Book Report: Switzy

15. Emma Cline, Switzy (2025) (9/19/26)

I'm not sure where I read about this novel—some review somewhere—but it sounded intriguing. And if I was going to get back to my alphabetical-order reading project, I needed an S. Switzy certainly works. And yes, I enjoyed this book very much. 

Though it's a sad book. Not simply because it's about a man, David Hastings, heading to Switzerland to end his life through assisted suicide. And not only because this man, who is 70-something (and I write this at age 71), has growing dementia. But because even as he confronts the end, it feels as if he's barely lived.

Sure, sure, he was a businessman, a CFO of a presumably large American company—until he started making 8-figure errors. He had had a wife (now ex), and together they have a daughter, who now lives in London. On his way to Zurich, he will visit said daughter and his grandson, and they will have a stilted, final visit (though he doesn't reveal to her his future plans). He also intends to visit his boarding school roommate, though they are estranged. He wants to say he's sorry for an incident now long in the past. 

David is traveling with a 30-something man, Cody, his hired companion, who remains attentive and (mostly) unfrustrated as he shepherds his employer in and out of hotels and to his various assignations. Cody will have a life past this job, after all; now, it's his task to be organized—and kind. David, meanwhile, alternates between lucidity and mental ramblings, often into a fragmented past, and sometimes just into the confusing detail of a room or a face in the present. 

Here's one (lucid, and sad) paragraph I flagged:

The first time he had gone to the Philharmonic, David had mistaken the racket of the players tuning their instruments for a strange, avant-garde song. He had listened attentively, tried to detect some kind of shape in the sonic junk. David, the dutiful student. He had never shaken the sense of checking a box. Straining to be moved in some way. And even as the music had started, the actual music, he wanted to be elsewhere. Perhaps his entire life had been a form of that wish. To be somewhere else. To hurry this along.
     There was some back way, wasn't there? Some workaround?

The more confused parts are conveyed through staccato sentences and short paragraphs that bounce from one thought to another, with white space in between. And Cline does an admirable job of inhabiting this character. Of course, it's impossible for us to know how people with dementia actually experience their dimming, or shattering, faculties, so it makes for a brave act of imagination on Cline's part (plus, of course, taking on an older male character). And it is the gist of the book. The visits with his daughter, with the old roommate, with the doctor at the Swiss facility, feel jerky, uncomfortable, because we're seeing them through David's eyes, and he's unable to process them himself. Cline does hint, through words or facial and bodily expression, at what the other characters might be thinking, feeling, but the POV remains consistent. Making the end somewhat of a relief. Now all those other characters can get on with their lives. Which, of course, they were doing anyway. It was just David who was skidding to a halt. And was ready to. Now he can find peace.

More than just a story, it's a reckoning, of course. What is a life well lived? And it's a nudge: to focus on living better ourselves, to be more present. Because we'll all run out of time eventually. 

My last several weeks

...in one collage of photos:

One reason I enjoy doing photo-a-day projects is that when I look at a composite like this, I recognize how rich my life is.

Though curiously, there are only two human beings in all these shots. And they're both in the one. 

Maybe I'm happy keeping my own company? Well, yes, I am. And I enjoy people too. I just don't like taking pictures of people.

A day in the life

It's 12:20 a.m., and I'm hearing the neighbors across the street, sitting on their porch or deck, talking animatedly. The last two days were hot, but today was merely warm (70s), and the night air is refreshing. I kind of like the somewhat distant sound of friends spending time together.

This evening David and I chatted about this and that—perfectionism, bad writing, politics (unavoidable), ship figureheads, maggots crawling on deer tongues (sorry, but real life)—after our usual round of TV: Veronica Mars, partway through season one (for the second time); and we started in on The Lincoln Lawyer, which neither of us remembers having seen. TV followed a heaping plate of leftover cauliflower pasta and sautéed spinach, yum.

It's funny recounting a day backwards. "Then" doesn't work. There is no real counterpart. "Before that"? Clunky. But I'm happy that we've started this new habit of "just chatting" after our evening TV dose. There's so much to talk about.

Before dinner, I worked on the bad writing—which in fact is a proofreading job for the Getty Museum, about a Gabinete de Porcelana, a porcelain room in a Spanish palace from the 1700s. I keep thinking I might stop working, but then I keep getting offered jobs that sound interesting. Did I ever even imagine that there were dozens of rooms made of porcelain in castles all over Europe? It sort of puts our present-day billionaires in perspective. People with too much power, money, or what have you. They've always been with us. And they have to prove their worldliness, or do I mean worth. Materially. At least in the past it was materially. I don't know how those trillionaires "prove" their "worth" nowadays...

David and I also contracted for our burial. Or rather, "soil transformation." I kept thinking of my mother, who sometime in her later years contracted with the Neptune Society to be cremated and have her ashes tossed into the Pacific. I bless her for that—though I also feel sad that she left this world somewhat as she entered it, all alone. In any case, now we've done similarly, only rather than being burnt, our bodies will be composted into dirt (it takes 30 to 45 days), and that dirt—soil—will be spread on some conservancy land or other. Ashes to ashes, flesh to soil. I'm glad that, whoever of us goes first, the other simply needs to pick up a phone and it will all be taken care of. 

This afternoon I spent a few hours with my good friend Barb walking at Elkhorn Slough and having lunch in Moss Landing. A fat little ground squirrel wandered the restaurant deck begging for scraps. And mighty Cosmo, a brown-and-white doodle, chased the little ground squirrel. So much action! The special listed on the board at the restaurant's entrance was "crab roll and potato chips," but when I asked the price I was dissuaded: $36! So I went for a $16 bowl of artichoke soup instead. Barb got the crab, and then treated me to lunch. I think we both ended up happy? (I was certainly happy to nibble on her chips.)

The slough was beautiful, and the tide was high, so when we got to the path spanning the open water and the inner lagoon, it was flooded! Which meant we had to turn around and retrace our steps. Still, when you go the opposite direction, you always notice something new. It was a beautiful day in that watery place.

At 10 I met my English learner, Marina, at the library as usual of a Friday morning. We read a children's book she'd picked up somewhere ("Free!"), about a couple of beavers, Pudgy and Polly. I don't feel like she's making any progress—in fact, it feels like she's regressing. I don't know how to improve her odds. Languages are pretty easy for me. I like them. They're like puzzles I want to figure out. She lives in a place where people speak English everywhere, and yet she doesn't seek out the opportunity to just go listen. But . . . she seems to enjoy our friendship, and our chats about life. I guess that's something.

And that was my day. Though I should note that it started with a deuce in Wordle! Promising great things to come!

Book Report: At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf

14*. Tara Ison, At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf (2023) (9/8/26)

Tara Ison was a mentor in my MFA program at Antioch University. We didn't work together, but I attended her workshop, her reading, and I loved her look: her smile, her berets. So when this book was published, I bought it. And finally I've read it.

I found it interesting, especially for the unusual perspective it gives, on unoccupied France during WWII. A France that was being fed stories from Vichy—collaborators, if you will, with the Germans.

The story is of 12-year-old Danielle, a Jewish girl in Paris, whose father is killed after the Germans roll in. Her mother decides the safest haven for her is in a village near Limoges, with a Catholic couple who once worked for Danielle's grandparents. There, she becomes Marie-Jeanne—Jeanne d'Arc becoming her own namesake savior. The book's title refers to twilight, and serves as a metaphor for that terrible time.

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, something about this book irritated me, and I ended up skimming quite a bit of it. 

There's too much Catholic liturgy, for one thing, and too much of Marie-Jeanne's often frantic thoughts, expressed in run-on sentences. I'm not sure I believed her naiveté, or her ready abandonment of who she'd been before. Was she really just adopting camouflage for safety, or was she especially gullible?

I do appreciate the book for one scene at the very end. Marie-Jeanne is on a streetcar heading to visit a good older friend and her little girl when a German soldier boards and tells everyone who actually lives at the destination to get out and walk the rest of the way, while everyone else should return to Limoges. She soon learns that all of the village residents, 642 men, women, and children, have been killed. This was a real event, occurring on June 10, 1944, four days after D-Day, and the village, Oradour-sur-Glane, has remained untouched ever since, a monument to the Nazi horrors. 

Ison has, indeed, done a marvelous job with historical research, and mining all the contradictions of Vichy France. I kind of love this book, even if it rankles me. I won't forget it. That's a testament of sorts. 

——————

*And as an addendum, I will note that several weeks ago I finished the sixth Slow Horses installment, Joe Country by Mick Herron—which explains why At the Hour counts as book #14, not 13. I'm not going to write a report. It was a good thriller, set in the snow, and I'm sorry to have lost a couple of the characters. Spying is a dangerous business.

Dirty Dancing

I like to take daily long walks—five miles or more—and one thing that keeps me going is podcasts. I've got a few favorites: Ezra Klein, Strangers on a Bench, Poetry Unbound, Melody or Witchcraft, Desert Island Discs, the Poetry Space, On Being. And lately, I've really been enjoying What Went Wrong: conversations about some of our most iconic, or most popular, or most unlikely movies, and the back stories about how they almost didn't get made, or might have been made very differently.

The other day I scrolled to a movie that I dearly love, Dirty Dancing. I don't remember when I first saw Dirty Dancing, but I do know that when Netflix went out of business and they let people just keep the last two discs they'd ordered, I put a lot of thought into what those two discs should be. 

Well, okay, "a lot of thought": I thought, well, I love Wings of Desire, so there's one. And . . . hmmm . . . I also love Dirty Dancing. Done.

And no regrets. I do enjoy watching both those movies every so often, different though they are. But also not so different: they're both about passion and meaning, what it is to be human. And sure, there are certainly other movies I'd also enjoy watching again and again. But I only got to keep two. Those others, whatever they are, are probably streaming somewhere, right?

Anyway. I very much enjoyed hearing the down-and-dirty on Dirty Dancing in What Went Wrong—the casting issues, the scant $5 million budget, the scramble for music rights (within that budget!), the search for a director, the search for a production studio, and it went on. They also mentioned a series of Netflix documentaries, The Movies That Made Us, the first installment of which is . . . yes, Dirty Dancing! So I watched that this evening. Each treatment gave me a different perspective, both on the movie itself and on the moviemaking industry. I'm beginning to think every movie I see is worth all that money. It's not an easy business.

I'll end with the movie's finale. 

Patrick Swayze especially was a joy to watch. He died too young. But I'm glad he lives on in Dirty Dancing.

Two poems, by two Jims: Harrison and Moore

I ran across these two poems today, both speaking of time and what matters, and I love them and want to keep them around. The first one in particular. My new goal in life is to keep wagging my feet above the abyss.

Bridge

by Jim Harrison (1937–2016)

Most of my life was spent
building a bridge out over the sea
though the sea was too wide.
I’m proud of the bridge
hanging in the pure sea air. Machado
came for a visit and we sat on the
end of the bridge, which was his idea. 

Now that I’m old the work goes slowly.
Ever nearer death, I like it out here
high above the sea bundled
up for the arctic storms of late fall,
the resounding crash and moan of the sea,
the hundred-foot depth of the green troughs.
Sometimes the sea roars and howls like
the animal it is, a continent wide and alive.
What beauty in this the darkest music
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies. 

So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above
the abyss. Tonight the moon will be in my lap.
This is my job, to study the universe
from my bridge. I have the sky, the sea, the faint
green streak of Canadian forest on the far shore. 

This is the photo of a young Jim Harrison that accompanied the FB post. It's kind of perfect.

I had not heard of the next poet before today, but I've looked into him a bit and like what I see. In 1975, he was at La Guardia airport when a bomb exploded, killing twelve. He later wrote, "I realized, in the aftermath of the bomb, how arbitrary fate can be. Spending the night in La Guardia in the midst of that chaos, destruction, grief, and hysteria changed the nature of my work. Since then, I have felt that life is much more about the interruption of plot than about plot. What choice did my poetry have, but to reshape itself around these interruptions? I try to see as clearly—even calmly—as I can how things are. Sadness is at the heart of this clarity, but, strangely, consolation as well . . . we are all in it together." The following poem may well inspire me to seek out more of Jim Moore and his work.

The Need Is So Great

by Jim Moore (b. 1943)

Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch
the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.

I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.
Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often

of late last light on a December day,
of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green

behind the broken chain link fence on the corner.
But the need is so great for the way light looks

as it takes its leave of us. We say
what we can to each other of these things,

we who are such thieves, stealing first
one breath and then the next. Bach, keep going

just this slowly, show me the way to believe
that what matters in this world has already happened

and will go on happening forever.
The way light falls on the last

of the stricken leaves of the copper beech
at the end of the block is something to behold.

And, okay, a third, final poem, named by David when I asked what his favorite is—because it fits the overall theme here: of having a mind and a heart and beholding the wonder of it all:

Messenger

by Mary Oliver (1935–2019)

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

The Weight of Time

Not long ago, Pádraig Ó Tuama posted in an email (Poetry Unbound?) a musing about time, and in it he included a poem he'd written, "The Weight of Time." One of the stanzas irked me, and continues to irk me:

1993 was a terrible year for me, an old guy said.
I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t born, came a reply.
The speaker got annoyed,
but the young guy said,
you’ve had your time —
my generation’s being destroyed.

First, the line "you've had your time." Um, no. Anyone who is alive has whatever time there is. We all only get this one span of time. Of precious life. You've had your time? What will that young guy feel when he gets to be seventy, eighty?

Certainly, too, you could look back to a similar "young guy" in the 1960s—who could easily have been the older speaker—and he also might well have said, "My generation's being destroyed." In this country, it has been true for many, throughout our history. The current generations might consider themselves lucky that they don't have a Civil War, a World War, a Vietnam, to get conscripted into, if they had perspective. There are many ways of surviving the odds.

Then there are the young people who complain about older folks who are remaining in their houses, now paid off, rather than moving somewhere smaller and letting young families take them over. But when I look at options around here, we'd have to pay more than we could get for our house, and for something smaller. Why should we do that? Haven't we paid our dues, earned some peace? Shouldn't we all get to be where want to be—assuming we've made it there—until it's no longer viable? Is it us "boomers'" fault that humans keep procreating, keep filling the planet? (And I say that as someone who did not.)

Of course of course, we're all egocentric, invested in our own stories, our own pains and joys, and we think we are the most important. And maybe that's also what I'm objecting to: that selfishness. Aren't we all in this together? Apparently not.

Though part of me thinks it's the media that are creating all the bellyache. That people aren't really as generationally divided, as dyspeptic, as selfish, as the "pundits" make up stories about. Because they've got to sell their papers. Which doesn't mean people don't believe the stories they're told. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sad. I wish critical thinking was actually taught in the schools.

Anyway, I'm keeping my house. I will do my best to stay healthy as long as I can, another ten, maybe twenty, but most likely not thirty years. Soon enough, the newest generation of young adults, whatever it calls itself, will have a crack at all I own. Most of it, they'll toss out. The house, though. I do hope some young family, someday, falls in love with it and makes it their own. Just not yet.

I know I'm being a crank here, but honestly. "You've had your time"? That's such bullshit.