Category: BookLust II

Deafening

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Itani, Frances. Deafening. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003.

This story is filled with such tragedy. In Part I Grania O’Neill is just five years old when she loses her hearing after a bout with scarlet fever. Her family is desperate to make her normal, to help her fit in the the hearing world. Her grandmother and sister devote themselves to helping her cope. When it is obvious she can’t, Grania, at nine years old, is sent away to a boarding school for the deaf. Part II covers one year. The year is 1915 and Grania is now 19 and working at Gibson Hospital. She meets and marries a hearing man, Jim Lloyd. In Part III Jim has gone to help in the war effort as a medic. The violence he encounters at this time assaults his senses to the core, but it is the thought of Grania and their love that sustains him. Part IIII (that is deliberate) covers 1917 – 1918. Jim has been gone for two years and Grania remains vigilant for his letters and watchful of the changing war efforts. The book ends with Part V, 1919 and the end of the war.  So much has changed during this time. So many people have died and relationships are forever changed. I won’t spoil the end except to say it was beautifully written. A book I couldn’t put down.

Telling lines, “What she can’t see she can’t be expected to understand” (p 14), “Words fly through the air and fall, static and dead” (p 43), “He had never known a language that so thoroughly encompassed love” (p 132), and “War ground on like the headless, thoughtless monster that could not be stopped” (p 237).

Reason read: October is National Protect Your Hearing Month.

Book trivia: Deafening was written as a tribute to Itani’s grandmother who was became deaf at 18 months.

Author fact: Deafening is Frances Itani’s first book.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Other Peoples Shoes” (p 182).

Wolves of Willoughby Chase

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Aiken, Joan. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. New York: Dell Yearling, 1962.

The premise of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is that danger lurks outside the walls of Willoughby Chase in the form of wolves, but it also lurks within in the form of an wicked governess, a different kind of wolf. After Bonnie’s parents depart for a trip Bonnie and her cousin Sylvia are left alone with Miss Slighcarp, a vicious woman determined to make their lives a living hell. A once warm and happy home is turned into a dirty, cold prison. Just when Bonnie and her cousin think it can’t get any worse they are sent off to an orphanage. It takes some trickery and a lot of help from outside friends for the two cousins to make their escape.
As an aside, I have never lived in an area overrun with any dangerous wild animal. Bonnie’s journey to Willoughby Chase is harrowing. The threat of attack by wolves is constant and astounding, especially when one is able to get on the train through an open window.

Even though this was geared towards children I was impressed with vocabulary. there were even a few words I had to look up: crenelated, oubliette and pelisse.

Quotes I liked, “She was cordially hated by the whole school” (p 113).

Reason read: Joan Aiken was born in September.

Author fact: Aiken won the Lewis Carroll award for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

Book trivia: On the edition I read Edward Gorey drew the cover illustration.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter “Best for Teens” (p 21).

City in the Sky

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Glanz, James and Eric Lipton. City in the Sky: the Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2003.

Because City in the Sky was written just two short years after the horrific events of September 11, 2001 and the spectacular collapse of the World Trade Center towers it is easy to accuse Glanz and Lipton of jumping on the 9/11 bandwagon and capitalizing on an unprecedented tragedy. But, the events of 9/11/2001, specifically the seemingly impossible collapse of the towers doesn’t appear in the narrative until the very end – practically the last chapter. Instead, Glanz and Lipton start from the very beginning. They present the key players and historical events in a tightly written account of how the World Trade Center went from an ambitious idea to an iconic city in the sky. To read City in the Sky is to witness the conception, birth, life and ultimate death of a New York City and world icon. Just like the Rockefeller ancestors before him, David Rockefeller harnessed his ambition and went head to head with shop keepers, politicians and naysayers to build an architectural masterpiece.

Reason read: September 11th, 2001. Need I say more?

As an aside – I had to ask my cousin for clarification on this since I saw the name “Boody” several times in the index. He confirmed that my father’s second cousin was Irving Rickerson Boody. Rick’s father was Irving. The connection to the World Trade Center? Irving (senior) founded the first company to occupy the World Trade Center. Hmmmm.

Quotes that stuck with me, “But common sense does not always prevail in New york” (p 47).

Book trivia: City in the Sky includes some great photos, including one of the directory for the WTC. Boody was on the 11th floor in suite # 1103.

Authors fact: Glanz and Lipton both worked for the New York Times at the time City in the Sky was published.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Building Blocks” (p 37).

Child That Books Built

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Spufford, Francis. The Child That Books Built: a Life in Reading. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002.

The Child That Books Built is an explanation for an addiction. Francis Spufford’s addiction. Right up front Spufford admits to his insatiable need to read, starting when he was a young child. He would explain his relationships with books as such, “Reading catatonically wasn’t something I chose to do…the stopping my ears with fiction was non-negotiable” (p 2). Once he gets his explanations out of the way he goes on to explain how all the reading he had done as a child shaped his world as an adult. Drawing on psychology and philosophy to make his points Spufford connects the world of Narnia to that of religious adoration; the Little House on the Prairie to that of family and community.

Quote that caught me off guard for its timing: “No addiction is ever explained by examining the drug. the drug didn’t cause the need. A tour of a brewery won’t explain why somebody became an alcoholic” (p 11). Wow. Wow. Wow.

Reason read: The Library of Congress National Book Festival is in September. This year it is the weekend of the 21st.

Author fact: Spufford also wrote I May Be Some Time for which he won the Sunday times Young Writer award in 1997.

Book trivia: Despite being short (only 210 pages) this book packs a punch. Be prepared.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Books About Books” (p ) and from More Book Lust in the introduction (p ix).

Old Friends

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Kidder, Tracy. Old Friends. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.

There are many reviews about Old Friends that start off with, “this was hard to read.” I have to wonder how many of those reviewers are administrators at retirement/nursing/convalescent homes. Do they see their own facilities as described by Kidder? It is easy to flash back to the experiences of a loved one in such a place. My own grandparents lingered in nursing homes until their deaths. I can remember the overwhelming smell of antiseptic and urine; my father reading an activity board and commenting on a “mystery” ride. “Just don’t get into any any black, squared vehicles” he quipped. Funny, But not. Kidder’s account of life inside Linda Manor is frank and unflinching. He also writes with a profound sensitivity, introducing patients as people with past lives and present feelings. They aren’t subjects used to illustrate a point. You feel for these people because their character development is as fleshed out as if it were a fictional account. It’s beautiful in a haunting way.

Quote that struck me, “People entering nursing homes have, for the most part, already lost control over their lives” (p 23).

Reason read: September is National Aging Month

Author fact: Kidder spent a year researching life at Linda Manor, even checking himself in as a resident.

Book trivia: There is a rumor that Kidder’s father is described in this book. I didn’t investigate to confirm or deny.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 300s” (p 67).

Diving Bell and the Butterfly

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Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

My father died of a massive stroke. When I first opened Bauby’s book I thought I knew what the life of a stroke survivor would be about. I was wrong.

Jean-Dominique Bauby was 43 years old when he was the victim of a rare kind of stroke that occurs in the brain stem. While he survives the event he is basically a prisoner in his own body. His body was completely paralyzed to the point where he could only move one eyelid. From this meager movement he learned to communicate with others and, amazingly, write this memoir. The title of the book comes from Bauby’s description of his condition. While his body felt as weighted down as a diving bell sinking in the sea, his mind was as free as a butterfly floating on the breeze.
There is a sense of stoic realism in Bauby’s tone and while it is impossible to believe, there is also a touch of humor in Bauby’s heartbreaking story. When he talks of everyone gathering for physical therapy and those same patients being uncomfortable with his plight. He describes their eyes skidding away from him as “…feeling the sudden need to study the ceiling smoke detector. The “tourist” must be very worried about fire” (p 33).

Other quotes that grabbed me: “She would take a vacation from life for five minutes or several hours” (p 67) and “I can weep discreetly. People think my eye is watering” (p 78).

As an aside, Bauby’s hospital room was #119. Go listen to Natalie Merchant’s “Verdi Cries.” The opening lyric is “The man in 119 takes his tea all alone.” I wonder what Natalie would have thought about this man in 119?

Reason read: There is a day in August when you are supposed to acknowledge guilt. I can’t remember where I learned this but I am reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly because it definitely makes me feel guilty.

Author fact: Jean-Dominique Bauby died just two short days after the French publication of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Did he have any idea how many people he would touch with his memoir?

Book trivia: While The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is short, less than 150 pages, it is huge on emotion. It has also been made into a movie. Now, there’s a tear jerker!

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Other People’s Shoes” (p 181).

Fixer

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Sacco, Joe. The Fixer. Quebec: Drawn & Quarterly, 2003.

Have you ever wondered how journalists get such up close and personal information about foreign affairs? How they get behind enemy lines to get the real scoop? This is the story of Neven, the sketchy Serbian “fixer” who, for a price, can be hired to take war correspondents behind the scenes. Joe Sacco befriends this fixer, Neven. Sacco tells his story in a short graphic “novella,” bouncing back and forth between the early 1990s and 2001 to bring to light the Balkan conflict. Neven helps Sacco paint a grim picture of the bloodthirsty warlords who ran the country and how the Bosnia government responded. Even though Neven was a mastermind at manipulating Sacco (and his wallet) they developed a friendship.

Best zingers, “Pussy is not soap” (p 8). True. “But you can’t drink bananas” (p 9). Again, true. “I must admit that I haven’t got a favorite hand-to-hand weapon” (p 33). Me neither.

Reason read: July is the best time to visit Bosnia…or not.

Author fact: Sacco is a pretty humble guy. This time, in The Fixer he makes himself out to be a meek journalist who can’t say no.

Book trivia: I could call this a graphic novella because it is a mere 106 pages.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Graphica” (p 104).

A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies: stories

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Murray, John. A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies: Stories. New York: Perennial, 2004.

“A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies” is a psychological tragedy. You cannot help but feel sorry for the first person protagonist as he slowly loses his grip on his once secure life. As a plastic surgeon married to a neurosurgeon twenty years his junior he has turned to the bottle to reconcile the memory of the death of his sister, his grandfather’s suicide brought about by mental illness, his wife’s miscarriage and his own handed-down obsession with butterflies.

“Watson and the Shark” is a different kind of tragedy. A doctor volunteering in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is witness to the brutal injuries a boy suffers at the hands of machete-mad soldiers. He begins to operate on the critically wounded boy when hundreds of other severely wounded men,  women and children are brought into his operating tent. In the beginning of the story the narrator feels like god, controlling the lives of the mangled patients under his knife. He has the power to stitch them together and potentially give them their life back. But, as he watches the multitude of mutilated suffer and die he begins to feel a hopelessness creep in.

Favorite lines, “She has buried herself so far in her knowledge of details that she cannot properly feel what is happening in her own life” (p 73).

Reason read: June is still short story month and this is my last set of short stories.

Author fact: A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies in John Murray’s debut collection of short stories.

Book trivia: There are eight stories that make up A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies but I am only reading two of them.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 103).

interpreter of maladies

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Lahiri, Jhumpa. interpreter of maladies. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999.

“Interpreter of Maladies” is all about human nature and how perceptions can change in the blink of an eye. Mr. Kapasi is a Indian tour guide with a second job as a interpreter for a medical center. While chauffeuring a family of Americans around he shares this information and explains that since he is multilingual he is able to interpret the patient’s malady to the doctor and the doctor’s remedy back to the patient. He has never thought about this occupation as being anything more than that until the mother of the family compliments him and shows an interest in his work. Mr Kapasi is at first flattered and his head soon fills with a fantasy involving the mother. This fantasy grows until she shares a terrible secret with him. Everything changes. The woman he once admired and fantasized about is nothing more than a dumb tourist.

“A Temporary Matter” is such a sad story! Plain and simple it’s about a marriage. Their relationship is young, only four years old, but it is damaged by the stillbirth of their first child. As with any couple devastated by the loss of a child, they each handle the tragedy differently. The one thing they have in common is a mutual pulling away from one another. When the electric company sends notice that their electricity will be cut for one hour each night for five days they look forward to the darkness; of not being able to see one another. It’s during this dark period that secrets come out and it seems like their relationship can be turned around.

Reason read: June is National Short Story Month

Author fact: Lahiri has also written a book, The Namesake, that was made into a movie.

Book trivia: Interpreter of Maladies has won a Pulitzer, a PEN/Hemingway, a New Yorker Debut and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 103).

In the Land of Men

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Nelson, Antonya. In the Land of Men: Stories. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1992.

“In the Land of Men” is a twelve page enormously powerful tale. What would you do if you lost your mother to cancer and left you alone with a father and three teenage brothers; left you living “in the land of men?” What would you do if said brothers, Les, Sam & Donald, find and kidnap your rapist? He’s in the trunk of the family car and their only question to you is, what do you want to do? The story leaves you hanging, holding your breath.

“Goodbye Midwest” could also have been called “Goodbye Roxanne.” It’s the story of an adult woman looking back on a lost friendship from childhood. Best friends from middle school, Roxanne was her opposite in everything. Why they were even friends in the first place is a mystery…but that’s the beauty of coming of age. Everything is a mystery.

Quote I liked, ” She wants to be young, off balance, teetering purposefully next to her husband, drinking something serious like bourbon” ( 120).

Reason read: June is short story month. Still.

Book trivia: In the Land of Men is comprised of fourteen short stories of which I only read two. But, I do have other Nelson books to read on the challenge list.

Author fact: Antonya Nelson’s stories have appeared in Playboy.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p ).

Servants of the Map

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Barrett, Andrea. Servants of the Map. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.

“Servants of the Map”
Max Vigne is an English Civil Junior Sub-Assistant surveyor in the Himalayas away from his wife and young family. As a member of the surveying party, through letters he describes his daily existence, leaving out the hardships and cruelties (like finding the body of a man who apparently died of the elements). Through those same letters the reader is exposed to Max’s inability to synthesize with this surroundings. Being from England he is embarrassed by his lily-white skin while everyone else on the team is dark and tanned. The differences go deeper than skin and culture. Max is drawn to the natural world, wanting to explore it more than reconnect with his marriage and life back home.

“The Cure”
It is December 1905 in the Adirondacks. Elizabeth and Andrew run a private home for health-seekers. They have nine boarders at the moment and one, Mr. Martin Sawyer, is dying. Elizabeth thinks her husband hides whenever someone is sick but really he is channeling the healing powers of Nora Kynd. Andrew believes in the healing qualities of magnets. They “shift the shape of the aura surrounding each person into a new and more healthful alignment” (p 203). On Nora’s birthday he honors her spirit by placing magnets in the chimney, hoping it will help Mr. Sawyer.
There are a lot of other characters to keep track of. Here are just a few:

  • Livvie and Rosellen – they help Elizabeth run the house
  • Mrs Temple – the nurse who left three days earlier
  • Dorrie and Emeline – they also run private homes for health-seekers
  • Bessie Brennan – Dorrie’s mother. She was the first to rent a room to a sick stranger
  • Mr. Woodruff – a Baltimore banker who roomed with Bessie
  • Olive – Bessie’s cousin
  • Aaron Brown – a boarder who died
  • Mr. Davis – another boarder
  • Mr. Cameron – an astronomy teacher from Connecticut, also a boarder
  • Nora Kynd – she taught Elizabeth, Dorrie and Emeline their trade. She came from Detroit, Michigan and has passed away.

Barrett takes the time to jump back to Nora Kynd’s story – how she fled to America from Ireland; how she was separated from her only living relatives, her two younger brothers; how she befriended a healer by the name of Fanny McCloud who taught her everything she knew; how she came to the Adirondacks. Like “Servants of the Map” this story focuses on science, this time trying to cure people of consumption or tuberculosis.

Line I liked, “Trying to stay in touch without touch; how that effort changes us” (p 29).

Reason read: June is short story month and so the short stories continue.

Author fact: Barrett was born in Boston.

Book trivia: Servants of the Map was nominated for a Pulitzer. Very cool.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Fear of Flying

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Jong, Erica. Fear of Flying. New York: Signet, 1973.

I think I started this book about eight different times, starting when I was 16 or 17. As a kid I always misunderstood the cover art – a naked woman under an unzipped… something. I thought she was in a body bag which, now that I think about it, doesn’t really make sense because if that were the case, she would have been sideways in the bag. Therefore she shouldn’t fit. Having no idea what the book was actually about back then I didn’t know it was a man’s unzipped fly. Now I say, “but of course!” The takeaway from Jong’s Fear of Flying is the underlying message of freedom (especially freedom from fear). To fly is to be free and this is one woman’s story about wanting that ability to become unfettered and free. Her sexuality and psychology are just metaphors for the deeper meaning of feminism and a woman taking control of her life…like a man. Yes, there is sex and lots of it but that’s not what Fear of Flying is all about.

Favorite lines, “A little girl who was neither bitchy nor mealy-mouthed because she didn’t hate her mother or herself” (p 46),

Reason read: May is considered the “Birds and Bees” month so let’s talk about sex.

Author fact: Erica Jong has a sexy website here. I love the colors and the use of multimedia – very eye catching.

Book trivia: According to Jong’s website, Fear of Flying was her first published book.

Reason read: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I am Woman – Hear Me Roar” (p 120).

In the Lake of the Woods

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O’Brien, Tim. In the Lake of the Woods. Read by L.J. Ganser. Grand Haven, Michigan: Brilliance Audio, 2011.

This is many different stories rolled into one. It is the story of an abused childhood. It is a vicious Vietnam War documentary. It is a quiet mystery. It is a love-with-abandon story and a tangled tragedy. John Wade is an Vietnam vet who lost the election for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The campaign was a complete disaster prompting John to take his wife, Kathy, to a secluded cabin in Lake of the Woods, Minnesota, so that he might lick his wounds in private. After a week away from the world Kathy inexplicably disappears. Using flashbacks to John’s childhood, college days, tour in Vietnam & relationship with Kathy, John’s psychological history is revealed. As a young child his father taunted him about his weight, teased him relentlessly about his obsession with magic. John learned at an early age to hide his feelings by imagining mirrors in his head, mirrors that reflected the world he wanted to live in and how he wanted people to treat him. In college his obsession with his future wife Kathy was like a sickness. He would spy on her incessantly, claiming he loved her too much to leave her alone. He would not spend hours doing this, but entire days. Then there was Vietnam. His enduring love of magic prompted the soldiers in his company to nickname him “Sorcerer.” This, along with the mirrors still in his head, allowed John to become someone else during the atrocities of war. He believed his violent actions were not his own because they belonged to Sorcerer. Throughout dating in college and during the political campaign as man and wife Kathy and John’s relationship was never on the same page. He spied. She needed space. She wanted children but when she became pregnant he convinced her to abort. He loved the campaign trail. She wanted off it. But did that mean John had something to do with her disappearance? O’Brien introduces a kernel of doubt when he describes Kathy lost in the maze of rivers beyond Lake of the Woods. The boat is missing after all…

My one complaint? The “evidence” involving quotes from wars other than Vietnam. I know why O’Brien did it. He wanted to show that the atrocities of war were not limited to the actions of soldiers involved in the My Lai massacre. It was overkill (pardon the pun).

Reason read: Minnesota become a state in May.

Book trivia: I am shocked this has never been made into a movie. Really. Another piece of trivia – this is the equivalent of an ear worm. I haven’t stopped pondering the possibilities since.

Author fact: There are a few autobiographical elements to In the Lake of the Woods.

BookLust Twist: You can always tell when Pearl loves a book. She either mentions it a few times in one Lust book or she mentions it in all of them. In this case In the Lake of the Woods was found in Book Lust in the chapter called “Vietnam” (p 238), twice in More book Lust in the chapters “Big Ten Country: the Literary Midwest (Minnesota)” (p 28) and “It was a Dark and Stormy Novel (p 128), and once in Book Lust To Go in the chapter “Vietnam” (p 246). Four mentions!

Ariel

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Plath, Sylvia. Ariel: the Restored Edition.New York: Harper Perennial, 2004.

Sylvia Plath wrote with such raw energy and emotion. Her essence is on every page, in every word. Nowhere is that more plain to see than in the collected poems in Ariel. As the last collection of poetry written before her death it is riddled with references to death. That is to be expected from one suffering from depression, on the wrong kind of medicine, and already an attempted suicide survivor. It’s as if death is stalking her, wooing her (case in point: the last line of “Death & Co” is “somebody is done for” (p 36) and “Dying is an art…I do it exceptionally well” (p 15). I chose to read Ariel: the Restored Edition and now that I’ve thought about it I don’t think it’s the version Pearl was referring to (see BookLust Twist). Oh well.

Favorite lines – the first being from Path’s daughter, Frieda, in the foreword, “The manuscript was digging up everything that must be shed in order to move on” (p xiv – xv).

Reason read: Although we are getting to the end of the month April is still National Poetry Month.

Author fact: Everyone knows a little something about Sylvia Plath (Smith College, Ted Hughes, suicide, etc), but what I recently learned was that she was born in Boston.

Book trivia: If you haven’t read Ariel I would suggest skipping the version Ted Hughes introduced to the world and pick up the one his daughter, Frieda Hughes, wrote the foreword for, Ariel: the Restored Edition. It is far more informative.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” (p 237). Oddly enough, Ariel is not a recommendation by Pearl. She merely uses it as an example of a recognizable cover when discussing Alan Powers’s book Front Cover: Great Book Jacket and Cover Design.

Author, Author

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Lodge, David. Author, Author. Narrated by Christopher Kay. New York: Recorded Books, LLC, 2005

This was a long listen! 14 cds equaling almost 17 hours. If you want to do the math that meant 51 trips to and from work in order to finish it. While the print version is under 400 pages the audio seemed much longer. Because Lodge’s writing is rambling I found myself getting distracted and confused about what was happening when.  Author, Author is a biography that focuses mainly on Henry James’s relationships with Constance Fenimore Woolsen, the granddaughter of James Fenimore Cooper and with fellow author/friend George Du Maurier and the “horrible opening night” of his play “Guy Domville.” The best part of the story was Henry’s relationship with Constance Fenimore Woolsen (fondly known as Fenimore throughout the book). James struggles to have a relationship with her that is private yet meaningful.

Confessional – I swapped this out for another audio book as soon as the new one became available.

Reason read: Henry James was born in April and so to celebrate his birth I am listening to Author, Author.

Author fact: Lodge’s body of work is quite impressive. I have a few more of his titles on my challenge list.

Book trivia: The audio version of Author, Author is read by Christopher Kay.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Literary Lives: the Americans” (p 144).