My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife by Bina Cady Kiyonaga

I’ve read some rather lukewarm reviews of this autobiography and I don’t understand them.

 My Spy

I like tall people. I like Action. I like spy stories. I like travel. I like hard lives lived easy. I like real women who get things done; who occasionally cry. I like interracial couples. I like family and reality.

Therefore, I like My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife, the true story of Bina Cady Kiyonaga who has known, lived, and felt all those things I’ve listed above.

My Spy was a solid Amazon wish list maybe that accidentally wound up in my shopping cart. Two days later, an inattentive essential oil purchase plopped a surprise, book-shaped package on my front porch. And what a great surprise it was.

For the next three days it was My Spy and I making our own private “Read More” campaign montage. Reading in bed, Reading in the bathtub, Reading beneath a tree. Reading is Fun!

Lately I have been trying to pinpoint a character that I have absolutely adored in the novels that I’ve read. And not just adored because they are pure-hearted, but because they are perfect even in their flaws.

The only character to come to mind at first was Katniss Everdeen and that’s only because she reminds me of myself.  My family has taken to calling me Kait-niss, if you want proof. So, shout out to me! (And you, Ange.)

All Hunger Games aside, I’ve never liked someone on the page as much as I have Bina Cady Kiyonaga. You know why? Because this woman is honest, and at points, painfully so. Since reading Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (well, as much as I could stand) I have learned not to trust a person’s own biased account of their life, but I trust Bina. She expresses thoughts, experiences, and some insecurities that even your best friend might hesitate to share. I realized this when she explained the complications that befell upon her and her husband, Joe, after the first few days of marriage and a quite unspectacular wedding night. Ehem.

Most of all, I love this autobiography because I like Bad-asses.

Who marries a fine, tall Japanese-American soldier who later becomes a CIA agent? Oh, well, this fabulous Baltimore-born, Irish-American Catholic girl who doesn’t give an eff about 1947-era racism.

Who lived all over the globe, raising five children, and always whole-heartedly working on her marriage? Bina. Bina Cady Kionaga. Keep up, y’all.

I give this novel five stars because of the—what seems like—legitimate honesty within. This woman was not perfect, her family was not perfect, money wasn’t always plentiful, and every thought expressed in the book was not always positive. Yet, somehow, I still aspire to be a woman as strong and alive as Bina.

As a writer, I admit that My Spy wasn’t a vivid work of literary genius, and I’m glad. The book was written conversationally, candidly—and that made the story of the Kiyonaga family that much more enthralling.

Final confession. After days of reading this book non-stop, I put it down a few pages shy of the end…for two years. It didn’t slip my mind. My Spy sat on my dresser, daring me to suck it up and finish. But Joe had become ill and Bina’s language hinted that the outcome would not be pleasant. Death is inevitable for us all, yes, but I couldn’t bear to read her pain. That is what makes this book spectacular: me fearfully staring down the pink cover of My Spy for 730 days.

Thank you for sharing your story, Bina Cady Kiyonaga. Five stars.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” makes me want to start a book club. Not some new, trendy (I hate to say—hipsteresque) book club where we drink PBR out of eternally dingy thrift store goblets, and talk about vinyls more than books.

I’m talking a real book club.

I want a gaggle of forty-somethings with wrinkled mommy-pooches, where you’re side-eyed if you don’t have more than two children, a disinterested husband, and/or chronic fatigue syndrome. I want to sit back on Lydia or Martha or Betsy’s plastic covered sofa, eating a processed mash of lukewarm casserole off of a recycled forest-green plastic spoon, and delight in the thrilling strictly book-centered conversation. I want this because I believe in New York Time’s Best Selling Author Gillian Flynn’s recent novel. Because while reading I clutched my heart and walked around my house cursing characters under my breath. I squealed, and growled even more. I thought: I trusted you! How could you? And, to be honest, I genuinely had my feelings hurt more than once.

I know that forty-something year old women (for the most part) have seen it all. I respect them. The screaming kids, long days at work, that damn toilet seat that is never down, and whatever other dumb things husbands do after twenty or so years of marriage. These everyday grievances—very reasonably—would make it more difficult to be shocked or wowed or amazed on a daily basis. I would love to see that amusement. Maybe amusement is a poor word choice when we’re discussing a book so rich in murder, deceit, and scandal. But I want to see whose side they take—or are tempted to take—in this dark novel.

Basically, a group of 21-year-old hipsters reading some book and gasping at everything wouldn’t match or amplify the laborious tug that “Gone Girl” inflicted upon my heart.

(I am a 21-year-old anti-hipster in a way so passionate that I am often called a hipster.)

Gone Girl

The review, the review. Back to the review.

Gone Girl.

Flynn does everything right, as can been seen through her fame and (I assume) fortune. A few things she does exceptionally:

  1. Her characters: Well-rounded, realistic, human.
  2. Her Formula: Not all books have one so unique.
  3. Her plot: It’s a puzzle, cemented together in the end.

To put it all into actual thought: Flynn’s characters are varied, plentiful, realistic. They evolve. I marveled at her ability to create such depth in each character—depth that goes beyond the handful of focal characters, but reaches out to form very real and important people through phone conversations and second-hand reports of “off-screen” encounters.

The formula here says a lot. It does a lot. The diary entries are a device, another way in which we experience a character. The relationship quizzes splattered within these entries solidify this character. And, perhaps, that is what Flynn does so well. We have two narrators, but more than two voices coming through. With this, I must say, that I was always entertained, switching from one to the other like a stupid-hungry-excited puppy. But how dare I say any more? I might ruin the novel.

Finally, the plot. A big ole’ mash of cause and effect: That happens because of this. So this happens because of that. Of course! It is a mystery. You knew this from the start. From the spindly white scratches across the ominous black cover to the eerie synopsis, you knew this was going to get juicy. But I didn’t know how it would seep, so wonderfully laden with secrets and lush, substantial facts. I love facts—they make everything so real. They make a sunny New Orleans afternoon feel like midnight during a hailstorm.

I can’t go outside. Are you crazy?

 

I ran into some frustrations, but none I could harp on. Like my opinions of the characters, my stance on these frustrations changed constantly. The feminist in me felt troubled at times by how the female was handled. Were feminists getting a bad rap here? Were we being misrepresented? Or, were women just out of luck in Flynn’s novel? I don’t know, I couldn’t decide. It may have been the discomfort of seeing various, misfortunate women losing that disturbed me. After all, no one really won here. I could speculate out loud, give passages and ruin “Gone Girl” for any innocent passerby, but I’m no hussy.

If you’re looking for an addictive, twisty, and slightly-gruesome read, this book is for you.

Ultimately I cannot give Flynn’s “Gone Girl” less than four stars.