle type I enjoy, and she answered, "So, write one yourself." A project suggested itself: I have enjoyed so many pleasurable hours with a good mystery -- why not try to write at least one book that would provide a reader with my taste a "good read"? It would serve as a sort of payback to all those who had put in the time that I'd benefited from. I set out pleased with the project, but with no promise of success. As it has turned out, I had the pleasure of having a number of people approach me to say that I had accomplished my goal. I also found that I really enjoy writing. 

Why Leelanau? Most would say that writing about what you know affords the best chance of creating a convincing fictional world. Aside from Leelanau, I've written a novel set in Chicago - with which I am acquainted, one set in Ann Arbor  -- ditto -- and my last book took place in Appalachia, where I once lived.

It should be pretty clear to locals and county visitors from the title of Underhill’s new book, Suttons Bay, that it’s set close to the author’s Leelanau County home.

Elizabeth Buzzelli, author of the popular Emily Kincaid series, shared Underhill’s perspective in part and also gave a surprising and striking response to one of my questions. That is, she doesn’t think murder in northern Michigan is all that unlikely or uncommon! Read on, if you dare!

Ah Pamela, murder is not as rare as you might like to think in our pleasant North Country.  The problem was, until recently, a distinct lack of law enforcement, or even collusion by law enforcement.  Since moving up here I have been treated to story after story of where the bodies are buried, with the miscreants never brought to justice.  I have one story -- which I'm considering as background for a future Emily Kincaid book -- about a mother and son who took in indigents during the winter, murdered them, and buried them in their basement. That site is now a paved-over parking lot in Kalkaska.  And stories from a retired psychologist . . . well . . . shall we say, murder is no stranger up here.  Winters are long and dull, you know. Now, as to how I got involved in murder.  My mother was a voracious mystery book reader.  Some of that must have rubbed off on me.  And then the nature of murder -- since Cain and Abel, a crime inducing the highest horror.  The act inspires not only fear, loathing, and reprehension but seems to reach down into that bottom-of-the-soul place where we all fear we might go--given the right circumstances. 

Murder is sin at its worst -- where a person's right to continue living is taken away.  To solve a murder, to bring a murderer to justice, is to set civilization back up on its feet, to make the world a good place again.  What better task for a writer than to set all of humanity to rights? To scare future murderers with apprehension?  And to have a heck of a lot of fun undoing dastardly villains.

Anyone who has ever met Buzzelli or heard her talk about her writing knows how much fun she has concocting her stories and punishing the wicked!

Buzzelli’s novels starring Emily Kincaid and sidekick Deputy Dolly all take place in and around Leetsville, a fictional Up North town. Underhill’s, as he points out, range from Leelanau to Ann Arbor, Chicago, and Appalachia. A local newcomer to the lists of northern mystery writers this spring is Berkley Duck of Leland, whose first novel is entitled The Grapevine. Here’s his take on my questions.

I wanted to try my hand at fiction. I picked the crime novel genre because I enjoy it as a consumer and because generating characters and a story line seemed manageable in this format:  a crime occurs, the protagonist gets involved (usually bringing some particular expertise to the task), he (or she) gets help from a sidekick of some sort, there may be a police procedural element, etc. All the writer has to do is fill in the details. Murder because you need a crime (obviously), and you need a crime that, presented properly, causes the reader to catch his or her breath: “Wow!  I wasn’t expecting that! What just happened? I liked that character.” And so he or she reads on. Murder resonates with everyone. 

 The Grapevine is not set in Northern Michigan (although the principal characters find themselves there eventually). Most of the action takes place in a large, unnamed city in the Midwest, a setting dictated in part by the plot but also one with which I was familiar having lived and worked in Indianapolis. Readers like to identify with the story locale, and verisimilitude is important. I have been told by readers of The Grapevine that they recognized places in which the action takes place even though I made them up. 

I intend to write another crime novel, and one in which more of the action takes place in northern Michigan. Murder? Of course!

So there you have it, from the horses’ mouths: crime, puzzles, characters, setting, justice.

How does the apparent embezzlement problem in a community symphony organization take a turn toward murder? Why would anyone take a shot at Deputy Dolly’s car while she is visiting an old grave at the Leetsville Cemetery? And what if a psychiatrist, listening to a patient’s description of how he would kill another person, takes as fantasy what is actually a plan? For answers to these questions – and all the others that will occur to you as you turn the pages of these mystery novels – read The Grapevine, by Berkley Duck; Dead Little Dolly, by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli; and Suttons Bay, by Robert Underhill. All are at Dog Ears Books now, and very soon we will also have for you Aaron Stander’s latest Ray Elkins mystery, Death in a Summer Colony.

Hot Date: A book signing and reception for and with Robert Underhill and his latest mystery novel, Suttons Bay, will be held at Dog Ears Books on Sunday, June 23, from 3 to 5 p.m. Please do not be confused: the book title is Suttons Bay, but the signing will take place at my bookstore in Northport!