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.

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.

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.

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.