I’ve read some rather lukewarm reviews of this autobiography and I don’t understand them.
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
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.
since that’s what we’re really here for. Mr. Fox, which is written by Helen Oyeyemi was on the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books list in 2011 and I’m sort of surprised that I hadn’t happened across it until late 2012. The book is about Mr. Fox, a writer with a wife, Daphne, and a Muse Mary Foxe.