SOLSTICE, yet another straight-people-unhappy tale with lovely bits about dance

SOLSTICE
CAROL GILLIGAN
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A brilliant but restless dancer discovers the true meaning of love and intimacy through the ebbs and flows of her marriage in this exquisitely written novel—from the bestselling author and psychologist whose feminist classic, In a Different Voice, revolutionized our understanding of women’s lives

Boston, 1969. Eve, a dancer whose feelings are expressed through the body and movement, senses an inexplicable distance growing between herself and her husband, Gabe, a journalist and father of her two children. Feeling lost and alone, she begins an affair; Gabe detects it immediately and begins one himself. Yet somehow they find their way back to each other, and when Eve gives birth to a daughter, their marriage becomes vital again.

Years later, when Gabe returns from a reporting trip to the Middle East and Berlin, Eve again perceives something is wrong in her marriage. Gabe no longer seems like the man she once knew. He has always had a darkness she could not fathom—deep psychological scars from his childhood, when Gabe escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport.

Amsterdam, 1991. Newly separated from Gabe, Eve has accepted a fellowship to choreograph a dance inspired by the story of Adam and Eve. When a colleague introduces her to a new translation of the ancient text, Eve begins to redefine the way she thinks about women, men, and relationships—and, perhaps, to see another path back to her marriage.

In this emotionally riveting novel, Carol Gilligan draws on her unsurpassed psychological understanding of women's lives to explore a new vision of love and intimacy. Sweeping across decades and continents, attuned to the rhythms of life and time, Solstice is a provocative and profound portrait of what it takes to truly love another.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Plenty of buzz around this tale of a Holocaust survivor haunted by his myriad ghosts, the burgeoning dancer/life force he marries, the challenging marriage they undertake, and lots of Jewish history relevant to the present day.

My interest in straight peoples' intimacy is not large enough to support this latter aspect of the story as my focus. I was a great deal more interested in Eve's story of how dance could explain the myth of Adam and Eve. It was *wonderful* to read Author Gilligan's evocations of dance as an art form. Eve's learning of the deeper meanings, the cultural resonances, the eternal quality of myths with a rabbi's learnèd guidance after she splits from Gabe in 1991 was as involving as anything I've read this year.

It's mired in a relationship novel I don't care about, one that's intended to add another resonant frequency to the myth of Adam and Eve, but that ends up not doing that. If I was supposed to care about Eve and Gabe as a couple, why is Gabe so...amorphous? Their three kids are names, when every couple I have ever known (that has kids) honestly thinks and talks more about their kids than anything else.

Author Gilligan's a psychologist so these are clearly informed choices made with intent, not lacunae of understanding. As they did not make sense to me, I can't say her information came through to me in the novel she wrote. I'll forget these characters in a week, but will carry the passages describing dance with me.

YES TO LIFE: In Spite of Everything, words and concepts I'd very much prefer to continued doomscrolling

YES TO LIFE: In Spite of Everything
VIKTOR E. FRANKL (tr. Joelle Young, intro. Daniel Goleman)
Beacon Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Find hope even in these dark times with this rediscovered masterpiece, a companion to his international bestseller Man’s Search for Meaning.

Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity.

Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl’s words resonate as strongly today—as the world faces a coronavirus pandemic, social isolation, and great economic uncertainty—as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim “Live as if you were living for the second time,” and he unfolds his basic conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. Despite the unspeakable horrors of the camps, Frankl learned from the strength of his fellow inmates that it is always possible to “say yes to life”—a profound and timeless lesson for us all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I had a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning in my house all my life. I first read it in one or another of the 1970s, though I can't recall which one; it was at a time of abject misery in my youth. It is a book about healing, and about perspective as the path to healing, messages that resonated deeply with me and still do. One always has the right to choose one's response to troubles and imposed suffering.

The 1946 lecures in this present book are not quite precursors to his larger, later work. They are shorter stems, less fully grown and un-espaliered on his carefully developed walls of philosophy; they're certainly grown on the same rootstock, however. That's how this gem arose to my grateful eyes: "Our perspective on life's events—what we make of them—matters as much or more than what actually befalls us. 'Fate' is what happens to us beyond our control. But we each are responsible for how we relate to those events."

I read this book, which came out early in the pandemic, after seeing Will of The Brothers Gwynne encounter Frankl and his bracing philosophy of using one's trauma for positive growth this month. It was a nudge for me to dig this book out, having shelved it during COVID while watching literal dozens of the people who live in my facility die hacking for breath that was not ever coming back because...honestly because I had the privilege of living and the luxury of only the most minor of symptoms when I caught the disease. It felt too on the nose in 2020, and I just forgot I had it until I saw the young man speaking on YouTube, and then reading his review on Goodreads about how he felt changed by Man’s Search for Meaning after reading it.

I was prompted by young Gwynne's reaction to seek out a similar one. I found several things that were of great value to me in my dotage, and weren't exactly mirrored in the Frankl quotes in my commonplace book, eg: "To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances—because life itself is—but it is also possible under all circumstances." What a mind to come up with this statement after being in Auschwitz!

Viktor Frankl is more than an inspiration. He argued in the face of people who wanted to exterminate him, like Daleks or Borg want to exterminate because they can, all those they Othered and deprived of essential humanity, that everyone, even his oppressors and wannabe murderers, are worthy of dignity and able to find meaning and value in this bizarre thing we call life.

Viktor Frankl is as close as we will see to holy man. He lived for fifty years after his liberation from Auschwitz. His simple continued existence would be inspiring enough. He never stopped, in his long life,espousing his belief in "logotherapy", something that was controversially developed *before* Frankl went to the camps for being Jewish...and while working for a Nazi-affiliated Austrian organization.

Does this make his story a lie? Some very nasty people, who never met Frankl or even conducted primary archival research on their allegations against him, claim he greatly exaggerated his peril as a Jew. Some extremely religious Jews claim he was a monstrous collaborator with the Nazis.

Judging him by his works, I believe they are the exaggerators, and quite possibly the liars. I say this without having done any serious research into the facts they allege to have discovered, only using for them the standard I've used for Frankl: Their works speak loudly. And in my opinion, point to darkness and ugliness in their motivations.

I remain inspired and uplifted by the works and words of Viktor E. Frankel. Thank you, young Mr. Gwynne, for saying the right thing at the right time, thereby reminding me of a good role model for the best use of perspective.