A Book A Week

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

2009-12-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

This is another fact/fiction mashup. Is that all anybody is writing these days? Unlike Daphne and The 19th Wife, both of which place a real-life person in a partially fictionalized setting, American Wife takes a more traditional approach; it’s a fictionalized account of the life of Laura Bush, but she is never identified as Laura Bush, and instead is called Alice Blackwell. Her girlhood is transferred from Texas to Wisconsin, her husband is called Charlie Blackwell, and she’s given one daughter instead of two. Otherwise many of the details are based on the circumstances of Laura Bush’s life, including a tragic automobile accident that occurred in her teens, her career as a school librarian, and her obvious ambivalence about her role as First Lady of the U.S.

I tried to approach this book purely as a work of fiction, and as such, it worked beautifully. I really loved reading it, and I loved Alice Blackwell. I could even see why Alice married Charlie, and why she stayed with him. Their relationship is complex and multi-layered, like most marriages. It’s a very mature, insightful book, considering the relative youth of the author (who is in her early 30’s now).

The trouble comes when you think about the story in light of what you know about the Bushes. Laura Bush was always an enigma as First Lady. Because I had no particular preconceived ideas about her, it was easy for me to connect with Alice Blackwell. If Laura Bush is indeed at all like her fictional alter ego (which seems to be true, according to independent sources) then I think I would very much enjoy a long afternoon with her.

But I really didn’t like having good feelings about George Bush, even a fictionalized George Bush, and that made me uncomfortable. Again, because this is a good book, Charlie Blackwell is well-drawn; he’s crude, impulsive, and judgmental, but he’s also warm and funny, and he loves Alice and their daughter with all his heart. I just kept saying to myself “it’s only a novel, it’s okay to enjoy it.”

A lot has been written about this book. The piece I liked best was published in Salon back in the fall of 2008. It’s a long interview with the author, Curtis Sittenfeld, and in it she addresses a lot of the issues that preoccupied me as I was reading the book. Here is the link.

(Book 43, 2009)

Does This Mean I Have OCD?

2009-12-13T14:13:00.000-08:00

This morning I reminded myself of Hannelore, from the Web comic Questionable Content. She’s the girl who compulsively counts things (other quirks include worrying; I do that too). So that was me, earlier today, sitting at my computer counting up the number of women whose books have been recognized by the New York Times in its annual list of Best Books of the Year over the past several years.

I started this crazy counting endeavor when I noticed that four of the five fiction titles on this year’s list were written by women. Wow, when had such an event occurred before, I wondered, an actual majority of women writers! Then I noticed the non-fiction list also sported two more titles written by women! This meant that 6 out of the 10 books were written by women! I had to know if this had ever happened before.

Long time readers of this blog will note my general hostility toward these lists and toward literary awards in general. I often specifically bemoan the lack of attention given to works by women, and to the preponderance of accolades given to certain white male authors (yes, I mean you, Philip Roth). Thus I was driven to discover whether this year’s list was unusual or not. As much as I could, I went back through previous years’ lists and compiled this information about the Times’s list of 10 best books:

2008: 4 out of 10 titles written by women.
2007: only 2 out of 10
2006: 3 out of 10
2005: 4 out of 10
2004: 2 out of 10

At this point I got bored, and the lists became harder to find, so I gave up. (I know, Hanners would have kept going and going and going….). But isn’t this great? It does look like this year was the first majority-female list. And, even better, this year’s list contains books I actually want to read. In fact, A Gate at the Stairs, and A Short History of Women are already in my queue at the library. Even the single lonely male-authored fiction title, Chronic City, is by Jonathan Lethem, whose book Motherless Brooklyn is one of my favorites. What if I read all five of these books? Would I then have to shut up about how irrelevant these lists are? I guess so, unless I hate them all…..

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

2009-12-09T15:13:00.000-08:00

When I heard that Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year I thought “Oh finally, they are giving that award to someone I like.” I hadn’t read the book yet but I was very optimistic. After all, I loved Strout’s two earlier novels, Amy and Isabelle, and Abide with Me.

I should have known better. One of the requirements for winning the Pultizer Prize for fiction is that I must hate the book.* Indeed, the Pulitzer committee calls me every year to make sure that they aren’t giving the prize to something I liked, by accident. (Ha! Just kidding!)

Olive Kitteridge is a series of connected short stories set in New England, where Strout’s previous two books have also taken place. The same characters pop in and out of various stories, including Olive Kitteridge, who is a retired school teacher. Most of the stories are just small episodes in the lives of the townspeople. I suppose they are meant to be poignant snapshots, but I found them to be disjointed and confusing. While the characters in Amy and Isabelle and Abide with Me are clearly drawn and memorable, the characters in Olive Kitteridge seem almost interchangeable with one another: here’s an ineffective man, and here’s another; this woman is disappointed, and so is this other one. I really can’t say enough awful things about this book. On the other hand, Abide with Me was just lovely. Go read that instead.

*Okay, I’m exaggerating. I liked Middlesex (2003), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2001), and Interpreter of Maladies (2000). But I hated (really really hated) The Road (2007) and was pretty bored by several of the other recent winners.

(Book 42, 2009)

ETA more specifics, less ranting.

Can't Blog Fast Enough

2009-12-04T12:43:00.000-08:00

What’s going on with all those books in my “Currently Reading” list, especially those two that have been there since the summer, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Building a Home with My Husband? I just don’t think I’m going to write about either of them. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, has some good parts that I’ve been reading bits of, but I don’t have the stomach to read the part about the pig (you know that part, right? Where he butchers a pig himself?). I can’t really write anything coherent about the book if all I’ve done is read random bits. Besides, I think enough people have talked about this book in newspapers, magazines, blogs, on TV, etc. that you can use one of those articles to figure out whether or not you want to read it.

Building a Home with My Husband is by Rachel Simon, with whom I went to college. She had her publisher send me a copy of this expressly for my blog. Rachel, I loved your earlier book, Riding the Bus with my Sister, but this one is too intimate for me to read and write about. I think because I know Rachel I can’t separate myself enough from her story to analyze it objectively. Building a Home with My Husband is classic Rachel: beautifully written and very detailed. If you enjoy creative non-fiction, especially books that deal with families and relationships, you should absolutely read this book.

And the other books in the list are books I’ve read recently but haven’t gotten around to blogging about. I'm going to run out of weeks in 2009 before I run out of blog posts. I have had lots of time for reading recently. (I have not, however, had time for housework, grocery shopping, or cooking. Nope, sorry, much too busy.)

Daphne by Justine Picardie

2009-12-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

Finally, another book to add to my “2009 Favorites” list, though I can’t say this book will appeal to everyone. Did you read Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, when you were younger? Or, like my friend Nora, did you read it last week? Just be sure to do so before you begin Daphne or much of the depth and significance will escape you.

Like several other books I’ve read this year, Daphne is a mashup of fact and fiction, and it shifts back and forth between the past and the present. The chapters set in the past are a fictionalized account of several years in Daphne du Maurier’s life, years during which she embarked on an ambitious biography of Branwell Bronte, the little-known brother of the famous Bronte sisters Charlotte and Emily. It’s also a time of marital upheaval for Daphne, and of doubt about her own abilities, direction, and sanity.

Another set of chapters tell the story of the researcher that du Maurier has hired to help her with the Branwell Bronte book. This character (John Alexander Symington, who is real, not fictional) was involved in a scandal concerning missing Bronte manuscripts. He is unstable and of questionable value to du Maurier; his chapters add another layer of dread to the story.

The (purely fictional) chapters set in the present are narrated by a young Oxford PhD student who is researching du Maurier’s life during the period she wrote the Bronte biography, and following the trail of Symington and his shenanigans. Thus we see many of the same episodes from two vantage points. This present day narrator has much in common with the narrator of DuMaurier’s book Rebecca; both are young, unsophisticated, and married to distant older men who may or may not be hiding something. Parallels between these two narrators abound, and it’s interesting to spot them.

In her heyday Daphne du Maurier sold millions of books, but was dismissed by her contemporary critics as a lightweight purveyor of gothic-type fiction for women. Yet du Maurier proved to have staying power and enjoyed a long and fruitful career. Modern critics are busily reshaping her image. As anyone knows who has read her books, she is a wonderful writer who created enduring characters, fascinating locales, and unsettling stories. Her writing is top-notch: erudite and atmospheric. In Daphne, Justine Picardie has paid homage to du Maurier’s legacy with similarly excellent writing and a haunting story.

(Book 41, 2009)

ETA: Mutual blog love.

Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indriðason

2009-11-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

These Icelandic mysteries continue to be my favorites. As usual, Arnaldur Indriðason delivers a simple mystery with a straight-forward solution, but it’s the accompanying journey through Iceland’s modern social issues that makes his books so interesting. And of course, Iceland’s issues are Europe’s issues; in this case the impact of immigration on a formerly homogeneous culture.

Elias, a boy with an Icelandic father and a Thai mother, is murdered on his way home from school. Was his murder racially motivated? Was it just a consequence of living in an impoverished neighborhood in Reykjavik? Suspects abound: local drug dealers and pedophiles, professed racists, schoolyard bullies. Detectives Erlendur, Sigurdur Oli, and Elinborg must contend with all this and more, including Elias’s mother Sunee, who speaks only Thai, her estranged husband who has engaged in a series of “marriages” to Asian women whom he brings to Iceland, then abandons, and Elias’s older half brother who is fully Thai and whose adjustment to Icelandic society has been marred by depression and violence.

This is a bleak story set in a rapidly changing society. Why do I read these kinds of things? I think I love them because they help me see that every society struggles with similar issues and that human traits are universal: the racist Icelandic teacher who rails against the Asian immigrants could be someone from the U.S. talking about Mexicans; the single mother trying to hold her family together despite her lack of money and her long working hours could be from anywhere. Trouble is everywhere and we just have to sort it out as best we can, clue by clue, as Erlendur does.

(Book 40, 2009)

Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner

2009-11-18T15:20:00.000-08:00

Popular fiction is a genre that is distinct from literary fiction, though the boundaries are fluid. I like to think of these categories as either ends of a ruler, with most books falling somewhere between the two ends. A lot of the books I read fall right around the middle of the continuum between popular and literary fiction. For example I put authors like Kate Atkinson, Diane Johnson, and Elinor Lipman right smack in the middle. At the literary fiction end of things are some of my favorites like Mary Gordon and Margaret Atwood. And at the other, popular fiction end are people I read (and enjoy) such as Janet Evanovich. Note that these are my own categorizations; others may disagree.

What baffles me is when the book industry people decide in advance where along the continuum a book goes, and design the cover and the marketing plan accordingly. Such is the case with Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner. The childish title and the frothy cover announce that this is Popular Fiction, capital P, capital F. Readers in search of serious ideas need not bother. Why pigeonhole a book like this? Why not a more ambiguous cover and title? Does the book sell more copies because of what it is, or what it’s not?

In fact, Best Friends Forever was good, and it reminded me a lot of Elinor Lipman’s books, which are often about sibling relationships and close friendships among women. BFF was a little more slapstick, a little less taut than Lipman’s typical work, but the jokes were funny, the characters were multilayered, and the plot (while not groundbreaking) had some originality. The dialogue was especially good. It’s supposed to be a Thelma and Louise kind of story though it’s much tamer than that. I think BFF would appeal to a lot of different readers but unfortunately many of the more serious ones wouldn’t be caught dead with it. Weiner’s publishers have done her a disservice; the chick lit fans will read it anyway because Weiner is already established in that subgenre, and by choosing this fashion magazine type of cover they are denying Weiner the possibility of bringing in new readers who usually hang out a little closer to the literary end of the book world.

The only reason I tried this book was because it was recommended to me by someone whose opinion I trust. If you trust my opinion, you might want to give this a whirl also.

(Book 39, 2009)

A Long Finish by Michael Dibdin

2009-11-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

When I heard in 2007 that Michael Dibdin had died, I remember thinking "Oh darn, I never got around to reading any of his books." What a weird thought, as if the Head Librarian would now be taking all his books off the shelves. It is true that I prefer to read books by living authors but that's mostly because I am trying to stay current, not because I've got anything against the dearly departed.

Dibdin's Aurelio Zen mysteries (of which this is an early one) always show up on the must-read lists, including this one, the Times Online's list of the 50 greatest crime writers, where he is #37. (How many of these authors have you read? I've read 26.) Dibdin is often discussed in the same context as Nicholas Freeling (also dead) and H. R. F. Keating (not yet dead) because all three are British mystery novelists who write in English about non-British detectives. Freeling created Amsterdam detective Piet Van der Valk and French Inspector Henri Castang, while Keating is the creator of Inspector Ghote of the Mumbai police. Aurelio Zen is Italian. Being British distinguishes these authors from mystery novelists such as George Simenon (#2 on the Times list, dead) who wrote in French and Andrea Camilleri (#43 on the Times list, not dead) who writes in Italian. Why the sudden interest in authors’ nationalities (and state of animation)? I am just wondering what it is about the British psyche that gives certain writers the confidence to imagine up these non-British scenarios with such confidence and panache. Are there books written in Chinese about London detectives, do you think?

Oh, did I like the book? I guess so. It had a lot in it about food and wine, which is always fun. It also had a wonderfully ironic ending. Zen is not terribly interested in following any sort of policeman-type rules, which makes for some good tricks.

(Book 38, 2009)

Vacation (reading)

2009-11-09T07:22:00.001-08:00

I'm having a little vacation at my father's house near the beach. It's nice to hang out with my dad and his dogs, and in a few minutes I'm going to take a walk on the sea wall. The weather is warm-ish and sunny and the tide is coming in. It's been a good short break from my job (not very stressful) and my teenagers (don't ask). I go home tomorrow.

I've read two books since I've been here and have started a third. I don't usually distinguish between vacation reading and regular reading but I seem to have done so for this trip. My airplane reading was A Long Finish by Michael Dibdin, an author I've always wanted to try but have never gotten around to. My laying-around-the-house reading has been Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner, a book I would normally NEVER read due to its embarrassing title and even more embarrassing cover art. But my father's wife liked it and promised I would too, and it turns out to be entertaining. For the trip home I've got Arctic Chill, another Icelandic mystery from Arnaldur Indridason.

Catch you on the flip side.

Caravaggio's Angel by Ruth Brandon

2009-11-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

I am very picky about writing styles. Have you noticed? I don’t like (and won’t read) badly written books. I will, however, sometimes read a decently written book* with a lousy plot. Caravaggio’s Angel fits into this category. I am a sucker for art mysteries and picked this up by chance. It’s about a museum curator who is putting together an exhibition of Caravaggio paintings. Some paintings are missing; others are of dubious quality. Still others are suddenly unavailable for loan due to unexplained intransigence on the part of their purported owners. The curator (Reggie Lee) must sort all this out.

I didn’t like Reggie and I didn’t like her methods. I also didn’t like all the extraneous clutter that littered the story (a Surrealist plot from the 1930’s; a loathsome French politician who does his best to thwart Reggie’s work, but yet to whom Reggie is inexplicably attracted; Reggie’s ill-advised fling with a French journalist who happens to be married to Reggie’s friend Delphine). Despite these complaints I was driven to finish it. How bad could it get? Pretty bad, in the end. Apparently this is the first book in a planned series about Reggie. I think I’ll pass on the rest of them.

*An editorial complaint: I hate the verb “to google.” It’s likely to move out of fashion, and can easily be replaced by the phrase “to search the Internet.” Shame on the lazy editor who allowed this to get through.

(Book 37, 2009)

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

2009-10-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

Some books just take longer than a week to read. This one took more than two weeks, partly because it’s long, and partly because some of it is a slog. Nevertheless it’s an interesting book and worth reading for the 85% non-sloggish bits.

The 19th Wife is another one of those 2-in-1 tales where the author skips back and forth between a modern story and a fact-based historical one. The historical tale is about Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young’s 19th wife, who divorced him and led a crusade against polygamy all the way to the U.S. Senate. The modern story is about Jordan Scott, whose mother (also a 19th wife) is accused of murdering her husband, the leader of a present-day polygamous sect in Utah. Jordan’s quest to clear his mother of these charges leads him back into the sick society from which he was ejected as a teen and forces him to confront the worst of it.

Both stories are compelling. Ebershoff does a virtuoso job of writing in a variety of styles and voices. Jordan is a young gay man, filled with rage at the society in which he was raised, yet convinced that his mother did not kill his father. He’s an endearing, sympathetic character and his chapters made me feel all maternal. In contrast, Ebershoff retells Ann Eliza’s story through a fictional version of her memoir, and includes multiple supporting documents to buttress her story. It’s these supporting documents that are the slog. Sometimes in the evening I would say to myself “Well, I could go read excerpts from Brigham Young’s prison diaries, or wait! Didn’t we get a new issue of Rolling Stone in the mail?” Guess which reading material I chose.

At times I struggled with knowing where fact ended and fiction began in the sections about Ann Eliza. Ebershoff provides a helpful discussion at the end of the book about his sources and methods but of course I didn’t find that until I was done. Observant readers of this blog will notice that this is the second book this year that I’ve read about Mormon society (the first was Escape by Carolyn Jessop). Neither book presents the group in a positive light, though neither explicitly deals with life among modern day non-polygamous LDS church members.

(Book 36, 2009)

Two Books in One

2009-10-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

I am reading The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. It's really two books in one: Ebershoff retells Ann Eliza Young's original memoir of her life with, and subsequent divorce from, Brigham Young in the late 19th century. Young (Ann Eliza, not Brigham) went on to be a crusader against polygamy and against Mormonism itself. Layered between the pages of this story is a modern murder mystery set in a fictional fundamentalist LDS clan in Utah, told from the point of view of one its "lost boys." Ebershoff also includes historical background material that retells Ann Eliza Young's story from different points of view. These include a memoir by her father, depositions by her brother, and extracts from a graduate student's research.

The question for me is, what is real and what isn't? Ann Eliza Young really wrote a memoir, but how accurate is Ebershoff's retelling? Is he using her words? How do I figure this out? Is the material that was supposedly written by Young's brother and father real or fiction? The only thing I know that is certainly fiction is the modern mystery, which is also very good.

Ebershoff has a Web site but it's not very comprehensive. Wikipedia has a good article about Ann Eliza Young. I am starting with these, but this process is taking me a long time. The book is long and engrossing, but is also slow going.

So that's where I've been. Just wanted to give you an update.

Mother on Fire by Sandra Tsing Loh

2009-10-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

Sandra Tsing Loh is a writer, performance artist, and public radio commentator. I don’t hear her much on radio but I do read her pieces in the Atlantic. I’ve also never seen any of her one-woman shows but would sure like to. In 2008 she published Mother on Fire, a memoir about her life in Los Angeles, specifically framed around her search for an appropriate school for her kindergarten-age daughter.

This is a very funny book, filled with raw emotion and angst. Loh takes on issues of class and status, money worries, stalled careers, the mommy wars, and the frantic pace of life in LA. She expertly captures the desperate panic of educated, affluent, urban parents in search of the perfect environment for their precious offspring. Loh herself vacillates between being one of these super-obsessed types, and being a slacker mom, and freely admits her own contradictory impulses. That’s partly what makes the book so entertaining. One day Loh is touring the $22,000-a-year private (pseudonymous) Wonder Canyon School, where “children honor diversity, learn peaceful conflict resolution and are taught music using the Orff-Schulwerk method.” Of course there is no diversity at Wonder Canyon; as Loh points out, the children must honor it because they don’t actually experience it. The next day Loh is letting her daughters watch Disney princess videos for the 82nd time and feeding them Kraft macaroni and cheese. She is consumed with guilt for failing to provide Baby Mozart and organic broccoli all the while railing against the forces that make her feel guilty. But despite how much Loh wants the Wonder Canyon, there is no way that she and her husband can afford it on the combined income of a journalist and a musician.

Thus Loh’s daughter ends up at an LA public magnet school. It’s a better choice than the local elementary school (which Loh dubs Guavatorina for its 89% English Language Learner status) though she is still the only blonde in a sea of Central American and Armenian children. But why is this a bad thing, Loh asks? Her daughter’s school is a warm and loving place where the children thrive. As a result of this revelation Loh becomes a public school activist and runs a Web site for parents of children in LA public schools.

Loh’s writing style takes a little getting used to. Her articles in the Atlantic are straightforward magazine-style journalism but Mother on Fire is filled with exclamation marks! –And interjections! Also lots of $%^#@!!!!! Before writing this book, Loh performed a stage version of Mother on Fire for 7 months in Los Angeles. I imagine the book reflects the style of the show. Was there a lot of ranting and desperate proclaiming? I bet there was.

You can find Sandra Tsing Loh everywhere on the Web. Here are some links to an interview in Salon, her articles in the Atlantic, her NPR pieces, a New York Times review of Mother on Fire, and her personal Web site.

(Book 35, 2009)

Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

2009-10-02T14:27:00.000-07:00

I keep coming across these mysteries that take place in exotic locales. This was another one, set in Saudi Arabia. A teenage girl called Nouf goes missing and eventually turns up dead. Because her family is rich and powerful it’s easy for them to bribe the coroner into suspending his investigation and recording the death as “accidental,” thus avoiding any hint of scandal. But Othman, Nouf’s favorite brother, wants the truth, and he arranges for two people to investigate on the sly. They are Nayir, the desert tracker initially hired by Nouf’s family to look for her, and Othman’s fiancée Katya, who works as a lab technician in the corrupt coroner’s office. This unlikely pair team up to find out what they can.

I can’t say that I know anything about the criminal justice system in Saudi Arabia. Is it really this easy for a prominent family to sweep something like this under the rug? Is there no one in charge who would force a real investigation? I guess not. Thus the author’s setup is a good one. She does the best with what the society offers in the way of investigative type characters. And she makes dramatic use of the cultural roadblocks our investigators encounter. The two cannot be seen in public together because they are not married to each other, which makes it difficult to visit places relevant to their investigation. Katya, the lab tech, must perform some of her forensic research at home because her working conditions are so constrained by gender segregation rules. Nayir is constantly struggling with guilt for his inability to erase his memory of Nouf’s naked body on the coroner’s table. These are not things that typically hamper U.S. or British cops!

A subtext is of course the status of women in Saudi Arabia. Katya is a rebel because she has chosen her own husband, and because she insists on working in a lab instead of using her chemistry PhD to teach at a women’s college. Nouf is a contradiction: she rode a jet ski in an abaya, she agreed to an arranged marriage, yet she routinely disguised herself as a boy to scoot around Jedda on a motorcycle. Nayir, at first extremely pious and traditional, grows through his contact with Katya and Nouf into a man who can see a woman’s point of view. All this adds up to an interesting story but not really an interesting mystery – the solution is a bit of a letdown, an afterthought, a little dangling bit that we don’t really care about as much as we care about Nouf’s life and what will eventually happen to Nayir and Katya.

(Book 34, 2009)

Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold

2009-09-23T14:03:00.001-07:00

I really had high hopes for this book, which is the first volume of a series called The Sharing Knife. My hopes were high not so much because I had heard anything about this book, but because I wanted it to be good. I wanted to get involved in another fantasy series. Alas, wanting isn’t enough. This was just average, and certainly not compelling enough to make me go on and read the rest of the series.

Lois McMaster Bujold is the author of the very popular science fiction/fantasy series about Miles Vorkosigan (of which I think there are currently 18 books, but there may be more). I tried to read these but they were too hard science fiction for me, what with their spaceships and wormholes and such. I also tried to read another fantasy novel by Bujold, The Curse of Chalion, but I can’t remember why I didn’t like it. Beguilement was my most recent attempt at her work.

The world of The Sharing Knife was interesting (something like rural 19th century Europe or North America but with bad monsters called Malices who must be hunted and killed by roving bands of men and women called Lakewalkers). I was especially intrigued by the creatures called Mud Men, who are kind of like the golems of Eastern European lore, built by the Malices out of animals and mud, to do their evil bidding. But for some reason McMaster let these plot points fizzle out and spent way too much time on a romance between Dag, an older, disallusioned Lakewalker man and Fawn, a young (non-Lakewalker) woman. The age difference between these two was kind of off-putting, and Fawn was just silly even though she was brave. The action picked up again somewhat toward the end, but it was clear that a lot of this series was going to be about Dag and Fawn’s evolving relationship and not so much about the Malices and the Mud Men. That discovery disappointed me. If I want a relationship novel I can find plenty to choose from, but really cool constructs like the Mud Men are few and far between.

(Book 33, 2009)

Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach

2009-09-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

This book came out in 2006 and I remember reading some of the press about it with interest. Autism was in the news a lot because I think 2006 was the height of the autism/vaccination link controversy; not that autism has stopped being in the news. At the time I thought I might find it too much of an issue du jour book and I skipped it, but I recently found it on the library shelf and remembered my earlier interest.

This is a novel, though it is based on the author’s experiences with her own son’s autism diagnosis. It’s another “everything was perfect then suddenly everything went wrong” book like I’ve been reading recently. Melanie (an American) and Stephen (an aristocratic Englishman) have a perfect life, except that 3-year-old Daniel isn’t talking, and he walks on his toes, and eventually starts banging his head against the floor. Melanie insists that something is wrong but Stephen thinks she is overreacting. Tragically, Melanie is right and Stephen can’t cope; he leaves the family after she refuses to institutionalize Daniel.

Leimbach writes intelligently about the autism diagnosis and subsequent adjustments: fearing that something is wrong with your child, having those fears confirmed, and the ensuing chaos as you try to adjust to the new reality. The book is set in London and as an American I found some of the cultural differences interesting. Everyone seems very interested in putting Daniel into a special school, to his mother’s dismay. A lot of the book is about Melanie’s battle to keep Daniel as much in the mainstream as possible, an approach to autism that is common in the U.S. but perhaps not so in Britain? Melanie eventually finds a therapist who connects with Daniel, but he’s not sanctioned by the National Health Service. The most poignant bits of the book are Melanie’s oblique references to the things she must sell in order to pay for Daniel’s sessions: “The vacuum fetched ninety pounds and I really don’t miss the carpet at all.”

Leimbach doesn’t sugar coat the hardest parts of life with Daniel but doesn’t dwell on them either. And Melanie is no saint, but she is a loving mother who rejoices in her child’s eventual progress. In the hands of a less skilled writer this could have been an exploitative, opportunistic book, but it’s not. It’s just a very personal story about one family’s experience. I liked it a lot.

(Book 32, 2009)

The Dressmaker by Elizabeth Birkelund Oberbeck

2009-09-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

This book was so forgettable that I forgot to blog about it. It’s one of the books I bought at Powell’s in Portland, Oregon back in the beginning of August. The plot sounded like something I would like: a simple tailor in rural France is transformed into a leading couturier when he creates a fabulous wedding dress for a socialite. I like to read about French fashion, French food, and French family life so I thought this would be good. Instead it proved to be a very dull, plodding story of a boring guy with a boring life, who momentarily gets famous and hates it. It did offer a few good scenes of French village life, but there was almost no food at all! And it had a really weird out-of-left-field plot twist at the end that totally ticked me off.

I found it very odd that this book included a reading group guide. I was absolutely shocked that anyone thought it needed one. I looked at some of the questions and they were as trite as the book. Here is one (and I swear I am not making this up):

Nearly every time a character appears on the scene in the novel, their clothing is described. How does the author use clothing to suggest something about a character? What are some of the most memorable, most vividly described outfits in the book?

Whoa, deep. You can find much better writing about French life, French style, and French food on the Web. Here are a few places to begin:

Paris atelier
The Sartorialist
Chocolate and Zucchini
Pollyvousfrancais

(Book 31, 2009)

More Boring Blather

2009-08-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

Where have I been? Packing up a kid for college. It's not as bad as it could be. I have friends whose entire minivans are stuffed with "necessities" like televisions and mini-fridges. Because my son is going abroad he's limited to two 50 lb. suitcases, so obviously he's not taking that kind of stuff. I am still hemorrhaging money though. Included in his list of "must-haves" were a 50mm prime lens and some kind of gazillion gigabyte external hard drive, neither of which (needless to say) I had when I left home for the first time. He's taking In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan to read on the plane, so that makes me happy. On his urging I am working my way slowly through The Omnivore's Dilemma, a book I swore I would not read, but which I find I am enjoying.

Even though I haven't been posting I've still been reading. You can always count on that. I've got two books to post about in the next little while: The Dressmaker by Elizabeth Birkelund Oberbeck, and Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach. I've just started reading Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold, which is the first book in her new fantasy series known as The Sharing Knife. So far I'm really enjoying it.

He leaves Tuesday so I'll be back after that. Meanwhile, enjoy this picture of a cat.

Help from a Stranger

2009-08-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I left a library book (Ysabel, by Guy Gavriel Kay) in the airline seat pocket on a flight from Madison, Wisconsin, to Minneapolis, Minnesota. A few days ago I went to the library, armed with my checkbook, to pay for this lost volume. When the library clerk pulled up my record she discovered that the book had been returned! I don't know if thanks are due to someone who works at Northwest Airlines, or to a good Samaritan passenger (maybe someone en route home to Madison?) who found my book and returned it to the Madison Public Library, but whoever did it, I am very grateful. Thanks for saving me the cost of a hardback and for making this book available for others to read. What a nice feeling it was to discover this!

Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies

2009-08-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

I thought this book was a novel about a crumbling marriage. It turns out that it’s a true story about a crumbling marriage which makes it a little weirder to read. If it were a novel it would fit squarely into the “domestic fiction” category that I love so much. Is there such a thing as “domestic nonfiction?”

Isabel Gillies had the perfect life: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a beautiful house. Then along came the perfect other woman and poof went the husband, the house, and all the trappings. Isabel had to move back in with her parents, but she’s gotten the perfect revenge by writing this book. Husband Josiah comes across as a cold-hearted jerk who abandons his family, and the French mistress Sylvia is portrayed as predatory and conniving.

Josiah and Sylvia are pseudonyms, but most of the rest of the story’s details are true. I found it by turns sad, funny, fresh, and maddening. Most of the drama takes place in Ohio, where Josiah was (and still is) a professor at Oberlin. Gillies possesses a certain kind of naïveté sometimes found among native Manhattanites and she spends much of the first part of the book exclaiming over the shocking novelty of life in the Midwest where no one has nannies. I found these parts really annoying (as you might guess) and had a little trouble warming up to her because of this. I was embarrassed for her when she admitted being surprised that Ohio had cable TV. Nevertheless, her honesty is endearing and you can’t help but take her side. Which I guess is the point.

(Book 30, 2009)

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich

2009-08-11T20:32:00.001-07:00

This was an emergency purchase in the Minneapolis airport last week. I was changing planes there (en route to Portland) and realized too late that I had forgotten my book on the first plane. But hooray: A kiosk selling paperbacks was right across from my gate. I grabbed this, the only thing that looked even half way palatable. It’s nearly a four-hour flight from Minneapolis to Portland. Without a book I’d have been crawling out onto the wing before I got there.

And this book was surprisingly good. Evanovich usually sacrifices plot for laughs, but in this she balanced the two fairly well. It actually had a somewhat interesting mystery and the solution was plausible. I would call this a well modulated effort, and certainly good enough for an airplane read. You do need some familiarity with the setup and the characters in order to get the most out of it but I can’t imagine anyone would try this who hadn’t at least read a few of her previous numerical endeavors.

The book I lost was Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. I wasn’t particularly enjoying it. I wonder if I lost it subconsciously on purpose? That’s still kind of dumb because I’m going to have to pay the library for it.

Portland was great. I had never been there before. I visited Powell’s, Mecca for all serious book lovers, and was suitably impressed. I was pretty restrained and only bought three books. I could have bought 20 but I didn’t have room in my suitcase. I did make sure I put all three in my carry-on bag for the return flight. I was taking no chances on a bookless flight home.

(Book 29, 2009)

Fan Fiction

2009-08-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

Does everybody know what this is? I only discovered it this summer, and wow, what a surprise. It turns out lots of people are writing original fiction about popular characters from television (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer), movies (Star Wars), fiction (Harry Potter, Twilight), and real life (American Idol). Who knew? The Internet makes it all possible—lots of it is posted on LiveJournal and another site called FanFiction.net but you can find it via Google. Just enter the name of your favorite show or characters along with the words “fan fiction” and you’ll be all set. When I searched for “Twilight fan fiction” the first Google hit was an archive page from FanFiction.net with links to 99,591 stories. That will certainly keep you busy.

I hear that some original creators are more receptive to fan fiction than others. I read that J. K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer are very supportive of their fan fiction writers but that some other authors are less thrilled by it. And I have to wonder what the real life subjects feel about it. Has anyone asked the Jonas brothers, I wonder? Interestingly (and I guess not surprisingly) there’s a whole subgenre of R-rated stories that are extremely popular.

Before you scoff at it, give some of it a try. I have spent a lot of time this summer reading some really creative, really well written stuff.

Testimony by Anita Shreve

2009-07-30T20:48:00.000-07:00

Why did this book have to be so sad? It was really heartbreaking. Well it turns out that in Anita Shreve’s world, if you commit adultery, very bad things happen to you. Testimony is not the only book where this is the case. The Pilot’s Wife and The Weight of Water are two others where death, or the death of one’s child, are deemed suitable punishments by Ms. Shreve.

This book is also about teenage stupidity, a subject that is a little too familiar to me right now. After a late night of reading I found myself reminding my 18-year-old “don’t go with any underage girls.” He looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Mom, I’m a camp counselor. They would fire me.” Yes, and you might die too, if Anita Shreve was in charge.

If you can believe it though, I actually liked this book. Shreve builds tension slowly and with masterful control, as I’ve mentioned in other posts. In this story, a video of a sexual encounter among students at a posh boarding school is posted on the Internet. Who are the students? How did they end up in this situation? How does the headmaster handle it? The parents? The police? Shreve uses multiple points of view to reveal the various characters and what they are thinking. By including the voices of even very small players (the boy from town who provided the liquor) she adds layers of nuance to her story.

(Book 28, 2009)

Love Falls by Esther Freud

2009-07-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

Esther Freud wrote Hideous Kinky, a good book that became an even better movie. Love Falls would be a good movie too, but it’s a lousy book. It would be a good movie because it would be set in Italy and have very pretty stars (isn’t that enough?). The protagonist Lara would be played by some nubile young ingénue who would flit around a Tuscan villa in her bikini, having sex with her boyfriend, played by some impossibly virile young male star. The older male lead (Lara’s father) would be played by someone handsome but remote, like Ralph Fiennes, and he would get his sex scenes also, with the 30-something female second lead. This part would happen in Florence, so there would be lots of café scenes and art museums, too.

I had to force myself to finish this book. The only things that propelled me forward were the descriptions of the villa and its gardens, the descriptions of the food, and the descriptions of Florence (more food, lots more art and architecture). I didn’t care one jot about any of the characters or what happened to them. I’m not even sure how it ended.

Plot summary, anyone? Lara, age 17, and her father go to Italy together to visit the father’s friend who is dying. They stay at the friend’s very cool villa near Siena. Lara gets involved with the son of the dissolute aristocratic English family from the very cool villa next door. Her father gets involved with one of their houseguests. The friend dies. They go back to London. Someone, please start filming this immediately.

(Book 27, 2009)

Escape by Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer

2009-07-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

I don't usually read books about the issue du jour if you know what I mean. For some reason, however, I was attracted to this book by Carolyn Jessop, who escaped from the FLDS, the fundamentalist polygamous cult that was recently raided by the Texas authorities for alleged child abuse.

Carolyn Jessop was raised in the FLDS community in Colorado City, Arizona, and forced at age 18 to marry a man 30 years her senior, a man who already had three wives and numerous children. She endured more than 15 years of marriage to him and gave birth to 8 children. Her book tells the story of how she went from being a true believer in the tenets of her religion to understanding the real nature of the FLDS: that it brainwashes its followers through isolation, violence, and intimidation into total subservience to the leadership, which consists of corrupt old men.

The first part of this book, which details Jessop’s childhood and married life, is painful to read. Life in the FLDS compound was (for women, anyway) “worse than [under] the Taliban” (according to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who, with Carolyn Jessop’s help, targeted the FLDS for its crimes). It was especially interesting to read about the dynamics among the women in the household. For them, plural marriage seems to be essentially a zero-sum game, where every favor granted to one wife or her children means that a different wife or child will lose out. Competition among the women is cut throat and Carolyn’s children were routinely brutalized by their “other mothers.”

Before Carolyn Jessop, few women managed to escape from the cult, as local police were FLDS members who returned runaway wives to their husbands. But Jessop’s bravery and intelligence saved her and her children. The story of how she managed to escape and to retain custody of all of her children makes for great thriller-type reading.

Written in 2007, before the raid on the Texas compound, this book provides great background for understanding the legal battles that are still going on with the FLDS. Before reading this book I didn’t know much about the FLDS other than that they seemed like some creepy fringe group that was operating far off my radar. I did not realize how many women and children were (and still are) being held against their will, forced into sexual slavery, denied education, adequate medical care, and freedom to come and go--their basic human rights.

(Book 26, 2009)