Saturday, June 30, 2007

Smile When You're Feeling Blue

First off, let me confess that I did not "read" Smile When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg, I listened to it as I quilted, drove, cleaned house, etc. However, it was the unabridged version read by Ms. Berg, herself, so I feel pretty okay reviewing it. It should be noted that Ms. Berg has a lovely speaking voice.

I really liked this book at the start. This may be my particular overlay, but given the fairly consistent limited omniscient perspective from Kitty's POV (at one point it suddenly and without explanation shifts to Louise then zips right back to Kitty) and given Kitty's predilections and the near saintliness of Louise, I started to pick up a real Austenian P&P vibe. As in, what if the story were told by Kitty. Plus, I liked Kitty. But, as we like to say in our house (a la the Simpsons), then the C.H.U.D.s came.

About halfway through, two distinct turns happened in the book that really pushed me out.

First, Berg begins to rely extensively on letters from soldiers to tell her story. Now, this Ken Burns-ian device can be effective, but the advantage Burns has is that the letters he uses are all actually written by different people. So, the voices in each letter sound different--different tone, nuance, approach, diction, etc. Berg's basically all sound the same--as though they were written by highly educated men with a penchant for 40s slang. And, golly they're long. The extreme length of the letters may not be as evident on the page--where small font, etc., can obscure things--but when they're read aloud, jeepers creepers! It's little wonder the war took so long if the troops were taking afternoons off to write epistolary novels Clarissa-style . Finally, after letter upon letter, the device wears really thin. It takes on a voice-over quality that seems desperate. I would have much rather focused on the inner lives of the Heaney family. I'm certain they have them, right?

Second, suddenly the novel becomes a rehash of American sentimental fiction wherein Kitty moves from Rosie the Riveter to a self-abnegating Little Eva-like character. At every turn, Kitty is punished--in ways both small and large. She breaks her nails and is made filthy at work; she keeps at her job because she's guilted into by her dad; she loses Julian (JULIAN? what kind of name is this for 1940s America?) to Tish; she decides to quit the job she now likes because of Hank; her boyfriend turns from supportive feminist guy to simmering rage jerk; she offers up her fiance Hank to her desperate sister; she lingers for 60 (!!) years longing for the children she never had with the husband she never had--all the while hanging with her sister who has both. And her reward? A dance at her 60th high school reunion with her ex-fiance brother-in-law. Wow, this is just full-on creepy!

All of these issues don't even take into account that the book just seems to lose steam. Key narrative events appear as lacunae. Huge decisions go unexplained. Changes in characters just happen. So much of this novel is on the surface, when it would have been so fulfilling to get a deeper portrait of the girls at home. As it is, the novel is like the cover of 40s glamour magazine--pretty but . . .

Monday, June 4, 2007

The Man of My Dreams

I picked up Curtis Sittenfeld's The Man of My Dreams in the Atlanta airport on my latest trip into the wide, wide world. I was actually drawn in by the paperback's cover, which so captured that moment in the Great Gatsby when Daisy weeps into Jay's beautiful shirts that I was overcome and purchased immediately . . .

And, then I looked inside. I hesitate to call the book a novel because it strikes me as a succession of character moments in the protagonist's life. They are connected more by the thread of her existence than by any real plot or momentum. Now, this may be the point, as Hannah herself seems stuck as the emotionally remote, psychologically scarred child, but if this is the case, it makes better structural theory than structure. Nothing makes this clearer than the end, which is basically a stopping point rather than anything that suggests the book had an arc.

To wit: at the end, there's this kind of Lifetime movie letter to the now-we-see-her, now-we-don't therapist who's been in and out of the book rather randomly. The letter is a sadly overdetermined, "I'm over him, I swear" creation that in real life would be about 30 typed pages--which immediately pushes it into the realm of seriously and/or cry for help. In effect, the letter acts as the "Angels talk to Charlie" end to this episode and wraps up the novel just about as well. This is especially true because the letter seems to harken back to the undergrad Hannah, not to the slightly more adult Hannah seen just a few pages earlier. But, we never learn why she regressed or if she had never progressed or why we're still supposed to be reading.

Having said all this, Hannah is interesting largely because she's all inner life separated from any expressed emotion or engagement. But, this kind of character is more short story interesting than novel interesting. And, few of the other characters sustain interest at all: Fig is a tiresome and stereotypical queen bee; Michael is a passive loser; Allison seems brought on stage left for dramatic tension and then forgotten just as quickly when the need for her plot point vanishes; Elizabeth and Darach could be intriguing but they disappear. We never see enough of Hannah's mom or dad to get what exactly is going on, etc. If they were all drawn more fully, we might care, but they aren't.

Beautiful cover, though.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

The Brief History of the Dead

I grabbed Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead off my husband's night stand before a flight to Texas because it was slim enough to fit in my bag. I had just started the latest Jane Smiley, but it was too thick. I didn't really know anything about it other than it was about some kind of afterlife waiting room. I got a bit worried when I read that Brockmeier was a McSweeney, as this is really more my husband's cup of tea than mine. But, what a great book! I had it finished by the time I hit Austin.

Okay, here's my question: why wouldn't Coke stop this book from being published? I'm not going to give away any big secrets--not that I have a bunch of readers who would be disappointed by spoilers--but Coke is not presented in the best light in this book. And, this less-than-best-light seems to fit just fine. I was just really surprised that the book wasn't squashed or squished or buried under antarctic snows.

But, given that it wasn't, I really liked how the stories are woven together with the dropped hints about connections. I was also surprisingly affected by the way in which relationships supersede all else in the city--how all the dross falls away from the Byrd's relationship and how Minny connects with Luka and so on--and in Laura's own life as it hurtles to its end. Brockmeier's descriptive touch is also solid. I could feel the cold, see the colors, and hear the heartbeat.

I also appreciated the subtle way in which we're placed in the future. It is a place similar to our own in so many ways (e.g., crappy business meet and greets; egg sandwiches; and, of course, Coke), but the world has just enough techno changes to make it clear we're in the "not now." This is the way the future is coming at us--not with flying cars and jet packs but with BlackBerries, corporate mergers, and bioengineered waters--so it all seemed very real.

If I had any criticism, it is that the last section of the book, as Laura fades away, goes on a bit too long. I had too many, "I got it, already," moments that I didn't earlier on. So, it didn't end as strongly as it should have. Still, a real surprise that makes me rethink my next visit to Atlanta.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Suite Francaise

I took a break to defend my dissertation and actually finish my degree. Woo-hoo! So, now, I get to go back to novels rather than policy and data (though, I'm wonky enough to like those as well).

So, the first book I picked up upon finishing was Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise. As probably everyone knows by now, this work is actually two chapters of a planned novel by Nemirovsky. However, her plans were interrupted by those of the Third Reich. I had read a brief sketch of the horrifying events of her life before reading the book--and intentionally didn't want to read the more detailed recounting that is part of the ancillary materials in the book before reading the two chapters: Storm in June and Dolce. I didn't want my opinion of them to be overly colored by her biography. I needn't have worried.

Suite Francaise is an achingly beautiful book. Nemirovsky's narrative voice is sharp and cold in its pitiless assessment of the foibles of the rich and privileged that frequently spell their doom. She is particularly harsh on the upper class, whose emotional range seems to have been as neatly trimmed and trained as its carefully manicured gardens and as dulled as its dusty drapes. An example . . . The head-spinning turn of Madame Pericand in a moment from self-righteous self-declared exemplar of noblesse oblige to wild-eyed hoarder is wonderfully drawn to both show the horrors that the war is bringing and distance the reader from any moment of sympathy for Pericand.

At other times, Nemirovsky can paint a reasonably unsympathetic situation in a cautiously warm glow all the while suggesting the dangerous sadness that war both creates and reveals. When Lucile engages in her platonic romance with Bruno, Nemirovsky manages both to play with the romantic conventions and then to shatter them as foolish delusions destined to lead to tragedy. In these first two chapters, her own heart is reserved for the characters stuck in the middle (like Lucile or the Michauds or even Bruno), those whose own goodness and kindness seems to arise in spite of their surroundings. War, the book suggests, doesn't produce "the greatest generation"; it simply makes each of us even more of what we really are, which--for most of the characters--is not very pretty.

I had never heard of Nemirovsky before reading Suite Francaise but the talent that exudes from the pages and the sheer beauty of so many of the sentences makes me want to read more. Her anger and the vengeance that she clearly desired comes through the weaponry of her words, and I am intrigued to see how her voice plays out in her earlier works.

Read this book. It will break your heart--for all the right reasons.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Veronica

I am not an edgy person. I think at one point I was. I went to clubs and shows, stayed out all night, wore trendy clothes, etc. Now, I stay at home and am quite thrilled that tonight I can both fold laundry and walk on the treadmill to Dancing with the Stars. So, I typically don't read novels by edgy novelists. No Chuck Palahniuk-ish or Susanna Moore-esque writers for me.

But, now I can say I've read a novel by a scary-persona novelist, and it was really quite good. Last week, I picked up Mary Gaitskill's Veronica. The narrative voice of Alison was wonderfully un-Lifetime movie-- cool, distant, with an oddly misplaced serenity. Her matter-of-fact rendering of her rebellion and its repercussions, good and bad, really drew me in. Some of Gaitskill's writing sparkled with a sharp sheen, especially early on during Alison's time in San Francisco and her observations about her Hepatitis friends. Yet, it also mingled with some oddly pedestrian and overwrought prose, and I thought the climbing narrative that pulled along the second half of the book was a bit forced. And, the "physical punishment of the pretty girl" is a little tired. Couldn't Alison have made it to the point she did without the car crash? Wouldn't her revelations have been just as powerful or even more so if she simply got old?

Alison's relationship with Veronica is laid bare in a way that leads to little sympathy for Alison, which is nice. The book doesn't go for the heart and suddenly create a Oprah-momented character where none would exist. Alison is solipsistic and enclosed throughout, letting her love for Veronica in and out just a sliver at a time. Even after Alison's epiphany about the depth of her friendship with Veronica, there remains an element of their relationship that arises because of Veronica's role as magical mirror rather than as actual human. Yet, the novel does show that she has grown wearily wiser overtime; if not to the degree one would wish, then likely to the degree that a real world Alison would.

I do think this book could have been cut by 50 pages or so with little harm and probably some benefit. Still, I highly recommend it.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Something Borrowed

Yes, it's chick lit, but I bought it at the airport--so it's kinda like eating while standing up in the kitchen . . . it doesn't count against me. Actually, I was coming down with a nasty virus and had just finished some messy work callbacks and was facing a 2 hour layover. So, I walked into the airport's Simply Books and stared blankly at the racks. The kindly woman dustmopping the store pointed at a nicely muted pink book with a sparkly ring on it, Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed, and said, "lots of people are buying that." So, I did. It is the literary equivalent of a Cinnabon, which was also nearby, and if you are stuck in the airport and can feel the flucold wrapping itself around you like a numbing old sweater and are tired of cleaning up other folks' messes and just want to Calgon-away for a couple hours in the time/space continuum rift that is the modern day airport, buy this book.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Dogs of Babel

Another of the novels I read on my trip was Carolyn Parkhurst's Dogs of Babel. I read Parkhurst's follow-up novel (Lost and Found) last year and liked it, so when I saw this one used, I picked it up. It was a quick read and generally falls into the "buy if cheap and used" category. The book did a nice job of examining grief and the way in which it can reshape our memories of the past. Yet, as with the odd Bootie in Emperor's Children, it took about ten seconds for me to know Lexy was a more-than-wee-bit rattling upstairs. It was also hard for me to believe that Paul, an academic, hadn't met enough screws-loose grad students and colleagues to have recognized Lexy for what she was--especially as she exhibited signs of the unhinged that were billboard big. And, who makes enough money by making masks (masks???) to buy a house . . . anywhere? Really. And, the whole DogFightClub-like turn about the dog surgery cult at 2/3 through was really unbelievable and not at all in keeping with the rest of the novel, very jarring and ridiculous. (Remo? What kind of name is that?) I also found Paul's sudden gestalt moment with the book titles a tad silly and unbelievable. Actually, the more I write about this book, the less fondly I think about it, so maybe I was impacted by the narrative's point about memory. Ha! Point won, Ms. Parkhurst. I still think Lost and Found is a good novel, so if you're going to read one of her books, pick that.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Patron Saint of Liars

Okay, now that my dissertation is done and submitted, I can get back to reading. I just came back from a trip to New Orleans--which is still there, kinda. And, the flights gave me the opportunity to read several (three!) novels. Here's the first, Ann Patchett's The Patron Saint of Liars.

I love Ann Patchett's work; it's readable, creates a lush world of words, but isn't overtly "book clubby." Things always turn out unsettled, though in a way that makes sense within the universe of the novel. This particular novel opens with the backstory to the hotel that will eventually become St. Elizabeth's--a home for unwed mothers. It has a magical realism-tinge to it, a fairy tale quality that hovers over all the Patchett novels I've read. Yet, what's nice, is that in her books the fairy tales are like the flawed golden bowl, run through with a small fissure lets the real world seep in.

Rose is a distancing heroine, keeping the reader at bay much as she keeps all others--save her substitute mom, Sr. Evangeline. She marries Tom without loving him, cruelly because he loves her. She marries Son without loving him, cruelly because he loves her and will love her unborn child. She keeps Cecelia (Sissy) and fears loving her. There is a crudeness to her symbolic role as foodgiver that seems a bit below the novel, though.

I have to admit that I did not see the Cecelia story ending as it did, so that was a nice twist. I had envisioned her as a cruel young heartbreaker, a proto-Fitzgerald pretty young thing, but did not see her dying.

And, I loved Sissy. Her palpable love for and disappointment in her mother and her chill. Her adoration of her father, and his for her. Shortly after reading this book, while home sick with the flu, I caught up on all the Heroes that I missed while working on my dissertation. The episode in which Claire's relationship with her father is backstoried struck me as so similar to the way Son and Sissy's closeness (note the names) is portrayed. Both made me cry.

All in all, a good book. Not as transporting as Bel Canto nor as emotionally grounded as The Magician's Assistant, but still, definitely worth the read.

Monday, January 22, 2007

The Emperor's Children

So, I finally finished Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children. I felt about it much as I did about Zadie Smith's On Beauty--why take all this talent and time to write about these people. Look, I don't need a book to be a feel-good romp. I'm totally a Hardy "because we are too many" girl, and it's damn difficult to find a truly admirable character in anything by Fitzgerald. The very same could be said about both of my top 2006 books (see previous posts). But, you still care about the characters in these novels, want to spend time with them, want to see what happens to them. For all its length, The Emperor's Children seems such a small book, about small people with sadly small ideas; people you want to avoid. Though I haven't read anything else by Messud, it is tempting to compare The Emperor's Children to Marina's own book: a project likely not worth the talent of the writer.

A while back, while reading Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, I found a fundamental gap in the book: where is the music? Wouldn't these preppies be listening to something? The absence of music became a jarring presence that distanced me from the book in a big way. In reading Messud's book, I faced a similar distancing question: why aren't these characters in grad school? These are not working world people, even quasi-working world people. In real life, Marina, Danielle, and Julius would be gathered in their TA offices, still at Brown, speaking in disaffectedly reverential tones about the post-postness of it all while fraternizing with their dissertation chairs, sleeping with their students, and avoiding their writing. Restaging it this way would explain their shallow faux-depth; their incestuous circling and coincidental collisions. But, in the sharky world of Manhattan, they seem so out of place--especially at 30, which is a bit old in the tooth for the town. Also, since when is New York the smallest big city in the world? And, has Messud ever been to Miami? The chance of accidentally running into anyone there is even lower than it would be in NYC. And the chance of even a slimmer-Bootie being hired in a South Beach restaurant. Uh, yeah, that would be Less Than Zero.

Then, again, who would hire Danielle? She doesn't seem to have a single idea worth paying for--let alone sending her to Australia (Australia??? Um, okay) to explore. Julius seems like a gay fifth card character on an old Sex in the City. And Marina. There's nothing to her. Again, maybe her opacity is intentional. I can't believe that her entire character is simply to be a daddy's girl, the emperor's child. And Bootie. He's not just touched; he's actually unbelievable. Even a character as odd as he is wouldn't believe Marina would accept a rip-up-one-side-and-down-another article about her own father. I mean, really. Ludovic Seeley? Seriously. And, why give one chapter to Aurora if it's not going anywhere.

And, what's with the guest appearance of 9/11? There's such a "and then the CHUDS came" quality about the way this awful event is used in the narrative. It seems to come out of nowhere and recede just as quickly, a useful plot churner. Why use 9/11 without going somewhere with it? For all that it impacts the narrative content, it could have been a freak tsunami or one of those Jake Gyllenhaal-stranding ice storms from The Day After Tomorrow.

Well, dear reader, it's safe to say I'm not a fan of this book, and given all the hoopla surrounding it, I'm really disappointed. But, I'm throwing caution to the wind and diving into Calamity Physics next. Let's hope the second hyped-time is the charm.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Kid Stuff

I'm about a third into Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children. It's good so far, but I'm already able to predict some of what's likely to happen. I think I'm liking the small scenes more than the big story arc. The scene with Thwaite and the undergrad in the bar. The scene with Marina and her dad in the study. And, am I already sensing the off-center relation in "Bootie"? Must there always be the more-damaged-than-initially-appears character in a novel aspiring to a certain level of importance? I'd just like to state for the record the following: in real life, if you pay any attention, you can always spot such individuals right off. They don't fool you; they don't surprise you; they don't shock and awe you. Instead, they tend to elicit from one simply an "of course you do, dear," a sigh, maybe a raised eyebrow, and then a polite distance. Still, I'll keep in it till the end.

In some real kid stuff news . . . being hypervigilant, academically-intense, overindulgent parents, we now subscribe to One More Story, which is a supercool online library for children with a neato "I Can Read" function. Given all that it offers, it's also somewhat of a bargain. If you have preschool kids and $40 burning a hole in your Vera Bradley, I encourage you to check it out.

And, we've discovered Jack Prelutsky and his scranimals (e.g., the radishark, the potatoad, etc.). What a clever guy! We now spend some dinners trying to create our own involving the foods on the table. Our best so far . . . the carrottweiler. He's also collaborated with some beautiful illustrators on these books, including the incomparable Peter Sis.

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Best Books (I Read) 2006--Part 2

The other book on my list is by Allegra Goodman, Intuition. It got some initial good press when it came out and then disappeared. Goodman doesn't have a flashy back story like Marisha Pessl (whose book I have on my nightstand in waiting), nor did it reflect in any discernible way the post 9/11 reactions of NY (though Messud's book is also in that same nightstand stack). So, this may be why Intuition never bobbled to the top . . . and, oh yeah, it's about paranoia and deception among research scientists but doesn't involve dinosaurs, cloning, or sex-crazed serial killers.

All that said, I started Intuition at the beginning of a flight across country and finished it the first night of my trip. Lacan once referred to the university as participating in the master/slave discourse, and I can think of no better evocation of this statement as Goodman's novel. The incestuous, internecine politics of academic life--both personally and professionally--are captured perfectly in what boils down to a complex novel of manners. In this case, the manners are the expectations of behavior and etiquette amongst cancer research scientists up and down the intellectual food chain as they scramble to move out of bench work and into the well-funded life of the mind, as hungry for recognition and admiration as they are for any real scientific discovery.

There is a moment in the book that flew into me like a bolt in its ability to convey how very easy it is to inject venom into such a fragile structure: when Jacob upends the entire Phillpot Institute house of cards by sharing a simple observation with Robin about her ex-boyfriend's surprisingly successful results, "They're almost too good to be true." The manner in which he weights this statement, understands exactly how it will be received, and the events it is likely to trigger--and the way in which his own action is triggered by a combustible combination of personal and professional jealousy toward his wife--is magnificient. I had never read anything by Goodman before, and as soon as I finished this, I bought Kaaterskill Falls, which was equally wonderful. Both books create a realm for the reader that she enters as an omniscient observer, entirely powerless to prevent what she knows will unfold--no matter the personal cost. Intution is, in the very best sense, an old fashioned novel filled with exquisite writing, heartbreakingly flawed characters, and a world that should matter to us much more than it does.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Best Books (I Read) 2006--Part 1

Although Cormac McCarthy has appeared on everyone's best of for 2006, I really can't abide him. I tried to read All the Pretty Horses, and gave up. It might be a bit sexist, but writing like this always strikes me as "boy stuff." Once in an American Lit grad class, I refused to read half the syllabus because it was chock full of nothing but boy stuff; I came up with an alternate syllabus, which was approved. In this way, I got to read a book that has stuck with me forever, Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World--one of the most unintentionally creepy novels ever written . . . and so much better than a guy living in a beaver dam. Anyway, this is why Mr. McCarthy is not on my two book list.

The two books that stuck with me the most in 2006 were also both very creepy, though intentionally so.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (really a 2005 book) had one of the most powerful narrative voices (Kathy) I've met in a long time. The combination of boarding school genre novel with horrifying science fiction run through a gothic blender was amazing, especially given that I'm not a sci-fi fan. The book seemed drenched in the bone chilling dampness of an English village, where the grey is brightened only by glimpses of some unattainable sun through a slightly brighter grey. Professionally, I've been reading a bunch of stuff on the posthuman as expressed through genomic art, and it's made me reflect back on Ishiguro's accomplishment at getting the reader to think about what it means to be human--and the relationship between soul and creativity--in a world where the human can be and is reproduced for clinical intent. Can art, and real connection, arise out of a replicated vessel? How do we become who we are? I also loved the Orwellian word play (especially in today's political climate) of "donors" and "carers". The agency suggested by the concept of donation is wonderfully at odds with the reality in the book, and the notion of caring--especially as evinced by Kathy--really problematizes the word. There's an opacity and distance to the entire book that is at once comforting (this is not us) and horrifying (this could be us). If you haven't read Never Let Me Go, please do.

Part 2 in the next post.