Category: Fiction

Portnoy’s Complaint

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Roth, Philip. Novels, 1967-1972. New York: The Library of America, 2005.

I always garnered eyebrow raises and smirking lips whenever I mentioned reading Philip Roth. What I didn’t realize at the time was whenever I mentioned Philip Roth everyone’s minds immediately went to “Portnoy’s Complaint.” Having never read this particular novel I didn’t get the joke. Okay. I get it now.

To put it quite simply, Portnoy’s Complaint is the monologue of Alex Portnoy, a psychoanalyst’s patient, as he recounts his childhood, coming of age years and his insatiable appetite for sex (starting with masturbation) that has dominated all his life. The setting of a therapist’s office is brilliant. Where else are you allowed to be candid to the point of shocking? Where else are you encouraged to reveal your deepest and darkest, most vile desires without judgement or arrest? Roth couldn’t have his character admit these activities in any other setting without the admissions becoming pornographic and the one doing the admitting, ridiculously perverted. Alex doesn’t just admit sexual desires, though. He rants about religion, culture, World War II, education, parenting, relationships – all with comic and sarcastic ability.

There were probably over a dozen different sentences that were evocative and startling, but here are two of my favorites involving eating:
“You could even eat off her bathroom floor, if that should ever become necessary” (p 285), “But I don’t want the food from her mouth. I don’t even want the food from my plate – that is the point” (p 287).

BookLust Twist: First, from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Jewish-American Experience” (p 132), and again in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Jersey Guys and Dolls” (p 130).

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

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O’Connor, Flannery. Collected Works. Sally Fitzgerald, ed. Library of America, 1988.

A Good Man is Hard to Find is a compilation of ten short stories by Flannery O’Connor. In order they are “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, “The River”, “The Life You Save might Be Your Own”, “A Stroke of Good Fortune”, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost”, “The Artificial Nigger”, “A Circle in the Fire”, “A Late Encounter with the Enemy”, “Good Country People”, and “The Displaced Person.” All ten stories have three significant things in common: a Southern twang, underlying religious tones and lots of interesting and deep characters with problems, some problems more obvious and serious than others. The title, A Good Man is Hard to Find comes from the first short story in the compilation (my favorite) and is a phrase first uttered by a restaurant owner outside of Atlanta, Georgia. He is discussing a serial killer on a rampage last seen somewhere in Florida. The rest of the stories center mostly in the rural areas surrounding the south, especially Atlanta, Georgia.

Favorite lines: From “A Good Man in Hard to Find” – “the trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled” (p 138).
From “The River” – “He seemed to be mute and patient, like an old sheepdog waiting to be let out” (p 155).
From “The Life You Save Might Be Your Own” – “She was ravenous for a son-in-law” (p 177).
From” “A Stroke of Good Fortune” – “…in a voice of sultry subdued wrath” (p 184. Okay, that wasn’t a complete sentence but I liked the wording. From “Good Country People” – “She took all his shame away and turned it into something useful” (p 276).

Author Fact: Flannery O’Connor continues to inspire people in all forms of artistry. Just Google her name and see the interesting things that pop up.

Book Trivia: A Good Man Is Hard to Find was referenced in an 1994 episode of the Simpsons.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Grit Lit” (p 106).

Nop’s Trials

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McCaig, Donald. Nop’s Trials. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1984.

Nop’s Trials was not what I expected. I was thinking since it was primarily about a Border Collie named Nop that it would be sweet and gentle, like the breed itself. Indeed, the story definitely has warm and tender moments – like when Nop is communicating with other friendly dogs – but there is definitely a harsher side to Nop’s Trials. If you know anything about Border Collies you know they are working dogs, used on farms to corral livestock like sheep or cattle. They are so agile and smart and quick to learn that people have created competitions to showcase their training abilities. These competitions are called “trials” and McCaig uses the word “trials” to steer the reader to this mode of thinking. In reality, Nop’s “trials” stem from the competition but are more of the “trials and tribulations” variety. Because Nop is a prize winner, always taking first place at the trials, a vicious man named Grady Gumm is hired to steal Nop from his owner, farmer Lewis Burkholder. This is to prevent Nop from ever competing again. Grady is an unscrupulous dog owner himself who keeps dogs for fight-to-the-death matches so pretty soon into the story there is a violent scene. I have to admit it shocked me. The good news is that Nop escapes Grady only to bounce from one trial to another. He encounters many walks of life, dog lovers and dog haters alike.
But Nop’s Trials isn’t just about Nop and his misadventures. It also delves into Lewis Burkholder’s life without Nop. It portrays a man as a farmer, a father and a husband as well as a dedicated dog owner who never gives up on Nop. The story examines the relationships between man and land, father and pregnant daughter, father and son-in-law, as well as husband and patient wife. Life’s lessons are masterfully played out while Nop’s fate remains a mystery.

Author Fact: McCaig lives pretty much the same way as Burkholder – on a farm in Virginia with Border Collies.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter obviously called “Great Dogs in Fiction” (p 105).

Mists of Avalon

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Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Mists of Avalon. New York: Del Rey, 1982.

The first time I read The Mists of Avalon I was in high school. We were studying literature written by women; literature that made an impact one way or another. Marion Zimmer Bradley was in the company of women like Margaret Atwood, Robin McKinley and Ursula K. Le Guin. Guess my teacher liked fantasy.

The Mists of Avalon is a retelling of the story of King Arthur, only King Arthur isn’t really a major character. It’s all from the point of view of the women in his life – King Arthur’s sister, mother, grandmother and wife, among others. The battle isn’t over the throne or with warring neighbors, but rather the differing religions. Patriarchal Christianity is locked conflict with Matriarchal Druid magic. It’s an interesting twist of politics and feminist rule. But, Bradley also explores other conflicts in society like fate versus free will, and magical powers versus realism.

Probably the thing that took me by surprise was the subtle use of incest, rape and other sexual situations within the text.

Book Trivia: While The Mists of Avalon has garnered much praise it is also been criticized as being “feminist propaganda.” It is the retelling of King Authur from the perspective of the key women in the story; namely Morgaine, Gwynhefar, Igraine and Viviane.

Author Fact: Marion Zimmer is a New York woman, born in nearby Albany. She died of a heart attack in 1999.

BookLust Twist: Pearl dedicates a whole paragraph to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon in Book Lust in the chapter called “King Arthur” (p 137), although King Arthur plays a very minor part in the story.

Beyond the Bedroom Wall

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Woiwode, Larry. Beyond the Bedroom Wall: a Family Album. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1975.

I was in love with Beyond the Bedroom Wall in the very first chapters. The detail with which Woiwode described the midwest landscape was beautiful. The story opens with Charles Neumiller going home to bury his father. In his mind he pictures every detail of the landscape he is returning to. I also appreciated the reverent description of Charles preparing his father’s body for the funeral. It was painstaking and loving and uncomfortable, just how a burial should be. From there, though, the story fell apart. The next section is told from the point of view of Charles’s son, Martin’s girlfriend, Alpha. I lost interest right around the middle Alpha’s diary, right after she marries Martin. The idea of a story about multi-generational family is one I normally take to. Maybe it was the length and the attention to detail that did me in. Moderation is key and too much of a good thing can be bad, even when it comes to descriptive words on a page.

One of the best lines, “My existence is a narrow line I tread between the person I’m expected to be and the person who hides behind his real self to keep the innermost antiquity of me intact” (p 9). Now, who can’t relate to that?

Author Fact: Woiwode is tenured at SUNY – Binghamton.

Book Trivia: Woiwode published a volume of short stories called Neumiller Stories. I can only assume these short stories are about the same Neumiller family as in Beyond the Bedroom Wall.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Great Plains (the Dakotas)” (p 106).

The Stand

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King, Stephen. The Stand. New York: Signet, 1980.

I think it goes without saying that The Stand is a super-long, super detailed book and the critical attention paid to character development and personality nuances plays a huge roll in its length. The other component to its heft is the fact it takes a long time to build up to the meat of the plot. The Stand contains three books, “Captain Trips”, “On the Border”, and “The Stand”. “Captain Trips” is the introduction to an influenza-like plague and its fast-paced spread of infection. You won’t look at another sneeze or cough the same way again after this. “On the Border” is convergence of the plague survivors; the good and the evil alike. They are all brought together by a shared dream of an elderly women. In the final book, “The Stand” the surviving society must take a stand on where their civilization will end up – on the side of good or evil? It’s drawn out to the point of ad-nauseam but the writing is fantastic.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from The Stand: “Denninger looked and acted like the kind of man who would ride his help and bullyrag them around but lickspittle up to his superiors like an egg-suck dog” (p 59). I just love the word bullyrag and lickspittle isn’t so bad either!

Book Trivia: Many different adaptations of The Stand exist. My favorite is a comic book series.

Author Fact: King used to haunt the halls at the University of Maine, Orono. He wouldn’t remember me but I served him coffee once in the Bear’s Den.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the lengthy chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213). I think Pearl intended The Stand to be horror.

Primary Colors

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Anonymous. Primary Colors: a novel of politics. New York: Warner Books, 1996.

The anonymity of Primary Colors appeared calculated on many different levels. It gave the author the ultimate freedom to insert truth into fiction and fiction into trust and never check the difference. No credentials on the author’s part would guarantee the lack of fact-finding, allowing the author to come as close to the truth as fiction would allow. It is obvious Primary Colors is based upon Bill Clinton and his first presidential campaign in 1992.
Jack Stanton is a young, charismatic southern-state governor with very human vices. He has a weakness for food and pretty women. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Sound like anyone you knew in the 90s? His wife is smart, unflappable; the one one comes up with the soundbites whenever the governor is interviewed. Primary Colors is told from the point of view of his presidential campaign employee, Henry Burton. Henry is idealistic about his candidate and wants to believe he’s a man of his word, but as word and action soon start to contradict Henry must make a choice.

Best quotes: “Never attack an opponent when he is in the process of killing himself” (p 156) and “This was, if you could stand back from it, a wonderfully intricate game” (p 157).

Author Trivia: Joe Klein was adamant he didn’t write Primary Colors even after he was “outed” by a writing analyst. Weird.
Book Trivia: Primary Colors: a novel of politicswas made into a movie in 1998, starring John Travolta – never heard of it.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Politics of Fiction” (p 189).

Last to Die

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Grippando, James. Last to Die. New york: Harper Collins, 2003.

What do you do when your town is rocked by a freak pre-Halloween snow storm that knocks out power for a seriously long time? In my case, read. A lot. I was able to finish Buddenbrooks, read Last to Die cover to cover and start Immortal. But, enough about the great reading opportunity. About Last to Die:

Last to Die is a suspense murder mystery with an interesting plot. It’s not your typical “Victim found murdered so who dunnit?”
Jack Swyteck has the unenviable task of defending his best friend’s brother, thug-turned-angel, Tatum Knight. Knight is suspected of killing a woman, shooting her dead in broad daylight. He admits that the deceased, Sally Fenning, did approach him to play hit man but swears he turned her down. Little brother Theo believes him. It’s when Knight is named in Sally Fenning’s 46 million dollar will that things get complicated. For this is no ordinary bequeathment. While five other individuals are named in the will they are all people Sally hated and only one of them can inherit the money; the last one standing. Soon, as one would expect, people start to die.
What makes Last To Die truly interesting is the cast of characters. Every person has a unique story to tell and a past to hide.

Author Fact: Grippando (like Grisham) was a lawyer first before turning out legal thrillers.

Book Trivia: Last to Die is actually the third Swyteck book. The series starts with The Pardon (1994).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Legal Eagles in Fiction” (p 134).

Altered Carbon

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Morgan, Richard. Altered Carbon. New York: Random House Digital, Inc., 2003.

I think this is the first book I have read that is considered cyberpunk.

In a world where you can pay off a cab driver with the swipe of your thumb, have psychosurgery to get over trauma, and go to places like Mi’s Wharfwhore Warehouse lives former UN Envoy, Takeshi Lev Kovacs. It is a world that centers on a multi-planetary society hundreds of years into the future. Earth is just one location where the plot takes place. In this futuristic environment human souls and personalities can be digitally stored and reloaded into new bodies after bodily death. The only group to not benefit from this cyber-eternity are Catholics. Since they believe in souls going to either Heaven or Hell after death they wouldn’t have anything to pass onto a new body.
To say that the plot is complicated is an understatement. Laurens Bancroft has seemingly committed suicide. All evidence points to this except Bancroft himself doesn’t believe it. He has a new body and limited memory and thinks he has been murdered. He has hired Takeshi Kovacs to solve his mystery.
This passage sums up the entire story: “You’re a lucky man, Kovacs…One hundred and eighty light years from home, wearing another man’s body on a six-week rental agreement. Freighted in to do a job that the local police wouldn’t touch with a riot prod” (p 45).

Something true, even in this world: “The human body is capable of quite remarkable regeneration if stored correctly” (p 243).

My favorite line in the whole book: “I thought I might die, but I hadn’t expected to be bored to death” (p 1,145).
Most profound sentence: “For a moment something ached in my, something so deep-rooted that I knew to tear it out would be to undo the essence of what held me together” (p 1,410).

This time, reading an e-book was a little more frustrating. There were a few spelling and punctuation mistakes and absolutely no copyright information whatsoever.

Author Fact: Morgan is crazy young, born in 1965.

Book Trivia: Altered Carbon won the Philip K. Dick award for best novel in 2003.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called  “Plots for Plotzing” (p 183).

Buddenbrooks

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Mann, Thomas. Buddenbrooks: the Decline of a Family. Translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931.

To sum up Buddenbrooks it is a four-generational story about the downfall of a middle class family. There is no storyline other than following the lives of the Buddenbrooks from 1835 to 1877. The Buddenbrooks are a typical family. They have their problems like everyone else. Faulty business deals, unstable health, failed marriages, partnerships made and broken. My favorite parts involved daughter Tony and her relationships with her family and the men who pursued her. The way her father simultaneously protects her and throws her to the wolves is eyebrow raising, but pretty typical of a father-know-best attitude. It is no secret that this saga doesn’t end well (just look at the title).

Quotes that struck a thought: “Hopes, fears, and ambitions all slumbered, while the rain fell and the autumn wind whistled around gables and street corners” (p 45), “She had never given him either great joy or great sorrow; but she had decorously played her part beside him for many a long year…” (p 68), and “Her face had the expression children wear when one tells them a fairy story about then tactlessly introduce a generalization about conduct and duty – a mixture of embarrassment and impatience, piety and boredom” (p 215).

Author Fact: Buddenbrookswas Mann’s first book, written when he was just 26 years old.

Book Trivia: An adaptation of Buddenbrooks was made into a movie in 2008.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade” (p 175).

Johnny Tremain

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Forbes, Esther. Johnny Tremain: a Story of Boston in Revolt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.

This is another one of those “reread a few times” books. I can remember having a crush on Johnny when I was 13 or 14. I’m not exactly sure why. I don’t think the idea of 18th century garb was what got me. But, there was definitely something about goody boy Johnny with his artisan ego that appealed to me.

Johnny Tremain may not be the most creative of titles for Esther Forbes’s John Newbery Medal award-winning book, but it’s most appropriate as it tells the story of two years in the life of fourteen-year-old Johnny Tremain. Johnny is one of several silversmith apprentices living with the Lapham family in Boston, Massachusetts. The year is 1773 and silversmiths are in high demand. Johnny is the most gifted artisan for someone so young and he knows it. The other apprentices are jealous until one day there is an accident and Johnny’s right hand is badly maimed by molten silver. Ultimately, he loses his place with the Laphams and must find other means of employment. It isn’t long before Johnny finds a second calling. He is good with horses and becomes a dispatch rider for the Committee of Public Safety. This job brings him into the company of important men like Samuel Adams and John Hancock. It is at this point where famous events in history like the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Lexington are woven into Johnny’s story. Fact and fiction are seamless.

Favorite lines: “Human relations never seem to stand completely still” (p 173) and “Green with spring, dreaming of the future yet wet with blood” (p 255).

Author Fact: Forbes was a Massachusetts woman.

Book Trivia: Johnny Tremain won the Newbery Medal in 1944.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction for Kids of All Ages” (p 114).

Spy Trap

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Packard, Edward. Choose Your Own Adventure: Spy Trap. New York: Bantam Books, 1980.

These Choose Your Own Adventure books are really fun. My particular adventure, Spy Trap by Edward Packard puts you, the reader, in the story as a secret agent for the government. You are asked to follow a tremendous secret that would rock the marine biology world. Humback whales are disappearing and you think you have discovered where they are going through analyzing their song. These whales can communicate! All along the story there are choices that you must make. Make the wrong choice and you end the story (and often times, your life). Make the right choice and you continue on your adventure and get to live on. Sometimes the endings are death while others are implied with a sentence that trails off… Your choices could be as simple as a right or left at the fork in the road or as complicated as asking if you trust your superiors to tell them all (if so, turn to page 89) or do you NOT trust them and you keep quiet (turn to page 95)? Every decision is up to you and because of the number of decisions you can make throughout the story there are countless variations of the same story. In my version I took risks left and right and managed to live to see a happy ending. My second time through I wasn’t so lucky. It’s implied I died at sea. So sad.

Author Fact: Edward Packard created this second-person storytelling idea. Very cool.

BookLust Twist: While not mentioned in the index The Choose Your Own Adventure series is in Book Lust on page 190 in the chapter called “The Postmodern Condition.”

October ’11 was…

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What do you get when you add a vacation to two road trips and a freak snow storm in which I lose electricity for two days? Answer – a boat load of books read in one month; so many books that I haven’t been able to review them all.

In the first week of October I went home. As past posts can tell you I like nothing more than reading on an island, especially one on the tail end of a hurricane. There is something so book-worthy about a rain soaked afternoon or two by the raging ocean…
On Monhegan I was able to read:

  • Anil’s Ghost by Michael Onjaatje (e-book),
  • Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (stolen from my childhood bookcase),
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (stolen from my sister’s childhood bookcase)
  • Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (another e-book) and part of
  • The Stand by Stephen King

On a road trip to New York (to see Natalie Merchant ~ more on that on the Other Side) I was able to finish

  • The Stand by Stephen King and
  • Spy Trap by Edward Packard and
  • Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

I started reading Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann when I forgot Immortality by Milan Kundera at work. I finished both those books and Last to Die by James Grippando during the freak snow storm/power outage (and to think people wanted me to come out with them because they had cable!!). As long as I candles and blankets I was in heaven.
But, probably the hardest book to get through was Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (another e-book). I started Altered Carbon the first week of October and slogged through it until October 27th. Talk about a complicated story! I am struggling with the review because the plot was so intense.

So, there it is. Nearly a dozen books for the month of October. True, four of those books were for kids (Phantom Tollbooth, Johnny Tremain, Spy Trap and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) but Altered Carbon, Last To Die and Buddenbrooks were “adult” enough to offset the kiddie stuff.

What’s in store for November? Well, considering I have no trips to Monhegan (or anywhere for that matter), Thanksgiving is this month, and we have a power back, I have no idea. 🙂

Phantom Tollbooth

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Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth. New York: Random House, 1972.

I loved this book as a kid. I’m glad it was on the list because I welcomed the opportunity to reread it. This book should appeal to all sorts of people. The wordsmiths, the children, the people who take puns to a whole new level…
Milo is one bored kid. He doesn’t find excitement in anything that he does. He sort of has this “oh well” attitude about his life. It isn’t until he comes across a package then his world completely changes. Milo discovers he has been sent a mysterious tollbooth. When he drives his car through it he is transported to the Kingdom of Wisdom. From there he has many adventures that allow Norton to play on English language idioms. For example, one of Milo’s companions is a watchdog named Tock. WATCHdog, get it? Also, there is a banquet where the diners eat words. But, my favorite concept is the museum of sound. Imagine being able to listen to the thunder and lightning from the night Ben Franklin flew his kite? Or the mutterings of Johann Sebastian Bach as he composed? The scritch of Edgar Allan Poe’s ink as he wrote my favorite poem, “Lenore”?

There were literally hundreds of lines I could have quoted as funny or thought provoking but here are a few of my favorites: “Expectations is the place you must always go before you get to go where you’re going: (p 19) and “…but it’s just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn’t there as it is to live in one place where you don’t see is” (p 120).

Great scene:
”
“I didn’t know I was going to have to eat my words,” objected Milo.
“Of course, of course, everyone here does,” the king grunted. “You should have made a tastier speech”
” (p 88).

Author Fact: Norton Juster is multi-talented. He is also an architect as well as an author.
Something of a side note: Norton had Jules Feiffer illustrate The Phantom Tollbooth. In searching for what Norton has been up to I discovered he had Jules Feiffer also illustrate his most recent book, The Odious Ogre. Too cool.

Book Trivia: The Phantom Tollbooth became a movie in 1970. Interesting. I’ll have to put it on my list!

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Not Only For Kids: Fantasies for Grown-Ups” (p 175). This I would definitely have to agree with. I had forgotten how much fun this book really, really was.

Anil’s Ghost

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Ondaatje, Michael. Anil’s Ghost. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. EPUB file.

Disclaimer: This was my first electronic book. I am trying very hard to trust that everything that was in the published hardcopy was present in the e-book version. I have to believe I didn’t miss out on something by reading this on an iPad.

Anil’s Ghost is the clever weaving of fact and fiction. In the mid-1980s Sri Lanka was in a state of civil unrest. It went beyond a north versus south conflict and involved illegal government activity. Anil’s Ghost is the fictional account set in the middle of a political and historical truth.
Anil Tissera is a forensic anthropologist returning to Sri Lanka after a fifteen year absence.  As part of a human rights organization her obligation to investigate and ultimately uncover the truth about ethnic and religious killings occurring during the country’s civil war. Her entire attention remains focussed on one particular skeleton she nicknames “Sailor.” His remains have been found in an ancient burial ground and yet anthropologically he is considered a contemporary.  Upon arriving in Sri Lanka she becomes paired with man she doesn’t know if she can trust. Sarath is quiet and keeps many secrets. What is amazing about Anil’s Ghost is the lush language and the intricate character development. Each chapter is dedicated to the unfolding of someone’s life, past and present. This technique brings a fullness to the storyline. In the end you feel as if every character has purpose to the plot.

Most interesting – Anil. Hands down. I don’t really understand her obsession with changing her name. She actually “buys” one of her brother’s names because he has more than one. The way she buys this name is not explicitly spelled out, but it seems ominous.

Favorite lines: “She was working with a man who was efficient in his privacy, who would never unknot himself for anyone” (p 60), “She would not step back from her fury” (p 116), and “One can die from private woes as easily as from public ones” (p 237).

Line that gave me pause: “They had both hoped for a seven-bangled night” (p 118).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the simple chapter called “Canadian Fiction” (p 51) and more interestingly from More Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in “It Was a Dark and Stormy Novel” (p 129), and again in the chapter called “Sri Lanka: Exotic and Troubled (p 213).