October 8 2023

October 8, 2023
# 1627

Francesca McDonnell Capossela, author
Trouble the Living

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Commentary 

Trouble the Living
a novel by Francesca McDonnell Capossela

BOOK REVIEW
Permit me an inverse start to this review. Why? Because the climax is so spectacular, and the denouement is so appropriately lovely, starting here is compelling. Any place in a novel that leaves the reader with satisfied tears and a nodding head is an appropriate starting point.
Besides, despite the book’s superb ending, it is the journey that the author skillfully maps out for us that provides the emotional crests and troughs that prepare us for the book’s final pages. Kudos to Francesca McDonnell Capossela for crafting one of the great novels of the last ten years. Am I over the top? Read on.

Trouble the Living is an enthralling exploration of love and redemption during transforming and unsettled times in countries separated by an ocean, against the backdrops of the Irish troubles on the one hand, and American mass shootings on the other.
The story takes place over a twenty-year span and presents the complexities, conflicts, and other dynamics binding mothers, daughters, and grandmothers, three generations of Irish women.

Before they are braided, we follow two storylines.

One takes place in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, in the final years of the Troubles. This story follows Bríd (as the seventeen-year-old daughter-narrator) and her sister, Ina, as they try to find stability while living in a divided family living in a divided country.
Already sympathetic to the IRA by her mother’s (first name Aoife, pronounced EE Fa) incessant political proselytizing, a family tragedy empowers her to join up. As a ‘soldier’ in that army, she participates in an act that, in her past, she would have found unspeakable.

After the event, frightened and guilt-ridden, and determined not to become her mother with Aoife’s insatiable appetite for violent revenge, Brid flees Northern Ireland and her family to start a new life in America.

The second storyline takes place in Los Angeles County, USA, and delves into Brid's later life as a single mother sharing the story spotlight with Bernie, her teenage daughter-narrator. Bernie is coming of age and her words and actions mirror a quest for independence, curiosity about her parents, and an exploration of sexuality, efforts which test their delicate mother-daughter relationship.

The two narratives braid when Brid reads about the death of her father and, sixteen-year-old Bernie in tow, returns to Northern Ireland. There, Brid and Bernie confront the women of their past, the women they've grown into, and the women they aspire to become.

Within the rich tapestry of the many themes woven throughout this work, female love in all its permutations dominates. Trouble the Living is a profoundly moving and insightful exploration of the depths and nuances that characterize how women understand, support, and love one another; a poignant exploration of the multifaceted nature of love and relationships among women, including friendship, sisterhood, mentorship, motherly love, trigenerational love, sexuality, heteronormative love, queer love, and gender love, aka feminism. Trouble the Living is one of the best reads in the recent past.

Within the overarching framework of feminine love, Capossela’s narrative explores gender inequality in the workplace, education, and society at large. It champions women's rights, particularly reproductive rights, and challenges the patriarchal structures and dynamics that impinge on women's lives and opportunities.

We read with a mix of fascination and outrage as Brid's husband abandons her, leaving her alone and without support to care for and raise their infant daughter.
We bear witness as Brid's overwhelming love for her daughter sometimes suffocates Bernie: excessive love can be as detrimental as neglect or abandonment, she teaches.
And, still under the feminist umbrella, we empathize with Brid, whose stern countenance leads her to navigate interpersonal relationships, particularly with men, in a markedly different manner than her sister Ina, who radiates charm and allure like Venus.

Trouble the Living does not suffer weak women. It’s a 289-page compendium of instances of women’s strength and resilience in the face of adversity, fighting under a banner reading, “War is a women’s thing.” Here are several examples of women’s power presented by Ms Capossela.
In the opening scene of the first chapter, Aoife brings her daughters to view the non-existent border, the invisible, imaginary border between Northern Ireland and Ireland imposed by the British. She enjoins them not to tell their brothers or father of their outing because “Girls understand these things better than fellas.” (And maybe because her husband crashed a bottle down on Aoife’s head for being outspokenly active in politics.)
The head of the Real IRA is a woman.
Brid, with her mother’s encouragement, is an active member of the IRA.
Family problems such as teen pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion, all of which involve violence, are resolved by the women in the family.

But life is more than wine, roses, or love. Negative themes permeate the story, alcoholism, suicide, political extremism, and illness among them. Bernie’s mother, Brid, is herself afflicted with severe depression, a condition made worse because of its deleterious effect on Bernie. Brid knows her withdrawal from life is causing Bernie pain but she’s powerless to overcome it.

Anger simmers within all the women. Aoife's deep-seated hatred and fury toward the Brits and the Prods are beyond gratification. Regardless of the atrocities committed by the Real IRA against their adversaries, she is always prepared to inflict more. Worse, Aoife's rage and vindictiveness are not confined to politics, as we witness in the five hurtful words she directs at Brid.

For her part, Brid does not turn the other cheek to Aoife’s malevolence. Among her other acts of retaliation, she boldly leaves her home and Northern Ireland, emigrating to America. Years later, Bernie’s anger will lead her to defy her mother's warning about her age and have sex as a form of rebellion. In both mother/daughter events, their fiery reactions lead to cataclysmic consequences.

BTW: One song favorite of Francesca, “Black Boys on Mopeds” by Sinéad O’Connor, addresses themes of social injustice, racism, and the tragic consequences of police violence. “England’s…the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds.” And another, Pink Floyd's, "Mother", from “The Wall” album, takes on the childhood problems of growing to independence.

Engrossing Style
Throughout the novel, Ms Capossela strategically drops tidbits that infuse the story with an edginess that creates a fluid, organic structure to the work.
Like the girls-only outing to the fictitious Northern Ireland border, because boys wouldn’t understand these things.
Also in the chapter, when going to answer the door, Brid locates her brother’s hurley stick, potentially an excellent weapon.
And yet again in this first chapter, Aoife reminds Brid to ‘watch out for Ina’. Danger is lurking.
As the story further unfolds, Brid develops a habit of enjoining Bernie each time she leaves, 'Promise you'll return.'"

Trouble the Living is rich in extraordinary metaphors, and they are original and ‘balls on accurate’.
Her hair is “pinned like a halo”.
He had “lips as plush as sofa cushions.”
His face was “as blank as an actor’s in between scenes”.
Her metaphors are packed into the narrative like tinned sardines. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist it.)
And how’s this sentence, using three metaphors to illuminate the subject, missing her island home: “… the stars scattered across the sky like broken glass, the clear note of a soprano singing a folk song, the strum of a guitar, fingers tugging out the longing deep, deep inside me.”

BTW: It’s not a coincidence that another favorite Fran song is the nostalgic “County Down” by Danú whose lyrics, “Come on home now to the County Down,” evoke a sense of longing and reminiscence, capturing the essence of home and the desire to return to one’s roots.

Francesca’s prose is lyrical. In this instance, Brid is stopped by a Brit at a checkpoint. “I tried to look at him the way Ina used to look at men. The way she would have looked at this one, even as he rested his hand on his gun like a pervert on the back of a bus. That daring, full look she’d give, like she was ready for any-and everything. I tried to look at him like I knew how to help him through a long night.”
And in this next instance, Brid is arguing with her mother. “She opened her mouth and spoke. Five words like a warm hand pushing me over a cliff. Like a knife between my breasts.” Can this girl write? I think so. Did I exaggerate? I think not.

She has a captivating way of introducing and describing family. Here Brid has just arrived at her mother’s house after a twenty-year separation.
She knocks three times. “The door opened. Dark, wild hair. The same eyes enclosed in new wrinkles, like a fresh envelope around an older letter.”
Or, what about her decision to leave home and country in the first place? “I had to leave all of this: her grief, her rage, her shaky hand gripping my shoulder as she tried to direct me. I was already halfway gone. …I did not want to be like my mother.”

I’m grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. Let’s talk. Buy the book and send me an email.

Dom Capossela

Dom: In person. Presenting his book. Come say hello! Sunday, Oct 15 @ 9am @ St Leonard’s Church in the North End

Dom: at Mass.
Sunday, October 15, @ 9.00
Dom will address the parishioners just before the final blessing.
Immediately following the Mass there will be a book signing.

It’s been a long time since I was on this altar.
I was an altar boy when the lovely Brother Gerard was responsible for the servers.

Dom: In person. Presenting his book. Come say hello! Thursday , Oct 19 @ 6pm @ I Am Books in North End

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Do You Believe in Magic? Anthology of Stories from the North End
Edited by Dom Capossela

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Do You Believe in Magic? Anthology of Stories from the North End
Edited by Dom Capossela

Amazon Reviews:

Hemera Pen

5.0 out of 5 stars I believe in magic 🪄

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2023

Verified Purchase

This is a beautiful book which captures the richness of the Italian neighborhood in Boston through the eyes of those who came to age their around the 1950s. Gorgeous photos and fun captions make the book fun to flip through; the essays create a lovely mosaic of topics ranging from food to music to schools, and a range of feelings from nostalgia to regret to a sense of belonging make it an entrancing experience.

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Kat’s Gen Z Corner   

Housewarming Party

I feel so lucky. Every day.

Will and I threw our first ever housewarming party together last weekend. 

So lovely to have a space big enough to share with people we love. It was a massive success. 

I feel so lucky. Every day. 

We borrowed a cooler and large drink dispenser from kind Upper West Siders through a neighborhood Facebook group. We warned our building neighbors about the party a week in advance and invited them to stop by. 

Will made stromboli from scratch, and I made homemade chocolate chip cookies. We also made green tea shots and apple cider margaritas. We were gifted flowers, a candle, olive oil, glasses, a painting, and lots and lots of wine. 

50 people RSVP’d for the event — maybe 35/40 total made an appearance that night sometime between 7pm and 2am. Felt so good to be surrounded by so many people we love. 

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Tucker’s Corner

The Creator - Directed by Gareth Edwards

It’s been almost forty years since James Cameron gave us a chilling vision of humanity’s technological future with The Terminator. Since then, our collective fear surrounding the proliferation of artificial intelligence has only increased as that technology slowly makes its way into our everyday lives. It’s funny then to see a film that tries to grant some sympathetic screentime to the digital menace so many of us fear. In the same way films set during World War II and Vietnam began to show perspectives from the other side of the battlefield, Gareth Edwards (Godzilla [2014], Rogue One) directs a film that wants us to consider the real stakes of creating life, albeit digital, and to treat our creation with humanity instead of terror. His newest film The Creator accomplishes this with true visual astonishment. This film is beautifully designed from top to bottom.

The Creator takes us to the year 2060 where AI has just detonated a nuclear weapon on Los Angeles (Just like Terminator) without warning. The US government declares war on all artificial intelligence and their sympathizers. They send our main character, Joshua (John David Washington) to a region now known as New Asia to infiltrate a collective of these sympathizers and track down their leader a scientist AI lovers revere like a god, the titular Creator. In the process Joshua falls in love with the Creator’s daughter Maya (Gemma Chan) only to lose her in a bombing raid carried out by US Special Forces. For this Joshua tries to abandon his military service but is soon brought back in when it’s revealed Maya may in fact have survived. But there’s a catch: to get the resources he needs to find her he must again work with Special Forces, this time to find and destroy a supposed doomsday device developed by The Creator. It’s quickly revealed that this weapon takes the form of a synthetic child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) who has no idea what she is.

The Creator wears its influences on its sleeve. Cameron’s terminator franchise of course but also Blade Runner, Spielberg’s A.I., Akira, and in a genre jump, Apocalypse Now. The search for a messianic figure in southeast Asia is right up that film’s alley and Edwards knows it. So much so that he fills the film with imagery harkening back to the Vietnam War. Once Joshua goes AWOL with the child-weapon, who he names Alfie, The Creator becomes a film about a hard cold man softened by the innocence of a child companion, a type of film I’m always game for.

Though he’s only made a few films, Gareth Edwards has established himself as a rare blockbuster filmmaker with a genuine sense of scale and poetry. His films feel huge, majestic, and meant for the biggest screens possible. It’s a refreshing approach where so many great movies are produced with the intention to be sent directly to a streaming service and watched at home. Watching The Creator, it’s clear that this approach is Edward’s calling card. Rogue One was the first Star Wars film to really feel worthy of the idea of travelling to a galaxy far, far away because of how huge he managed to make space seem. Godzilla was a similar experience with the titular creature feeling maybe for the first time, truly terrifyingly gargantuan. Creator paints yet another portrait of combat and sacrifice across a giant canvas where the combatants are dwarfed by titanic forces of destruction. In this film that includes roving drone-warfare weapons that cast walls of light across war torn landscapes, bringing the impending doom of a blast from the Death Star and also the malevolent gaze of the Eye of Sauron.

The Creator was made for $80-million dollars and though that’s more money than any one should be able to shake a stick at, this film puts films with budgets three times larger to shame with it’s visual storytelling. Edwards used to be a special effects artist and his ability to meld real life footage with digital effects is constantly impressive. Despite his love for digital creations he shot this film across nearly 100 real locations worldwide making sure to ground the story in as much reality as possible before adding in any computer generated magic. His approach is a Godsend for someone like me who has been watching Star Wars television dominate the sci-fi space with some of the laziest and worst digital backdrops to ever come out of powerhouse Hollywood. And where these TV shows feel truly empty despite portraying whole new worlds and galaxies, The Creator takes the opposite approach. Every scene is full of amazing sci-fi world building with sequences set in a robot factory, a visit to the former L.A. blast crater, and a ground battle set in thick fog where suicide-bomb machines emerge to complete their mission in nightmarish detail.

The Creator’s script is the film’s one weak point and I hesitate to even use that word. It isn’t weak but with so much visual invention packed into every frame it seems to seem more boilerplate by comparison. All that said though, it’s a satisfying story told with incredible skill for its medium. It’s clear that Edwards is falling on the sympathetic side of history when it comes to artificial intelligence. Edwards evokes Rodney King in his approach to humans living alongside machines. “Can we all get along?” is a refreshing take when so much of our media is centered on AI as a threat to everything we hold dear. Any story that asks its audience to consider the other side before making a final judgement call is important and I think The Creator waves that flag quite well.

BRAYDEN MARTINO’S GEN Z CORNER:

Coffee & Community

One year ago, I saw a cup of coffee as nothing more than a means to wake up. I was a college student in classes from 9am-6pm and rehearsals from 7pm-11pm almost every day. There was no time to stop.

What coffee shop is going to be quickest at this time of day? Pavement or Cafe Nero? Is today going to be a Starbucks day? Or maybe I could walk a little bit further to Farmer’s Horse and get a drink that’s actually bearable. But I can’t be late for Acrobatics again…

Then I saw a job posting for my favorite coffee shop. The one in Downtown Boston that I could only make the trip to when I had a free Saturday.

Why not apply? I don’t know the first thing about making coffee. But maybe they’ll see past that?

I got an interview. It was one of the first job interviews where I felt like I was being talked to like a person. The manager cared about my passions, and wanted to get to know me as a wholistic person. We shared stories and laughed. I knew quickly this was home.

GEORGE HOWELL COFFEE.

George Howell, the inventor of the Frappuccino. 

George Howell, who sold his company Coffee Connection to Starbucks.

George Howell, who revolutionized the way coffee is sourced, stored, and sold.

Who cares? Good for him, I guess.

Okay, I did think it was cool to be working for a coffee pioneer. But I didn’t fully understand the brilliance of this man until I started working for him.

A view of George Howell cafe on Washington St

George taught me that coffee is like music. The green coffee farmer is like the composer, who cares for the coffee in its earliest stages, writing the stories it will tell through its flavors. The roaster of the beans is like the conductor, who analyzes the composer’s work and prepares it for brewing by roasting it to the level that will best convey its intended taste. The barista is like the musician, whose music directly reaches the audience’s ears. The barista is crucial, because those beans have journeyed across the world and been cared for by many, but the audience’s experience of the music depends on how the musician plays it. The barista curates the direct human to human experience of drinking coffee. The barista takes those beans and grinds it to the proper size, portions it to the proper weight, and pushes water through it at the proper speed, temperature, and quantity. All while making a genuine connection with a complete stranger.

Like I said, coffee was just a means for me to stimulate my nervous system. But it wasn’t until I was immersed in the coffee world that I realized it could do so much more. For starters, a guest at a coffee shop instantly tends to have a different kind of rapport with their barista then they do with other customer service workers. Being in Downtown Boston connected to a major hotel, I began to meet people traveling from all around the world who would share with me glimpses into their genuine inner-life. Tourists, asking for the best places to find connection with the history of a country that they have a complicated relationship with. Businesspeople, nervously preparing to speak at a conference and asking for advice from their barista who they just found out is an actor. A musician who just moved here and doesn’t know how to break into the scene. As software engineer who comes in and gets the same thing everyday, and each time shares a new (and increasingly shocking) piece of information about himself with his barista. A writer, who has lived in Boston for over 80 years and runs a local magazine and wants to feature his barista in the latest issue (sound familiar?).

I did not intend to be in this photo. But unfortunately and comically, it's one of the few that I have of me at work,

The more I became immersed in this world, the more I got to experience the beauty of human connection. These were people that I probably never would have had the chance to talk to— at least not on this personal of a level. Perhaps some of these people I would have made assumptions about, or judged, had I not gotten this unique opportunity to earn their trust and receive some sort of open expression of self. This job changed the way I operate in the world. I look differently at strangers because of it. The average person is more interesting and imaginative than I previously thought. People are passionate, and when I get to hear about the thing that someone is passionate about, it rubs off on me just a little. And when I least expect it, I meet someone who is just as passionate about one of the niche things I’m passionate about, and that’s when magic erupts.

I love being in a cafe environment. I love the connections I get to make, and I love watching other humans make connections in my space. First dates, business meetings, job interviews, creative brainstorms, family gatherings, friend reunions… heck, even the people working on their computers alone, perhaps writing the next great screenplay or researching the next big scientific innovation. There is something special about being in a space bustling with human connection and creativity. And this dates back to the 15th century with Islamic coffeehouses where they’d play board games, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. Or the European “Penny Universities” in the 16th and 17th centuries, whe

A view from the new café I work at in New York City.

While I still love the extra boost that caffeine gives, coffee has become more than just a jolt to my nervous system. I’ve become part of the symphony that is the coffee world, and a patron to the art everywhere I go. In a culture that is very “go, go, go!” I hope that more people will discover the absolute delight of a well-crafted cup of coffee, and the connections that they can find within these lively spaces.

Brayden Martino

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Restaurant Review, Banks Fish, downtown Boston

Hiramasa (Yellowtail Amberjack) Crudo
The fish was delicious: firm and tasty.
Unfortunately oversauced.

Scallops Crudo
While the sauce was restrained, the jarring pile of commercial banana chips was not appetizing.

This was the pick of the night.
The roasted chicken was firm and very moist.
The chicken sausage served with it, perfectly seasoned.
A winner.

Banana Cream Pie
Looked wonderful.
The crust was not: it was dense and dry.

The restaurant was attractive and pleasant. The service (We had Jake, an eighth-grade student counselor in Quincy) was terrific. The food was good. The wines were well-chosen.
Not my kind of place. I’m after better quality food.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
"Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning."
George Carlin

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Six Word Stories
Should have lived more, written less.

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