Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

The Snow Child

by Eowyn Ivey (2012)

“Like many fairy tales, there are many different ways it is told, but it always begins the same. An old man and an old woman live happily in their small cottage in the forest, but for one sorrow: they have no children of their own. One winter’s day, they build a girl of snow.”

The Snow Child is based on  the Russian folktale Snegurochk, which means “Snow Maiden,” about a couple who build a child out of snow.

The novel is set in Alaska in 1920; it tells the story of Jack and Mabel, a couple trying to forge a new life in the wilderness where they moved a little less than two years after their only child was stillborn. They are homesteaders, clearing land and hoping to farm it in order to claim the land as their own.

Place is central in this novel. Ivey was raised in Alaska and still lives there; and as The Guardian review notes, the novel, her debut. “is so saturated with wilderness atmosphere that you almost feel you’ve been there yourself.” Her love for this challenging landscape shines through, and we appreciated her narrative’s tremendous capacity to situate us in a place none of us are familiar with. 

When Jack is injured, Mabel, who arrived in Alaska with book learning and a skill for fine work,  steps up to the physical challenges of sowing potatoes and reeling in fish. We appreciate her strength. 

Mabel and Jack both develop over the course of the novel, and Jack is portrayed with as much tenderness as Mabel.  The Snow Child narrates the growth of both partners within a single marriage over a long period as gender roles and preconceived notions gradually loosen in the shared hardship of their new life.

One day, the couple playfully builds a snowgirl, but the next morning she is gone. Instead, they start to catch glimpses of a small blond girl off in the trees. The novel’s fairy tale origins are strong, and at times you find yourself wondering if poor Mabel and Jack will be sucked into some occult fairyland of deathless ice maidens, Angela Carter-style. Or will they simply buckle down to mending their damaged relationship, bonding over the muddy rows of potato seedlings in a more heartwarming result? 

Retelling fairy tales allows a writer to experiment with setting and character development, but always in the background is the plot of the original tale. Although Mabel’s sister assures her that she can write new endings, as readers we cannot escape the outlines of the tales that have been pulled into the light. We know in our bones that the Snow Maiden, that elusive girl who offers them a new chance, cannot exist in “real life”– she thrives in the ice and snow and freedom of living on her own in nature. The baby boy she births helps Mabel and Jack and ties up the story’s loose ends but it is a mere fantasy ending that we did not feel replaced the far more convincing ending of the original tale.  The novel’s conclusion wraps all up in a magical heartwarming fashion that left us unconvinced.

However, our conversation was lively, and as we listened to each other we each recalled details that made the characters and the setting feel real and nuanced despite the end result of a bit too sweet of an ending.

In case you are interested: there is a musical is based on this tale! Check out the NPR story:

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/02/606509836/snow-child-conveys-alaskas-wild-magic-in-musical-form

Click for a four minute listen

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Notes

Three Things About Elsie  Joanna Cannon (2018)

There are three things you should know about Elsie. The first thing is that she’s my best friend. The second is that she always knows what to say to make me feel better. And the third thing…might take a bit more explaining.

Eighty-four-year-old Florence has fallen in her flat at Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly. As she waits to be rescued, she thinks about her friend Elsie and wonders if a terrible secret from their past is about to come to light. If the charming new resident is who he claims to be, why does he look exactly like a man who died sixty years ago?

Booklist describes the novel as

a tender and charismatic look into life in a nursing home. Cannon effortlessly captures the home’s slow routines, along with the ways that staff and residents coexist but often know little about each other . . .

When we met on Monday afternoon to discuss this novel, we all agreed we were glad we read it, but, perhaps predictably in a novel that focuses on the confusions of memory and truth, each of us had questions about the actual facts of the plot. 

We were not all sure what was actually “the truth” about Elsie, or about Florence, and we differed about certain “facts” in the novel about the past.

Spoilers ahead! Don’t Read if you don’t want to know what happens!

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For example, we asked each another: When did it first become obvious to you that Elsie was not a resident of the home? When did Elsie die? Did she die in the fire Florence mistakenly believed she had caused? 

Several of us realized Elsie was not present in the retirement residence but did not realize she died in the fire. We all knew Elsie was Florence’s best friend, that they were very close friends, but not that Flo’s only love was Elsie, that after Elsie died, Florence never married or had children because she, Elsie, was her true love.

We talked about the retirement home, our own determination to avoid such places if possible, the patronizing tone of Miss Bissel and Miss Abrose toward the residents, the tendency to disbelieve those who are forgetful and tending toward dementia.

We agreed that Cannon’s characters–both residents and staff–were believable and well drawn. We praised her handling of the braided plots, Flo’s memories as well as the mystery plot. We appreciated the writing, and all of us had favorite lines, too many to record even with the help of post-its or underlining. 

The ending felt forced for some of us. Rodney’s arrest after so many years, the likelihood that he would end up at the same retirement home as Florence after so many decades. And that he would have access to her flat in his attempts to undermine her testimony about the past by accentuating her dementia. 

We speculated about the significance of the jet black amulet Flo notices beneath the baseboards from her fallen position on the floor.

We recognized the plot resembles what I label “deathbed bookends” in my book of old ladies, and yet we did not want to critique Cannon as we hadSusan  Minot for using this plot structure. After a bit, we realized Minot  had placed as the emotional center of her novel an unrequired sexual encounter from the protagonists’ past whereas Cannon provided a much fuller portrait of Flo’s current life and explored the aftermath of trauma.

Around the edges of our focus on the novel, we exchanged some of our own experiences: from visiting family members in such retirement homes, to differentiating between dementia and normal cognitive lapses, to experiences being patronized by younger people who call is by diminutive labels or refer to us in third person.

We liked Flo, and we wondered when she  began considering Elsie was present, when Elsie was part of herself. Was the third thing about Elsie that Elsie had died? Was it that she loved Elsie? What do you think?


Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy (2024)

Following the loss of her husband and son, 83 year old Helen Cartwright returns to the village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. She retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit: “Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle–as though even for death there is a queue.”

Then, one cold winter night, a chance encounter with a mouse sets Helen on a surprising journey. Over the course of two weeks in a small English town, this reclusive widow discovers an unexpected reason to live.

A Southern Review of Books reviewer notes that “Booy depicts aging and atrophy, loneliness and invisibility, with compassion,” and we largely agreed. Our responses to the book were mostly positive, from simply loving it to enjoying its fairytale qualities. The least positive was “I didn’t hate it” from a reader who prefers more character development and would have liked to know more of Helen’s inner life. 

A  reader in the group pointed out the effects of the author’s portrayal in minute detail of the repetition in Helen’s day, including the order of TV shows, the blurring of news from which she feels disconnected. We brought in many of our own observations about the invisibility of the elderly,  the difficulty of making new friends late in life, and the value of community.

It is no longer Helen’s world to think about. And in her mind it is the same news over and over again, with the only difference being that people think they’re hearing it for the first time. When there is a string of robberies in the village, Helen thinks, “But what does she have to steal? This is a place where everything of value has already been taken.”

We were surprised when we learned Helen had been a famous cardiologist in Australia, and we wondered what prompted her to return to her birthplace after so many decades. We wondered if she had friends, and noting Helen’s remarks about Dr. Jamal’s kindness as so different from her own way with patients, we considered that she may have been as single minded and unkind as Dr. Swenson in State of Wonder.

I think we all found her relationship with the small mouse heart warming, regardless of its probability. We may have laughed a bit at her sudden conversion to vegetarianism, but we agreed on the need for relationships with other people and were happy to see her come out of her depressive isolation and desire to die.

Stories such as Sipsworth can transport us away from the quotidian dailiness of our lives, just as the mouse transports Helen, opening us to delight and hope beyond the chaos of the broken world.  Like the fairytales of our childhoods, such stories, however fantastic, can awaken us to the power of kindness and connection and care,

We were a bit amused that this series included three tales of elderly women and animals from the octopus of Brightness to the parrots of How to Read a Book to the small mouse of Sipsworth. Common to all three of these very different stories was a move, through a connection with the animal, from loneliness and loss to newfound community and possibility.

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

How to Read a Book: A Novel Monica wood

“The perfect pick to really light a fire under my book club, and yours….A reminder that goodness, and books, can still win in this world.” —New York Times Book Review

Monica Wood’s 2024 novel of fresh starts follows Violet, a 20-something woman fresh out of prison; Harriet, a retiree who leads a book club inside the women’s prison; and Frank, the retired machinist whose wife was killed in the hit-and-run for which Violet served time.

When I asked our book group what word they would associate with Wood’s novel, the first word was “forgiveness.” 

Reading about Harriet’s careful preparation for her weekly book group discussions in the women’s prison, I initially felt somewhat self-conscious about my comparatively less arduous preparation. Harriet prepared discussion questions and tried them out on her niece Sylvia. She even began each session with a short affirmation. 

But then I reassured myself that the members of the Downtown Oakland Senior Center book group are experienced readers. Our meetings follow a structure we have found useful: everyone in our group shows up prepared to call our attention to a particular passage, whether a favorite or one they find confusing or frustrating, and explains why we chose it. I am the convenor, but I do not control the conversation.  

What both groups have in common is the ability to escape into a book, to treat the characters as “fellow creatures” in Harriet’s words, and to respect one another and our differing opinions, in our case less from radically different life experiences, although certainly we have different paths, but more from our differing responses to the reading. It is interesting to consider, despite the general contours of our lives, how those responses are shaped by experience.

We appreciated Wood’s characters with their resolutely human gifts, kindnesses, and flaws. We appreciated that no characters are presented as completely evil or saintly, allowing us to experience them as fully realized.

  We liked the portrayal of second chances, not only for Violet but also for Harriet and Frank, both widowed, both capable of mature love with partners less judgemental  than their original spouses. Although Violet’s sister and Frank’s daughter both misjudge them, we have a sense they too may eventually be able to forgive. 

As in Beautiful Creature, we were taken with the non-human creatures as well, in this case African grey parrots. After her release from prison, Violet is hired as a lab assistant for  a research professor who studies  African grey parrot parrots, known for their amazing ability to mimic human speech and capable of memorizing hundreds of words. One of the delightful features of the novel is its description of the parrots, and Wood provides bibliographic links for readers who want to learn more about these fascinating birds.

The two novels are also similar in the way the authors tie up loose ends in the conclusions: both provide happy endings that, however improbable, are satisfying and just within the realm of the possible, avoiding the saccharine, thanks to realistic characterization. Violet’s coda at the end of the novel, with its account of her failed early marriage and the professor who takes advantage of her, reminds us not to give up on ourselves or others. Violet’s eventual contentenments–her much happier second marriage, three children, and grandchildren who all enjoyed Ollie–are pathways that seemed impossible in her early life.

I may investigate Wood’s other fiction when I yearn for kindness in ordinary fellow creatures and the possibility of second chances and forgiveness and love in our harried, chaotic and often callous world. 

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine  (2023)

  • Winner of the 2023 Khayrallah Book Prize
  • Finalist for the 2024 CLMP Firecracker Award for Debut Fiction
  • Shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten excellent stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more.

The New York Times review beautifully articulates how I feel about these stories of immigrant experience:

Dearborn’s characters are split on what part of America is worth acquiring, what part must be resisted and how deep anyone is allowed to dream at all.

We had a good discussion, as always with this terrific group, and we agreed that these compelling stories drew us in, and we all wanted to know more.

However, I needed more help than usual from the group. My beloved dog scratched my eye, a particularly frustrating event given my already poor vision, so I could not manage taking notes on this collection, leading discussion, or taking notes on the group chat for this blog post. After the discussion, I asked people to send me notes and this blog is a group effort!

Patricia, to whom we are indebted for her recommendation of the book, opened the discussion; and several members sent me notes afterward. This week was even more than usual a clear demonstration of the value of community, an apt theme for this collection!

Several members talked about the way the author uses humor even when his stories deal with pain and regret. All of us were struck by the story of “Speedo” with its portrayal of humor and nostalgia as well as the charm of a modern “peddler” con man. Members reminded me how we appreciated, as a group, the “diversity of ethnic background, circumstances and personalities presented in the stories” and reminded me how we applauded the refreshing frankness about sexuality coupled with humor. We discussed the complex portrayals of marriages in the stories, which while located in specific local space, varied as in all spaces and groups between the good, the meh, and the abusive and ugly.

We discussed the stories’ references to the recent past, when Dearborn was a typical mostly white suburban town and barricaded itself against protests in Detroit in contrast to its now status as a vibrant community with a large immigrant population. The references to ICE are chillingly current.

The collection includes a variety of immigrant experiences and attitudes: from those who are able to return for a visit to their home country, those who cannot, and those who have no desire — either to return or in some cases, of the generation born in the states, to visit a country they have never seen. We hear of the longings of place: whether a past homeland or a dreamed future one, in Manhattan or Los Angeles.

The collection provides food for thought regarding traditional values and social relationships as they shift between nations and generations. We wondered about the effects — both toward less and more tolerance–as people navigated different value systems. We considered the ways the collection invites us to consider how success is valued in different cultural spaces. Does the desire for economic power motivate moving? Or is it created by being in the US? Or both?The collection presents such questions and issues without editorial judgment. Instead, the confident narrative lets us see how the characters are feeling.
Despite our varying connections with Lebanon, most of us knew little of the Lebanese community in Dearborn.

The two collections of short stories in our current series veer from our usual selections that focus on older female protagonists. Although we intend to return to that early focus, we all agree that these stories led to important insights both about immigrant communities, whether in Danticat’s portrayals of the Haitian diaspora or Zeineddine’s stories of the Lebanese diaspora, and about the ways in which cultural values shift, personalities abide, and community and tolerance and care are essential.

Posted on by Kirsten T. Saxton

Senior Book Chat

February 7 2025

Our winter 2025 season opened with a lively discussion of A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman (2012), a novel about which a number of members shared strongly held opinions. One reader pointed out her disappointment—-not only in the novel but more importantly, its divergence from the stated original focus of our book group: the book is neither written by a woman nor focused on an old woman. When I admitted that members had recommended two few on-topic books for t this season, she reminded me that she submitted a lengthy list. She had been unaware that we only consider books a member has read (we diverged from this “rule” when we agreed, prior to its publication, to read Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything because we so loved her other books. 

Our resultant disappointment in Strout’s most recent novel coupled with a discussion regarding our shifting from our founding goals resulted in our determination to dip into that lengthy list of on-topic books prior to our next round of selections.

To that end, please send me your suggestions of books you discover that are written by women and focus on older women! You can see our list to note what we have read previously.

Now back to A Man Called Ove,originally published in Sweden In 2012  and then translated by Henning Koch and published in English in 2013. The novel was on the New York Times best seller llist for 42 weeks. It has been adapted for two films, one in Swedish and a second in English.

The story follows a miserable, grumpy, elderly man living alone on a suburban street. Bitter over and still grieving the loss of his wife, Ove, alone and misanthropic, is disillusioned with the modern world and determines to end his life.  Described by his neighbors as “the bitter neighbor from hell” he eventually strikes up a friendship with a boisterous young family who moves in next door. His pregnant neighbor Parveneh, keeps interrupting his solitary life with her daily challenges. As you may anticipate,these multiple interruptions eventually re-connect Ove with the joys of human connection. The plot is obvious from the beginning, and members either  found it boring and derivative or appreciated the ease with which the plot  structured reading and the promise of a feel good ending..

The Kirkus review notes: “The book opens helpfully with the following characterizations about its protagonist: ‘Ove is fifty nine. He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars  and his forefinger a policeman’s torch.’ What the book takes its time revealing is that this dyed-inn-the-wool curmudgeon has a heart of solid gold.

We generally sympathized with Ove and the hardships he had endured since childhood: the loss of both his parents, his loss of a job for refusing to be a snitch, the loss of his house to fire,his unborn child, and finally the loss of his beloved wife, Sonja whose upbeat personality balanced his curmudgeonly take on life. Some of us attributed his attitudes to grief; others said he was born into the wrong time, and we agreed that as readers “of a certain age,” we shared some of his complaints about the ineptitude of ordinary people to make their own household repairs, to mend a bicycle, or to back up a vehicle. We applauded his integrity and disagreed some about whether he had a heart of gold or just a sense of responsibility

The general tone of many reviews and the views of many of our group align with this feel good take on the novel. However, some members of our group wholeheartedly disagreed, frustrated with how the novel removes his own responsibility for his emotional disconnection, and provides little reason for his wife to have loved him except a tired adage that she saw something underneath his surface lack of empathy or kindness.  The novel also leverages the stereotype of the repressed, isolated Swede enlivened by the warm, open woman of color and her “chaotic” energy. 

The discussion was lively, and we all agreed that in this exhausting moment, the sort of “gentle ease” of the novel made it an easy read. We agreed that we will continue to look for books by women that focus on “old ladies” as we had decided to do five years ago, when the group began.

Posted on by Ruth Saxton

Welcome!

Notable Old Ladies Blog

I just finished teaching the final course of my 46 years at Mills College–“Coming to Age,” a collaboration between 18 students and about twice that many members of the Downtown Oakland Senior Center. Jennifer King, Director of the DOSC and a Mills alumna, helped create a format that fit the schedule of the center’s members and also worked for students.

We planned to meet together four of the sixteen class sessions, once monthly from February through May. The seniors created plans for an additional session and chartered a bus to Mills, but Covid 19 forced us to cancel, and we met for the second half of the semester on Zoom.

We read selected stories I feature in my forthcoming book, The Book of Old Ladies: Celebrating Women of a Certain Age in Fiction. We loved comparing our responses in animated discussions in person and on the course blog. Not only did students disagree among themselves, but seniors also noticed details the students had overlooked, and everyone brought lively insights to our conversations.

But, now the course has ended. Although I have been asked to continue the course, I can’t create that same magic again. Instead, I look forward to opening shared reading and discussion to a wider group, using this blog as a space to share my reflections and my interviews and other relevant content

I hope that eventually the blog provides a public space in which to move beyond The Book of Old Ladies and the spring course into conversations that introduce additional stories of women of a certain age–primarily, but not exclusively, in fiction. Some of those stories fall outside the structure of my book, others I have discovered since, and still others are only now being written. After years in which I could not find stories focused on the present lives of older women characters–not just their pasts–I am excited to introduce stories that move beyond what I have come to call “mini appearances of old women as secondary characters” or “death-bed bookends” to engaging stories that get inside the heads of old women, see the world through their eyes, and abandon tired old stereotypes.

I invite you to read along with me.

Please share your ideas and discoveries of Notable Old Ladies in Fiction and Beyond!