Nancy’s Reads & Reels: “Some Assembly Required,” “The Story of Lucy Gault” and “American Pastoral”

Anne Lamott with her son, Sam Lamott, appeared at Decatur Baptist Church and the place was packed. My daughter and I went because we loved Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird. With complete honesty, she tells it like it is — the good, the bad and the ugly.

Some Assembly Required is about Sam, first written about in Operating Instructions when he was giving his mother a crash course in motherhood, and now all grown up and a father himself. When Sam announced that he would be a father at age 19, well that took some getting used to. The baby Jax and his mother, Amy, have become an important addition to the Lamott family and their circle of friends. Now they have written a book together.

Sam takes after his mother. He is charming and has a great sense of humor. They both kept us laughing. Anne Lamott wasn’t planning on being a grandmother at age 55 but life happens and now she has a lot to say about being a grandmother and letting Sam, Amy and Jax figure out their life and as usual she comes out will these hilarious one-liners.

Lucy Gault  and Merry Levov are two daughters who figure prominently in The Story of Lucy Gault and American Pastoral. Both daughters change the trajectory of their parents’ lives.

William Trevor is the author of The Story of Lucy Gault and many other novels, short stories, plays and non-fiction, so I was familiar with his writing when I happened upon this book at the Decatur Public Library. Lucy Gault’s life begins in 1920s Ireland when the family, fearing violence, packs up to leave their country house. Nine-year-old Lucy runs away setting off a chain of events that make for a real page turner.

Books set in Ireland are always a pleasure and William Trevor is a master of evoking the countryside and the characters who inhabit it.

I’ve heard mention of American Pastoral, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1997, for years and was always searching for it at the library until finally I broke down and bought a copy. Anyone familiar with Philip Roth’s writing won’t be surprised at his fictional account of an American life gone off the rails.

In Roth’s telling, Swede Levov is a legendary athlete in his Newark high school and goes on to wed Miss New Jersey, run the family business and move to the picturesque village Old Rimrock, but then in 1968 his beloved daughter, Merry, becomes something you would never expect.

Remember the sixties? I remember it as a blur. Where are those people who were “stuck in the sixties?” What did that mean? Philip Roth will remind you of all that you want to forget about the sixties in a novel not to be missed.