Tag: relationships

November Numbness

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“Live a life steeped in experiences.” That’s what my tea bag therapist said this morning. I’m not sure what to make of that advice, considering I have been passing each day as if waiting for something, but not exactly sure what.

I keep going back to the hospital for x-rays and answering mind-throttling questions like, “when did you break your back? How long have you been having extremity nerve pain?” Nearly passing out from lack of comprehension, I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t, but at that moment I sat there in silence with a stuck-in-dumb expression on my face. Yes, my back hurts from time to time, but broken? Yes, I have been complaining about my hands and feet falling asleep, but pain? I was there to get my protruding rib cage scrutinized. Now they tell me it’s a nodule on my lung and abnormally high white blood cell counts. “Probably a viral infection,” the nurse said of my white blood cell count. This was before the nodule on my left lung (25% malignant cancer) was a reality via CT scan. Are the two related? Am I falling to pieces? Sure feels that way. In the meantime, I have buried myself in books:

Fiction (Lots of books for kids and young adults):

  • David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd (AB): a book for children, added in honor of Fantasy Month.
  • The Pinballs By Betsy Byars: another kids book added in honor of Adoption month.
  • Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko.
  • Martin Dressler: the Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser.
  • The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (EB).
  • Foolscap, or, the Stages of Love by Michael Malone.
  • Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller.

Nonfiction:

  • She’s Not There: a Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan.
  • The Caliph’s House by Tahir Shah.
  • Expecting Adam: the Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Magic by Martha Beck (AB)

Series continuation:

  • Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett.

July’s Jam

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July was jamming. Guess what! I ran a few times this month. Even participated in a charity run for an aunt-in-law (is that a thing?). I am feeling much, much better! And. And! And, I was able to read a ton:

Fiction:

  • Jackie by Josie by Caroline Preston – in honor of Jacqueline O. Kennedy’s birth month.
  • Cop Hater by Ed McBain – in memory of McBain’s passing in the month of July.
  • Miss Lizzie by Walter Satterthwait – in honor of Lizzie Borden’s birth month.
  • Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken – in honor of July being Kids Month.
  • Gardens of Kyoko by Kate Walbert – in honor of Japan’s Tanabata Festival.
  • Animals by Alice Mattison – in honor of Mattison’s birth month.

Nonfiction:

  • The Coldest Day: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam – in honor of July being the month the Korean War ended.
  • The Book of Mediterranean Cooking by Elizabeth David – in honor of July being picnic month.
  • Den of Thieves by James Stewart – in honor of July being Job Fair month (odd choice, I know).

Series Continuation:

  • The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason – to continue the series started in June.
  • Midnight in Ruby Bayou by Elizabeth Lowell – to continue the series started in April.

Early Review for LibraryThing:

  • Into the Storm: Two Ships, a Deadly Hurricane, and an Epic Battle for Survival by Tristam Koten.

 

Stories of Alice Adams

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Adams, Alice. The Stories of Alice Adams. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Reason read: June is Short Story Month.

The first time I read a collection of Alice Adams’s short stories (After You’ve Gone) I noticed similarities that soon became redundancies throughout the stories. The same is true of The Stories of Alice Adams. Virginia, San Francisco, Maine,the Carolinas, and Mexico are popular places for her characters to either live or vacation. Lawyers, artists, and writers are popular occupations for her characters. Old wealth is especially favored. Adultery, money issues, and other marital woes always seem to be in the mix from story to story. In other words, a word of caution: these stories are best consumed intermittently. Like After You’ve Gone I could not read more than one story at a time.

Lots of quotes to quote but here are two I liked, “She was simply enraged at the sea for knocking her down” (p 54) and “Adolescent memories are not only the most recent and thus the most available. They are also the least subtle, the simplest” (p 75).

Author fact: Adams was born in Virginia, raised in North Carolina, and lived in San Francisco. Sound familiar? Proof you write about what you know.

Book trivia: There are a total of 53 short stories in The Stories of Alice Adams. Two stories are mentioned more than once in the Book Lust Challenge and there are eight that I can skip because I already read them in After You’ve Gone.

Nancy said: Nancy said there was an “excellent cross section of her short works in Stories. (Book Lust, p 1).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the very first chapter called “A…My Name is Alice” (p 1).

“Verlie I Say Unto You”

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Adams, Alice. “Verlie I Say Unto You.” The Stories of Alice Adams. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Reason read: June is short story month.

My first reaction to “Verlie” is to comment on the blindness of the privileged. Verlie is a maid in Todd family’s home. When news of Verlie’s husband’s death reaches the Todd household no one is sure how to tell Verlie. Their naive expectation of her reaction is one of grief. Never mind the fact Verlie and Horace haven’t seen each other in years. They can’t understand why she smiles at the news. It’s obvious they don’t know their employee even though she has been with them “forever.”

Author fact: Alice’s mother was also a writer, just not as accomplished as Alice.

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

Martin Sloane

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Redhill, Michael. Martin Sloane. Back Bay Books, 2002. http://archive.org/martinsloanenove00redh

Redhill, Michael. Martin Sloane. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2001.

Reason read: May is known as missing child month in some parts of the world. Choosing this book for recognition of missing child month was a little tongue in cheek because it’s actually an adult who goes missing, but his childhood plays a big part of the story. In a way, he has been missing since childhood.

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I love that song.) I had to feel sorry for Jolene. At the tender age of 19 she becomes a pen pal to a man 35 years her senior. At 21 she becomes his lover and loses her virginity to him. Think about that for a second. He’s old enough to be her father. She dedicates her young life to a man 35 years older than her, teaching him how to drive and caring for him like a husband, all because she fell in love with his artistry at first sight. Little object-filled boxes of life. His life. They intrigued her, then captivated her.
Irish born artist, Martin Samuel Joseph Sloane is a conundrum. When he suddenly leaves his and Jolene’s home in the middle of the night, Jolene is left with his little boxes and a million questions. What follows is a quest for love. The themes of loss and forgiveness are unmistakable but what bubbles to the surface in the end is maturation and grace.

Quotes to catch my attention (and there were a lot of them to chose from), “I’d had my share of exquisite humiliations before, but never with someone I actually liked (p 27), “And we continued to learn the other like explorers expanding their maps of the known world” (p 34), “I learned to live with this spectacle of concealment” (p 52), and my favorite, “Love provokes all kinds of behaviour and in retrospect it all seems warranted: you have to allow for passions” (p 93).

As an aside: I think I have said it before, but I like it when a book introduces me to new music. This time it’s new old music, “When Day is Done.” I found a really sultry version sung by Clint Walker on YouTube.
Another aside: I had never been to Watkin’s Glen, New York before meeting my husband. Redhill inserts a minor character from Watkin’s Glen living in Ireland.

Author fact: Redhill wrote many other novels, some under the pseudonym Inger Ash Wolfe, but I only read Martin Sloane for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Martin Sloane is Redhill’s first novel and it nominated for the Giller Prize.

Nancy said: Pearl called Redhill’s book Michael Sloane instead of Martin Sloane. It’s indexed that way as well.

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

A Celibate Season

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Shields, Carol and Blanche Howard. A Celibate Season. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.

Reason read: April is National Letter Writing month…or so they say.

In a nutshell, a couple is separated by a wife’s internship. The husband stays behind to care for the home life. Together, they decide to handle their separation with minimal phone calls and visits, choosing to communicate primarily through handwritten letters. In truth, I had a love-hate relationship with A Celibate Season. On the one hand, I am a big fan of the epistolary technique. I like the subtle voyeurism of reading someone’s mail, especially strangers. I also found it interesting that what remained impossible for the characters to disclose to one another went into an unsent letter, thus keeping with a true epistolary technique. What I didn’t appreciate was the obvious breakdown of the marriage very early in the exchange of letters. I hated to see it coming that soon. Was it obvious to anyone else when Chas starts moving furniture around as soon as Jock is gone? Or when both of them start criticizing the people (strangers to each other) in each other’s lives? Does Jock bait Chas by mentioning her boss’s inappropriate comments? Or does Chas poke at Jock by admitting the cleaning lady disliked Jock’s kitchen curtains enough to remove them? Before page 50 I predicted Jock would have an affair with Austin and Chas would sleep with Sue. Ugh.
Probably the most realistic argument Chas & Jock have is about money. Chas is an unemployed architect, taking care of their two children while Jock is the money maker. Chas can’t pay the furnace repair bill while Jock frets about needing a new dress for a House of Commons reception.
One last gripe – I don’t think quoting long conversations verbatim is realistic in a letter.

Note to self: stop reading the “Questions for Discussion” section of books before finishing the book itself. I was disappointed by the question about Chas and Jock’s marriage, “Has the “celibate season” made it weaker or stronger?” That to me implies a non-ending ending; one of those ambiguous yet ubiquitous, it’s-up-to-the-reader endings. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Book trivia: A Celibate Season was a play before it was published as a novel.

Author(s) fact:
Carol Shields – Shields died in 2003.
Blanche Howard – Howard went on to write a memoir of her friendship with Shields in 2007.

Nancy said: not a lot. She just said A Celibate Season is a good epistolary to read, if you like the technique.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the intriguing chapter called “Epistolary Novels: Take a Letter” (p 80).

As She Climbed Across the Table

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Lethem, Jonathan. As She Climbed Across the Table. Read by David Aaron Baker. Maryland: Books on Tape, 2007.

Reason read: February is Lethem’s birth month.

I love Jonathan Lethem’s voice. The style he writes in is so casual, so sly you feel like you need to reread the words to make sure you haven’t missed something important or at least clever. As She Climbed Across the Table is told from the perspective of Anthropology professor Philip. The story he tells you is at once heartbreaking and humorous. His girlfriend and colleague, particle physicist Alice Coombs has fallen in love with a void, a tiny black hole. The only problem with this? The void, named Lack for obvious reasons, has refused Alice’s attempts to lose herself in his depths. This “lack” of affection on Lack’s part only makes Alice desire him more. Why? Because it seems as if he (because it has to be a he for Alice to love) has a personality capable of rejection. He will devour car keys and other items of significance, but not Alice.

As an aside: When Alice repeatedly admits she loves Lack the way she used to love Philip, (but doesn’t anymore), I wanted Philip to be more rebellious. Here is he, allowing crazy, non-speaking, dopey Alice to live in the same apartment all the while refusing the advances of a beautiful and smart therapist who is practically throwing herself at him. Am I too cold blooded to think Philip should have developed more of a “screw you” spine?

Author Fact: This is not a fact per se…but, I ran into a photo of Jonathan Lethem and in it he looked sorta, kinda, somewhat like Mike Gordon from the band Phish. Not exactly like him, mind you. But, close enough to be his kid brother or something.

Audio trivia: David Aaron Baker does a great job with voice accents. The part when Philip is drunk is hilarious.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter “Jonathan Lethem: Too Good To Miss” (p 146).

Her Name Was Lola

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Hoban, Russell. Her Name Was Lola. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003.

The first thing one needs to know about Her Name Was Lola is that it’s a short book with even shorter chapters. It’s a quick read – maybe even a lazy Sunday-in-one-sitting kind of read.

November, 2001. Max has writer’s block. As described in the first chapter, “Max writes novels that don’t sell, children’s picture books that do.” Only, the picture books aren’t getting written either. Instead, he is wandering around London, talking to himself and dealing with a dwarf demon called Apasmara on his back. Apasmara out of Hindu mythology and symbolizes Forgetfulness, Heedlessness, Selfishness, Ignorance, and Materialism. He was sent to make Max forget about Lola Bessington.
Flashback to December 1996. Max meets Lola and falls in love. She falls back. A few months later Max meets Lula and falls in love. She too falls back. Two women with similar names. One man with “blighter’s rock.” One big problem. Hoban always announces the date at the beginning of each chapter. To orientate the reader or mark the passage of time, I don’t know. It’s not a spoiler to say Max loses both women, but I think it is a spoiler when I say his fictional character is the one who gets it right. Leave to Max to create a character who is more virtuous than himself.

Reason read: Hoban’s birth month is February. Read Her Name Was Lola in his honor.

the line I liked the best, “People are composed of memories, losses, longings and regrets” (p 28).

Confessional: reading the lyrics to Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana (At the Copa)” took me right back to the late 70s when I was all of 9-10 years old. A girlfriend and I we loved the song to much we wanted to act out the lyrics – especially the “who shot who?” and the “yellow feathers in her hair” parts.

Author fact: Many people think Her Name Was Lola is autobiographical. If Hoban knows an imaginary dwarf named Apasmara then okay. That is awesome.

Book trivia: This is so short it can be read in one day.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “Russell Hoban: Too Good To Miss” (p). This is the penultimate Hoban book on my list. One more and I will be done with the chapter.

Last Tycoon

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Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Last Tycoon. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941.

It’s too bad this was never finished. I think this would have been my favorite Fitzgerald book. Even incomplete, I like it better than anything else I have read. This is a simple yet complicated story about love. She loves him. He loves someone else. That someone else is set to marry anyone else but him. Classic love square. You have to feel sorry for Monroe Stahr. He is lovestruck by a woman who strongly resembles his deceased wife. As a man in the movie business he has the money and the power to woo Kathleen into a brief relationship, even despite the fact she is engaged to be married to someone else. Meanwhile, there is young Cecilia, a junior at Bennington College, just willing Stahr to look at her, to notice her. It is her voice that tells the entire story. Fitzgerald explains the first and third person narrative. What Cecilia is not witness to, she imagines. “Thus, I hope to get the verisimilitude of a first person narrative, combined with a Godlike knowledge of all events that happen to my characters” (p 164).

One of my favorite scenes is Stahr’s treatment of a letter Kathleen addressed to him. He manages to not read it for three hours and is proud of his restraint. Why? What difference does it make when he opened it, immediately or three hours later? The fact of the matter is he opened it anyway.

As an aside, this is going to sound awful, but in a way I am glad Fitzgerald died. The story is beautiful as it is – unfinished yet simple. His plans for the rest of the book are over the top: murder plots and a Stahr dying in a plane crash. Children stealing from the dead and their subsequent trial. Cecilia in a sanitarium (like his wife, Zelda?). Like I said, it all seems over the top.

Lines I liked, “His dark eyes took me in, and I wondered what they would look like if he fell in love” (p 22), “It was more intimate than anything they had done, and they both felt a dangerous sort of loneliness, and felt it in each other” (p 102), “What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story” (p 117), and “It would come in some such guise as the auto horns from the technicolor boulevard below, or be barely audible, a tattoo on the muffled dream of the moon” (p 144).

Reason read: F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in September.

Author fact: Fitzgerald died of a heart attack while writing The Last Tycoon. According to the forward, he had just written the first episode of Chapter six. Sad.

Book trivia: The Last Tycoon is narrated by a junior co-ed at Bennington College, but the story is more about Monroe Stahr.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Literary Lives: the Americans” (p 145). This book actually doesn’t belong in the chapter. “Literary Lives: the Americans” begins with this sentence, “If you want to know more about a writer, before or after reading his or her book, here are some top-notch literary biographies” (p 144). The Last Tycoon is not a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 

 

 

Raw Silk

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Burroway, Janet. Raw Silk. Boston: Little , Brown & Company, 1976.

Suffice it to say, I devoured Raw Silk in four days. I probably would have finished it sooner if I didn’t have to take time out for essential things like eating, sleeping, and a little thing called going to work. I simply couldn’t put it down. Virginia Marbalestier is an American mother to a five year old, married to a Brit, and living in a big house outside of London. She has risen above her childhood of Californian poverty to become a successful textiles designer for a company where her domineering husband is second in command. She appears to have it all, but if anyone were to peep in their windows one would see an abusive relationship spiraling out of control. “Ginny” and husband, Oliver, fight constantly and the confusing thing is, not only does Ginny predict the abuse, she does nothing to avoid it. She welcomes it by deliberately differing and defying her husband on a regular basis. They fight over the welfare of their daughter and when Ginny gives in that is the first betrayal. The second is Frances. Oliver is all about appearances and when Ginny befriends Frances, a mentally unstable, nearly catatonic coworker, he seethes with anger. The angrier Oliver gets, the more “accidents” Ginny has. This downward spiral forces Ginny to examine her own life, her own betrayals, her own sacrifices.

Quotes I liked, “I want you to know I’ve finally got round to regretting what we missed” (p 33), “Do you know that I can still wake with the memory of your mouth?” (p 34), “I have no skill whatever at knowing what my sins are” (p 159), and “Very often I would like to take a plate of fried eggs and fling it full into the four-in-hand of Oliver’s miniature-motif embroidered tie, and this desire makes beads of sweat stand out along the hairline of my unbrushed hair, but even this is pleasurable” (p 164).

Reason read: Janet Burroway was born in the month of September.

Author fact: Ms. Burroway has her own website and the first thing I discovered when I went there is Raw Silk came out as an audio book for Open Road Media on February 4th, 2014.

Book trivia: Raw Silk was nominated for a National Book Award in 1977.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Writer’s Craft” (p 237).

Feast of Love

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Baxter, Charles. Feast of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

This is a really clever story. Charlie Baxter (the character…or the author?) wakes from a bad dream and, like any real insomniac, chooses to walk it off. His 1am stroll leads him to a bench where he finds his neighbor, also wide awake. The two start a conversation about relationships and Charlie’s neighbor urges him to write about “real” people in “real” relationships, starting with his own twice-divorced life. From there, we are introduced to a myriad of characters. The theme throughout is love, love, love. Love of all shapes, sizes, complexities, and intricacies are on display. It is though a curtain has been drawn back and we are allowed to view the more intimate ups and downs of a relationship, for better or for worse.
As an aside, I was talking to a friend about this book and he didn’t like it because he felt the details of the relationships were too personal to be put on display like that. In some respect I agree with him. But, I think we were both drawn into the mystery of exactly who was telling the story, because I think that makes a difference. If it purely fiction it is not too personal, but. But! But, something changes when it is someone telling their story outright.

Lines I liked: “The moon, it seems, is not singing at all” (p 5), “Every relationship has at least one really good day” (p 17), “I kept reaching for his heart and finding nothing there to hold on to” (p 31),

Reason read: Michigan became a state in January and Feast of Love takes place in Michigan.

Author fact: Charles Baxter has his own website here. The schedule for readings hasn’t been updated since 2012 and I was tempted to ask why on the Q & A page…but I didn’t.

Book trivia: Feast of Love was a National Book Award Finalist. It was also a New York Times Notable Book.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Michigan)” (p 26).

Naked to the Waist

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Dark, Alice Elliott. Naked to the Waist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

Naked to the Waist is a compilation of six short stories with the title story being the last. While each story varies from the next there are a few underlying themes common to them all. All include women who are in relationships not easily defined. The relationships that surround them are slightly domineering.

“Interior Studio” – Two artists struggling to make ends meet; told from the point of view of the painter wife with a dominant writer husband.

“The Good Listener” – a writing teacher gets caught in a love triangle that turns into a love square.

“Plans for Plants” – a couple is moving apart. They don’t know each other anymore.

“The Comfortable Apartment” – an abused wife has the opportunity to leave her husband thanks to her sister…but does she?

“Buddy” – for me, this one was the most disturbing. A man takes his girlfriend’s puppy while she is in France for a funeral. He never wanted her to get a dog, and that’s all I’ll say about that one.

“Naked to the Waist” – Lucy is torn between wanting her best friend, a homosexual, to want her and wanting to move on with her life.

Telling lines, “She threw herself into love as though she were diving under water in at attempt to make herself disappear from the surface of the planet” (p 20), “She was coiled coolly around his mind” (p 92), It shocked him to see her alone, and he realized it was the first time he had observed her out of the range of his influence” (p 162″, and “This was my cue to placate him with one of our private games, and I did” (p 131).

As an aside, adultery is a common theme in Dark’s stories. I found it striking that when two different characters in two different stories want to know how their partners are getting away with the affair they ask the same questions, “how are you managing this?”

Reason read: November is National Writing Month and I’m honoring the short story this month.

Author fact: Dark also wrote In the Gloaming and Think of England both of which are on my list.

Book trivia: Naked to the Waist is made up of six short stories and oddly enough was not available in my area. I had to request it from Bangor, Maine.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A…Is For Alice” (p 1).

Evolution of Jane

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Schine, Cathleen. The Evolution of Jane. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

It all starts when Jane’s mother thinks twenty five year old Jane needs a vacation to mend a broken heart. Jane has been left by her husband of only six months and while it has taken Jane only half that long to get over the abandonment she does not dispute her mother’s “quaint notion.” It is on this trip she has always wanted to take, to the Galapagos Islands, that Jane discovers her long-lost, once best friend, and cousin Martha is a guide. As Martha and Jane had fallen out of friendship Jane is baffled by this coincidence and is unsure how to proceed with her feelings and actions. She spends the entire vacation obsessing about the failed relationship.
The story itself jumps from the past to the present in an effort to explain Jane and Martha’s childhood friendship. Despite a mysterious family feud that split the rest of the family the two cousins were inseparable for a period of time. Until one day they weren’t. Jane’s obsession over what went wrong dominates the trip to the Galapagos. Even when her roommate tells her “let sleeping dogs lie” she can’t let it go.

Quotes I liked: “But I saw immediately that Martha was too familiar to meet for the first time” (p 13) and “I had traveled across two continents, from one ocean to another in order to be washed up on a beach with my next-door neighbor” (p 36).

Reason read: In honor of Charles Darwin’s birth month being in February. Simple enough.

Author Fact: Catherine Schine has an author page on LibraryThing with absolutely nothing on it.

Book Trivia: It was neat to find a New York Times review written by my favorite author, Barbara Kingsolver. She endorsed the book heavily because of its evolutionary and anthropological accuracies.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Galloping Through the Galapagos” (p 88).

Dec ’12 was…

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December 2012 was a decidedly difficult month. I don’t mind admitting it was stressful and full of ups and downs. How else can I describe a period of time that contained mad love and the quiet urge to request freedom all at once? A month of feeling like the best thing on Earth and the last person anyone would want to be with? I buried myself in books to compensate for what I wasn’t sure I was feeling. And I won’t even mention the Sandy twins. But wait. I just did.

  • The Wholeness of a Broken Heart by Katie Singer ~ in honor of all things Hanukkah. This was by far my favorite book of the month.
  • Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner ~ in honor of Iowa becoming a state in December. This was a close second.
  • The Tattered Cloak and Other Novels by Nina Berberlova ~ in honor of the coldest day in Russia being in December. I read a story every night.
  • Big Mouth & Ugly Girl by Carol Joyce Oates ~ in honor of Oates being born in December. I was able to read this in one sitting.
  • The Women of the Raj by Margaret MacMillan ~ in honor of December being one of the best times to visit India
  • Rosalind Franklin: Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox ~ in honor of Franking being born in December
  • Billy by Albert French ~ in honor of Mississippi becoming a state in December
  • Apples are From Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins ~ in honor of Kazakhstan gaining its independence in December.

In an attempt to finish some “series” I read:

  • Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol 3  by Giorgio Vasari (only one more to go after this, yay!)
  • Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers

For audio here’s what I listened to:

  • The Galton Case by Ross MacDonald ~ this was laugh-out-loud funny
  • Bellwether by Connie Willis ~ in honor of December being Willis’s birth month

For the Early Review Program with LibraryThing here’s what I read:

  • Drinking with Men: a Memoir by Rosie Schaap

And here’s what I started:

  • Gold Coast Madam by Rose Laws

For fun: Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep.

Crossing to Safety

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Stegner, Wallace. Crossing to Safety. New York: Random House, 1987.

Crossing to Safety is a story you have to stick with in order to understand. For the first 100 pages you might find yourself asking, “what is the point?” because it seems to be about two couples who have a great relationship with one another. It’s all about the ups and downs of their friendship through the years and Stegner’s characters move in and out of prose casually, almost nonchalantly. He makes assumptions that you already know them by name. There are no obvious introductions to anyone. What’s more, there is a certain carefree attitude of the first decade of their friendship as well (mid 1930s). The women of the bonded friendship, both pregnant at the same time, enjoy champagne on a picnic. As the story moves along you can’t help but be drawn into the loyalty of their friendship; the push and pull of individual need against the fabric of their woven relationship.

Favorite lines (and there were a bunch of them), “It was a toss-up who was neglecting whom” (p 84).

Reason read: Wallace Stegner went to the University of Iowa and was in the Graduate Program in Creative Writing, “the Iowa Writers’ Workshop” and Iowa became a state in December. Yes, it is a stretch but that’s what I’m doing.

Can I just say I love the picture of Wallace Stegner on the back of Crossing to Safety? Or maybe it’s just the sweater. As an aside I would like to thank Stegner for introducing me to the 1931 Marmon. What a classy (but gangster!) car!

Author fact: There is a great website dedicated to Wallace Stegner here.

Book trivia: People either love or hate the “nonplot” approach. I loved it…once I got used to it.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Growing Writers” (p 107).