Tag: Fiction

Are You There God?

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Blume, Judy. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. New York: Dell, 1970.

What woman in her 40s or even 50s doesn’t remember reading Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret? Seriously. If you were anything like me, all you could focus on were the parts of the story related to sex and the human body. I remember being insanely embarrassed by “the cotton ball” incident. So much so that I didn’t even attempt it myself (although I was tempted, being so flat-chested and all). What I don’t remember is being that anxious to grow up. Maybe because in some ways when I was Margaret’s age I was already way ahead of her when it came to certain life experiences.

Margaret Simon is a well-rounded eleven year old who has just moved from Manhattan to suburbia New Jersey. She quickly makes friends with three other girls her age. All four of them are in a hurry to have breasts, get their periods, and kiss boys. Margaret learns about all these things by keen observation, but what she really wants to know in detail is religion. With her mother’s side of the family being Christian and her father’s side Jewish, Margaret doesn’t know what to be. She has been raised without a religion which her friends think is cool but Margaret disagrees. She is so desperate to fit in she feels she needs to decide on religion to be like everyone else. The irony is every night Margaret talks to “God” about her hopes and fears without really knowing who she’s talking to.

BookLust Twist: From  More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Best For Boys and Girls” (p 21). Yes, I double-dipped from the same chapter in one month.

Okay – since this book was (and still is) so freaking popular I am very surprised it hasn’t been made into a movie…something for the Oxygen or Lifetime channel. An after school special? Think about it – it covers sex, puberty, religion, interfaith marriages, morals, social class distinction…

Eyes of the Amaryllis

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Babbitt, Natalie. The eyes of the Amaryllis. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

This is a grade school book – one that I have never met. It’s part fantasy, part familiar and all cute. What captured my attention was Babbit’s understanding of the power of the ocean. Even though this is a book for children she captured the strength, the beauty, the danger, and the lure of the sea.

Jenny Reade is sent to Cape Cod to care for her grandmother Geneva, who has broken an ankle. Jenny is completely out of her element. Years earlier her sailor grandfather was lost at sea. Because Jenny’s father has never come to terms with losing his father he barely visits his mother, who has remained in their seaside house, and he has never brought Jenny to meet her grandmother. As a result Jenny has never seen the sea.
The story takes on a mystical air when Jenny’s true task comes to light. She is not there to care for Geneva while she is off her feet like her father thinks. She has been summoned to watch for her grandfather’s ghost ship. Geneva strongly believes that her dead husband will send her a sign from the depths of the ocean, so every night Jenny walks the beaches in search of such a sign.

Favorite line: “It takes what it wants and it will keep what it has taken, and you may not take away from it what it does not wish to give” (p 5). Babbitt is talking about the ocean, of course.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Best For Boys and Girls” (p 21).

Incidentally, Babbitt is a Smith College alum.

Great Gatsby

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Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925.

Everyone knows The Great Gatsby, but the ironic thing is no one can figure out James Gatz Jay Gatsby. Every time someone saw me with this slim (182 page) paperback I was reminded of just how “great” Gatsby is, but no one could really tell me what it was about.

Consider this: the plot (set in the 1920s) is basically about a bunch of adulterous affairs observed by Nick Carraway. First, there is his second cousin, Daisy, and her husband, Tom. Tom is cheating with Myrtle. Myrtle is married to George Wilson, the drunk. Daisy is hooking up with Gatsby because five years earlier they had a thing and in Gatsby’s mind, he never let Daisy go.  The hook of the entire book is the mystery surrounding Jay Gatsby. For starters, that’s not his real name. He may or may not be wealthy, he may or may not be a war hero, he may or may not be a bootlegger, he may or may not be connected with organized crime, and he may or not be a murderer. He is a complex study in contradictions – throwing outrageous parties every weekend but not knowing enough people who would care enough to attend his funeral. Besides being an interesting portrait Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby is also a picture of society in the roaring 1920s, and a commentary on morality and the pitfalls of wealth.

Favorite lines:
“‘I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library'” (p 46)…yeah, libraries have that effect on drunks.
“”No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart” (p 97).
“She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand” (p 108).

Most shocking: Tom breaking Myrtle’s nose and the exclusion of Tom & Daisy’s three year old child, Penny, in the story.

BookLust Twist: The Great Gatsby gets a double mention. First, in Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 600s” (mentioned for the teacakes) (p 73). Also in More Book Lust in the chapter called 100 good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1920s” (p 176).

Firewall

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Mankell, Henning. Firewall. Trans. Ebba Segerberg. New York: The New Press, 1998.

I have to say it again. I think something got lost in the translation of this book.

Kurt Wallander is a Swedish detective trying to solve a series of mysterious deaths. At first the only common factor is the time frame in which these people died. A man falls dead after using an ATM, a cab driver is beaten to death, and someone has apparently committed suicide at a power station all within a matter of days. But, as the investigation continues pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Somehow the picture reveals an absurd terrorist plot.

What makes Firewall so entertaining is Kurt Wallander’s personality. He is a short tempered detective, good at what he does but not as great at being a divorced dad to his near-adult daughter. She finds him overbearing and lonely. I found Wallander and his Swedish police work very strange. For starters, Wallander is accused of not doing things by the book and for the most part those accusations hold true. Over and over he considers sharing information about the various investigations with his colleagues but over and over again he finds reasons not to. Also, computers connected to the crimes aren’t confiscated, potential witnesses and suspects aren’t detained for questioning, and despite rooms being searched several times, key evidence is not discovered right away. Case in point: an office was searched several times and yet Wallander finds a postcard under a computer keyboard days later.
I found some parts of Firewall predictable. Wallander is single. At his daughter’s urging he joins a dating service. Within days he gets a letter from a potential match. Right away I knew this “response” was trouble, for the letter is slid under his door – no return address or postmark. Wouldn’t Wallander have read how the service works and wouldn’t he have found a nondescript letter without a postmark a little suspect?
All in all Firewallwas a good vacation read. It was fast paced and highly entertaining.

Favorite line: “A person who died eventually became a person who had never existed” (p 7).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Crime is a Globetrotter: Sweden” (p 59).

June ’10 was…

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June was a month of reconnection. By far, my favorite musical moment was the lovely Rebecca Correia at the Iron Horse. It is awful to say but every single artist that follows her on stage can’t compare. Not that they are NailsOnaChalkboard bad, but they have nothing on Rebecca. On the professional side of things June was a very frustrating month. On the personal sides I got one of the best hugs of my life (thanks, Gracie). For books, it was this:

  • Happenstance by Carol Shields ~ this should be a movie
  • Hatchet by Gary Paulsen ~ this also should be a movie
  • The Confession of Nat Turner by William Styron ~ this was a hard one to read
  • Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World by Carol Brightman ~ a very thorough biography that helped with my insomnia
  • I Don’t Know Why I Swallowed the Fly by Jessica Maxwell ~ first year fly fishing story
  • Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym ~ a sociology experiment in a land of anthropologists
  • Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brien ~ this took some time to get into…so much so that I didn’t finish it.
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ~ I needed to lick my wounds with something enjoyable!

For LibraryThing’s Early Review program:

  • The House on Oyster Creek by Heidi Jo Schmidt ~ once I got beyond the first chapter I loved it. Beautiful writing.

For the fun of it:

  • Winning By Losing by Jillian Michaels ~ I’m most interested by the subtitle on the cover of her book, “Change You Life.” I’m up for that. Really.

Master & Commander

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O’Brian, Patrick. Master And Commander. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1969.

Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! I couldn’t get into this. As the last book of the month I found it incredibly boring. Maybe it was stopping every ten minutes to look up words like felluca and dursn’t and slops. It was all I could do to call up my father’s ghost and remember nautical terms like foretopgallantsail and cockade and halliards. To be honest, it was too much work for summer reading. This is something I went to bury myself in in the dead of winter when nothing else can distract me or call me away. I’ll put it back on the list in honor of something else.

PS ~ this was made into a movie starring Russell Crow. Maybe I should just shut up and watch it.

Less Than Angels

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Pym, Barbara. Less than Angels. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1980.

My impression of the first 50 pages of Less Than Angels was that the plot was very slow-moving, like a wide river with almost no perceptible action. Indeed, the first 50 pages are the reader’s surface introduction to at least fifteen different characters and only the very beginnings of a plot. Some of the characters are unnecessary to know for they never resurface again. Others are more important. On the whole, Less Than Angels is a community of contrasts. Professors of Anthropology mingle with fledgling students. The aged and retired cast a skeptical eye on the young and impulsive. Frenchmen stand baffled by the British. At the center of the story is Tom Mallow, a distinguished yet vain anthropologist caught between a relationship with a sophisticated older journalist and a younger wide-eyed student. In addition, Less Than Angels is an excellent study of English culture (lots of tea-times and interesting meals) along with the typical social graces and faux pas.

Favorite lines: “Curiosity has its pains as well as its pleasures, and the bitterness of its pains must surely be the inability to follow-up everything to its conclusion” (p 9) and, “And so it came about that, like so many other well-meaning people, they worried not so much about the dreadful things themselves as about their own inability to worry about them” (p 41)

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Barbara Pym: Too Good To Miss” (p 195).

House on Oyster Creek (with spoiler)

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Schmidt, Heidi Jon. The House on Oyster Creek. New York: NAL Accent, 2010.

Probably the most distracting aspect of Schmidt’s style of writing was her almost fanatical need to portray Henry as the older, colder, and uncaring husband. I get it. Schmidt wants the reader to cheer Charlotte on when she meets a man more to her liking, more to her temperament, more to her everything. You aren’t supposed to hate the damsel in distress. You aren’t even allowed to dislike her. In order to make the damsel’s potential affair acceptable said damsel’s husband needs to be bad. Very bad. If the husband is really awful you wind up begging, praying for that knight in shining armor. In an attempt to make Henry bad I think Schmidt went overboard. As a result Henry became a caricature of the very worst. In the first chapter alone (we’re talking 13 pages) there were over 24 negative words associated with Henry. Here are some, but not all, of the words and phrases used to describe Henry’s words, actions and demeanor. I left out dialogue with Charlotte:

  • irritation
  • seething
  • contempt
  • staunch
  • “heart seemed to harden” (p 3)
  • bleak
  • rebellious
  • stark
  • “nothing pleased him” (p 6)
  • fury
  • bitter
  • “fit to kill” (p 7)
  • “real hatred” (p 8.)
  • rigid
  • suspicion
  • jeer
  • scorn
  • irritated
  • contemptuous
  • darkening
  • “glance was poison” (p 11)
  • infuriating
  • infuriated
  • “patience stretched to breaking” (p 13)
  • shuddered
  • “spasm of disgust” (p 13)
  • icy

To make matters worse, on the other side of this marriage is Charlotte and her demure, sweet, sensitive, caring, loving, “made of empathy” personality. Schmidt is not as fanatical about driving that point home. But, you get the point just the same.

However…once I got beyond page 14 I loved The House on Oyster Creek. Charlotte is a little self-righteous at times but after putting up with Henry all those years she deserves to. While House on Oyster Creek focuses on Charlotte as she makes her way the book is really about the entire community she joins. Schmidt is extremely accurate when introducing Charlotte to the new community. when it comes to a tight-knit community there will always be this Them and Us attitude. You could be in a community for over 30 years and just because you are the first generation to do so, you are still the newcomers in town. The more generations you can brag of, the more clout you have in the community.

Of course, I had favorite lines that I really hope Schmidt keeps in the book, but I won’t quote them here.

I have to admit I never rooted for Charlotte to have an affair. There was something so broken about Henry that I think Charlotte owed it to him to work it out. When Darryl ends up marrying someone else I was happy. I can admit the story ended exactly how I wanted it to end.

Confessions of Nat Turner

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Styron, William. The Confessions of Nat Turner. New York: Random House, 1966.

I have never run so hot and cold about a book before. On the one hand William Styron has a beautiful writing style. His descriptions of the Virginian south in the 1830s are breathtaking while his depictions of slavery are simultaneously heartbreaking. What I didn’t care for was the obvious artistic liberties Styron took with the plot surrounding  historical fact. Obviously, in order to fill an entire novel he needed to expound on the factual confession of Nat Turner which was less than a standard chapter in length. He had to assume supporting plots and characters, but was it necessary to have Nat Turner only lust after white women? Do we know this to be a true trait of Nat? His sexuality seems to be fodder for controversy. I saw The Confessions of Nat Turner to be the truth bundled by fiction. At the heart of Styron’s novel is Nat Turner’s confession, but what surrounds it is pure imagination and speculation. While the book garnered a Pulitzer Prize it was also banned in some parts of the south. That should tell you something.

Two lines that stuck with me: “They were in the profoundest dark” (p 17), and “I do not believe that I had ever thought of the future, it is not in the mood of a Negro, once aware of the irrecoverable fact of his bondage…” (p 171).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and More Book Lust. From Book Lust in the chapter called, “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1960s” (p 178) and from More Book Lust in the chapter called, ” Southern-Fried Fiction: Virginia” (p 209).

Happenstance

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Shields, Carol. Happenstance: Two Novels in One About a Marriage in Transition. New York: Penguin, 1994.

The very first thing I noticed about this book is how it is arranged. I understood that Happenstance had originally been two very separate stories, published with two very different names. The husband’s side of the story was the original Happenstance (published in the early 80’s) and the wife’s side of the story was called A Fairly Conventional Woman. The wife’s story was published sometime later. The version of Happenstance Nancy Pearl suggested was the combined stories of the husband and wife. So, back to the arrangement of the book – her side has a pink cover with a photo of a woman’s upper torso in a frame. To see his side you have to flip the book upside down and over. His cover is blue with a photo of a man’s lower legs in a frame. Clever. I started with the wife’s story because if the book were to sit on a shelf properly (spine displayed correctly) it is her cover you see first when you pull it off the shelf. I’m sure this is the way Shields meant it to be read even though the husband’s story was written and published first.

In the first 50 pages I couldn’t tell if I liked Mrs. Brenda Bowman. She seemed too persnickety to me. Too particular. Too fussy. I am prone to comparing characters to myself, especially if we have something in common like upbringing, hobbies, schooling, age, or certain circumstance. In Brenda’s case, it was age. We are almost the same age. So, by default her actions made me seem fuddy-duddy. I don’t act that old, do I? Her husband seemed more laid back in an odd, disconnected kind of way. Together, they made up a marriage that needed some waking up, some simultaneous letting go. Both husband and wife had the opportunity to cheat on the other. I don’t think it’s a plot spoiler if I say the wife comes closer to doing so than the husband, even though the husband has a better excuse.

The most honest line in the whole book, “You could become crippled by this kind of rage” (p 49). How true.

What I liked the best about Happenstance is the idea of two sides of the same marriage. Both husband and wife notice small things while separated: Brenda notices small accomplishments like going out of town by herself. Jack notices small changes in the family he has practically taken for granted.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Carol Shields: Too  Good To Miss” (p 197). I have to say I am sad that breast cancer took the life of this great author.

June ’10 is…

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June is a weird month for me. I might have a Monhegan plan. I’m not sure. The one thing I know about June is that there will be music. Plenty of music and books. As two constants in my life, I doubt anyone is honestly surprised by that remark. Music and books. For music it is the lovely Rebecca Correia at the Iron Horse in Northampton. June 11, 2010 at 7pm. That same weekend it is the eternally talented Sean Rowe at the DreamAway Lodge in Beckett. June 13, 2010 at 8pm…I think. There is Phish somewhere in there as well…I know, don’t say it.

For books it is:

  • Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brien ~ in honor of National Ocean month
  • Hatchet by Gary Paulsen ~ in honor of Adventure fiction month
  • Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron ~ in honor of Virginia becoming a state in June
  • Happenstance by Carol Shields ~ in honor of June being the most popular month to get married in…
  • Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World by Carol Brightman ~ in honor of Mary McCarthy’s birth month.

For LibraryThing’s Early Review program:

  • The House on Oyster Creek by Heidi Jon Schmidt

For the fun of it:

  • Master of Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels

May ’10 was….

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Pretty in Pink

May. What to say about May? For obvious reasons it wasn’t the month for reading. I still haven’t mastered walking and reading without doing both at an excruciatingly slow pace!

  • Endless Love by Scott Spencer ~ apparently this was made into a movie. I am curious how they handled the anal sex scene…
  • You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Old) Mother by Janet Newman ~ funny, funny, funny (although, an odd choice to honor Mother’s Day)
  • Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor ~ my first Keillor book. Now I know what all the fuss is about. Another funny one!
  • Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis ~I admit it. I gave up on this after 50 pages. I moved onto a Jillian Michaels book. More on that next month….

For LibraryThing & the Early Review Program:

  • Fundamental Weight Training by David Sandler
  • Fall Asleep Forgetting by Georgeann Packard ~ this should be a movie. It was weird but good!

For the hell of it:

  • Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper

Zorba the Greek

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Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek. Trans. Carl Wildman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952.

I will be the first to admit it wholeheartedly. I did not enjoy Zorba the Greek. There, I said it. I am beginning to feel I have a built in prejudice against translated stories because this is not the first time I have said this. Something gets lost in the translation. I am sure of it. Not only that, but this time I was bored. Supposedly, Nikos Kazantzakis’s Last Temptation of Christ is more exciting. I can only wait and see.

Lines I did happen to like, “And I’m making it snappy so I don’t kick the bucket before I’ve had the bird!” (p 36), and “The mischievous demon in the wine had carried her back to the good old days” (p 37).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter “The Alpha, Betas, Gammas of Greece” (p 9).

Fall Asleep Forgetting

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Packard, Georgeann. Fall Asleep Forgetting. New York: Permanent Press, 2010.

I have a love-hate relationship with books like Fall Asleep Forgetting. The problem is Packard’s writing is too good. Like a delicious meal I couldn’t slow down when it came to eating it up; devouring whole chapters at a time. What’s wrong with that? In truth, this is a book meant to be savored slowly. The writing is delectable, deliriously rich and expressive. One minor distraction is character focus is a little out of focus. I would have preferred Claude as the obvious heroine rather than swirled in a mishmash of other incredibly strong personalities. Because Fall Asleep Forgetting really is about Claude and her strange involvement with a married couple, Paul and Sloan, that fact really needs to be teased out. Paul is dying and his wife is bisexual and mentally ill…sort of. Claude is caught up in their relationship until it becomes her relationship, her obsession, but as I mentioned before, she is not the only one. There is nine-year-old Six and her parents Rae and Sonny, Cherry the transvestite owner of the trailer park where most everyone lives and her partner Barton, and elderly Mr. and Mrs. Saugerties. Each one of these characters has a unique and tantalizing story.

Quotes that I really hope are kept: “Once your parents hate you for who you are, the scorn of others in mere child’s play” (p 42), and “I see now that equal parts repulsion and attraction make for the most voracious form of lust” (p 124).

Personal note: I was really excited to see e.e. cummings quoted at the beginning of the chapter called “The Curving Support of Feather Pillows” (p 129). ‘Milly and Maggie and Molly and May’ is a great poem. My only argument would be against calling it a poem about just Maggie because Milly, Molly and May all had important parts.

Samuel Johnson is Indignant

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Davis, Lydia. Samuel Johnson is Indignant: stories. Brooklyn: McSweeney’s Books, 2001.

I always love it when I get a collection of short stories to read. For some reason I like idea of the simplicity of keeping something short when sometimes, nothing could be further than the truth; especially when it comes to a short story. A short story might be short on words or sentences or even paragraphs, but long on meaning and, in the end might turn out to be a little thought provoking or dare I say didactic? In other words, I might learn something!

Lydia Davis is funny. But, more importantly she has an amazing range of subject material. So much so that I found myself asking what subject does Lydia Davis NOT cover in a short story? What’s more, Lydia Davis has a wide range of writing styles. Everything she writes has a common theme: strange and wonderful, but no two stories could be characterized as “the same.” Her stories are eerie and contemplative, funny and sad, wise and irreverent.

Favorite lines, “You can’t tell everyone the truth all the time, and you certainly can’t tell anyone the whole truth, ever, because it would take too long” (p 7).

BookLust Twist: From  Book Lust in the chapter called simply, “Short Stories” (p 221). Duh.