The value of valuing yourself (Universal Studios, LA, over one week present-day): Ann Garvin knows what women want and don’t want. Meaning she knows what readers want.

Armed with her literary toolbox, her trademark comedic voice covers up a fifty-year-old Midwesterner’s heartache (from Madison, Wisconsin where the bestselling author of the feel-good genre hails from), Garvin cleverly casts her new starring female character – Poppy Lively – in a make-or-break costume assistant job in the Wardrobe Department of Universal Studios demanding a different type of toolkit.

Poppy may not have the remarkable tools of creative genius Edith Head, iconic fashion designer for much of the 20th century, but she’s infused with the same witty, warm, candid, wish-we-were-friends traits as her creator. So you’ll be rooting for Poppy the moment you meet her.

On page 1, line 3, a word is repeated three times when Poppy’s world, on the brink of collapsing, must do what Garvin has excelled at, coaching herself: “You are good at pivoting. You are the pivot. Be the pivot.” Garvin pivoted from thirty years as a registered nurse with a doctorate in exercise physiology. Wellness fitting the image of someone who turned from comforting patients to comforting readers, also founding the women’s writing group Tall Poppies, called “a unique force in the publishing industry.”

What Poppy lacks, notably, is confidence. Desperately, she needs to muster up enough when thrust into a world far removed from her comfort zone that’s not what it seems, whereas Poppy wears her heart for everyone to see. A pleaser, not a wanter. A survival mechanism self-taught when you’ve navigated your world doing what you were told to do and doing what you think others want, not “wanting” for yourself.

Borne from significant others treating Poppy as valueless, “dispensable”: her unhappy-in-marriage mother who left her; belittling father; biological dad leaving her to singlehandedly raise her attached-at-the-hip daughter Robyn, now seventeen, headed to college after the summer plot time ends; and the ex- she thought was “the one who got away,” nicknamed Three.

That’s a lot of abandonment. Something Poppy can’t bear to do to Robyn, who’s given her a breather to fix what may be unfixable, working over the summer as a nanny for a Manhattan family before she heads to train to become a nurse. Like Garvin was. Like Poppy’s best friend Chelsea is.

The victim of an IRS crime that wiped out her entire bank account, Poppy trusted the wrong person. Stings, when you’ve “adapted” but “never let your guard down.” Knowing whom to trust is still a huge problem for Poppy when she lands in a fake, fantasy world where nothing is what it seems to be.

Expect Pecking Order Treatment. False Assumptions. Favoritism. Miscommunications. Bullying. Accusations. Schemers. Crooks. Malcontents. An intimidating task masker among the beautiful people. Hard to know if Poppy is beautiful on the outside being so self-deprecating. What we come to know is how beautiful she’s on the inside.

If you’ve read one or more of Garvin’s four other novels (see her last: https://enchantedprose.com/i-thought-you-said-this-would-work/), or subscribe to her lively newsletter, you’ll recognize that no matter how zany, unreal “There’s No Coming Back From This” is Garvin is after joy. Poppy so deserves that.

In Garvin’s July 10, 2023 newsletter about her new novel she lists three good-hearted goals she wants readers to take away – and achieves:

  • “I hope I make you smile.
  • feel good about being a messy human.
  • sometimes I hope you feel seen.”

As if the theft of her finances isn’t enough, Poppy couldn’t/didn’t predict that taking over her father’s Coupons by Mail business would become irrelevant when people pivoted to online shopping, eliminating the need for paper coupons. Ironic, since these days Poppy knows her way around the Internet and social media: that in a moment’s notice she could be “Deleted,” “Erased,” in a “must hire,” “below-the-line” job that’s more important than you might think. Like Poppy.

Prejudice thrives even in dreamy La La Land. Poppy’s “Midwest Hello” is treated like a “cartoon” character.

Poppy wins over our hearts and minds as she’s so good-natured, maternal, caring even when others don’t seem to care or treat her with respect. How long can she keep up the “stress-joking” when so much is unfair, unequal, at stake?

Beneath the smiles and laughs, there’s life lessons when Three pops up years later and offers Poppy a lifeline, he now a Hollywood producer for Universal Studios. Set over one week that Poppy and the reader feel takes place over months as so much goes wrong. Ludicrously and realistically.

No wonder Poppy’s racing around all hours of the day and night panicked she won’t measure up. Berated, intimated, mocked, watched, put-on-notice. Gavin, always relatable, shapes Poppy as a woman “saying yes when you don’t know how to say no.” In this alien, whacky landscape how can she assert herself when no means you’re out?

Garvin’s toolbox is deep and wide, so there’s room for a few good souls to be fixtures on Universal’s lot. Not only humans, but dogs. In 2020, she wrote in her newsletter on the “wonder of dogs” and how her dog Peanuts was like “a person,” like a member of your family. Again, hallmark Garvin, who includes dogs in her novels since they’re unconditional sources of comfort and companionship.

Kevin, a soothing tiny dog no one wants, ends up with Poppy, clinging to her chest as she runs around in circles. Kevin like everything else in this on-the-surface glittering world isn’t whom you think he is. The movie-in-the-making stars three dogs Poppy is also accountable for. More than Poppy should be asked to do. Like women – Garvin’s mantra.

Room too for a legendary movie star, the human star in the movie being filmed, living in one of the trailers at Universal who’s not what the rumors say he is. A revengeful young lady who carries a grudge who isn’t as she appears to be either, and a Teamsters Union member, tough on the outside, grieving inside. 

Poignancy threads throughout. It’s the sadness of Poppy believing, “Nobody wants me” (except Robyn and Chelsea; family and friendships matter profoundly.) Poppy yearning to be appreciated. Valued.

Garvin’s message transcends Poppy. It’s always about women: “It didn’t matter how far you’d come in the world of competency; women were always judged by their outward appearance.” Poppy doesn’t dress for the kill; she barely can find the time or money to dress at all.

An LA memory haunts her: the sight of looking into the eyes of a homeless woman in a city with so many unfathomably rich people yet homelessness is staggering (over 75,000). If you’ve been there, you’ve seen it. If not, Garvin makes us see what Poppy does: Life is fragile. We too could one day, out-of-the-blue, find ourselves on the “struggle bus.”

It’s not just about watching your back. It’s about watching someone else’s back. Not letting allure blind you. Value more than beauty and money. Work to stay true to yourself. Follow a moral compass. Respect the dignity of all. Kindness goes a long way.

As for making readers happy, Garvin has mastered the art.

Lorraine

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Love in a Loopy Time (Los Angeles, over five months or one repeating contemporary day): What happens when you’re stuck? Stuck in time. Stuck in life. Stuck in love. For the reader, what happens is you’re stuck in delicious entertainment.

Entertainment, the industry that is – music, radio, TV – plays an influential role in Holly James’ out-of-this-world second novel, The Déjà Glitch, expressing its passions, talents, perks, sacrifices. Where better, then, to set it in the Entertainment Capital of the World? How big a role the Hollywood strikes as of this writing will affect us is unclear, compared to James’ assuredly affecting fantastical romantic tale.

Gemma, James’ new main female character caught up in a whirlwind of one extra-extraordinary day (see her debut), is a radio show producer. She keeps crashing, bumping into Jack, a TV scriptwriter. Each day that she does, she has no memory of him the next day, other than a dream-like, déjà vu sensation of “familiarity” strong like a “brilliant sunshine,” whereas Jack’s had 156 days of memories of her. Enough time for Jack to fall madly in love with Gemma. If she could only remember him 24-hours later maybe he’d have a chance. So, to be precise, Jack’s ensnarled in a five month time “snag” that’s driving him crazy, while Gemma’s bizarre situation recycles over and over one day.

James, a psychologist, has made a much-appreciated leap into the world of charming, swoon-worthy romantic novels. She brings insight into what ails lonely hearts, together with what ails a “cutthroat industry.” A consultant for the highly competitive tech industry and the cocooned academic world, whatever stuck with her working in those environments filters into this wildly imaginative story.

James, though, isn’t a theoretical physicist – the only realm that could possibly explain the surreal plot about a “temporal anomaly” triggered when two lives intersect and time stands still for them.

The sci-fi premise feels like you’ve “entered The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Emmy-award winning TV series launched in 1959 considered one of the greatest producing more than 150 episodes, inspiring a 2019 revamp lasting only two seasons. While nothing in James’ preposterous literary version terrifies us, there’s a building sense of fear that’s what’s temporary might be eternal unless the glitch comes unstuck.

Serling’s distinctive live voice drew us in. James’ literary voice does too, with charmed prose that makes us feel we’re “in the moment.” Both also warning us about the dangers of success and technology.

Gemma and Jack’s non-linear lives seem as if the universe has a scheme and reason for this madness. Almost as if meant-to-be since they’re both single, unsettled thirty-somethings. Not without considerable effort – at least 156 recycles trying to make it so.

Gemma has been traumatized by her ex-boyfriend, a rock musician, who used her to get an in with her father, a legend in the music industry. Estranged from him, having put his career over family and they paid for it. So, when she smashes into Jack at her go-to coffee shop, the last thing on her mind is noticing him or remembering him. Jack’s plight is to how to change that, after they’ve spent flirty, enchanting times together. Trust, abandonment, and forgiveness are big themes.

Gemma has two best friends. Lila, from college, who’s everything Gemma is not except the kind of loyal friend we all wish we had who’ll drop everything to be there for her, despite having a lot going on as a social influencer with 200,000 followers @ Lila in L.A. James has fun with all the freebies Lila gets, tries, and lends her BF. Not the bad smelling shampoo, but the sexy clothes Gemma doesn’t own. Rex, a fuzzy friend, “the most faithful man in her life,” is also always there for her, ready to snuggle up with her while reading a book. Gemma isn’t the let loose, let’s party kind of gal Lila is. Lila’s bold and fearless. Gemma, wary and afraid to step out of line will for Lila.

Starting with going to her fancy, overcrowded birthday party, where Lila points out to unassuming Gemma there’s a man at the end of the bar who can’t keep his eyes off of her. Does she know him? He seems familiar, but no. Oh, she’ll get familiar with him but won’t remember what happened the next day. Jack plots so many ways to get her to remember him but nothing sticks, so he too can’t move on, nor remember what he did the day before he met the love of his life.

What a spacey set-up! In James’ hands, it works. Marvelously.

How to shake things up to get Gemma to believe Jack loves her more than anything else in the world? How can she trust someone she doesn’t know? Especially when people she loved and thought she knew betrayed her?

What will it take for Gemma to believe, “The universe is a collection of infinite objects in random motion . . . Each with their own path and timeline”? That, “In any system with different parts in simultaneous yet variable motion, there is always a chance for disruption”?

Like The Twilight Zone, James sweeps us into another spectrum. Is that so unreal given the chaos our world is spinning in?

An awfully playful, page-turning approach to creating a delightful romance, one Lila says is, “a fantastic, impossibly romantic story about the two of you essentially stopping time.” Impossible? But don’t you think the universe has gone “off kilter”?

Besides, “Who was to say what could or couldn’t be possible in the great expanse of a universe humans barely knew a sliver of?”

Gemma’s younger brother Patrick adds another element to this ludicrous scenario. More than a best friend, the two grew up as a tight team after their family broke up and they only had each other. Patrick has something he hasn’t told Gemma, yet, knowing his news will make her cry, which will make him cry too. The easier-to-believe Domino Theory is seen here, and elsewhere.

Patrick and Gemma keep calling each other as he’s stuck at the airport trying to fly home to her. Like reality, his flights keep getting cancelled. James adds enough real life issues to her unreal story, including casting Patrick as the character who cares about wildlife conservation, needing protection from a world gone awry. What is the significance to the plot of his not being able to get out of airports?

Expect to be treated to feeling like you’re sitting behind a glass window glued to a live radio show interview with another legendary rock star you’ve loved since a child; swinging to rip-roaring music resounding in the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater; and whisked away to “mansions wedged into the earth like fallen-glass-and-stone meteors.” Ever wonder if the superrich Hollywood stars hidden behind private gates feel as if they’re living in “a cage filled with loneliness”? That fame and fortune comes with a hefty price tag.

Mostly, though, we’re vicariously feeling what it’s like to be somebody’s “center of everything.”

Someone once told me to look for the gems. The Déjà Glitch is one of those gems, wanting us to believe anything is possible.

Lorraine

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Life lessons, amid all the laughter, craziness, and romance (Houston, Texas; present-day): What do classical pianist Leon Fleisher, French impressionist Claude Monet, and Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh have in common? More to the point, what do these artists have in common with the wild and wondrous plot of Hello Stranger? More specific to Katherine Center’s newest female protagonist – struggling portrait artist, twenty-eight-year-old Sadie Montgomery – what does Sadie’s medical affliction have in common with them?

Since you won’t know Sadie’s medical diagnosis until 40+ pages in, rather than spoil the oh-so-clever plotting, why not imagine what could be so catastrophic to derail a painter of portraits? That’s not really a fair question competing with Center’s imagination, especially after nine other bestselling romance novels, one adapted and available on Netflix (The Lost Husband), another in production (Happiness for Beginners).

Competing is also key to the plot. On page one, Sadie has just found out she’s one of only 10 finalists out of 2,000 invited to submit a portrait for the coveted North American Portrait Society’s annual contest. A chance of a lifetime to be recognized, appreciated, coming with a $10,000 prize she could use badly. She had six weeks to create her entry, until out-of-the blue she’s hit with a medical calamity that eats up three. Down-to-the-wire, crazily so.

“You know those days when it just feels like the universe is out to get you?” Well, Sadie has had many days, weeks, months, and years of those. Now she feels even worse, as in, “The brokest and sickest and most disoriented I’d ever been in my life.” As in, “No matter how alone you are in life, you always have yourself, right?” Except with Sadie’s condition, she’s lost the ability to rely on herself.

So, if you’re wondering how Center, dubbed the reigning queen of comfort reads,” concocts her literary magic this time with such a serious plot, here’s a clue: Center believes, “Tragedy is a given, but “joy is a choice.” Center proves, “Laughter is the best medicine.” How she makes that happen is a gift.

The prose makes you smile. One word – “Anyhoo” – conjures up something Lucille Ball, iconic TV comedian, might have said to her dear friend and neighbor Ethel. Ball, who gave us so many laughs. In a way, the sharp-shooting, fast-paced dialogue reminds us of the laugh-out-loud episode when Lucy donned her ridiculous white baker’s cap to work on a conveyor belt wrapping chocolates and cannot keep up the pace. Center can.

For instance, during a session with Sadie’s doctor/therapist Nicole from Trinidad, the conversation goes like this:

“You’re very in your head.” “I’d like to see you dip into your heart.”

“I like it in my head.”

But that’s not really where we live.”

“Are you trying to tell me I’m emotionally closed off?”

“Because I have a lot of emotions. I’m great at emotions! I’m a huge fan of you, for example. I just fell madly in love with my brand-new veterinarian. I cry at life insurance commercials.”

Later: “I’m just going to take a fake-it-til-ya-make-it-approach.”

“It might help people to know what’s going on with you. It might help them help you.”

“Have you met people?” “People don’t help other people.”

Sadie makes her life even more difficult than it already is having mastered the art of acting and saying she’s “fine. OK,” no matter how desperate she feels. Caring about preserving her dignity and not hurting the feelings of others even though inside she’s “falling apart.”

“We all just move about through the world on guesswork and hope,” Sadie says, trying to cajole herself when her world is suddenly, literarily, turned upside-down, sideways, torn into pieces.

Sadie has had a hard-luck life. Adrift for fourteen years since she lost her mother at fourteen, the one person in her life that, “Couldn’t always fix things for me, but she was always there. Until the day she wasn’t.” Sadie misses her mother’s warmth, kindness, fun, creativity, and loving-life spirit. We feel her pain, longing to be hugged and loved. A good-natured young woman who’s been knocked down by the other members of her so-called family. Her father, “a celebrated surgeon,” who wants nothing to do with her; her “evil stepmother” Lucinda might someday make enough amends if she tries hard and long enough and doesn’t let Sadie down; and her “evil stepsister” Parker who, playing amateur psychologist, seems to be a psychopath – dangerously revengeful, abnormally jealous, downright mean, likely beyond hope. Center’s literary world has no room for cruelty.

Sadie, then, has ingrained emotional triggers – feeling betrayed, abandoned, forgotten. On her medical journey, she learns life lessons. One called “confirmation bias,” based on evidence, theorizes that if you go looking for something based on assumptions, you’ll find what you were looking for. Which means you’ll also miss what you weren’t looking for.

Sadie misses a lot.

What the reader doesn’t know is how much they miss. Clue: starts in the first chapter. You will not see the twist coming. When it comes, you’ll marvel at how well put-together the novel is, despite being engrossed. In fact, you won’t read this novel, you’ll devour it. For the record: I didn’t know Center would say the same thing about romantic stories in her Author’s Note after the novel ends. She wants us to devour her novels the way she devours what she reads.

Still, how could Sadie have the presence of mind given what’s on her plate to get romantically involved with someone? She’s so discombobulated, though she can’t remember the last time she was kissed, touched. Well, that’s part of the sexual tension and humor.

Enter that aforementioned dreamy new vet, who comes to the rescue of Peanuts. Sadie’s senior, fluffy, adorable, mini-dog – her “soulmate, and only real family.” Ugh, how those emotions tug at the hearts of dog lovers who understand what the unconditional love and loyalty of a special companion profoundly means, or anyone with compassion for someone who’s terribly lonely. She’s not that far gone, though, that she doesn’t consider she might be “manufacturing a crush” to distract from her “wounded” self. You’ll see how delightfully entangled that relationship becomes.

Another handsome male is in this picture. Sadie overhears him on the phone in the elevator of her apartment building she interprets to mean he’s the worst type of man alive. When she tells Sue (Soo Hyun), her best friend from college, an art teacher, they playfully debate whether he’s a “playboy,” “seducer,” “libertine,” “shag bandit,” “Womanizer,” “Mutton monger.” Sadie lands on Weasel but Sue’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kim, who own the building, call him Mr. Helpful. Hmmm. It’s the Kims who’ve kindly allowed Sadie to use their rooftop storage space for a studio she lives in and calls a “hovel.” Casting the Kims as Korean-American immigrants translates into they know what it means to struggle.

Rooftop views let us know where the novel is set. In Houston, Texas the author’s home. The building located in the Warehouse District. West is Buffalo Bayou.

When Sue can’t be there for Sadie modeling for said contest – Sadie is operating on Hope – she doesn’t tell her how frantic she feels. Sue has a good reason. What are best friends for?

How will Sadie find a replacement model? Imagine where that can lead to!

Lorraine

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How oranges influenced the making of an award-winning journalist (Central Florida, also Gulf Coast; 1964 to 1983): What does the melancholy voice of Through the Groves tell us about the childhood and coming-of-age underpinnings that influenced the making of a celebrated journalist?

Anne Hull’s memoir of memories goes as far back to when she was three years old, to her early twenties. What do the events she recalls tell us about Hull?

An absorbing question knowing she’s the recipient of prestigious journalism awards that recognize Courage in Journalism (Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award), and the advancement of Human Rights (RFK Journalism Grand Prize Award).

Aware of these distinctions, you may find yourself looking for the emergence of skills and characteristics you imagine an acclaimed journalist might possess. That’s what makes reading this memoir different than others who also grew up impoverished, in an unstable home, in an oppressive place – in Hull’s case, undeveloped, “desolate” Central Florida in the 60s before Disney broke ground. Her father, son of citrus-growers, once told his six-year-old daughter that where they lived “was no place for a child, though Disney was betting otherwise.”

That town was Sebring, an area below “four thousand square miles of rural lands and unmarked roads” referred to as the Ridge. Back then, having the “heaviest concentration of citrus groves in the world.” Lurking under canopies of beautiful oak trees with “mossy beards” was a world not fit for a child. So why isolate and coop up a young girl in the blazing, humid summers inside a truck without air-conditioning and a windshield coated with “pesticide dust”? Why did her mother Victoria insist she accompany him? Driving through, checking on the orange groves he was in charge of for HP Hood milk company’s citrus subsidiary, now gone. “Almost nothing in Florida stays the same way,” Hull reflects, capturing some things that haven’t changed. 

Her early memories etch a sense of outsiderhood: formidable “aloneness” and injustice a young girl perceptively picked up on and figured out. One involved her father’s right-hand man who supervised a hard-laboring crew of fruit pickers, Booker Sanders. Yes, his name evokes Bernie Sanders, senior Senator from Vermont, who’d have fought for Booker for Mayor of Sebring since he was by far the more qualified candidate but not happening in this white man’s world. Racism is alive and well, rearing its ugly head in another episode of a black man served at a lunch counter after segregation ended yet still treated like a dog. Is it any wonder, then, that Hull grew up to report on stories of racism, isolation, poverty over the twenty years she worked for The Washington Post?

The memoir makes you think of other people too. Like the often-quoted, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver, who penned, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?” Hull’s childhood was wild in the emotionally unsettling, uprooted sense, and geographically playing in “spooky” cypress swamps teaming with alligators, mosquitoes, and chemicals. Her father sold pesticides for ORTHO, the chemical company. Can you hear Rachel Carson screaming? Once he was promoted to managing orange groves, the climate determined his family’s livelihood. Drought and cold weather became significant factors in his emotional distress and alcoholism.

Hull couldn’t have answered Oliver’s poetic question during the years she looks back on. Instead, she chooses issues she grew up in, around, and observed. Including culture wars between two parents whose values, aims, and worldliness were polar opposites, and a culture’s deep-seated religious faith and conservatism that didn’t allow her to freely express herself. A bright spot, more like a spotlight, was her maternal grandmother, Olive or Damie. A bohemian, “an ethereal flower,” she relocated to St. Petersburg from Brooklyn when she became widowed. Her Gulf Coast home was cluttered with “tribal masks, hookah pipes, Chinese scrolls, Bombay wicker fans” that drove her mother crazy when they lived with her, but the guitar-playing, Beatles and Carly Simon fan Damie let Hull be who she wanted to be.

On September 27, 2004, Hull wrote an article for the Post titled “A Slow Journey from Isolation,” in which she speaks of her “coming out” as a journey. Hull chose to play with toy soldiers over dolls. Again, keenly aware early on, seeing herself as a “tomboy” preferring to play with boys, fishing in the plentiful lakes, running around in pants not dresses. Her mother and paternal grandmother Gigi did what they could to direct her to more feminine things. Not that the two saw eye- to-eye all the time, with Gigi a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She lived in a town called Hopewell. An ironic name for a place that felt hopeless.

In fourth grade, Hull did find two kindred girlfriends. She recognized the threesome as outcasts. One a black girl, the other a girl who liked and treated her black classmate swell. Housed in a brand-new school named Stonewall Jackson Elementary, governed by a school board that fought against integration for eight years, how did this affect Hull’s sensitivities?

The budding journalist, though, stays balanced, showing a generous side of Gigi and, more profoundly, her father despite being estranged for a long time. He’s seen as a tragic figure who just couldn’t overcome. We empathize with him and his down-and-out plight. When MLK was assassinated he told Booker, “It’s gonna hurt whites, too, the loss of Dr. King.” He understood his friend’s pain and what trying to kill the Dream meant for all of us.

Through the Groves is a memoir needing to overcome.

There’s nostalgia in some of what Hull recollects, but mostly we feel emotional pain. The first hint, the sleepwalking incident at three when she managed to walk out the front door unnoticed, made it across the lawn and street. Sleepwalking reflects some type of stress, as did Hull’s bedwetting bouts each time her mother moved her and her much easier-going younger brother Dwight someplace else.

Hull saw her mother’s restlessness. Her father never stepped foot out of Florida, whereas her mother grew up in Prospect Park, a borough of New York City. Raised around luxuries, her father around “God and oranges.”

Hull’s mother wasn’t around a lot, especially when she became an elementary school teacher, with higher ambitions, as a single-mother. Interestingly, Hull didn’t think of her that way, blessed with two substitute mothers: Damie and Ceola, a $5 a day caregiver/housekeeper/playmate. She lived on the wrong side of the tracks in what was called Black Sebring, or Colored Town, or other degrading names. Her world “felt like a separate town.” Separate and not equal.

Despite the emotional chaos of Hull’s formative years, she displays the kind of emotional restraint you’d expect of a seasoned journalist. This isn’t a poor-me examination of her early years described in sappy or angry prose. The three times she uses the word “sobbed” and once writes about tears speaks volumes. Less becomes more in this slim yet poignant memoir.

What we see is a journalist’s powers of observation, clarity of prose, ability to tell stirring accounts but not by overdramatizing them. Hull’s voice feels authentic, truthful, and from someone not seeking the limelight. 

What we don’t see is how she picked up the pieces to become an acclaimed journalist. We’re left waiting for a second memoir that tells us how she became who she is.

Lorraine

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Finding grace and renewal teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in “The Land of Smiles” (Northern and Southern Thailand, 2019 – 2020): If you find yourself smiling at this memoir’s charming cover design, that’s because it’s set in “The Land of Smiles” – Thailand.

Westerners, or farangs in the Thai language, naturally interpret a smile to mean happy. In this Southeast Asian country, a smile has thirteen meanings. So, along with the “spirit houses and spirits,” there’s an elusiveness to this “adapting, shape-shifting, exploring,” delightful-to-read, multi-layered memoir.

Addressed to “Gentle Reader,” let the cover’s pinkness guide you to its lightness. See the ethereal beauty in the Thai Lantern Festival, also known as the Festival of Light:

Pink, the color of the lotus flower on the flag of Pathum Thani province, an hour outside of Bangkok, the capital city, where much of this five-month journey takes place. At a private, international, Montessori immersion program for kindergartners ages 2 ½ to 4.

Interpret the adult and Mary Jane shoes to signify a story about the author at age 60 landing at an early childhood Montessori school volunteering to teach ESOL through the Teach the World Travel program. The shoes appear to be flying, calling forth the spirit of a culture that believes in going with the “flow.” Flying also the freeing imagery of one of the “slow, sweet” songs the children sing that ends with: “The air that I breathe/I fly.”

Kindergarten at 60 is unique and special. Unique in terms of Dian Seidel’s credentials and age. An accomplished scientist, retired after thirty years working at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), where she influenced the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize on Climate Change awarded to an Intergovernmental Panel in 2007 (see here). It’s not every day that a senior scientist finds herself challenged by little kids, nor accepted to teach them at her age. Five countries determined her age a liability.

Special because this isn’t just the author’s story. One of her application prerequisites was that her husband Steve, at 67, teach at the same school. He had elementary school experience she didn’t, but he too an expert on the environment, having retired as a climate policy advisor to the White House. They make a great team, balancing his laid-back personality with the author’s admittedly more anxious one. But with twenty years of studying and teaching yoga, she meshed with the meditative beliefs of Thai Buddhism. An avid swimmer, too, the author worked both calming activities into a disciplined before-sunrise, before-classroom routine. The “Prep” school, within-a-larger elementary school model, came with a swimming pool pass.

There’s many reasons Dian Seibel is so likeable. One, realizing their nearly free apartment by the school seemed better than her younger teacher colleagues from other countries. Loving her comforts – coffee among them, oh-so-relatable – but not looking for preferential treatment. We also appreciate her candor – how completely out-of-her comfort zone she was, and how daunting the Thai language proved to be for conversing with the children, parents, teachers, administrators, despite familiarity with other languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Yiddish).

The beautiful spirit of the Thai culture and the grace of the people enriches the pleasing prose. The author smiles too, forging through, noting the benefits of weekending in Bangkok. Plus, the children and teachers (khru) are endearing; Khru Dian and Khru their new names. In the “Top Ten Things to do in Thailand if You Aren’t a Tourist,” defined as “experiences that nourish your mind, body, and soul,” half are in the capital city. Others like “Eat Thai Street Food” are ubiquitous, adding “Fearlessly,” a reference to the country’s fondness for extremely spicy, hot chili-peppered dishes. A Thai word to memorize is mai ped, translated to politely say please without chili. What foods are eaten, described, tantalize.

By Arian Zwegers [CC BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

In the spirit of wanting to inform readers, we’re told there’s a “Glossary” of Thai words and phrases at the back of the book. An important word to understand is mai pen rai – the culture’s attitude and “approach to life.” It partly explains why the rest of the language is “too dang hard!” since the phrase has multiple meanings: “No problem, it’s fine, you’re welcome, don’t worry.” Thai is also a “tonal language” consisting of “five tones, more than either Cantonese or Mandarin.” Some of the words demonstrate the culture’s respect for its people when they meet each other: wai. Even this hello consists of several ways of showing respect depending on whom you’re greeting. Discerning body language is also not easy. Refreshing, though, respecting teachers, parents, and elders.

The video also shows the reverence the Thai people have for their King. Except for referencing the Kingdom of Thailand, Seidel stays away from politics. Googling you’ll learn Thailand has had a constitutional monarchy for decades, but the current King is trying to turn the clocks back to an absolute monarchy without the democratic freedoms. That’s why public outbursts against the royal family are significant as they’re still against the law (see here).

Kindergarten at 60 is not about conflicts, though. It’s about a personal journey that gives back as much as it gives. One of the questions Seidel asks is whether she’s a tourist or a traveler? What’s the difference? Since they’re going home to Maryland they’re not “expats,” she says, concluding they’re “sojourners.” The word conjures up adventuring in “a strange land and depending on the goodwill of strangers.”

Dangerous air quality is discussed – the reason Thailand wasn’t on the author’s dream list (nor teaching children so young). Of course, two climate experts would be even more sensitive to this but Americans have just felt how climate change affects them when the Canadian wildfires spread their harmful particles. Rarely, does the air pollution move out of the unhealthy zones (see here).

The prose and experiences kept reminding me of Abraham Maslow’s psychological theory Hierarchy of Needs, which is multi-layered, explained in “tiers.”

By Factoryjoe [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

The first tier attends to basic needs. The Seidels were very fortunate to have, perhaps make-or-break, assistance through a world travel and placement program that took care of all the paperwork. That’s why they first ended up in Northern Thailand, in Chiang Mai, an ancient city, for orientation and training before they traveled south to their temporary home-away-from home.

The second tier, swimming, yoga, and Thai massage, nourished the author’s mental health and body. The third rung represented by the coffeehouses frequented where outside the classroom they also found Maslow’s friendship, connection, sense of belonging. The fourth tier, Self-Esteem, seen in the respect teachers are given and the ability to make the most of a Thai adventure. A you may not get what you want at first, but sometimes you get what you need life lesson. If you’re open-minded. Like the hands-on, individualized, experiential, holistic Montessori teaching practices, acceptance is not passive. It’s a path forward and a purposeful mindset.

Chet may be the student who moves you the most. An “old soul,” he’s “closer to the Buddha nature than the rest of us.” And yet, he’s also “easily troubled by the world.” Chet symbolizes the “inner peace” Seidel searches for, which is why Self-Actualization is the fifth and highest tier attainable on Maslow’s wise pyramid.

Wise like this colorful, informative journey.

Lorraine

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