Hiding Place

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Azzopardi, Trezza. The Hiding Place. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.

    I have to start by saying I would love to meet William Gedney just to ask him about the photograph on the cover of The Hiding Place. I guess Francine Kass (who designed the cover) would be more appropriate to ask of these questions. Nevertheless, here are the things I would ask of either:

    1. The girls are in the kitchen obviously paring something (apples? potatoes?). Why do they all have one leg up; why are they standing like storks?
    2. The painting of the Last Supper – was that meant to be symbolic since the girls are standing in a kitchen?
    3. There is a fourth pair of feet and evidence of a little knee behind the child leaning on the refrigerator. Who is she and why isn’t she more visible? I took this to be Dolores, the narrator of The Hiding Place. She is the youngest daughter and paid attention to the least. More symbolism?

    The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi is sad, sad, sad. Dolores Gauci is the youngest of six daughters born to Maltese immigrants Frankie and Mary. Her view on the world is both tragic and innocent. She is at once stoic and childish; solemn and naive. What Dolores sees is a family slowly dismantled by a gambling and always losing father. As her siblings are bartered away Dolores must face a grim childhood with fewer and fewer protections as even her mother’s will to survive slips away. Serving as the backdrop for the Gauci family is the 1960s landscape of Cardiff, Wales, an immigration town populated with citizens hardened enough to do just about anything to survive.

    Favorite lines: “Her fury travels down the spoon and into Luca’s dinner. I am breast-fed: I get rage straight from the source” (p 22), “As with all truth, there is another version” (p 75), and “She’ll be scrubbing the steps again, probably – it’s a job best done in anger” (p 126).

    BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter, “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123).

    Company of Three

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    O’Connor, Varley. Company of Three. Chapel hill: Algonquin Books, 2003.

    There is mystery that surrounds Company of Three. At face value it is the story of three actors struggling to see their name in lights on Broadway. New york City in the 1970s is a hub for creative activity such as dance and the theater and Robert, Patrick and Irene stand in the spotlight, ready as ever for their close ups. Company of Three follows their successes, their failures, their struggles. It examines their friendships and love affairs and what they mean to one another. Ultimately, it is the story of how far they would go for their careers and for each other.

    In truth, it is that friendship that has me scratching my head. At one point in the story the three friends vow to always be there for one another and someday run a theater together. They even seal the deal in blood. Yet, despite their close bond and the pact they have made, Patrick keeps some very dark secrets from his friends. Curiously, he lies continuously so his connection to Robert and Irene is questionable.

    Best quote (and why I think people take up acting): “Acting was not the departure from myself that I thought it would be, but rather a journey into the very parts of myself I thought I would rescue me from” (p 57).

    BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “All the World’s a Stage” (p 7).

    Why Things Bite Back

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    Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

    I first became interested in Why Things Bite Back when I thought of the title in relation to health and flu vaccinations. The more aggressively we try to fight the ills of the seasonal flu the more resilient the virus gets.  Now with the vast-reaching and rapid spread of the H1N1 virus Why Things Bite Back seems even more telling.

    Edward Tenner takes an in-depth look at the technology that first set out to make our lives easier, more convenient, and faster: technologies that include chemistry, invention, ingenuity and just plain luck. The advances science and medicine don’t come without fault and failure. It’s these drawbacks that Tenner describes as “revenges.” Seat belts that save adults but kill children, for example. The unexpected thrill to Tenner’s book is that it isn’t dry and didactic. There is actual humor hidden in the irony.

    My favorite line (for obvious reasons), “…what are we to make of stepping from office elevators into our cars and driving to health clubs to use treadmills (a feature of nineteenth-century prisons)…” (p 10).

    BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 300s” (p 66).

    Fire Next Time

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    Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963.

    The Fire Next Time is a slim yet powerful 120 pages. Baldwin does not waste a single page on empty words or phrases. Every sentence is an argument for America to beware of “the fire next time.” He implores the reader to take a page from history and not turn a blind eye to it; we must change the course of racial inequality in order to survive. Even though The Fire Next Time was published not even ten years after the integration of Little Rock’s (Arkansas) Central High Baldwin’s fiery words hold true today.

    The title, The Fire Next Time, is drawn from a “recreation of the Bible in a slave song” – ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time’ (p 120), yet there are several examples of such warning scattered throughout the entire book. This warning is in a couple of my favorite quotes.

    “But, in the end, it is the threat of universal extinction hanging over all the world today that changes, totally and forever, the nature of reality and brings into devastating question the true meaning of man’s history” (p 71), and “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets ans one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time” (p 105).

    BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two chapters: “African American Fiction: He Say (p 10), even though it isn’t fiction, and again in the chapter “Essaying Essays” (p 81).

    February ’10 is…

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    Off the top of my head, I’m not sure what to call February besides another cold, cold month. I could get all giddy and self-absorbed in the fact that it’s my birth month (so maybe I should be reading something by me – ha), but that doesn’t seem to be all that productive. Besides, my published work would take all of two minutes to read! February is a visit with Mr. Richard Marx II (formally known as Mr. Bubblegum). We have a date in three weeks. February is more time with Dr. Ruth. No offense, but after this month I would like to think I’m on the road to recovery and will not need so much attention in that area in the future. I have started training for Just ‘Cause and have moved my feet over 50 miles so far.

    I should point out the obvious. This is late. February has also started out as my month to be overextended in a big way. Not sure if that’s a good thing.

    For books it has been and will be:

    • Company of Three by Varley O’Connor ~ in honor of February being National Theater Month. Okay, so if you can’t get there, read about it!
    • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin ~ in honor of Black History Month
    • Warriors Don’t Cry: a Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High by Melba Patillo Beals ~ in honor of Civil Rights month
    • Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder ~ in honor of medical workers in Haiti right now.
    • Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences by Edward Tenner ~in honor of National Science month.

    There is a rumor of another LibraryThing Early Review book. The publisher was nice enough to send me a thank you for reviewing the book, but until I actually have it in my hand I won’t be mentioning it here.

    Little Friend

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    Tartt, Donna. The Little Friend. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

    In a nutshell The Little Friend is about Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, a twelve-year-old girl who decides she simply must solve the mystery of who killed her nine-year-old brother when she was just an infant. All Harriet knows of the incident is that little Robin was found hung from a tree on Mother’s Day and nobody knew why. During her attempts to solve the mystery Harriet and her sidekick Hely get themselves into troubles far more adult than their years. Larger Mississippi-southern issues such as poverty and prejudice encircle  more complicated crimes such as deception, drugs, and death.

    I love the way Donna Tartt writes, but was confused by plot. 555 is a long time to be reading about a mystery that doesn’t really get solved. The ambiguous ending is ripe for a sequel. Yet, there are seemingly unimportant characters that float in and out of the plot without an apparent role in the story (like Harriet’s sister Allison). Could they come back with a stronger presence in another book? One other concern is that The Little Friend is supposed to be a story set in the 1970’s. Were there meth labs back then?

    When you first meet Harriet you think she has all the beginnings of a serial killer: “She could set the house on fire if she wanted to, and no one would be there to stop here” (p 67), and “…this was the hallmark of Harriet’s touch: she could scare the daylights out of you, and you weren’t even sure why” (p 74).

    BookLust Twist: There is no doubt in my mind that Nancy Pearl loved this book and thought of it often. Case in point: it’s mentioned in Book Lust in the chapters “Families in Trouble” (p 82) because after little Robin is found murdered, nothing is ever the same for his family, and “Girls Growing Up” (p 102) because Harriet, Robin’s sister, grows up between the 555 pages of The Little Friend, as well as in the introduction (p xi) where Pearl says she knew she would love The Little Friend from the very first sentence. Little Friend is also mentioned in More Book Lust in the chapters “Lines that Linger; Sentences that Stick” (p 143) – the same first sentence Pearl mentioned in Book Lust, and “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” (p 238) because of its creepy doll face – a total of five mentions between the two Lust books. I can’t blame Pearl because Little Friend does fit nicely into each and every chapter mentioned.

    January ’10 was…

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    January 2010 was all wrong. I put many other activities ahead of reading. Knitting- mom’s blanket was falling apart so I took some time to fix that (as well as add new trim). I also started a new blanket of blue and white. Haven’t figured out why I’m making this one at all. I think it will go to the island because we certainly don’t need another blanket! Working out – been walking & running on the treadmill withe some regularity, as well as weight training and a little yoga. Cooking – been getting back to making real meals which need more time…Bad television – I’ve become addicted to the addict shows: Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, Hoarders, and Intervention. I seem to identify with the misfits a little too well.

    So, having said all that – reading wasn’t my highest priority. Behold the (ahem*) ‘finished’ list:

    • High Five by Janet Evanovitch ~ in honor of female mystery month (whatever that means).
    • The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden (*) ~ in honor of the book lust of others (again, whatever that means).
    • The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything by K.C. Cole (*) ~ in honor of January being the “start-over/clean slate” month.
    • Echo House by Ward Just ~ in honor of Ward Just’s birth month.
    • In Search of Robinson Crusoe by Timothy Severin (*) ~ in honor of National Geographic month.
    • Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin ~ in honor of Mr. Franklin’s birth month.
    • Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Goethe ~ in honor of letter writing month.
    • The Little Friend by Donna Tartt ~ a behemoth of a book with an unsatisfying end.

    For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program I finished Nothing Right, a collection of short stories by Antonya Nelson. If you are looking for quick snapshots of dysfunctional family life, this is the book for you!

    * Sad to say, I didn’t get into these books enough to finish them. I did my 50 page rule and called it quits.

    Sorrows of Young Werther

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    Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Sorrows of Young Werther. Boston: Frances A. Niccolls & Co., 1902.

    There are so many little facts about this 134 page story that I just loved! First, I find it enticing that this eighteenth-century novel was written anonymously. It was if it really was meant to be autobiographical. There are many similarities between Young Werther and Johann Goethe. Another interesting tidbit about The Sorrows of Young Werther is that the story was both banned and embraced in eighteenth-century Germany.

    To put it simply, Sorrows of Young Werther is about a young, impressionable artist who moves to a new, yet fictional town. He is enamored with his surroundings and shares his new-found joy with his friend, Wilhelm, through enthusiastic, vividly descriptive letters. For the first month the letters contain glorious accounts of the landscape, the sights, the sounds, and the people – everything around him. After that first month though, Werther’s entire focus centers on a young woman he met at a party. It’s obsession at first sight and he can think of nothing else but to be with her constantly. Unfortunately, Werther’s affections are doomed as the object of his affection, Charlotte, is already engaged to be married to a “worthy” gentleman. In an effort to remain near to Charlotte, Werther befriends her husband-to-be. Things becomes complicated (as they also do in this kind of situation). Of course this love triangle cannot last and ultimately ends in tragedy.

    Telling lines: “We should deal with children as God deals with us, – we are happiest under the influence of innocent delusions” (p 35), “…a man under the influence of violent passion loses all power of reflection, and is regarded as intoxicated or insane” (p 47), and “I sometimes cannot understand how she can love another, how she dares love another, when I love nothing in this world so completely, so devotedly, as I love her, when I know only her, and have no other possession” (p 81). In these three quotes we see Young Werther growing more and more obsessed with Charlotte. It can only end badly and as we see on the very last page, it does, “The body was carried by labourers. No priest attended” (p 135).

    BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Epistolary Novels: Take A Letter” (p 79).

    Nothing Right

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    Nelson, Antonya. Nothing Right: short stories. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009.

    Antonya Nelson’s humor comes at you in a slow and subtle way, almost like a Mona Lisa sly smirk. The entire collection of short stories is what a peepshow is to an adolescent boy; the reader is allowed in the living rooms and lives of the characters for only so long before the curtain is dropped and the scene goes dark. Nothing Right leaves you wanting more and always asking, “what happened next?” The perfect hook for a sequel. The one drawback to leaving so much to the imagination? The characters didn’t stay long enough for me to truly garner an interest in them personally. I wanted to know what happened next in terms of plot but not character. All of the stories circle around family dynamics; the good, the bad and most certainly, the ugly.

    • “Nothing Right” (title story) starts tongue-in-cheek although the reader is yet to see the irony. Hannah stares at brochures about taking care of babies while her own baby, 15 year old trouble-maker Leo, sees the district attorney  about a bomb threat he made at school. Hannah’s troubles only deepen when Leo goes on to father a child…
    • “Party of One” is a rather bizarre story about a woman trying to convince a married man to end his affair…with her sister.
    • “Obo” bothered me the most. I didn’t understand Abby at all. A pathological liar, she convinces her professor to take her to his wife’s family home for Christmas; all because she has fallen in love with the professor’s wife.
    • “Falsetto” – Michelle tries to cope with her parents’s devastating car accident while caring for her much younger brother and simultaneously re-evaluating her perfect relationship with her boyfriend.
    • “Kansas” is about a family’s drama when 17 year-old niece Kay-Kay disappears with her three year-old cousin.
    • “Biodegradable” is about a married woman who has an affair with a scientist.
    • “DWI” is about a married woman who loses her lover in a drunk-driving accident.
    • “Shauntrelle” is about a married woman who admits to an affair thinking her lover will be happy with taking her in. She is wrong and loses both men.
    • “Or Else” is about a man who misses the life he had with his childhood friend’s family so much that he pretends he is still part of their lives.
    • “We and They” is about a family in competition with their neighbors until they adopt a child who sides with the enemy.
    • People People” is about two sisters who couldn’t be any more different from one another.

    Semi-Attached Couple

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    Eden, Emily. The Semi-Attached Couple & The Semi-Detached House. New York: Dial Press, 1982.

    From everything that I have read it seems that Noel Perrin single-handedly revived an interest in Emily Eden’s The Semi-Attached Couple, calling it “what to read when you run out of Jane Austen.” He mentions this in his book, A Reader’s Delight and again in The Washington Post.

    The Semi-Attached Couple is a humorous and witty look at a Victorian couple who didn’t exactly marry for love. Surrounding their romance, or lack-thereof, is busybody family members, a cultural protocol for decorum, and good, old-fashioned Victorian society standards. Of course, Sarah married too young and Lord Teviot married too quick. Neither understands the other and isn’t sure of themselves. There is plenty of gossip, secrets, and satire in The Semi-Attached Couple.

    BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in two different chapters. First, “The Book Lust of Others” (p 34), and “Viragos” (p 227). Pearl basically says the same thing in both chapters: Emily Eden is a recommendation of Noel Perrin (as mentioned before).

    Hole in the Universe

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    Cole, K.C. The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything. New York: Harcourt Inc., 2001.

    January is quickly becoming my month for nonfiction (sorry, S.!). The Hole in the Universe is what Nancy Pearl calls a book about nothing and author K.C. Cole supports that with her subtitle, “How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything.” Cole combines physics, science fiction, literature, mathematics, and humor to make her case. Who knew a book about nothing could be so entertaining? Cole has the ability to take scientific fact and not-so-exact speculation and make nothing about something.

    Line to scratch your head over: “Potential, it turns out, is one of the most impressive properties of nothing” (p 3). From that sentence on, I knew I was in for an interesting time.

    BookLust Twist: From Book Lust” in the chapter called, “Zero: This Will Mean Nothing To You” (p 256).

    Hoarder

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    I have gotten obsessed with the show, ‘Hoarders’ on A&E (at least I think it’s A&E…). It’s all about people who collect and keep things until the things control their lives. It’s rather scary, but I watch the show to encourage me & myself to take a keen eye to our own clutter. Books, hair clips, shoes, casserole dishes, letters, hotel lotions, charity walk t-shirts. It all starts to pile up after awhile. Loss of control isn’t all that out of the ordinary.

    I’m feeling a little disheveled when it comes to the Book Challenge. Old blogs aren’t filed properly. They don’t follow format and are missing valuable tags. There is no order to the older stuff. At the same time, I have the sudden obsession to call Ms. Pearl out on a few things. Like, why are (nearly) whole chapters in More Book Lust made up of books already listed in Book Lust? There are over 100 titles listed in both books. Some have triple or even quadruple mentions.

    In an effort to organize this whole project I am taking a closer look at all of the older book review blogs. I am cleaning up tags (and adding missing ones), including a BookLust Twist to the really old posts, and taking note of repeat titles. I realize this is going to be really annoying for anyone with an RSS feed to this blog. You’ll think I’m writing up a storm when really, all that’s happening is an update here or there. I am really, really sorry about that. I just need a little mis en place in my life.

    In Search of Robinson Crusoe

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    Severin, Tim. In Search of Robinson Crusoe. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

    I have no idea why but in the beginning of reading In Search of Robinson Crusoe I couldn’t tell if it was fact or fiction.

    Reading In Search of Robinson Crusoe reminded me a great deal of the show “Myth Busters.” Everyone knows the story of (or at least heard of) Robinson Crusoe. Tim Severin sets out to explain the landscape of Daniel Defoe’s imagination, beginning with the Isla Robinson Crusoe, 400 miles off the coast of Chile. Weaving together fact, fiction, myth, mystery, history and adventure Severin is able to produce a believable retracing of one of literature’s best known castaways, Robinson Crusoe. What’s more, Severin is able to retrace the ancestry of Man Friday as well.

    Oddest sentences: “The overpowering influence is the surrounding ocean. Its weather system brings over 40 inches of rain each year, and although the average temperature is a mild 15 degrees Fahrenheit, the daily conditions veer abruptly from warm sunshine to gusts of cold wind and rain showers” (p 46).

    BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Islands, Desert and Otherwise” (p 128).

    Echo House

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    Just, Ward. Echo House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997.

    Covering three generations equaling 90  years of politics and power struggles, Ward Just follows the lives of the Behl family starting with Adolph and Constance Behl and their quest (notice I said their quest) for the White House. Adolph’s son, Axel and grandson, Alec continue the saga with their own political ambitions (although Alec goes the legal route becoming a lawyer). Supporting them, and sometimes leaving them, are the women who forever loved them, loved power and had ambitions of their own. Ward Just includes an entire host of Washington characters as well as well-known political events through history. At the center of it all is the Behl family mansion, Echo House. Built to be the next White House it is the scene of secrets of all kinds. Dirty secrets, family secrets, secrets told, secrets kept, secrets that help, secrets that hurt. While nothing terribly exciting happens it’s what doesn’t happen that makes Echo House such fun to read.

    BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Ward Just: Too Good To Miss” (p 135), and from the chapter, “Politics of Fiction” (p 189).

    Lost Steps

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    Carpentier, Alejo. The Lost Steps. New York: Noonday Press, 1956.

    The Lost Steps is about a man who takes a journey that becomes more than travel to him. Married to an actress who barely has time for anything but the stage, he takes a trip to South America with his mistress with the mission of finding primitive musical instruments for a museum curator. In the beginning of the story the man is fixated on making himself happy. For example, caught in the middle of a violent revolution where the streets are riddled with gunfire, he cannot think of getting himself to safety. Instead, he is fixated on returning to his companion for fear she has already (within minutes) taken up with someone else. Throughout the story his priorities change and he begins to imagine the wild landscape back in time, before mankind. His imagination takes him to unchartered territories that are vividly described. Carpentier’s observations are astute and he writes with remarkable clarity. The landscapes of South America are breathtaking.

    Favorite lines, “When my birthday was celebrated among the same faces, in the same places, with the same song sung in chorus, the thought invariably struck me that the only difference between my previous birthday and this one was the extra candle on the cake, which tasted exactly like the last one” (p 9). “In this country, I was told, passing from power to prison was the normal thing” (p 60). “Silence is an important word in my vocabulary” (p 109).

    Something else I found interesting: The New Yorker claims The Lost Steps begins in New York City yet Alejo Carpentier prefaces the story with a note that begins, “even though the site of the first chapters of this book does not call for any specific location…” (p v). The New Yorker must have gotten the New York City information from another version.

    BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Cubi Si!” (p 68).