This is my symphony ...

Dark and stormy

2012-01-29T12:48:00.000-06:00

Swamplandia!
by Karen Russell

This book sat tucked away for several months-- a reader's copy, passed on by a lucky friend who attends the Michigan Booksellers Association every year-- until it finally wormed its way off my bookshelf when I heard NPR's own Nancy Corrigan add it to her "10 Best Novels of 2011" list. Now the synopsis had always sounded a bit John Irving-esque, which was its appeal. Always up for quirky characters in impossible situations, how could I pass up a novel about a family of alligator wrestlers who run an alligator themed park?

And, to be sure, I wasn't disappointed for the first several chapters. Ava Bigtree has potential has the next star in Swapmlandia! She loves to perform and is quick and agile--qualities essential in gator wrestling. But Ava's young mother has died, her father and brother disappear, and Ava is left alone on the family's Everglade island with a sixteen-year-old-sister in love with Ouiji boards and possibly having an affair with a ghost. That all fits the Irving bill. Add to the plot that brother Kiwi is found working at Swamplandia!s rival World of Darkness park and the Chief at a casino and the novel seems on it's way to another Hotel New Hampshire.

[spoiler alert]
But Russell's characters don't have the innate goodness of Irving's, nor do they seem indomitable, and the novel takes a dark turn into a child's rape and abduction. And while many contemporary novels deal with life's dark realities, Russell never brought her characters back into the light--and I feared for the future of Ava and her siblings, even though the writer seems to want to convince us that the story has a happy ending.

Next up: 11/22/63 by Stephen King, our next book club read for March. I am delighted after only 75 pages and I am looking for my own portal into the past.

Hope

2012-01-29T12:10:00.002-06:00

Secret Daughter
by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Somer and Krishnan have it all. Meeting in med school he was drawn to her American optimism and drive, she to his British accent and exotic Indian homeland. Marrying to improve their chances of being assigned a shared residency program, they set out (as most do) with the dream that their perfect professional lives would blend seamlessly with their perfect family life. But several years into their marriage and several miscarriages later, that dream is fading. The waiting list for adopting a baby is crushing--then, in what seems like a perfect solution, Kris suggests they travel to India where his family has ties to an Indian orphanage. Female newborns are often abandoned because families value boys and the child would look like Krishnan. I had a real problem with Somer's reluctant response, which didn't seem to jib with the social conscience of the late eighties. But the need for a baby overcame Somer's ojections and a few months later they are back in the States with beautiful Asha.

Parallel to the story of Somer and Krishnan is that of Kavita and Jasu, Asha's birth parents. Still mourning the loss of her first daughter, torn from her arms and killed by Jasu's brother, Kavita vows that if her second child is a daughter, she will travel to a Mumbai orphanage so that at least the child will live. So the day after her baby girl Usha, meaning Dawn, is born, Kavita and her sister journey to the orphanage, Kavita's sorrow palpable in her weeping. Kavita and Jasu's life is one of poverty, hardship, and abuse; Somer's and Krishna's one of privilege and comfort ... and both families find happiness or peace of mind elusive.

It was easy to fault Somer for her discontent; her reluctance to embrace the culture of her husband and daughter eventually drove a wedge between mother and daughter and wife and husband. But I did like watching Asha's own homecoming, living in India for a year to internship at The Times of India.Asha grows to love India and her lively aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Though perhaps a bit too pat, a tragic event brings Somer and Kris to India, where they attempt to mend, and Asha, which means Hope, lives up to the name they gave her.

Secret Daughter was not overly demanding and provided enough of a glimpse of Indian culture to make it satisfying. A good read overall.

Letting go

2012-01-08T09:18:00.001-06:00

What Is Left the Daughter
Howard Norman

I chose this book, plain and simple, for the title. I have a kind of fascination with daughters, being one and all. And so it was with some disappointment that I realized the novel was really a father's letter to his daughter, a daughter he had never lived with and hadn't seen for twenty-some years. Now Wyatt's story is compelling--I was just expecting a female protagonist. Set in Nova Scotia, I loved the bleak sky, grey sea, and heavy salt air that clung to every event and seeped into each character.

Wyatt Hillyer is orphaned at 16 when both his parents commit suicide, jumping to their deaths from bridges separated by only a few miles. Both, it seems, loved the same woman. (Now that got my attention!) Wyatt accepts an offer from his aunt and uncle to move to small town Middle Economy and become apprenticed in Uncle Donald's tobaggon shop. Wyatt immediately falls in love with his (adopted) cousin Tilda in true unrequited love fashion. Tilda, intent on becomming a professional mourner, is preoccupied and hardly notices Wyatt. Tilda eventually marries Hans Mohring, a student from Germany, just as Canada poises on high alert at World War II's advent.

Uncle Donald becomes obsessive about possible U-boat attack in Canadian waters--so much so that he and Aunt Constance separate, Uncle Donald moving into his workshop. Tragedy does finally strikes in the Northumberland Strait and sets the plot unraveling. Both Wyatt and Donald spend time in prison, baby Marlais (she of the "daughter" in the title) is born, and Wyatt finds himself seperated from Tilda by an ocean.

I must admit, though, that I struggled for over one hundred pages to keep reading the book--not because of any plot or character weakness, but because of the writer's voice. The characters speech was quaint, overly formal, or maybe just Novia Scotian. It was off-putting. But I was so drawn to Wyatt and the setting that I let go the fight. And glad I am that I did.

Next up: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell--so far, a bit John Updike-ish, which is not a bad thing!

I Want To Be Like Essie

2012-01-07T11:48:00.000-06:00

The Coffins of Little Hope
Timothy Schaffert

Give me an octogenarian obituary writer--and one named Essie, at that--and you've got me hooked. And while it took nearly the entire book to figure out the title (and, quite frankly, I don't really understand why it was chosen--although the wordplay was clever), I wasn't disappointed. Essie Myles, twice-widowed, lives in small town Nebraska where she makes a family with her grandson and great-granddaughter. Essie (or Ess or simply S) writes her obituaries with the same attention of an investigative reporter. The novel pivots on Essie's trying to ascertain whether or not young Lenore has been abducted and killed by her mother's boyfriend--or whether the girl is merely an invention of her pitiable mother.

Spinning around Lenore's absence is the story of Tess, a thirteen-year-old whose life is upturned when her long-absent mother returns; of Doc, whose job as editor of the County Paragraph hasn't fit him since he tried it on after his beloved father died; of W. Muscatine, author of a series of gothic children's books, who secretly corresponds with Essie while the town tries to ferret out who has leaked the series' latest installment. If you love characters as Charles Dickens and John Irving love characters, you won't be disappointed with Little Hope.

Falling up

2011-12-13T15:34:00.001-06:00

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
Heidi w. Durrow

The review was glowing, the novel won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, it was on Best Fiction lists for the year--and yet I passed over this one for months. I shouldn't have. I'll be honest--I like plots that haven't been done before (although I suppose in some ways there's even a brush of Hunchback of Notre Dame here) which is why the book appealed to me. Rachel Morse, 11-years-old, survives her young family's murder/suicide: a jump from the roof of their Chicago apartment building. Rachel's Danish mother had recently moved her children to the United States to be with her boyfriend, a man who has difficulty accepting her biracial children. Mourning the loss of her marriage to an African American GI, struggling to keep her alcoholism under control, homesick for Denmark--it was all too much. And now young Rachel must live with the gruesome truth that she lived because the bodies softened her landing.

As if losing mom and siblings wasn't enough, Rachel is taken cross country to live with her paternal grandmother in Portland, Oregon. There, Rachel, light-skinned and blue-eyed, is immersed in black culture--her white mother and Danish roots never mentioned. Rachel's quiet longing for what she has lost threads its way through her life as she grows to love (and, sadly, lose) vivacious Aunt Loretta and her activist husband Drew, and, of course, her demanding Grandma. The only biracial girl in school, she tries to find her place despite the taunts and teasing of other girls. Dare she reveal her quick mind and devotion to school? Can she hold on to the fragments of Danish sometimes surface--and tie her to her mother? Is she black? Or white?

Parallel to Rachel's story is the story of the only witness to the family's fall: young Brick. Devastated by what he saw, Brick becomes devoted to the memory of Rachel. He eventually leaves his addict mother on a cross-country quest to find the girl who fell from the sky. And it is their eventual meeting becomes the catalyst for both to heal.

Drifting

2011-12-12T18:55:00.000-06:00

Peony in Love
Lisa See

[spoiler alert]

This was a quick Kindle purchase--I needed something light and breezy and (in true Kindle fashion) I needed it now! Having read Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan I anticipated another story of love and friendship--and was eager to gain more insight into 17th century China. I didn't read a lot about the novel, but glimpsing the words "poetry" "opera" "rocky path of love" in Amazon's synopsis, I was sold.

But a ghost story?! Really? I was (initially) so disappointed. Yes, Peony meets her true love, keeps it secret, becomes betrothed, mourns the man she could never have ... and then proceeds to die before her wedding to, you guessed it, the man of her dreams. I was tempted to end right there, a mere 7 chapters into story, but something kept me reading.

And in the end, Peony in Love was worth it. Here the reader gets a glimpse into to fascinating spiritual world of Chinese culture, the stages of death, the levels of the after-life. I have another layer of thinking about what might come next, something that has always drawn me to wondering. The image of Peony and her grandmother hovering, trailing behind on the shoulders of some beloved family member is both beautiful and comforting and I sometimes find myself wondering on whose shoulders I will drift.

If at first you don't succeed ...

2011-12-12T18:53:00.000-06:00

Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen

A few years ago, following the recommendations of almost every book reviewer, I opened Jonathon Franzen's Corrections with high expectations--winner of the National Book Award; Time's Great American Novelist. About 40 pages later, I was done. Now I'm no wimpy reader, but Franzen's prose was dense and I didn't feel that "Me! Me!" tug from the characters. A fellow English teacher, and an abashed Franzen fan, dropped the book off at my house saying, "No rush--whenever I got to it ... " Such a soft sell. After getting tired of the 3 inch tome staring back at me from my reading shelf, I broke down. How bad could it be, after all?

Let me begin by saying that this time I finished the novel. And I'm actually quite proud of that because I was tempted many times to quit. Was the prose still dense? Yes--though maybe not so much. Did I feel that tug from the characters? Yes--although when Patty and Walter Berglund showed their true colors I felt hornswoggled. The summary in PW is accurate enough for anyone not familiar with the story: two young liberals build an idyllic life together: model marriage, precocious kids, This Old House renovations--they had it all and did it all. Or so it seemed. But sugar-coating only cracks and crumbles under the weight of reality,and what lies beneath is often rotting. And so it was with Patty and Walter. Their lack of emotional intelligence led to repression, jealousy, betrayal, adultery.

I don't need Pollyanna or happy endings. But I do need to feel as though characters I live with throughout a novel have some redeemable characteristics. And here I found none. After their lives collapse, both Patty and Walter try to reinvent themselves, but still find little happiness, and their reunion at the novel's end feels thin. In many ways, Freedom was the twin of We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. But I left Oates' novel satisfied at the family's reconciliation and reinvention. I don't know what I'm missing with Franzen's novels, but I just don't get it.

Almost perfect

2011-08-10T17:14:00.000-05:00

22 Britannia Road
by Amanda Hodgkinson

A book-loving friend of mine commented recently on my blog: "Don't you like anything?!" But I think that reading with discrimination doesn't mean I don't like certain novels; it just means I tend to notice stylistic or plot devices that just don't promote story. I am an avowed story glutton--give me a narrative that rings true any day. And in Amanda Hodgkinson's 22 Britannia Road I found an almost perfect story.

Set during and immediately after World War II, the novel follows the Nowak family. Husband Januscz worked in the Polish underground and roamed Europe while his young wife Silvana and toddler Aurek stay behind (briefly) in Warsaw. But as the Germans and Russians advanced, they, too, left for the countryside. Both their experiences destroyed much of their hope for the future and left them far different people--Januscz loved again, and lost; Silvana lives an almost feral life in the forests of Poland. At the war's end, Januscz miraculously finds his young family in a refugee camp and brings them to England--22 Britannia Road, to be exact--to continue their lives where they had left off. But can they?

One of the things I loved about this story is that it was clear from the beginning that there was a secret of some sort--which I promptly figured out, then doubted, and finally learned the truth. Januscz's desire to return to the family they once were was so very much like a man. Silvana's distance as she tried to make sense of her past and present was so very much like a woman and her fierce attachment to their son Aurek made sense, given the horrors they had experienced. Or did it? (And so the secret begins to unravel ...)

22 Britannia was a quick read because it was so compelling--I can't imagine any reader unsatisfied.

This one's a three-fer ... or, summer is waning and I'm behind in my postings!

2011-08-04T22:37:00.000-05:00

White Woman on a Green Bicycle
by Monique Roffey

The love story of George and Sabine Harwood begins as most love stories do: passionate and built on dreams. Their story ends as some marriages do: brittle, shattered, and, yet, somehow still connected. The whimsical cover threw me as I started the novel, which begins in the present with the 70-something couple leading lives separated by mistrust and alcohol. The caustic tone wasn't what I'd expected. But a few chapters in, Roffey rolls back the years and we see George and Sabine arrive in Trinidad, fresh from England. They are on an adventure, young, and in love. But the heat oppresses one and invigorates the other, and the racial animosity thrills one and deadens the other. Their unraveling is bittersweet, poignant--and only made more so when the author returns to the present at the novel's end.

Private Life
by Jane Smiley

Margaret is a spinster, plain and simple. At age 27 her prospects are dim: she was a bit too plain, a bit too frank, and a bit too intelligent to settle. But when Andrew Early, a celebrated, yet eccentric scientist, arrives in town, Margaret's wily mother Lavinia encourages their friendship. Confused at times by Andrew's bizarre behavior, Margaret sets off with him for life in San Fransisco shortly after World War I. Margaret learns to play the dutiful wife, typing her husband's book drafts, listening to his rants, enduring long nights alone while he researched. Initially bedazzled by her husband's mind, Margaret eventually comes to recognize Andrew's narrow-mindedness and paranoia. While she gains confidence and a wider circle of support, he is drawn into himself, seeing conspiracy at every turn.The novel could share a title with one of Doris Lessing's collections: We Are the Prisons We Live Inside.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (nonfiction)

Amy Chua

Book club selection for August--I read it in a day. Author Amy Chua wanted to raise her daughters as a Chinese mother would, not a Western one. Chinese child-rearing, Chua feels, engenders successful children who excel in school and music. Western parenting ... lets just say we don't come out so well, and most of the time, justifiably so. Chua came under incredible criticism when the book was published--mostly from those merely reacting to a sound bite. The book ends up being more a treatise on what not to do as we watch Chua and one of her daughters battle to what might have been the end of their relationship. Well worth reading and plenty of points to discuss.

Immortal Beloved

2011-07-05T16:33:00.001-05:00

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot

In 1951, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital, took a tissue sample from the cervix of Henrietta Lacks. She was indigent, African-American, and weeks from death. The cervical cancer she had been diagnosed with was a particularly virulent form, and Lacks spent her last days in agony. Those HeLa cells, as they came to be known, went on to change medicine, providing endless opportunities for research into cancer, polio, AIDS, and radiation poisoning. Quite a legacy--except for the fact that Lacks knew nothing of the tissue sample taken from her, nor did her family. And that is where the story of Henrietta Lacks becomes tragic and unforgettable.

To be sure, taking the tissue sample did not require Lacks' permission. But her cells quickly became famous, behaving in a way that no cells ever had before: they survived and reproduced rapidly, making them the most-used cell-line in medical research. Lacks' cells were the first cells ever mailed by the U.S. Post Office and they are cultured and stored in research labs the world over. In fact, author Rebecca Skloot estimates that nearly 50 million metric tons of the cells have been cultured, becomming a mult-million dollar industry.

Before Henrietta's cells became immortal, she was mother, sister, wife, and daughter. Her laugh was said to be contagious, and her love of children legendary. As a child she lived on her grandfather's tobacco farm, but later moved to Baltimore with her husband David "Day" Lacks. Henrietta dressed to the nines when she went out, loved to dance, and favored red lipstick and nail polish. She fed family and friends from a bottomless pot of spaghetti and meatballs. In short, Henrietta Lacks was more than HeLa--she was a flesh and blood woman who loved and lived in the embrace of her family.

Lacks' family never learned of the HeLa cell line until nearly twenty years after her death--and even then the knowledge was clouded by misunderstanding and emotion. Her children, none of whom had much schooling, did not understand the most basic concepts of biology, and imagined their mother cloned or parts of her living on, enduring even more abuse at the hands of the medical community. When articles appeared about scientists fusing animal cells with HeLa cells, they imagined with horror that their mother was now a mouse-human. It was astounding (and perhaps horribly naive) of me to think that adults in the year 2000 would lack this understanding. The family also became outraged when they learned the cells were bought and sold--and that they never saw a cent of the profits. Indeed, sixty years after Lacks' death, her family still couldn't afford basic health care.

Skloot spent ten years writing the book, most of those years cultivating relationships with Lacks' relatives, especially her daughter Dorothy. Dorothy suffered from high blood pressure, back problems, diabetes, depression, and perhaps bi-polar disorder. She was a handful, but Skloot was never condescending, and almost tender in educating Dorothy about cell structure and reproduction, and modern research science. Memorable also was Johns Hopkins researcher Christoph Lengauer, who brought Dorothy and her brother Zakariyya face-to-face with their mother's cells in his laboratory; and Paul Lurz, administrator-cum-historian, who respectfully shared with Dorothy the fate of her older sister Elsie, who died in Crownville State Hospital. In a story filled with bad guys, these three were testaments to honesty and character.

I was shocked at the end of Skloot's book--never saw it coming. The author used some of the book's profits to set up a scholarship fund for the Lacks family, and in 2011, Sonny Lacks accepted an honorary degree in his mother's name. A fitting postscript to an American tragedy.

Too much tinkering?

2011-06-24T18:53:00.000-05:00

tinkers
by Paul Harding

So much of what the blurbs on the back cover of tinkers relate is true; the novel is "elegiac", "heartbreaking", "compelling". I would add meditative. Tinkers is beautiful, plain and simple, and the first sentence had me immediately: "George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died." What follows is three pages of George "seeing" his house crumble around him, settling and sinking, tile by tile and brick by brick. As one whose mind nibbles around about the mystery that is death, whose husband works with hospice patients weekly, I found the descriptions of George's death strangely comforting, although admittedly outlandish.

Harding strings the stories of George, his father Howard, and Howard's father, the minister, like charms on a bracelet. The older men both harbor unmentionable diseases. Great grandfather slid into dementia, and slides out of Howard's life, one day vanishing entirely. Years later, Howard, besieged with grand mal epileptic seizures, finds a brochure for a mental asylum on his wife's dresser, and he, also, rides (quite literally) out of his son's life. Both men wrote enigmatic observations about nature, baffling to the reader in sense--but beautiful and dream-like all the same. It is George alone who remains surrounded by his extended family at life's end, breaking with his father and grandfather. All the men tinker in some way, Howard most literally as a rag and bone man. George tinkered with clocks and taught building trades; the minister tinkered with words. All were gypsies of a sort.

It is perhaps those lovely passages themselves that hindered me from falling headlong into tinkers. I found the passages distracting, interfering with the movement of the story. Perhaps that was Harding's purpose? To blur the lines between narrators? Gorgeous writing. Satisfying characters. But while that may be the way of oh-so-unconventional and outre, the novel wasn't as compelling as more traditional narratives--it kept getting in the way of the story.

[And who cares what I think, anyway?! The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, so who am I to say?]

2011-06-23T08:00:00.004-05:00

Year of Wonders
Geraldine Brooks

The year is 1666; a small village tucked in the English countryside welcomes a new lodger--George Viccars, a tailor from London. Viccars luxurious bolts of fine cloth, however, harbor the unseen "seeds" of the Plague. After his death, we watch the lives of the villagers quickly spiral into despair. Anna Frith, the young widow who took the tailor in, works for the rector of the village, Michael Montpellion. With Montpellion and his wife Eleanor, Anna nurses the sick, attends to the survivors, and helps bury the dead.

The title was misleading--I expected to read a novel where the horrific plague brought out the best in people, and bound them together in community and a renewed spirit of brotherhood. Instead, we have witch hunts, swindlers, religious fanatics, and, rather than grave robbers, a grave-digging robber who swoops in hours before a death and charges outrageously for a decent burial. I guess one's true nature does surface during adversity. But through it all, Anna Frith somehow prevails, and, as she watches the world around her fall apart, tells her story with wisdom and insight. Eleanor Montpellion teaches her to read and becomes a fast friend, and Michael Montpellion relies on her courage and skill in nursing the sick.

Year of Wonders provides a fairly accurate (albeit cliched) look at England in the seventeenth century. My interest never flagged and the novel was a quick read. But I have to wonder why oh why contemporary writers insist on some sensational ending, one that isn't in tune with the time, place, or character of the novel? Is it because a quiet, thoughtful story of grace and dignity won't sell? I won't put a spoiler alert here, but to say the far-fetched end of Anna's story was disappointing is putting it mildly.

Currently reading : tinkers by Paul Harding; next up The Immortal Life of Harriet Lacks, our July book club selection.

Fat goggles

2011-06-22T07:33:00.004-05:00

Half-assed
Jennette Fulda

A few years ago I lost some weight and also began faithfully reading several blogs. One of the blogs I discovered was Half of Me, written by one "Pasta Queen". The blog chronicled the life of a twenty-something woman on a quest to lose half her body weight; I think I jumped in at around 250 pounds. The writer was witty, sometimes even downright sardonic. Her voice was crystalline--I felt like I knew this girl after only a few weeks of reading her posts. And I liked her a lot. Fulda is one of the reasons I started exercising and riding a bicycle--the old "if she can do it, I can" thing.

Half-assed is Pasta Queen's blog-made-book, rather like the book Julie, Julia of the Julie/Julia Project--only this writer has none of the snarkiness of Julie. I put it on my wish list as soon as Fulda wrote about it on her blog, but there it sat. So you can only imagine how quickly I snapped up a Kindle copy when her Facebook page (I am a devoted fan!) announced it available for only 99 cents. Here the reader has an even more thoughtful look into Fulda's weight loss--same inimitable voice, but even more revealing as she begins to take off the fat goggles through which she looked at herself and the world for over twenty years.

Fulda has put her weight-loss blog aside and now writes Jen-Ful, a blog with a little bit of this 'n that. And while I do enjoy her perspective and getting a peek into her life as a free-lance web designer, I do think she lost something special when she set aside Half of Me. One of the reasons was her new battle, dealing with a chronic headache. All the time. Twenty-four, seven. For years. Although I also deal with chronic pain, I don't have Fulda's Vicodin and Chocolate on my wishlist and I don't know why. But I do know I'll continue to read her blog because after reading hundreds of her posts (often daily), I consider her a digital friend.

Not my collectible

2011-06-22T06:55:00.001-05:00

Cookbook Collector
Allegra Goodman

So I like to cook. I love to eat. I read cookbooks for fun. And the icing on the cake? NPR commentator Maureen Corrigan called author Allegra Goodman an "updated Jane Austen" and the novel a contemporary take on Sense and Sensibility. And while the basics are there (two sisters blind to love and misguided in their life's work) that's about where the similarities end.

I have little good to say about the novel. The plot was often unbelievable, the characters caricatures, the conflict a mish-mash of every modern social cliche imaginable. Silicon Valley start-up? Check. Brat pack millionaire entrepreneurs? Check. Green movement tree huggers (literally)? Check. Religious mysticism? Check. A lesbian child custody battle? Check. SEPTEMBER 11, for goshsakes?! Now that was just maudlin pandering.

The story centers on two sisters, Emily--the software entrepreneur-- and Jess--the grad-student-cum-book store clerk. Emily has it all, or does she? Jess is adrift and seeking purpose and stability. (See what I mean about cliches?) Both women evolve and flip their lives--see paragraph 2 for inciting devices. And I wanted this cookbook collector ... who didn't show up until nearly one-third of the way through the novel. To be sure, the cookbook collector could have referred to Jess' employer, rare bookstore owner George. Or it could have been the mysterious woman who wanted him to appraise her uncle's collection. Or it could even have been the uncle himself, an enigmatic college professor who littered his collection of rare cookbooks with sensuous line drawings of his unknown love. But suffice it to say, although the cookbooks may have played a part in Jess' rebirth, this book was not about a cookbook collection.

So--a pretty disdainful take on a mediocre book. Thank goodness for the Kindle app and the fact that I won't have this book cluttering my shelves. But ... I read the whole thing. Page one to whatever. And, in the end, I guess that says something.

The other side of the coin

2011-06-16T15:12:00.006-05:00

Wench
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Author Dolen Perkins-Valdez peels away another layer of the slave narrative we all know existed--that of the black women, treated "well", who were mistresses of their white owners. Even school children know of Thomas Jefferson's Sally Hemings, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs rose in popularity twenty years ago. In Wench, we meet four women--Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet, and Mawu--who accompany their masters each summer to vacation in Ohio at Tawawa House, a vacation spot and hunting resort. There, they live in cottages as "couples", leaving behind the glares of white wives and the murmurs of field slaves.

A white reader might be torn, conflicted, by the life presented, much as I was on my first reading of Jacobs Slave Girl. Relief--some masters cared for their slave lovers and biracial children. See? The women--in free Ohio--could not bring themselves to run, summer after summe after summer. Some "loved" their masters. And yet the white men kept their children enslaved, refusing to emancipate them; they tied those mistresses to the porch rails when fearful they would flee. No love here. I found the women's reluctance to admit their "status" afforded them no protection difficult to accept--I wanted them to rail against the injustice and rise up against their enslavers. But I am not scheming to have my children freed, or even calculating how to keep them close; I am not trying to avoid the lash, or keep my belly full. And so the women bide their time, bending under the yoke of slavery--cracking, maybe, but never breaking, waiting, waiting, for just the right time ...

And now for something completely different ...

2011-06-15T15:12:00.000-05:00

Full Dark, No Stars
by Stephen King

This read was a step out of my comfort zone in two ways: I don't read Stephen King (or any kind of horror), and it was my first book on my Kindle app. Let's get the Kindle app out of the way first. I am a former book store clerk. I once wanted to be a librarian. My husband and I might have more books than hairs on our heads (his, certainly!). I love the smell of musty, inky paper and library glue; the only decorating tips I can offer is to pile crooked stacks all over the floor and tables. In other words, I am a book woman.

So it was with great reluctance and a bit of fear that I downloaded the Kindle app on my new iPad several weeks ago. And there is sat, neat and tidy in the folder I'd created labled "books"! A fellow book woman told me she reads only those books she doesn't want to keep--and I thought to myself, "Well, what books would that be?!" And then book club agreed to try King's new short story collection, Full Dark, No Stars. Over lunch one day, one of our members recounted the story "A Good Marriage", based on the BTK serial murderer Dennis Rader. We were spellbound, and turned to each other almost at once--"Let's read this for our next book!"

First of all, Full Dark is more murder mystery than what I think of as horror--no real supernatural here. Maybe some psychological horror, but no girl with telekinetic powers and no rabid dogs. Oh, wait--there is one sell-your-soul-to-the-devil scenario ... but it's almost fable-like in its brevity. The first story, "1922" tell the story of a hen-pecked husband who (to use a great deal of understatement!) turns the tables and murders his wife. With his teenage son. And dumps her body in a well. Hmmmm. "Big Driver" tells the tale of a rape victim cum-murderer who takes the law into her own hands. And the aformentioned "Good Marriage" peeks into the mind of a wife who finds that her "perfect marriage" is a sham, her husband, a psychopath.

The stories are compelling, even to one not accustomed to such plot lines--I would say to myself, "Oh this is just gross!", put the book (oops, my iPad!) down in disgust, and before ten minutes had passed, picked it up again. All turn on the idea of revenge--and, really, what would one do to take revenge on someone who had made your life miserable? Or worse? Just as satisfying was King's afterword. Excusing himself for hovering around matters dark and dim, he reassures his "Constant Reader" that he believes "most people are essentially good", like himself. "It's you," states King, "I'm not entirely sure of." Perfect ending. And besides--it was just plain fun to be scared.

Ambivalence

2011-04-19T19:19:00.003-05:00

The Postmistress
by Sarah Blake

Nineteen-forty, small Massachusetts village, the London blitz, a single Postmistress ... it all had the sound of the charming Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And like many who didn't experience the war, I've encountered World War II through my dreamy Tales of South Pacific and Norman Rockwell goggles. Granted, the past several years have given us movies like Saving Private Ryan--but for those of us with tender sensibilities, Michener was more comfortable. But no fairy tale here--author Sarah Blake presented the Second World War as the ambiguous moral battle it surely was for some Americans.

Told through the eyes of three women, the reader comes to see that all America probably wasn't as unabashedly patriotic as old newsreels would have us believe. Iris James is forty, single, a bit standoffish, and runs the Franklin post office with friendly efficiency; Emma Trask wants to keep her little light of family happiness hidden under a bushel; and Frankie Bard, girl reporter, works right alongside the great Edward R. Murrow. Each watches the war unfold with ambivalence. It is the men in their lives who die as a result of war--a situation that would make anyone face life with uncertainty. While I thought that Blake probably made these characters a bit too forward thinking, they were, overall, believable. (As is always my complaint, I grew quite weary of Emma's whining and Frankie's inability to make up her mind--but that's probably just me.) I did think the undelivered letter motif was a bit overwrought and didn't quite deserve attention it got on the book's blurb. I was also more than a bit disappointed that Blake titled the book The Postmistress when Iris herself corrected those who did, and told them her title was simply "postmaster".

Perhaps the most serendipitous discovery came not from the book itself, but from the bookmark I used. With about fifty pages of reading left, I idly turned over the vintage linen postcard cum bookmark I had stuck between the pages and even more casually began to read the message written on the back. (I've spent several months collecting Michigan postcards from the 30's and 40's to use as a border above the wainscoting in my kitchen.) Imagine my surprise when I read the following, dated 1946. written in back-slanted precise script: "My husband and brother both arrived from overseas in time for Christmas [sic] as you can imagine the happy holidays. My brother went back to college." Surely a reference to returning vets--two soldiers returned home, safe at last.

Last, but not least

2011-04-07T08:46:00.011-05:00

One Thousand White Women
by Jim Fergus

I fear I may be the last woman standing who hasn't read the popular novel by Jim Fergus, One Thousand White Women. I've read the reviews, heard the scuttlebutt among friends, but it seemed too much of a good thing, considering I'd read Thirteen Moons and Color of Lightening over the past year or so. But read it I finally did.

The novel's subtitle is in the tradition of good historical fiction: The Journal of May Dodd. Starting in 1875 we follow May Dodd in her sanctioned "escape" from an insane asylum where her family had imprisoned her for promiscuous behavior. May's crime? The wealthy Chicago socialite fell in love with a man below her social station, found herself pregnant, and, subsequently lived with him. Fergus gives us enough description of life in the asylum for the reader to understand that if May wasn't insane when she arrived at the mental institution, she soon would be.

After searching a bit, it seems the story is entirely fiction, although some Internet sources purport that an Indian leader did indeed suggest an exchange of white brides for horses. I doubt the xenophobic sensitivities of 19th century white Americans, however, would ever permit this to come about.

As I expected (with some disappointment, I must admit), the women, all social outcasts of some sort, find personal freedom and often fulfillment with their Indian families in a fairytale type of way. May Dodd is often puzzled by the customs of her new husband Little Wolf, and she sometimes asserts the values of an independent white woman in ways that probably wouldn't have been so blithely accepted (for instance, swimming with the men in the morning and riding next to her husband on the trail). Fergus makes the tribe's polygamy seem reasonable, and May comes to hold dear the companionship of Little Wolf's other wives. It was all a bit too pat for me.

That was my biggest frustration with this novel. I think romanticizing the life of Native Americans is just as reprehensible as demonizing them. Paulette Jiles presented a very different picture of white Indian wives in her Color of Lightening.

The problem lies in determining the truth.

Flavia fever

2011-04-06T08:06:00.097-05:00

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
by Alan Bradley

It took me a more pages than I was comfortable with to admit I liked Alan Bradley's first Flavia DeLuce novel, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I am not a murder-mystery fan, so that may have been part of it. Or maybe what kept me snagged were the incredibly precise chemistry references far beyond my knowledge--but I am a closet Anglophile, a former eleven-year-old girl, and someone who often lives in a melodramatic story-world myself ... so what was not to like? I read Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag with no such reservations and enjoyed every word of it, chemistry or not.

When we catch up with Buckshaw's residents, Flavia is still mired in constant warfare with her older sisters Daffy and Feely, and Father still hides behind his stamps. Dogger and Mrs. Mullet still hold the seams of the family together, shell-shock and horrid food notwithstanding. And Flavia's beloved bicycle Gladys still transports her all over Bishop's Lacey and its environs--and it is Gladys herself who brings Flavia to St. Tancred's churchyard where she meets Rupert Porson, famed puppeteer of the BBC's Magic Kingdom television program. In order to pay for repairs to his broken-down caravan, Rupert and his lovely assistant Nialla agree to put on a puppet show in the parish hall.

Enter a mad hermitess, a grief-crazed mother, an unmarried pregnant Mother Goose, a former German POW, and a marijuana (that of the "weed" in the title) growing farmer and you've got a Flavia DeLuce novel of the best sort.

The impromptu puppet show ends with a murder, and Flavia sets out (of course) to unravel the mystery. Along the way she uncovers a love affair, reconstructs the truth behind an accidental death, and rescues a suicide with an antidote of (what else?) dove guano! Then, step-by-step Flavia unfolds her discoveries to her idol Inspector Hewitt. How can one not love this little girl?.

Maybe it was just that I was familiar with the pace of Bradley's stories and the rhythm of his writing, but this mystery was a more enjoyable read. Or perhaps it was just because I was happy to enter again this quaint and familiar world. After Sweetness I wasn't certain I'd read Bradley's second novel; After Weed, I'm anxious for his third.

Stay with this one

2011-04-05T07:36:00.003-05:00

If I Stay
by Gayle Forman

Recommended on NPR's "You Must Read This" feature, If I Stay is a young-adult novel that doesn't read like one: the writing is evocative, the story isn't maudlin, the romance almost (!) believable. The novel does have the quick-read characteristic of YA, though--no dense writing here. The premise, however, is heavy: a well-adjusted (maybe a bit too much?) family sets out on a snow day adventure and in the slip of a tire is involved in a fatal crash. Daughter Mia, the 17-year-old protagonist, walks along the side of the road and sees her mother and father, dead. Then she comes upon herself being frantically worked on by paramedics and loaded into a screaming ambulance. Is she dead, she wonders, as she climbs in to the ambulance and heads to the hospital?

Mia can't feel her body, nor can she walk through walls and people like the ghosts she's seen in movies; this sidelined Mia doesn't feel pain. Caught in uncertainty, Mia watches, listens, and struggles to make sense of her new self. We watch her dear Gram and Gramp visit; we see friends and extended family arrive to hold vigil. And all the while, Forman takes us back and forth through Mia's short seventeen years as she remembers ... the birth of her brother, her punk dad's transformation to retro hipster, her first kiss, summer at music camp, a Labor Day picnic. Never maudlin, Forman's writing is clean and offers a beautiful elegy for a girl not yet dead.

Some of the health care professionals come off a bit harsh and unfeeling; this would be a great read for student nurses and doctors. Forman is not pedantic--I worried throughout the book that it would turn into a treatise for pulling the plug as Mia's family tried to make sense of her chances for recovery. I fretted that there would be a grand heavenly reunion with her family--which I hate in any young adult movie, song, or book, given the suicide rate among my often-depressed high school students. No, the choice to stay (or leave) was Mia's. During a visit, Mia's favorite nurse Ramirez encourages her grandparents to talk to her: "She's running the show. Maybe she's just biding her time. So you talk to her. You tell her to take all the time she needs, but to come on back. You're waiting for her."

And so we wait for Mia to decide.

[A word about the title of this post--in the tradition of many newer YA series, my paperback copy included a few pages of Forman's sequel Where She Went. Run, don't walk away from this book! It was everything awful about teen fiction--everything If I Stay was not.]

The buzz about Bee

2011-03-13T15:49:00.003-05:00

Little Bee
by Chris Cleave

Almost a year ago now, a friend of mine ask me excitedly whether or not I had read Little Bee. "What's it about?" "I can't tell you much about it ... 'something' horrible happens on a beach in Nigeria to a little girl ... that's all I can say." As her voice kept sliding down a register, my first impression was "Meh! I sure don't need another one of those horrific scenes to wade through to get to an even more depressing story." Over the past several months, one or two others have mentioned Little Bee in the same hush-hush manner. I put it on my wish list. I took it off my wish list. And then--book club chose it for our April read. And so I was now stuck.

Even the blurb on the book's cover played the secrecy game: "We don't want to tell you WHAT HAPPENS in this book. It is a truly SPECIAL STORY and we don't want to spoil it." Let me say first off, that the "something horrible" is not as horrible as it could have been. Oh, it's awful, no doubt about it--but it didn't warrant, I don't think, all the secrecy. In fact, one of the "somethings" relates to a white couple, which surprised me. Other than that, I think I will also continue the embargo on the something horrible, although I probably should insert my standard [spoiler alert] here.

Little Bee is, indeed, a young woman buzzing with purpose and drive and single-mindedness, carrying a load on her slight shoulders that no one should have to bear.The sadness that trailed behind her in a yellow cloud was heavy, thick, and sweet. I believed Little Bee and I loved her, and all her imaginary conversations with the village girls, and her clipped, precise English, laden with idiom and insight. The woman she met on the beach in Nigeria, however, was another story. Sarah was an entrepreneur (nothing wrong with that) who cheated on her husband (uh-oh), and went to a Nigerian beach resort to repair her marriage (that's better ...)--then continued (and seemingly without guilt) to continue the affair upon their return. I found her amorality off-putting. While Little Bee is the one haunted by the death of Sarah's husband Andrew, I think it is Sarah herself who had an active hand in his death. In my mind her only redeeming quality was the action she took on the beach that fateful day. And unfortunately, it wasn't enough to earn her salvation in my book. Even her attempt to do right by Little Bee at the book's end didn't ring true.

Little Bee almost demanded I read it in the few hours I did; it was a quick and, overall, satisfying read. I did find fault in the sometimes shallow characters and their superficial lives--I wonder if it was intentional that these were the white characters? But Little Bee herself was was fully alive, pulsing with energy and vitality.

Next up: The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson. I had read two glowing reviews of Finkler and waited anxiously for it to arrive. Seventy-five pages in I'm starting to feel a little grumpy as I always do when a book disappoints--the story doesn't add up, the characters aren't at all appealing, and I'm a'gettin' cranky ...

Almost elegant

2011-02-03T14:12:00.001-06:00

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
by Helen Simonson

I settled into this book like a cat on a lap--it was a comfortable story, warm and familiar, and not overly challenging. Kind of a second or third cousin to Elegance of the Hedgehog with a nod to Remains of the Day, I felt right at home. (It need not be a spoiler alert, though, to say that the ending of Pettigrew was more satisfying than either of those novels ... or was it?) Having heard the author interviewed on NPR, and then hearing Diane Rehm's Reader's Review this past summer, it was on my wish list just waiting for paperback release.

We meet both the Major and Mrs. Ali, the novel's two main characters, when Mrs. Ali comes to collect newspaper money-- and Major Pettigrew is reeling from a phone call telling him his brother Bertie died the night before. While their relationship has been up to this point one of a friendly shopkeeper and loyal customer, sharing such an intimate moment brings a momentous change. A widower for years, Major Pettigrew's life has slowly stiffened and grown circumspect--and Mrs. Ali, a beautiful widow, exotic in her Pakistani heritage and lovely in her sensitive demeanor, begins to soften the carefully drawn lines of his existence.

As might be expected (or perhaps only to fulfill a British stereotype), the village of Edgecombe St. Mary is unsettled by this "unseemly" friendship. Running parallel to the Major's story is the story of his son Roger and his American fiance Sandy, and Mrs. Ali's nephew Abdul Wahid and his wild-child lover Amina. In all we see the painful reality (and sometimes comedy) of lives bound up in deceit and tradition, rather than simply giving over to love. A minor story involving a Lord Dagenham, a pushy American land developer, and a pair of treasured Churchill shotguns seems unnecessary at times--or perhaps it is only included as a foil for the novel's musty tradition motif.

Definitely a good read for back-to-back snow days.

Family Secrets

2010-12-29T09:40:00.000-06:00

Sarah's Key
Tatiana De Rosnay

Tatiana de Rosnay's Sarah's Key was another novel on the book club table at Schuler's that I picked up and put down for over a year. Alternating chapters between World War II (July 1942, to be exact) and present day France, we get the stories of two women, Julia Jarmond and Sarah Starzynski. Julia, an American ex-pat who has lived in Paris for the past twenty-five year,s is investigating Vichy France's round-up and deportation of thousands of Jews. Sarah's story is tragic--she is held in the Vel' d'Hiv' with her mother and father until they are separated and sent to different internment camps. Eleven-year-old Sarah does not understand the gravity and finality of that midnight knock on the door and agrees on the spur-of-the-moment to lock her four-year-old brother in their secret hiding place, not knowing that it would be his death sentence.

Living with that knowledge haunts Sarah and the family that found little Michael's body for the rest of their lives. Sarah escapes from the camp and is sheltered by an elderly French couple from the countryside. Growing up as their adopted daughter, she eventually immigrates to the U.S. where she disappears at age twenty. Journalist Julia Jarmond discovers Sarah's story in her research--and perhaps even more horrifying is her discovery that her husband's family moved in to the Starzynski's vacant apartment soon after their departure, and are there when Sarah several months later to recover his body. Feeling they are somehow complicite in his death, the Tezac family harbors the secret for sixty years.

Julia and Sarah's stories alternate chapters for much of the book, which makes a good read for us impatient readers who hate having to leave one story to pick up another! Sarah's story ends tragically, and Julia's seems headed that way as she anticipates an abortion, divorce, and leaving Paris for the States. In the end, however, Sarah's story is more satisfying, at least in the narrative sense. De Rosnay drags Julia's story on a bit too long and maybe most confusing to me was the implied relationship between Julia and Sarah's son William at the end. What, exactly, was their connection--spiritual? romantic? friendship?

Although the ending did not live up to the novel's promise, Sarah's Key was a good vacation read that kept me turning the page.

Ten hours

2010-12-26T19:24:00.001-06:00

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
by Tom Franklin

Post-Christmas open house found me sluggish, lounging on the sofa in my pj's until 4 PM--and devouring Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter in a mere ten hours. Set in Mississippi in the early seventies and the present, the novel explores the lives of two men, one black, one white, following the murder of a teenage girl in their town. Larry Ott, for years convicted of the crime in the court of public opinion (although no body was ever found, nor did he ever confess), is the town loner, and his (sometimes) black friend Silas Jones returns to his hometown as town constable after serving several years on the police force in Oxford, Mississippi. Their lives connect again when another young woman comes up missing--and Larry Ott is once again the prime suspect.

Franklin wove his narrative in such a way that I was never slowed by the back story he needed to tell. The novel, suprisingly, begins with Larry's murder-gone-wrong. Silas finds himself drawn back to Larry's home to gain perspective on their broken childhood friendship. As happens in most Southern novels, Silas discovers a secret in the attic--literally--and tries to come to terms with its implications for the rest of the novel. Silas also has harbored some information for thirty years that would have implicated himself, rather than Larry, in the past murder.

The book's back cover blurb called the book a "thriller" and suspense novel, which was much too heavy-handed in my view. At novel's end, we see both men close one door and open another. Silas comes to understand the redemptive power of truth, and Larry begins to learn the strength found in community--but both somewhat grudgingly, and only after suffering in isolation for much too long.

Unfulfilled

2010-12-23T19:26:00.001-06:00

Remarkable Creatures
by Tracy Chevalier

I was anxious to begin my first Christmas read, a novel by Tracy Chevalier, who also wrote Girl With A Pearl Earring, because of the time period: early nineteenth century, the place: Lyme, England, and the topic: women in the sciences, as rare as the fossils these women discovered. And although the back cover blurb promised the characters, "... forge a path to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century" I felt the book didn't deliver what it promised.

Miss Elizabeth Philpot, at twenty-four, understands her place in the world as a spinster, and lives with two of her unmarried sisters in Lyme Regis,a seaside town in England. The sisters settled into their husbandless lots by developing eccentricities: Margaret mixed herbal tonics and salves, Louise gardened avidly, and Elizabeth had "the eye" for finding fossilized ichthyosauri, Counterpoint to Elizabeth is the younger Mary Anning, who also has the eye--but is the daughter of a widowed laundress who sometimes resorts to burning the furniture for fuel. Despite the class differences the two women form a fast friendship, begin working together to hunt for the next big find. Even as Mary sells her finds to support the family, the two accompany growing number of treasure hunters, collectors, and geologists who begin to flock to the area once the discoveries are made public. Elizabeth and Mary have a falling out over the affections of one of these gentlemen, and they cease to work together.

The story touched lightly on the effect the fossils had on religious beliefs of the time, the constraints of spinsterhood in the nineteenth century, and the exclusion of women in any intellectual endeavor. Any of these enormous themes could have driven an insightful novel. What I found most disappointing was that the how of Elizabeth and Mary's expertise was wholly ignored. The women might read Cuvier, a French fossil expert, but the ideas and their thoughts on their reading weren't relayed or discussed in any meaningful way. It was almost as if their knowledge was innate--although the novel covered many years the reader sees no building of ideas. I felt this gave the women's scientific "knowledge" less weight. Quite frankly, I didn't fully believe they were experts.

That said, I did find the book readable and it was a pleasant, though not altogether fulfilling, way to begin my reading holiday.

Next up: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin. I'm reading a thriller? By choice?!

Hungry for more?

2010-12-20T12:02:00.000-06:00

Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins

This summer I read Scott Westerfeld's Pretties/Uglies series and loved the fresh-take on storytelling in Young Adult novels. One member of our bookclub has been campaigning for Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games for a few months, and I wanted to quickly read it so I could get on to my Christmas break books! Perhaps it was my rush, or my glut of Westerfeld this summer, but these critically acclaimed YA novels didn't make me immediately order the next in the series, as I did after reading The Uglies.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy the novel--I stayed up late trying to finish it last night, and did so this morning with my coffee. Another futuristic science fiction novel, the story line had many similarities to Westerfeld's books: an individualistic, rebellious teen girl fights the constraints of a dystopian society. Katniss Everdeen offers herself up to take the place of her cherished little sister, Prim, when the youngster is chosen ala The Lottery to be a "tribute" (or participant) in the country's Hunger Games. The games, apparently, were instituted some fifty years previously to control the populace with fear and intimidation. Each year, two tributes are chosen from each District and fight to the death in a wilderness arena. Katniss can't bear the thought of the tender, naive Prim enduring such depravity and, even though their District has won only once, feels she stands something of a chance due to her experience as a hunter.

[spoiler alert]

What follows is a weeks' long cat-and-mouse game between the twenty-four tributes. Of course, since Kat is the novel's heroine, she does well in eluding the other participants. And since this is a young adult novel, there is the requisite love story between Kat and her District partner Peeta Mellark.. It is apparent that Peeta has been a long-time admirer of Kat's, although she is oblivious to his affections. When their trainer suggests that they will stand a better chance of winning sponsorships and audience support if they act as star-crossed lovers, Katniss plays along. Or does she?

The cliff hanger must be a convention of YA series, and this one is no exception. And while I'm tempted to find out what happens to Kat and Peeta after they arrive home to Victory Village, this time I'm full, thank you very much.

Next up: Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

From the stacks

2010-12-15T18:56:00.000-06:00

Three Junes
by Julia Glass

I overlooked this book on the book club table at my local book stores for ... maybe a year or more?! I would read the blurb on the back cover, carry it around for a while, and then think, "Oh--another book about three women? Sheesh! How many of those can you read?" And then I'd promptly set it down again. So what a surprise when I finally did succumb--only to find out that the "three Junes" were three months of June separated by years, and that two of the main narrators were men.

The story opens with the narrator Paul McLeod. A trip to Greece after the death of his wife prompts him to reminisce on their life together. As he tells his story, it is clear to the reader that we see things he does not--that the beautiful life he paints may have had some scratch outs and paint-overs. Paul's son Fenno picks up the narration in the second June and we see Paul's overpainting through the xray of his son's story. The third June is told through the eyes of Fern, an neighbor of Fenno's whose own life provides a counterpoint to Fenno's. When Fern's husband dies, Fenno is drawn in to her world--and through Fern's tragedy finds clarity for his own.

A good read overall, I was most captivated with the McLeod family, and found myself distracted by Fern, who almost acted as a deus ex machina. I would rather that Glass had provided another family member's perspective to round out the novel. Keeping it all in the family would have added to the novel's cohesiveness.

Much too real

2010-12-14T16:45:00.001-06:00

Columbine
by David Cullen

I actually finished this book at least six weeks ago; I read it in a 3-day rush over a weekend. Why the rush? Because it was so awful I couldn't stop. Why the reluctance to blog? Because it was so awful I couldn't think of what to say. David Cullen was on the scene at Columbine High School around noon the day of the murders. Nearly ten years later he has allowed himself to close his notebook. But what he left us is a raw and compelling look into the lives of the killers and the victims.

Cullen had access to police files and the journals of Dylan Harris and Eric Klebold; he interviewed teachers, administrators, students, parents, and psychologists. What we're left with is the knowledge that most of what we knew about the tragedy was not true--Harris and Klebold were not bullied, nor outscasts. In fact, they were the bullies--and popular and gifted. They also had a criminal record and a teacher had reported a disturbing short story that Klebold had written. That Cassie Bernel was not the girl who said "Yes". That Dave Sanders was left by the SWAT team and did not have to die. And also that Eric Harris was a psychopath and Dylan Klebold depressed.The list of inaccuracies goes on.

Columbine was the December choice for my book club, made up of fellow teachers. Nearly to the reader, we all had the same reaction; the only outlier was the one of us who couldn't even finish the book because of the horror. After the Columbine tragedy we read articles, had in-service on how to recognize and reach out to those outcast students. Our school instituted a "no backpack" rule. We would be sure this would never happen again; we'd recognize the "signs" and be proactive. But all this in reaction to an event about which we didn't even really know the truth.
And the truth is that the tragedy probably couldn't have been prevented, no matter what. And that it could, and probably will, happen again.

The Man Standing

2010-10-13T07:27:00.000-05:00

Last Guard Out
by Jim Albright

On our trip to San Francisco last summer, one of the most "touristy" thing we did was tour Alcatraz. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise; the self-guided tour was well-organized, paced just right, and heavy on history. The only problem I had was turning left when the recording said "right" ... and vice-versa! More than once I found myself turned around.

When we got off the ferry, the ranger previewed some of what we would see, and promised that at the end of the tour we'd have an opportunity to talk to the "last guard out"--the guard to escort the final few prisoners as they were relocated to prisons around the country. Alcatraz, closed in 1963, was an aging prison, expensive to run: all food, supplies, employees, visitors, and even waste took the 30 minute trip across the Bay to "the Rock".

Jim Albright began his tenure at Alcatraz as a young 24-year-old husband and father. Seeking secure employment to support his family, Albright was hired by the Federal prison system, and the young family traveled from Colorado to San Francisco to begin their new life. Alcatraz was his first job as a guard, and he was understandably apprehensive--Alcatraz's reputation was one of hardened criminals and even harsher conditions. But, for the most part, Albright seems to think the reputation was not always deserved.

While he maintained a stern demeanor and followed the prison rules strictly, Albright found the prison well-run and disciplined. The problems that occurred during Albright's term--attempted escapes, prisoner self-injury, a hunger strike--were nothing that the staff couldn't manage. Albright retold first hand one of the most famous Alcatraz escapes, the 1962 Frank Morris escape through a hand-made tunnel, up utility pipes, and out on to the roof. While the stuff of legends (and a Clint Eastwood movie), to Albright, such events were all in a days work.

I found most interesting the life of families on the island--most guard families lived in apartments on the island, and life was a cycle of coffee klatches, movie nights, card parties, and ice cream socials ... these in the prisoners' exercise yard! The children played in the shadow of the three story prison block, and prisoners sometimes told Albright when his wife had baked a cake or pie, having seen it cooling on the window ledge of their apartment.

Quaint and colloquial, Albright's writing will win no awards, but the story he tells is priceless. When I had Mr. Albright autograph my book I asked him if he missed prison work. The 74-year-old replied that he would go back tomorrow if he could.

A Trip Through Time and Space

2010-08-22T17:09:00.000-05:00

Miss Hargreaves
by Frank Baker

A phantasmagorical magic lantern show, Miss Hargreaves is a treat--a luscious Anglophilic truffle of a novel. Brittish-isms? Check. Cathedrals and church music? Check. Eccentric old ladies? Check. A Jeeves and Wooster novel-cum-fantasy? Check. One of NPR's book critics, librarian Nancy Pearl, offered Miss Hargreaves up as one of her "under the radar" reads and it is not to be missed if any of the above piques your interest.

Norman Huntly, a twenty-something church musician, makes a harmless game of creating fantastic stories and characters "on the spur of the moment". So to pass a quiet afternoon, for instance, Norman and his best chum Henry might carry on between themselves about a trip to Ireland or a man in the pub--all, mind you, totally the creation of their imaginations. And so once on a visit to a dreary cathedral, spurred on by a boring sexton, Norman and Henry regale the sexton with tales of their dear friend Miss Connie Hargreaves--she of the noisy cockatoo, traveling harp, and books of poetry. Later that evening (and probably fueled by quantities of stout and whiskey), Norman sends off an invitation to their Miss Hargreaves, begging her to visit. All quite a lark.

Only imagine his surprise when he receives a reply from a Miss Hargreaves some days later--with her acceptance and her itinerary. Flummoxed, Norman assumes Henry has found a way to turn the joke around on him; but he is even more mystified when a book of poetry by Constance Hargreaves turns up in his father's book shop.

This is truly a book that has no easy explanation, and if I supplied a spoiler alert you might think I was pulling your leg. Is Miss Hargreaves real? Perhaps her appearance is just a series of incredible coincidences? Is it possible she is a ghost? This is a book that defies categorization, really. If you like Jeeves and Wooster, if you accept Mary Poppins, if you want a novel whose plot is not tired, this is your late summer treat.

Let the Circle Be Unbroken

2010-08-22T16:27:00.001-05:00

Home to Holly Springs
by Jan Karon

One of my secret guilty pleasures is the Mitford series by Jan Karon. Too quaint, bordering on maudlin, pat plot lines ... but, oh, do I love Father Tim, Cynthia, Dooley, and all the animal and human characters that make up life in Mitford. Interestingly, I started the books before I returned to the Church--and even though I was not what I'd call a praying girl at the time, I wasn't at all put off by Father Tim's rather sentimental vision of God and life in the church. For goshsakes I even read the prayers Father offered up!

Jan Karon "ended" the Mitford series with Light From Heaven ... and shortly after began her new Father Tim series. My guess is that Karon wanted to be free from the confines of Mitford, and Home to Holly Springs takes Father Tim Kavenaugh out of North Carolina and back to his birthplace in Mississippi. Readers of the Mitford series know that Tim had a problematic relationship with his father, and never quite healed from the loss of both his mother and housekeeper Peggy. I suspected (quite rightly) that Karon would use this book to unbury those family secrets.

And reveal she did. The novel was again filled with God-driven "coincidences" and quirky characters, woven together with Father Tim's childhood memories. Many of those memories were ones faithful readers had heard bits and pieces of before, but were fleshed out to fill in his childhood--and, on the whole, those stories were Karon's strongest. My biggest disappointment were the secondary characters, of which she probably had more than necessary. Many of them seemed added simply to advance the story--unlike those strong Mitford characters, they were easily skimmed over and forgotten, save two or three. (But that was also my criticism of her later Mitford books as well.)

I read Home in a day and wouldn't have needed (or wanted) to spend any more time on it. It was satisfying only because it was like having coffee with a long-lost friend. It was also a weepy read--partly Karon's sentimentality, partly the love between Tim and Cynthia, and partly because I was horribly home-sick for my children. Not nearly as endearing (or enduring, I fear) than those early Mitford books, I will probably still be up for the next book in the series In the Company of Others, if only to spend some more time with Father Tim. .

Just started: Last Guard Out by Jim Albright. Purchased at Alcatraz on my recent trip to San Francisco, it is the account of one of the last guards to serve at "The Rock".

Reading China

2010-08-19T15:40:00.001-05:00

Oracle Bones
by Peter Hessler

This was our August book club read; the 458 pages was intimidating to some, parts I and II were pretty convenient at 218 pages--so we called it good at half a book (although some of us overachievers couldn't resist reading the entire thing)! And author Peter Hessler provided plenty to talk about in our discussion even at the halfway point.

Beginning in 2002, Hessler spent years traveling, teaching, and writing in China, living (usually illegally) in Chinese neighborhoods. That advantage gave him the opportunity to befriend locals who gave him rare insight into the lives of middle class Chinese. And so we meet William Jefferson and Nancy Drew (their chosen English names), a pair of Chinese teachers who left their rural village to become "migrants", traveling to the coast where better lives were to be had in the city--or so they thought. Former students of Hessler, Willy's warm letters to him are dear, and reproduced verbatim, replete with misspelled words and raunchy jokes. Willy's passion for learning and teaching English rival none and he was never without an English dictionary and notebook. By Chinese standards, Willy and Nancy lived comfortable lives; Americans, however, would not be content with the long hours, bleak landscape of the city, shabby apartment, and low pay. We also meet Polat, an ethnic Uighur, who makes his fortune (and loses it) as a money exchanger, and finally emigrates to the U.S. where he is granted political asylum; a Chinese radio talk show host who gives advice to the lovelorn; and old Mr. Zhao, who fought to save his courtyard hutong from being razed.

Hessler frames his narrative by including chapters he labels as Artifact A, B, C, etc--all cultural and archeological treasures of the Chinese. The reader learns that China, rather than being the monolith we Americans seem to think, is, in fact, a vast region of many cultures and languages. We learn of an ancient city wall being unearthed by peasants spoonful-by-spoonful as it winds its way through farmland, and of the origin of Chinese characters. And, of course, of the oracle bones--really tortoise plastrons etched with questions, fired, and then "read" by diviners. Always a bit slow, it took me about 450 pages to realize the significance of the book's title. Just as the oracle bones of the past revealed life's mysteries, Hessler was also reading the cracks of Chinese culture to reveal the world of the Chinese to American readers. How exquisite that the journalist becomes modern-day diviner.

Next up: Miss. Hargreaves by Frank Baker. Published in 1940 this novel's time space continuum is far beyond its time--so far, a great lark!

Pretty is as pretty does

2010-07-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

Pretties
by Scott Westerfeld

I had no intention of reading this entire YA series; to be honest, I only read Scott Westerfeld's first book, Uglies, because I promised some students I would (see my post from June 15, 2010). But Westerfeld left the reader hanging at the end of Uglies, the publisher cunningly included a five page teaser to Pretties at the end ... and I was hooked.

Readers of Uglies will not be disappointed. Definitely geared for young adult readers (and probably girls, at that), the novel continues to explore our culture's preoccupation with physical beauty. Tally Youngblood and her friend Shay have finally become pretty. As the novel opens, Shay, in fact, has just "surged" again, and now has twelve tiny rubies implanted around her iris'. The girls' lives center around a series of over-the-top parties and dances ... and then recovering from hangovers the next day.

[spoiler alert]

Pretties, however, addresses some intriguing subtleties of this future world. While it is true that pretty "beauty" is fairly standardized (large eyes, full lips, unblemished skin, long limbs), we also learn that new pretty muscles are strong and pretties rarely become sick; most injuries can be quickly and easily
repaired. Pretties organize themselves into cliques--the Crims, the Hot-airs, the Cutters--something every teen can relate to. And maybe most intriguing, the idea of being "bubbly"--that adreneline rush or exhileration that comes with taking risks or pushing boundaries.And in an interesting twist, we discover that this world of pacifists studies violent behavior by holding a group of pre-Rusties on a reservation.

Readers of Uglies know that Tally undergoes her pretty surgery knowing that the accompanying brain lesions will leave her vacuous and inane--and also knowing that she would be smuggled a cure from an ugly doctor. When Tally and her boyfriend Zane find the cure after a wild hunt, Tally decides she will divide the pills between them--to disastrous results. Most of the novel follows Tally in yet another escape to the Smoke. And once again the novel ends with a cliffhanger.

Young adult readers will appreciate Westerfeld's frank treatment of sex, alcohol, and rebellion. Parents can rest assured, however, that the author does not titallate--while we know Tally sleeps with her boyfriend, there is no mention of having sex; hangovers are just as miserable in Pretty Town as they are in our world; and rebellion takes the form of outrageous pranks, as opposed to any bitter hatred of adults.

A little bit Harry Potter (think Harry's Nimbus and Tally's hoverboard), with a dash of Star Trek (think body scans and protoplasers), add some teen angst, and you've got Pretties. Now ... on to Specials, third in the series!

Next up: Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler, August's Chicks on Books read.

The End

2010-07-21T20:55:00.001-05:00

Finn
by Jon Clinch

[spoiler warning]

Eight months after putting Finn aside I took the novel up again and finally finished this dark and incredibly creative novel. Jon Clinch tells the back story of Pap Finn, following faithfully much of Mark Twain's narrative in Huckleberry Finn: we see Judge Thatcher, Widow Douglas, the Preacher. Interestingly, Huck is but a shadow in this story. Finn's family is wealthy, staid, and racist in the manner of the South during the 1860s. Throughout the novel Finn is simultaneiously drawn to and repulsed by a former slave, Mary. Finn's self-hatred takes the form of vicious abuse; Finn's father is a judge who disowns Finn for taking up with Mary.

True to my earlier post on November 2, 2009, the novel continued in a raw and brutal manner.The novel opens with a gruesome scene: a black and bloated corpse floats down the Mississippi, covered in blowflies. This image will continue to haunt the novel and, in bits and pieces we learn that Finn has murdered and flayed the woman in an effort to rid himself of what he sees as his essential weakness--miscegenation. In a complicated twist on Twain's work, Mary is Huck's mother. Huck Finn is black.

In his author's note, Clinch references an scholarly work by Shirley Fisher Fishkin, "Was Huck Black?". Fishkin's premise is based largely on Huck's dialect, which was more black vernacular than Southern white, and the fact that Huck seemed to be based on one or two black children Twain knew. While audacious, the re-reading of Twain's work made this novel compelling.

But Finn's rationalization of his murder of Mary, the encroaching insanity of his alcoholic delirriums, his participation in the brutal rape of a young black boy, and his imprisonment of Huck are written almost poetically, only adding to the the novel's horror. Here is Clinch after Finn begins his dismemberment of Mary: "Fastidious in his methods, he arranges each portion upside down or inside out, its inner surface made outer to show red and slick and fibrous but never allowed to reveal the dark curse of its hidden face. He arranges the pieces thus to speak of death and death only ... as if by such transformation he can alter all that has gone before and begin anew, clean and pure and washed in the indiscriminate blood." Finn--homeless, dirt poor, abusive, alcoholic--seems to have no trace of humanity left. Yet it is Judge Finn--respected, educated, wealthy--who chills the reader perhaps even more. For in facing his mortality, the aging Judge Finn summons his son with one last request--that Finn murder "The creature. The child. The boy" because "I cannot tolerate my blood passing through mulatto veins ... I am relying on you to end the life of that bastard creature. And bring me evidence." The Judge's blood runs cold in Pap's veins.

Some sort of justice (or perhaps it's just more violence) is meted out at the novel's end--another black woman ties Pap to the rape of her son and kills him in his sleep ... with the same knife that flayed Huck's mother. Inventive and audacious--difficult to read--but in the end, Finn is well worth the effort.

Heat Lightening

2010-07-17T13:45:00.000-05:00

The Color of Lightening

by Paulette Jiles

I've heard that there really is no such thing as heat lightening--but when I was little, those flashes that lit up the night sky with no thunder, no discernible bolt of lightening, and usually when the weather was hot and humid, we called "heat lightening". Paulette Jiles novel The Color of Lightening is a little like that. The novel flashed with insight and beauty, a powerful story ... but in the end, lacked thunder and so it fizzled out quietly.

The Color of Lightening is the story of Britt Johnson, a freed black man, who emigrates from Kentucky to Texas Territory to carve out a new life for himself and his family. We get to know their family very little before the event around which the novel turns: the capture of his wife, Mary, and children Cherry and Jube, by a raiding band of Kiowa Indians. Jiles tells us the story through a prism. The reader sees Mary and the children as captives; Britt, as he races to find them and negotiate their release; and Samuel Hammond, a Quaker sent from the Indian Bureau to "manage" both the Native people and the white settlers. Taken also in the raid were the Johnson's white neighbor, Elizabeth Fitzgerald and her two granddaughters, for whom Britt returns.

[spoiler alert]

Jiles' narrative is perhaps strongest when she writes about the captives Mary, Elizabeth, and the children. Some of the young captives were adopted and treated with great tenderness. Childless wives often took the youngest prisoners in as their own children. The older women were used as slaves; some even took Native husbands. Mary Johnson was savagely raped and beaten at the beginning of her capture, and she lost the ability to speak clearly. Mary works alongside the wife of her captor and waits with longing for what she is sure will be her rescue at Britt's hands. Jube Johnson, almost ten, comes to relish the life of the Kiowa; children have incredible freedom, young boys are taught early on the skills of a warrior, and were even at a young age waited on by women. It is Jube, perhaps, who has the most trouble returning home--in fact, he initially refuses to go home with his family.

In introducing the character of Samuel Hammond, Jiles is able to investigate the ideas of non-violence in the face of violence, cultural arrogance, and personal freedom. Hammond, a Quaker, comes to doubt his belief in non-violence and cannot reconcile what he feels are his rational offers with the Indian's rejection of them. Samuel also learns of white captives who will not return to their families after years with the Indians, and of returned captives who mourn the loss of their Indian way of life. While Samuel's story is secondary, it could have been stronger;
he sometimes seems to be a vehicle to speak for the author's own beliefs.

I raced through the novel initially--Jiles' tale was compelling and she wove the stories together seamlessly. However, by the last quarter of the book, the story's pace merely plodded along. And the last fifty pages read more like a history text--all event, no narrative. It was almost as if Jiles needed to make the book much longer (so she could continue her storytelling all the way to the end) or much shorter (so she could end on a powerful note). Sadly, I seem to remember feeling the same with Jiles' earlier book Enemy Women--also a fantastic story that just faded away. That's not to say the novel isn't worth reading--it is--but any reader who is a plot fanatic should be forewarned.

Laugh until you can't read!

2010-07-13T12:17:00.000-05:00

So Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is this month's book club read--and when it was chosen, I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to read it. When my copy arrived in the mail, the teaser was a little more intriguing: "Not long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her husband of fifteen years left her for Bob, a guy he met on Gay.com, but that same week a car accident left her seriously injured" . And so Janzen returns to her Mennonite family to recuperate, both physically and emotionally. Okay, so a memoir a little out of the ordinary--probably no "I-had-a-horrible-childhood" here. I did, however, seriously doubt the blurbs that assured me the book was laugh-out-loud funny. Cute, maybe. Sweet and endearing, sure. Crack-a-smile, of course.

I was wrong. By the time I read Janzen's description of her cat trying to "catch" a drip of urine trailing down the catheter tubing (gross, I know, but I don't do the scene justice), I couldn't continue for the tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. While I have no experience being Mennonite, I do have the childhood experience of living in a frugal household where almost everything was reused, recycled, or bought on sale. Janzen had the lunchbox horror of Cotletten sandwhiches--I had "gooseliver". Janzen wore pants extended by strips of cloth sewed along the hem--birdboned me wore "husky" elastic waist jeans my mom got on sale from Sears catalog. And while not Mennonite, anyone who grew up in an evangelical household can relate (at list a little bit) to the emphasis on Christian music and youth group "fun".

Even though this is Janzen's story, it is perhaps her mother Mary who most endeared herself to me. Mary Janzen is the queen of non-sequitur and so incredibly accepting of her daughter it almost broke my heart. When Janzen decides to accompany Mary on a visit to an eighty-six-year-old shut in, she asks her mom, "Is [Mrs.Wiebe] mentally alert?" To which her mom replies, "Oh yes! She wears a wig!" And Mary Janzen's unconditional love is touchingly sweet. Janzen's life outside the Mennonite community has had the biggest impact on her relationship with her adult brothers. Questioning her mother on why her brothers are more conservative even than her parents, Mary Janzen replies, "Oh, they'll mellow over time. When you're young, faith is a matter of rules ... But as you get older, you realize that fiath is really a matter of relationship--with God, with the people around you, with the members of your community." Would that all people of God showed such compassion and humility.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress takes a peek back into Janzen's childhood, and also details the joys and struggles she had when she reached her twenties and made the decision to leave her community. Janzen talks openly about her abusive husband. And in her return home, Janzen finds that maybe accepting and incorporating her roots is more valuable and healthy than rejecting them outright. I had the pleasure of attending a book reading Rhoda Janzen gave at the public library one evening. When I went, I had only read fifty pages--but her strong voice, wry and sardonic tone, and effervescence made me run home and read the book even more quickly. And laugh out loud I did.

Next up: The Color of Lightening by Paulette Jiles. I've only read a couple chapters, but it's already tempting me away from doing school work for next year!

86 years and counting ...

2010-07-06T16:32:00.001-05:00

The NPR reviewer who critiqued Iain Pears' Stone's Fall last spring found it hard to put this nearly 600-pager down. And while I DID finally find it difficult to put down, it took a few days for the novel to work its magic. The historical novel is vast, starting in 1953 with the death of Madame Robillard (aka Lady Ravenscliff, Elizabeth, Virginie, and Countess Von Futak). The list of Lady Ravenscliff's aliases alone should give warning to just how complex is the storyline.

Stone's Fall is really three books--the same story is told by three different characters in three different time periods: London,1909; Paris, 1890; and Venice, 1867. All three stories revolved in some way around the death or life of John Stone, an English business magnate who controlled armament production for much of Europe. Part One, which took place immediately following Stone's death, followed a young journalist as he tried to make sense of Stone's business holdings and banking practices of the day. Admittedly, this bored me to death. Stock options, bank trusts, and Fleet Street machinations are not the stuff of fiction for me! By Part Two is was evident that, although the book's title was Stone's Fall, is was really the story of his wife, Elizabeth. As Countess Von Futak, she ruled the salon's of Paris--and how she came to that position was revealed in Part Three. I often found myself paging back through the previous sections to determine whether or not I had "met" a character before, and under what circumstances. I also longed for a timeline to unravel the characters' connections to each other.

Poverty, prostitution, espionage, suicide, and insanity reared their ugly heads in Stone's Fall--all the dirty laundry that make up the best reads. But it was the unraveling of Stone's death that satisfied the most.The novel's ending was powerful, if not by the last ten pages, predictable. No need for a HUGE spoiler alert here--I won't spill any details--but suffice it to say I'm curious about the number of novels that include incest as a plot device. I was also pleased as a reader that Elizabeth, the character whom I thought I had figured out, turned out to be more complex than I presumed--and, in fact, wasn't the woman I thought I knew. And for me, that is a good ending!

A young Odysseus

2010-06-23T17:45:00.001-05:00

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
by Reif Larsen

I had no idea when I opened this beautiful, quirky, and imaginative novel what awaited me--every page is embellished with hand-drawn maps, drawings, schematics, sidebars, and footnotes that follow up on some reference in the narrative. Supposedly the story of twelve-year-old T.S. (Tecumseh Sparrow) Spivet, map maker extraordinaire, the novel follows T.S. on his hobo trip from Montana to Washington, D.C. to collect the coveted Baird Award from the Smithsonian Museum. But the tale is so outlandish, so unbelievable, it holds all the power of an epic. And perhaps in the end, it is best to read the book that way.

All epic heroes come from a homeland that shaped and molded him or her and T.S. is not different. T.S. and his family live on the Coppertop, a ranch nestled against the Great Divide. T.S's mother, Dr. Claire, is a dedicated scientist (and distracted mother) who seeks the never-seen tiger beetle. Dad is a throwback to the Old West--a man who speaks cowboy-ese, drinks whiskey, and watches old westerns in the settin' room. T.S. has two siblings ... or had. For the death of his younger brother Layton looms like a dark shadow over the Spivet's lives. Gracie, his teenaged sister, tolerates her odd family--barely.

What sets T.S. apart is his genius for diagramming and mapping nearly every aspect of life. Some of his maps are ordinary--Scratch of the Nib, Walking Chart, Concentration of Litter in Chicago--; some, sublime--Identification of Cow Path Tiger Beetle Subspecies, Sound Drawing of Brahm's Hungarian Dance No. 10. T.S.'s mentor, Dr. Terrance Yorn, has been submitting his work to the Smithsonian for some time and T.S.'s work has been published in journals such as Science and Scientific American--no one, however, suspects that the elegant graphics were drawn by a twelve-year-old. The labyrinth of T.S.'s mind (that's another map!) is amazing (pun intended). He is curious and insightful--surely a genius. And perhaps this super human feat is what points in the direction of an epic reading of his story.

After first refusing the Baird, T.S. decides to set off on his own to claim the prize, certain that his family is better off without him: Dr. Claire is preoccupied, his father ashamed of him, sister Gracie is, well, a teenager, and Layton dead in a freak shooting accident. T.S. jumps (or rather grabs on by his fingernails) loaded with an unwieldy suitcase filled with mapping pens, notebooks, a sparrow skeleton, and other non-sequiturs. Almost magically, T.S. finds that the car on which he has stowed away hauls a motor home. And it is from the relative comfort of the camper that T.S. makes his way across country.

The trip is a series of misadventures that could (or could not) be true: T.S. enters a worm hole on the Great Plains; he discovers a Hobo Hotline number that is one easy phone call away from the destination of any railroad train in the U.S.; he encounters a ranting homeless man who wounds him severely; he joins the secretive Megatherium club; he is invited to the President's State of the Union Address--only to skip out on it. This could all be simple fun, an unabashed rollick of a story ... or these could be adventures every bit as significant as Odysseus' encounters with the Cyclops, Scylla and Charibydis, and the Sirens. That just takes a little more effort than I was willing to on a hot and humid summer day ... so perilous adventure tale it was.

Just started: Stone's Fall by Iain Pears (And it's good already after only a chapter.)

Summer daze

2010-06-15T14:43:00.003-05:00

Uglies
by Scott Westerfield

It was during a classroom discussion of Fahrenheit 451 that one of my students said, "This is just like the Uglies." What followed was a rather confusing rush of plot tidbits from two or three of the girls. I'm not sure the novel even sounded interesting to me at that point, but I made the promise to read it this summer--just as I did last summer with Twilight.

Uglies is a dystopian young adult novel (a kind of Giver for teens) about a world divided into groups based on looks and age: littlies, uglies, new-Pretties, mid-Pretties, and finally, Crumblies. At age sixteen everyone undergoes an operation to become a Pretty--bones are lengthened or shortened, skin removed, iris' implanted, cheekbones sculpted, eyes widened. Pretties are then segregated into Pretty Town where they party wildly and indulge their passions.

As the story opens, Tally Youngblood is lonely, having lost her best friend Peris a few months before when he "turned". Once prettified, Pretties no longer associate with Uglies. Then Tally meets Shay and the two Uglies become fast friends. Shay, however, has plans to escape her turning--she claims not to want the operation--and has made a few inroads with runaways who live in the Smoke. While Tally tries to convince Shay not to run, Shay is true to her word and disappears only days before her turning. Though saddened at the loss of yet another friend, Tally is still eager for her own operation.

Special Operations, however, has other plans. Tally is blackmailed into leading the authorities to Shay and the Smoke--her refusal would mean she would stay ugly forever. Tally eventually makes her way to Shay and is intrigued by life in the secret settlement. In the Smoke she reads magazines in the library and sees that hundreds of years in the past everyone was ugly--weight, height, eye and skin color all differed from person t0 person. Tally finds satisfaction in the Smoke, and falls in love with David, an ugly who has never lived in a city. A twist of fate brings down the Smoke and the rest of the book sees Tally trying to free those captured by Special Operations (such a blatant pun!)--and in the process Tally discovers the awful secret David's parents had uncovered.

[spoiler alert]

Westerfield attacks our preoccupation with outer beauty and touches on the idea of lookism. Teens who are bombarded (and often overwhelmed) by media and social pressure to measure up to a certain standard of beauty will find the novel compelling. And while I rarely read the second volume of these teen trilogies, I found myself wondering ... what will happen to Tally after her operation? Will she remember the promise she made to find a cure ...

... to be continued?! Whatever the case, on a cloudy summer afternoon I was pleased to find myself in that reading fog that only comes from reading for hours and hours--oblivious to the demands of the everyday. It is truly summer.

Chicks on Books

2010-06-13T17:56:00.002-05:00

The first ever meeting of the Chicks on Books book club met today at M's! A great group with strong opinions and never at a loss for words--what could be better?!(In fact, how does one know if the discussion is too animated?) I am looking forward to the summer books we'll read ... and also a bit surprised that the initial books, anyway, are non-fiction. Who knew? Always an avid reader, I've only just started reading non-fiction myself in the past several years--really with the advent of my AP class. I would have thought that the bent would have gone towards fiction, my all-time favorite get-away.

We've checked off The Glass Castle today. July's read will be Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhonda Janzen; August will see us reading Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler. Can't wait!

Mindfulness

2010-05-26T19:44:00.004-05:00

Savor
by Thich Nhat Hanh

Having read Living Buddha, Living Christ and skimmed Hanh's Meditations on Mindfulness, I was pleasantly surprised by the time I finished Savor, co-written with Dr. Lilian Cheung. The practice of yoga first introduced me to the idea of living in the moment several years ago, and Thich Nhat Hanh writes compellingly about the practice. Yet I had always thought of mindfulness as a spiritual practice--a means to deepen my relationship with self, others, and the Divine.

The opening chapters of Savor were a primer on the practice of mindfulness, and I so skimmed much of them. Then followed some information about the necessity of healthful eating and exercise for weight reduction--and anyone who has gone through years of Weight Watchers as I have knows the score on that front. So it is probably safe to say that for the book's first half I was a bit disappointed.

Until, that is, I came to Hanh's idea of habit energy--the idea that many of our harmful eating patterns are no more than a habit, and that habit exerts an energy that often governs our behavior. The way around the habit energy of poor eating are the Seven Practices of a Mindful Eater. Now this was a little more food for thought (pun intended): honor the food, engage all six senses, serve in modest portions, savor small bites, eat slowly, don't skip meals, and eat a plant-based diet. Pretty basic, but at least a fresh look at what I already should know. And since we're finally entering the summer season, the idea of honoring food when I shop at the farmer's market is easy, as is engaging all senses.

But it was the Mindful Living Plan that more fully incorporated the idea of mindfulness and made the practice ... well, practical (would you believe I just now noted the root of the two words is the same?)! Hanh's plan is composed of three components: InEating, InMoving, and InBreathing. Each of these practices incorporates the mindfulness breathing technique--"I breathe in ... I breathe out ..." InMoving has me walking mindfully, becoming aware of my feet and focusing on their contact with the ground--walking in the moment, no "to-do list" racing through my head. InBreathing is given the most consideration, with breathing meditations for everything from teeth brushing to emailing to traffic jams. The thought of applying mindfulness to brushing my teeth seemed both ridiculous ... and sublime. Of course this is mindfulness, and at its purest.

In the end, I would recommend Savor to anyone who wants to deal with poor eating and exercise habits in a more holistic manner. Those who are familiar with the practice of mindfulness can skim through the first half of the book; those who are new to the idea will find it easy to understand and accessible.

A twenty-four hour read--

2010-04-09T17:45:00.003-05:00

Servants' Quarters
by Lynn Freed

It has been at least a year or longer since I've been compelled to read straight through a book, taking time only to eat, sleep, walk the dogs, and keep the house running. Lynn Freed transported me completely into a world I've read about, but only rarely. The voices of Penelope Lively, Dickens, and perhaps even the Brontes whispered around the edges of this story and I was sorry to have it end so soon at only 212 pages.

Cressida lives in Africa amongst an odd assortment of characters. Several years after The War, its horror still visits her Jewish family. Older sister Miranda screams in night terrors, father lies comatose in the back bedroom, and eccentric (or insane?) Aunt Bunch demands constant watching. But it is Cressida's neighbor who is at once both the most compelling and the most repellent of them all. Mr.Harding, wounded when his plane was shot down over Germany, bears the visible scars of war time--horribly disfigured in the crash, he wears a veil over his panama hat to hide his hideously burned face.

The back story of the events that carry Cressida throughout the novel is complex--sex, money, power, and jealousy compound life at every turn--and Freed only reveals that story a drip or drop at a time. Mr. Hardy, lord of the Big House, watches Cressida from infancy and sees in her a soul that doesn't belong to the world she inhabits. Here Freed begins to parallel Great Expectations, a conceit that is difficult to ignore once the two stories are connected. Cressida and her family come to live in Harding's servants' quarters and it is here that he begins to influence the course of her life. Cressida, herself longing for something more, abides by Mr. Hardy's rules and rises to his expectations as she grows. Unlike Pip's, however, the family Cressida must reject is worthy of no nostalgia--crass and common, the reader is relieved whenever Cressida separates herself from them.

Jane Eyre's shadow hovers over the novel's love story--but this element of the novel was still a surprise to me. Poignant, offensive, and touching, I was willing to allow their love to unfold without judgment. If I had any complaint, it would be that Freed chose the easiest way out and relied on a Coda to finish Cressida's story. In a novel this complex, it seemed too pat an answer.

But it could be that Coda was where Mr. Harding had been leading Cressida all along.

Paint-by-number

2010-04-08T15:51:00.007-05:00

Laura Rider's Masterpiece
by Jane Hamilton

Laura Rider's Masterpiece--or maybe not. I was intrigued, as any avid reader and sometime writer might be, with this novel's premise--Laura Rider, determined to try her hand at writing a romance novel, lures her husband into an affair with a radio personality so she has juicy enough material. A far-fetched farce that should be entertaining--but after 75 pages I'd had enough. It was almost as if Hamilton was trying too hard to amuse (Charles and his mistress-to-be connect while siting Silver People--extraterrestrials?! I don't think so.) and I gave myself permission to close the book, something I rarely, if ever do.

Next up: Servants Quarters by Lynn Freed

Me, too--me, too!

2010-04-07T14:27:00.004-05:00

Knit Two
by Kate Jacobs

Another round of Friday Night Knitting Club and I'm buying it all the way. Take up knitting? Me, too! Bake some muffins? Me, too! Go to Rome? Me, too! Open a bakery? Me, too! Live in New York? Me, too! Kate Jacobs strength is not necessarily in fine writing--but in making her readers care about her characters. I want to be part of their world ... and so I power-read through Knit Two, happy all the way.

Several years after the death of Georgia, Dakota has finished a year of college, teetering on the edge of adulthood. The rest of the ladies have moved on--Darwin has twins, Lucie struggles with single parenthood, Anita anticipates marriage to Marty, Peri runs the shop. It is perhaps Catherine who transforms herself the most--going from self-absorbed socialite to a woman who gives up the mask she's worn, finding, at long last, who she wanted to become.

Improbably, half the club find themselves in Italy for the summer. Dakota accompanies Lucie to nanny, James tags along to watch over Dakota, Anita searches for her long-lost sister, and Catherine goes ... just because she can, I think! Nowhere but in a novel would such circumstances evolve--but somehow, it doesn't seem far-fetched. Jacobs touches on some big issues--single-parenting, aging parents--and knits each situation up neatly with no raveled edges. Certainly not very much like life, but satisfying enough for a spring weekend. In fact, should there be a third Knitting Club novel ... I'd very likely pick it up again and willingly let myself be transported to Walker and Daughter on the Upper West Side.

Greater love hath no man than this ...

2010-03-14T17:04:00.004-05:00

Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese

From the very first pages, I heard echoes of John Irving in Verghese's first novel: the exotic setting, strangers in a strange land, and unbelievable (and yet SO believable!) twists of fate. Imagine--a British doctor and an Indian nun work together in Ethiopian mission. Sister Mary Joseph Praise finds herself pregnant with Dr. Thomas Stone's baby, and dies giving birth to Siamese twin boys. Stone, attending the birth only in the latter moments of Sister's life, attempts to save her by (unsuccessfully) crushing one of the baby's skulls. The mission's obstetrician arrives at the last moment, safely delivering the twins by C-section. The boys' conjoinment, it turns out, is minor--they are attached only by the flap of flesh on their foreheads that is easily detached.

Preposterous. Yet totally reasonable in this convincing novel. The story of Marion and Shiva Stone is a riot of Ethiopian sounds and smells and tastes and
sights. Stone, devastated at Mary's death, leaves the mission with only the clothes on his back, and isn't heard from again for twenty-some years. Indian obstetrician Hemlatha is at one of life's crossroads, and fostering the boys, mothering the boys, gives her a life she dared not imagine. Hema and internist-cum-surgeon Ghosh (who is Stone's replacement in more ways than one) create a family and find joy in each other. The boys share a magical bond--Marion, ever practical and often altruistic; Shiva, a genius who lives in the moment with seemingly little concern for others.

Events and a woman (isn't it always a woman?) find Marion in New York, finishing his internship at an inner city hospital. Rudderless, Marion tries to reconnect with his Beatrice, only to have that connection bring him close to death. It is Shiva who comes to Marion's rescue, along with Hema and Thomas Stone. N0 spoiler alert here--but suffice it to say, with only 75 pages to the end my guess as to who would die was wrong.

If I have any criticism of the novel, it is that Verghese leaned a little too heavily on medical technicalities; I didn't need to know quite so much about the repair of fistulas or TB or even cirrhosis of the liver. I'm guessing the doctor in the author (for he IS one of those physician authors) got the better of him at times! And near the end, when, say, I STILL couldn't figure out how the novel would end, I did tire of the plot twists--every corner I turned, it seemed, held another gut-wrenching event. But I reminded myself that Irving writes in much the same manner, seems preposterous himself at times, and still brings me back for more.

It was not without surprise, then, that as I read the author's meticulous acknowledgments I found the following: "I am grateful to John Irving for his friendship all these years. I have learned so much from him both in our correspondence and in his published work." Abraham Verghesse has obviously done more than one successful internship, and his mentor's influence shines brightly.

Next up: finish my February New Yorker! This was a long one at 657 pages.

Big Love--

2010-02-21T16:26:00.007-06:00

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
by Tiffany Baker

--but not the kind in the cable series! Truly Plaice's life would be extraordinary whatever her circumstance. Born with acromegaly, she is, indeed, a giant. Truly's mother Lily, sick with cancer, struggles to deliver this incredible child, all the while composing a letter in her mind to the baby she assumes will be a boy. Her dying words are that letter's closing, "Yours truly" ... but the doctor catches only a whisper, and assumes Lily had named the child.

As in most stories where a mother dies leaving her infant children and grieving husband, Truly's childhood was the stuff of fairy tales: a drunken father, poverty, separated siblings, and menacing authority figures. What distinguishes Little Giant from fairy tales, though, is Truly's medical condition and her village's reaction to her. Shunned, hidden away, and mercilessly teased, Truly sees herself as others see her: ugly. While Truly adores her older sister Serena Jane, even that love is rejected. Instead, Truly bonds with Aberdeen's other outcasts--a speech-impaired girl and an eccentric young genius.

Time is not kind to Truly; she eventually seeks out medical care from one of the very boys who bullied her throughout childhood, but the prognosis is not good: Truly will continue to grow (in both height and heft) until her organs give out. While her life sounds grim, Truly does make a kind of truce with the circumstances that surround her. She gently raises her sister's child and falls in love of a sort.

Even more important, Truly finds she possesses a gift. Housekeeper to Dr. Bob Morgan, last in a long line of Morgan doctors who ministered to Aberdeen residents, she uncovers the family's long lost secret. That first Dr. Morgan had married the town witch who secreted away her spell book before she died. Truly discovers that Tabitha Morgan had "hidden" the spell book in plain sight--and she begins to unravel the dangerous secrets of herbs and potions.

To be honest, I was worried that, as the story grew grim, the novel's ending would be unresolved, even unhappy. But while I wouldn't say the ending was happy in a fairy tale type of way, it was satisfying enough. Little Giant is the type of book I love to love--a pinch magic, a dash of love, and a good dose of healing. A cover review compares Baker's story to Alice Hoffman's and I couldn't agree more.

Just started: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. What few pages I've already read are compelling. Quote I think I'll always remember: "Remember the 11th commandment. Thou shalt not operate on the day of a patient's death." Can't wait to give this book some more time--I've finally got my AP class' essays graded, so I might be in luck tomorrow! (Except then I'll have my yearbook proofs nagging away ...)

Snow Day!

2010-02-10T14:33:00.005-06:00

Mornings on Horseback
by David McCullough

I was intrigued with McCullough's premise--to unfold TR's life to the point where he "came to be" the TR we know from history. And so McCullough writes of Roosevelt up to his run for mayor of New York. I have to admit I knew so little of Roosevelt--mainly, the caricature we have of him in our 8th grade history books: he of the spectacles, bushy mustache, and toothy grin. So with a day off school after we were blanketed with 10 inches of snow, I finally finished the biography I've been chipping away at since Christmas.

McCullough spends a great deal of time on TR's incredible childhood. Wrapped in love and privilege, his interests in science and nature were nurtured and encouraged--in part, because his frequent asthma attacks sometimes brought him to death's door. Small, bookish, incessantly curious, and wonderously intelligent, Thee (as family called him) was adored by his sisters and brother. The family of six (plus the requisite servants) toured Europe for a year and spent months on the Nile.

I also had no idea that Roosevelt was married to the beautiful Alice, only to lose her four days after the birth of their child. It was in the three years after her death that he spent in Dakota, living the life of a rancher. Baby Alice was left in the care of her Aunt Bamie. Pushing himself to the brink physically, Roosevelt drove cattle, chopped wood, and hunted grizzlies at a furious pace in an attempt to bury his grief. TR never spoke again publicly about his first wife and felt he had failed when he married again three years later. He had hoped to "he would never remarry--as a testimony of love for his beautiful, dead wife, his first and only great love."

A page later and the book is ended--TR is off to England to marry his second wife, Edith Carow; he has just lost the race for mayor of New York. McCullough felt that at that moment, the historical Roosevelt was finally formed and he would go on to become the Rough Rider, Governor, Secretary of Navy, Vice President, and, finally, President who made his mark on American history.

Next up: The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker

This 'n that

2010-01-31T17:06:00.002-06:00

Comfort Food
by Kate Jacobs

If a book could be a grilled cheese sandwhich with tomato soup, this novel by Kate Jacobs would be just that. Nothing special, no fancy twists or turns--but satisfying all the same in a ... comfort food kind of way. Rather typical chick lit, we've got the single mom (a widow this time), a young woman with a mysterious past, an even younger beauty queen trying to scratch and claw her way to fame, and, of course, the requisite hunk. What probably made the book work for me was the fact that the main character had a show on the CookingChannel--a slightly veiled stand-in for the Food Network. As a foodie who follows any number of celebrity chefs, part of the charm of the novel was trying to spot "my" celebrity chefs in the novel--but I have to admit the connections were pretty limited. If you're in the (reading) mood for a light snack, Kate Jacobs novel just might hit the spot.

Too many books, too little time

2010-01-30T18:12:00.005-06:00

--for blogging, at least. Sometimes frugal to a fault I hesitated buying this NPR recommended book--but my husband ordered off my wish list as a bit of "Happy Winter Break" reading material and it's definitely a keeper. While I was initially drawn in by the stories of the help, it was Skeeter Phelan's story that continued to draw the narrative forward. The lives of Abileen and Minny didn't really change (although we understood with the death of Medgar Evars that Change was on the way), but Skeeter, a Junior League member standing just on the outside of the Southern Belle circle, evolved as she took down the stories of the colored women who served her family and the families of the other League members.

Skeeter begins her journey mourning the loss of the black woman who raised her and also her status as a "spinster" at age twenty-four. Thinking that since marriage wasn't currently an option she'd find meaning in a career, Skeeter gets a part-time job at the local newspaper writing a household advice column. Knowing nothing about homemaking (since the help had done all things domestic in her family) Skeeter turns to Abileen, the maid of her best friend for help. Ablileen provides the substance Skeeter needs to write her column--and ends up throwing Skeeter the lifeline she needs. We see Skeeter as she comes to understand the lives of the black women she lived with side-by-side, as she gives up her chase to find a husband, as she throw off the propriety of the fifties to embrace the freedom of the sixties.

A compelling good read.

To be continued ...

2009-11-02T15:05:00.010-06:00

Finn
by Jon Clinch

I've prevaricated and stalled, I've come to a standstill, postponed, and delayed writing another post about Finn--and last night I finally gave myself permission to put it on hold until I'm not in school. I think during the school year I'll need to go light and, if not exactly, cheerful, then at least redeeming in some way. Now I'm not saying that Finn won't end on some revealing and uplifting note (though I have my doubts), and I'm not one who has to read all things sweetness and light. But I came to the conclusion that it was just too much right now. So I'm off into Kate Jacob's world again in Comfort Food.

Finn, the story of Huck Finn's father, is dark and menacing. We see the Widow Douglas, the huckster preacher, and the judge who welcomed Finn into his house in an attempt to reform him--all through Finn's eyes. Though the boy Huck does appear in the book at the halfway point, he is a flat character--almost a placeholder. It is Finn's twisted mind and sinister spirit that prevail, and we see him battling his cold and powerful father, falling into a relationship with a slave, and conceiving a son by her. Yes, Huck is, in Clinch's novel, biracial--he is Huckberry because at birth he was dark as a huckleberry. A strange twist, a bit unbelievable, but certainly fitting in this novel. Sometimes poignant, often violent, and misogynistic throughout, Finn is a heavy read. And so I'll need to return another day.

A bump in the road--

2009-10-13T15:55:00.003-05:00

I started the year with every intention of posting on a more regular basis--AND keeping up my reading. Well, I'm doing the second, but not the first. A bit of a fibro flare has kept me flat on the couch and too exhausted after a full work day to do much more than stare into space. I'm a bit better with each day, now, and can't wait to post on Finn and Glass Castles. To be continued ...

2009-09-12T21:11:00.008-05:00

Crow Lake
by Mary Lawson

I started reading Crow Lake the Friday before school started and put it down reluctantly after only a few chapters--and, of course, the busyness of the new year kept it lying on my dresser for the past five days. With B. gone all day, I was able to take it up again--and couldn't stop.

The hinted-at Greek tragedy wasn't as monumental as I would have thought--although, I suppose, that just may have been Lawson's point. Kate Morrison took her brother's fate to a realm that was more her fantasy than his reality, and so what she leads us to believe is a tragic fate is simply ... life happening. Lest I sound glib about orphaned children, an unplanned pregnancy, murder, and a university education left behind, the "life happening" was difficult. But difficult in the way that our lives are messy, complicated, and often fall short of our expectations.

What I found most disturbing was Kate's emotional vacuum--until I realized that I've done the same when living through a crisis. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to recall my own emotional life during those years of single-parenthood. Most compelling was Kate's realization that the family history she had created was more fiction than fact--based on the life she had wanted them all to live, on the people she had wanted them to be. That's probably the single-most important lesson I've learned in the past several years--that love is much easier (and rich and satisfying) when you love the person who IS, not the person you think you want them to be.

Crow Lake is a good read--and Lawson's insight is spot on.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy

2009-09-09T15:47:00.005-05:00

Murder at the Watergate
by Margaret Truman

I may be the last reader on earth to try one of Margaret Truman's Washington "Murder at ..." series. A colleague who moved on to another job left it in a crate of books for me to use at school, and I snagged it at the end of the summer while setting up my room. Murder at the Watergate was a surprise--light, breezy and entertaining. Truman shamelessly "place drops" (rather than name drops), so it's a perfect fit for a news addict like me. I read it over Labor Day and it was a fun cap on my summer reading. I've long been a Grisham fan for light reading, but have been disappointed in some of his more recent law books. (Does anyone else think he's lost his knack for an ending with a twist?) I think when I need fluff, I just might move through some of Truman's other Murder at ... titles.

Detritus

2009-09-02T18:56:00.004-05:00

The Photograph
by Penelope Lively

So while the piles of papers hooked me, I've not read a book since Olive Kitteridge where the main characters are so very unlikeable. Elaine is a driven, hardened woman--really such a cliche--while her husband is a feckless ne'er do well who rides on her coattails (another cliche!). TV historian Glyn is really Elaine's counterpoint, and all the while, Kath (we were to assume she was the shallow character) was the lost, misunderstood soul whose gorgeous exterior hid a bleak interior life. Because of the cliches (perhaps) I really didn't feel compelled to read pell mell, which was sad, considering the summer is ending and reading time will become dear; rather, I soldiered on and finally finished.

But those piles of papers slipping and sliding out of the landing cupboard did keep me going. Glyn's pursuit of the truth (one, mind you, that he didn't care to find while his wife was living) was manic--and I thought of dad's tortured retelling of his early years. He, too, was manic--and also skewed, I'm guessing, every nuance he found in the photos. Glyn did the same, perhaps hoping to find himself the sympathetic one after living years of self-absorption. Hmmmm. Sounds disturbingly similar to dad's account--and perhaps for the same reason.

Sidenote: Isn't "detritus" one of the best words in the world? I just love it!

Missing

2009-08-30T09:52:00.004-05:00

This month's Wired had an intriguing article about individuals who have decided to simply vanish--burdened by the mess they've made of their life, usually either relationships or illegal business dealings.(Check out "Gone" by Evan Ratliff; Sept. 09) Seems that none of the folks ever really vanished--that, now matter how airtight they thought their plan, they tripped themselves up somehow when they relaxed their guard. Ratliff is even trying to see if he can disappear for 30 days--$5000 if anyone finds him!

Of course Ratliff mentioned Huck Finn and Great Gatsby, both literary characters who sought to make their lives over. Curious also is the fact that the vanishing acts featured in Wired are all men. I wonder how many novels have been written about these kind of vanishing acts? I can think only of Ann Tyler's Ladder of Years where Delia walks off the beach, down the road, and onto a new life. Any others?

Lively redux

2009-08-26T05:37:00.006-05:00

The Photograph by Penelope Lively

I'm pretty certain that Lively is one of my favorite contemporary writers. I first met her in Moon Tiger when I worked at the bookstore--this is the book that I warned a customer included incest, but "good incest"! Sheesh, what was I thinking?! I think more than anything, it is Lively's style that I appreciate so--and would emulate if I could. That, and the British-isms that are so delicious.

"He tugs at a file to improve his view of what lies beyond and, sure enough, there is a landslide. Exasperated, her gets down on hands and knees to shovel up this mess, and suddenly there is Kath.
A brown foolscap-size wallet file, with her loopy scrawl across the flap: Keep!
... What is she doing her, in the middle of all this stuff that has nothing to do with her?" (2)

Only a couple dozen pages in, I am already intrigued. Glyn, searching for papers he needs to write an academic paper, comes across an envelope that contains (big surprise) a photograph. The photograph--also labeled DON'T OPEN--DESTROY seems to indicate his deceased wife may have had an affair. With her brother-in-law, no less.

We'll see how this all plays out. The piles of papers is what hooked me--

Moments of always within never

2009-08-23T16:34:00.005-05:00

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barberry

I admit that I had a difficult time with this novel at first. In fact, I have been "reading" it for about three weeks--unheard of for me! (But one of those week, I just let it lie on the shelf because I didn't know if I wanted to go on.) Translated from the French, Hedgehog convinced me that U.S. readers are wimps when it comes to reading novels for the mind. Within the first several pages there were references to Marx, Feuerbach, Mahler, Death in Venice, Proust, Freud, and Japanese art films--topics not addressed even in contemporary American midlist fiction, to say the least.

The novel follows the lives of two misfits--Rene Michel, a well-read, yet (formally) uneducated concierge for a wealthy Paris apartment building, and Paloma Josse, a wealthy, precocious and thoughtful 12-year-old. Both women decry the world they live in and their observations leave them bitter and bereft. Madam Michel hides her true self behind the stereotype of "concierge"; Paloma plans to celebrate her thirteenth birthday by setting the family apartment on fire and committing suicide.

The first half of the book is draining. Both characters are so quick-witted, yet so contemptuous and scornful of those around them, finding empathy for them is difficult. But enter Monsieur Kakuro Ozu, the man who moves both women to awaken to the soft heart of their True selves (yes, a capital T!) and the novel deepens. Paloma quickens to the relationship she develops with both Mm. Michel and Kakuro, and comes to see that her plans of self-destruction really make her no different from the violent youth gangs she sees on TV. And Mm. Michel opens to hope, realizing that perhaps what makes life worth living are those crystalline moments in an otherwise murky existence.

The end was, quite frankly, a shock. Barberry flipped what we were expecting on its end, and, the last incredibly bittersweet pages saw me putting the book aside so I wouldn't be overwhelmed with tears. It is Paloma who ends the book with, "I'll be searching for those moments of always within never. Beauty, in this world."

Buddy's Grand Adventure

2009-07-29T13:30:00.004-05:00

I swear that someday I will write a children's book about Buddy. On our walk today, we rounded the corner and were intercepted by a yapping Lhasa Apso--they met nose-to-nose and Bud just stood his ground looking friendly and rather disappointed that they couldn't play (or maybe just disappointed that the darn thing wouldn't shut up!). Down another couple blocks I saw an enormous Wolfhound-like dog bound across the street--and, oh pish, wouldn't you know I forgot my pepper spray. But this big girl was friendly as all get-out, bounding around Trixie and Buddy without a care (or a collar) in the world. No spastic jumping on Buddy's part when she was around, but plenty of barking when she ran down the street--"Stay and play with me, me, me. I'll be your friend! I loooooove you."

A neighbor grabbed a leash from her house to take her home, and on with the walk. As we came back down Walwood, she was returning, dog-less. Her hunch as to where the big girl lived was right ... and she turned out to be yappy's big Labradoodle sister!

Never say never

2009-07-28T14:33:00.004-05:00

I came of age when Title IX was a new thing--girls in my high school could be tennis players or golfers, if anything. Most of us weren't really physical, especially me, being a quiet, mousey, bookish little thing! When I decided to get healthy and lose weight several years back, I realized how much of a disadvantage I had--I had no kinesthetic intelligence and no strength. Yoga was (and is) my lifeline--I learned about my body and got stronger.
Then I got it into my head to run, and found it incredibly empowering. (Think Bill Murray in What About Bob and hear me say, "I run--I run!" Thanks to K. I took the attitude that it didn't matter how far or how fast I went, as long as I just did it! And I have to say, to most, my "progress" is pretty pathetic. I realized today I practiced the yoga sutra of ahimsa toward myself (or non-harming) when I run--I pace myself in the park, setting goals from tree-to-tree, allowing myself permission to walk whenever I darn well feel like it! If I make it to my goal, I ask myself if I can make it to the next, and most of the time I can. If I can't make it, I am kind to myself, simply saying, "At least you're out here!" and "Years ago you couldn't (or maybe wouldn't) do this!" So even an old dog can learn a new trick--make like Nike and Just Do It.

Finally Summer

2008-07-09T13:06:00.003-05:00

This has got to be one of the loneliest books I've ever read. It was beautiful, don't get me wrong--but every page pulled at my heart. And if one of the loneliest books, probably also one of the most truthful. I thought how close I came to Ella's story and whether or not my choice was the better one. Lonely, yet redemptive, somehow, as the characters touched and blended their lives--which should be the story of all of our lives as we live this incarnation.

But today is truly the start of summer. The kitchen is almost done, I stayed for the rosary after mass, and I've read three books. I was a bit frantic this morning, wondering, now that the hustle and bustle have ended, what I was to do with myself. The remedy? Ease into summer and drink long draughts!

I love this photo!

2008-01-06T15:12:00.001-06:00

One argument team in APE promised that if the class voted for them, they would have me wear the Groucho glasses (I agreed)! They (sadly) didn't win--I actually thought their proposal was quite creative. What teenager doesn't want to see their teacher look ridiculous?! So I wore it anyway for the rest of the hour.
Happy 2008--

Where does a year go?

2007-07-30T14:26:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe that it's been a little over a year that this little guy joined us--and what a joy he's been. The story will live in family lore how the evening we brought him home I cried to take him back after he bellowed his beagle bark at Shasta ... and now I want to cover his floppy ears whenever B. tells that story.

Our Bud has truly been a healer. After Hoover's death I didn't think I could face the challenge of bringing another dog into our home But Bud proved me wrong with his pouting bottom lip and his love of all things squeaky and tuggy. And of course, the bond that he and Trixie have developed is priceless.

Not that it was all sweetness and light. I seriously thought after the first obedience class that I was doomed as a dog mom; I just didn't have "it." What I didn't realize, I think, was the time and energy and thought that dog discipline requires. Enter Cesar Milan--but that's a whole 'nother story! And His brush with heartworm this spring sent me reeling.

Who knows if Buddy really IS Hoover reincarnated, balanced, sent back to heal us? Or if we were brought into his life to bring him safety and security? Whatever the case, he's touched our lives and hearts--Happy anniversary, Buddy.