I was on the road for over a month (long story, not sensible to tell it here) and I didn't bring my notable books with me. I read junk instead. So now I am catching up, and realizing I have forgotten which books I chose to read! So I am listing here those I have read and those I am about to read or am starting already.
I committed to twelve books for this year. So far I have read:
A Strange Piece of Paradise
The Omnivore's Dilemma
The Amateur Marriage
The Most Famous Man in America
I am currently reading The Ghost Map.
I have started The Worst Hard Time. And I have obtained The Dream Life of Sukhanov.
So that's six. I don't remember if I already chose the other six. No matter. I will.
Just writing this helps me stay on track and makes me feel better!
Thursday, August 9, 2007
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
It all comes down to a meal.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes four specific meals but they collapse into one: what you are eating tonight.
Pollan asks the question, where does my food come from? In this amazing book that defies easy cataloging, he does his best to discover the origins of four different meals, progressing from the "industrial" to the foraged (hunted and gathered).
He discovers that "industrial meals", including fast food, come from corn. The many uses to which corn is put is flabbergasting by itself. Following its trip from a farm in Kansas to a McDonald's in Berkeley, though, is disturbing.
He follows the corn to the beef cow that first spends an idyllic six months, more or less, living on grassy hillsides, but then is introduced to the corn mixtures at a factory farm, in an environment that words cannot adequately describe. Cows are not meant to eat corn, so the grain is sliced into wafers to make it more digestible and the cows are bred to tolerate it. The small saving grace here is that the life of this animal isn't long.
Pollan looks at the other parts of the meal as well, but not so intensely. In fact, it is the meat part of the meal that seems to interest him most throughout this book. Which is not to say that vegetarians need not read this book. It has a great deal to say to all of us.
After eating a McDonald's meal on the road, Pollan moves to Big Organic, and shows us how organically-raised animals differ little in their experience of life from their industrial counterparts. Similarly organic crops are raised in a manner similar to large non-organic produce. The benefits are still there for humans, however. These fields don't contaminate water or air with toxic chemicals and our bodies get more nourishing food (Really. Several studies have now shown that organically-grown food has greater quantities of antioxidants and other nutrients that ward off disease). The down side is that "Big Organic" is not sustainable organic. Small Organic can be. And the animals are not treated as we'd like them to be treated. "Free range eggs?" If you get a chance to see one of these operations you'll laugh at the term.
The third meal comes from a "Beyond Organic" farm where cattle, chickens, turkeys, and other animals are raised in such a sustainable manner that their existence actually enhances the quality of the land. This remarkable farm is run by Joel Salatin, a third-generation beyond-organic farmer. The farm doesn't run itself. The workers spend long days moving animals, cutting hay, processing chickens, doing whatever needs to be done, and something always needs to be done. But the result speaks for itself: a farm run on almost nothing beyond human labor and some power for some equipment. What is especially notable is that the farm's products are so desirable that people drive many miles to get them (Salatin refuses to ship anything because he doesn't want to add the cost of pollution to his bill). Polyface (the name of the farm) also supplies many top restaurants in the area and is sold at farmers' markets.
An ideal farm if it could be replicated all over this country. However, such farms must be run by knowledgable "grass farmers", which is antithetical to the common model for large farms. Factory farms rely on cheap, ignorant labor. Polyface relies on committed, intelligent management. Could be done, though. Salatin feels that when enough people "opt out" of the current mode then factory farms really could become extinct.
The fourth meal is one that Pollan prepares from food he hunted or gathered himself, with a few exceptions. All local, regardless. He spends months learning how to forage and to hunt and finally pulls it all together in a meal he serves to special friends who helped him along the way. This one he dubs "the perfect meal". Not because it tastes better than all the others but because he feels it expresses his gratitude for every item in it. In eating this meal it appears that Pollan reached back into pre-history and felt at home.
I had some quibbles with a segment on vegetarianism and animal rights, because, contrary to how generously he treats others with differing points of view, Pollan actually ridicules animal rights people. Because I am one myself, I was offended not just because of his attitude but because he failed to realize that we are not all the same. Some of the arguments he made against vegetarianism can easily be refuted, but I won't go into that diversion here. Enough to say that he doesn't get much of it right, although he gets more right than many others I know.
This one quibble, which looms rather large in my mind, still did not affect my overall impression of the book. I believe that anyone reading this book will have the tools to make intelligent decisions about how they eat. More, I believe that there are some simple changes that can be made to the law to discourage the production of cheap corn and its trail of toxicity. Knowledge is power.
4.5 out of 5 stars
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes four specific meals but they collapse into one: what you are eating tonight.
Pollan asks the question, where does my food come from? In this amazing book that defies easy cataloging, he does his best to discover the origins of four different meals, progressing from the "industrial" to the foraged (hunted and gathered).
He discovers that "industrial meals", including fast food, come from corn. The many uses to which corn is put is flabbergasting by itself. Following its trip from a farm in Kansas to a McDonald's in Berkeley, though, is disturbing.
He follows the corn to the beef cow that first spends an idyllic six months, more or less, living on grassy hillsides, but then is introduced to the corn mixtures at a factory farm, in an environment that words cannot adequately describe. Cows are not meant to eat corn, so the grain is sliced into wafers to make it more digestible and the cows are bred to tolerate it. The small saving grace here is that the life of this animal isn't long.
Pollan looks at the other parts of the meal as well, but not so intensely. In fact, it is the meat part of the meal that seems to interest him most throughout this book. Which is not to say that vegetarians need not read this book. It has a great deal to say to all of us.
After eating a McDonald's meal on the road, Pollan moves to Big Organic, and shows us how organically-raised animals differ little in their experience of life from their industrial counterparts. Similarly organic crops are raised in a manner similar to large non-organic produce. The benefits are still there for humans, however. These fields don't contaminate water or air with toxic chemicals and our bodies get more nourishing food (Really. Several studies have now shown that organically-grown food has greater quantities of antioxidants and other nutrients that ward off disease). The down side is that "Big Organic" is not sustainable organic. Small Organic can be. And the animals are not treated as we'd like them to be treated. "Free range eggs?" If you get a chance to see one of these operations you'll laugh at the term.
The third meal comes from a "Beyond Organic" farm where cattle, chickens, turkeys, and other animals are raised in such a sustainable manner that their existence actually enhances the quality of the land. This remarkable farm is run by Joel Salatin, a third-generation beyond-organic farmer. The farm doesn't run itself. The workers spend long days moving animals, cutting hay, processing chickens, doing whatever needs to be done, and something always needs to be done. But the result speaks for itself: a farm run on almost nothing beyond human labor and some power for some equipment. What is especially notable is that the farm's products are so desirable that people drive many miles to get them (Salatin refuses to ship anything because he doesn't want to add the cost of pollution to his bill). Polyface (the name of the farm) also supplies many top restaurants in the area and is sold at farmers' markets.
An ideal farm if it could be replicated all over this country. However, such farms must be run by knowledgable "grass farmers", which is antithetical to the common model for large farms. Factory farms rely on cheap, ignorant labor. Polyface relies on committed, intelligent management. Could be done, though. Salatin feels that when enough people "opt out" of the current mode then factory farms really could become extinct.
The fourth meal is one that Pollan prepares from food he hunted or gathered himself, with a few exceptions. All local, regardless. He spends months learning how to forage and to hunt and finally pulls it all together in a meal he serves to special friends who helped him along the way. This one he dubs "the perfect meal". Not because it tastes better than all the others but because he feels it expresses his gratitude for every item in it. In eating this meal it appears that Pollan reached back into pre-history and felt at home.
I had some quibbles with a segment on vegetarianism and animal rights, because, contrary to how generously he treats others with differing points of view, Pollan actually ridicules animal rights people. Because I am one myself, I was offended not just because of his attitude but because he failed to realize that we are not all the same. Some of the arguments he made against vegetarianism can easily be refuted, but I won't go into that diversion here. Enough to say that he doesn't get much of it right, although he gets more right than many others I know.
This one quibble, which looms rather large in my mind, still did not affect my overall impression of the book. I believe that anyone reading this book will have the tools to make intelligent decisions about how they eat. More, I believe that there are some simple changes that can be made to the law to discourage the production of cheap corn and its trail of toxicity. Knowledge is power.
4.5 out of 5 stars
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
The Most Famous Man in America, by Debbie Applegate
The Most Famous Man in America: the biography of Henry Ward Beecher [link takes you to my amazon store], is a comprehensive, exhaustive story of Beecher's life, written almost like a novel. The book introduces us to a vaguely familiar figure in American history and brings him to sparkling life, complete with a look at his famous family and the scandal that later almost destroyed him.
Henry Ward Beecher was one of Lyman Beecher's children, and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lyman became well-known as a preacher in his time, as a strict Calvinist, a believer in the old testament way of seeing God: vengeful, punishing. He was known for following his own strict code of ethics, but at home he was a loving, forgiving father. Unlike many evangelical Christians today, he also believed strongly in education and questioning, encouraging all of his children to learn all they could.
Lyman wanted all of his sons to follow him into the ministry. Eventually, hesitantly, Henry did just that.
From childhood, though, Henry did not resemble his father. He was easy-going, optimistic, playful. He made others laugh. He developed a vague sense that Lyman's view of God didn't mesh with Lyman's own actions, and he puzzled over the twisted logic needed to follow Calvinist tenets.
Over time, as much for self-acceptance as for any other reason, he strayed from the Calvinist and developed a view focused more on Jesus and on love. At first he took little steps away from his childhood teachings but eventually just threw the whole thing away, embracing not only love and forgiveness but even finding a way to meld the Bible's teachings with the early concepts of evolution.
Henry was a terrific orator. He discovered this talent early in school and eventually this is what made him most famous. What really drew them in, though, was his warmth. Over the years, as crisis followed scandal, he tended to emerge with his head above water mostly because of this capacity. People liked him.
Henry's unique brand of religion was more palatable than the old-style version. People liked to hear that there was hope for them, that when they sinned they were just human. Above all, Henry believed and taught that it is "more important to do good than to be good."
It's clear from his life in this book that much of what he preached is what he wanted to hear himself. He was far from a saint. He overspent, went into debt constantly, enjoyed riches and good clothes, loved being with women. Later in life he even took up drinking (he did continue the church's teachings against drink, gambling,and prostitution throughout his life). Eventually his relationships with a few women led to a major scandal, bringing all of the pundits of the day well out in the open, destroying friendships, and sobering his effervescent personality.
Overshadowed by his large presence was his sharp, questioning intellect. Beecher became friends with several of the so-called transcendentalists, and in fact brought much of that high-minded philosophy down to earth, where he himself practiced it. He was passionately interested in science and in the origin of man as a biological being.
It was his radical approach to religion that earns him his place in history, however. Most modern churches follow his practice, so much so that we forget Christianity has not always preached love and forgiveness.
This biography is a sympathetic yet not sycophantic telling of the story. It's clear that Applegate likes what she knows of Beecher (and she knows a lot: she started this book as a thesis at Amherst, where Beecher went to college, and the librarians there led her to thousands of treasures about and by Beecher) but she does not let it cloud her vision. She tells it as it is, careful to specify what is known absolutely and what is not.
As a bonus,the story encompasses a wade swath of early American history. A significant portion of the book tells the tale of slavery and abolition. It is easy, sometimes, from the distance of time, to imagine that it was a simple situation: slavery is bad and therefore must go. But of course it was not simple. Lincoln himself famously said that he was for the union and if that meant slavery had to stay then it would; if that meant slavery had to go it would. In other words, political expediency outflanked moral obligations then as well as now.
What made Henry's sister Harriet's book (Uncle Tom's Cabin) so famous is that she made slaves human. This had not been done before. Critics now can easily rail against her sentimental writing and characters but those critics weren't there then. She wasn't a great writer but she said what others did not.
Henry, too, leaned toward abolition. But he wavered again and again, primarily for his own political reasons. He was no sturdy oak of principle. He would sacrifice principles and people to protect himself. Yet still people loved him. Perhaps because they saw much of themselves in him.
There was more to this extreme man than can possibly meet the eye today. This book helps us realize that and gives us an excellent picture of the times.
Henry Ward Beecher was one of Lyman Beecher's children, and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lyman became well-known as a preacher in his time, as a strict Calvinist, a believer in the old testament way of seeing God: vengeful, punishing. He was known for following his own strict code of ethics, but at home he was a loving, forgiving father. Unlike many evangelical Christians today, he also believed strongly in education and questioning, encouraging all of his children to learn all they could.
Lyman wanted all of his sons to follow him into the ministry. Eventually, hesitantly, Henry did just that.
From childhood, though, Henry did not resemble his father. He was easy-going, optimistic, playful. He made others laugh. He developed a vague sense that Lyman's view of God didn't mesh with Lyman's own actions, and he puzzled over the twisted logic needed to follow Calvinist tenets.
Over time, as much for self-acceptance as for any other reason, he strayed from the Calvinist and developed a view focused more on Jesus and on love. At first he took little steps away from his childhood teachings but eventually just threw the whole thing away, embracing not only love and forgiveness but even finding a way to meld the Bible's teachings with the early concepts of evolution.
Henry was a terrific orator. He discovered this talent early in school and eventually this is what made him most famous. What really drew them in, though, was his warmth. Over the years, as crisis followed scandal, he tended to emerge with his head above water mostly because of this capacity. People liked him.
Henry's unique brand of religion was more palatable than the old-style version. People liked to hear that there was hope for them, that when they sinned they were just human. Above all, Henry believed and taught that it is "more important to do good than to be good."
It's clear from his life in this book that much of what he preached is what he wanted to hear himself. He was far from a saint. He overspent, went into debt constantly, enjoyed riches and good clothes, loved being with women. Later in life he even took up drinking (he did continue the church's teachings against drink, gambling,and prostitution throughout his life). Eventually his relationships with a few women led to a major scandal, bringing all of the pundits of the day well out in the open, destroying friendships, and sobering his effervescent personality.
Overshadowed by his large presence was his sharp, questioning intellect. Beecher became friends with several of the so-called transcendentalists, and in fact brought much of that high-minded philosophy down to earth, where he himself practiced it. He was passionately interested in science and in the origin of man as a biological being.
It was his radical approach to religion that earns him his place in history, however. Most modern churches follow his practice, so much so that we forget Christianity has not always preached love and forgiveness.
This biography is a sympathetic yet not sycophantic telling of the story. It's clear that Applegate likes what she knows of Beecher (and she knows a lot: she started this book as a thesis at Amherst, where Beecher went to college, and the librarians there led her to thousands of treasures about and by Beecher) but she does not let it cloud her vision. She tells it as it is, careful to specify what is known absolutely and what is not.
As a bonus,the story encompasses a wade swath of early American history. A significant portion of the book tells the tale of slavery and abolition. It is easy, sometimes, from the distance of time, to imagine that it was a simple situation: slavery is bad and therefore must go. But of course it was not simple. Lincoln himself famously said that he was for the union and if that meant slavery had to stay then it would; if that meant slavery had to go it would. In other words, political expediency outflanked moral obligations then as well as now.
What made Henry's sister Harriet's book (Uncle Tom's Cabin) so famous is that she made slaves human. This had not been done before. Critics now can easily rail against her sentimental writing and characters but those critics weren't there then. She wasn't a great writer but she said what others did not.
Henry, too, leaned toward abolition. But he wavered again and again, primarily for his own political reasons. He was no sturdy oak of principle. He would sacrifice principles and people to protect himself. Yet still people loved him. Perhaps because they saw much of themselves in him.
There was more to this extreme man than can possibly meet the eye today. This book helps us realize that and gives us an excellent picture of the times.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
The Amateur Marriage, by Anne Tyler
The Amateur Marriage follows two people with very different personalities who are flung together in wartime and decide to make a marriage of it.
Pauline is an energetic, attractive, talkative young woman, who likes to enjoy herself. Michael is quiet and reserved and likes to stay home.
Michael rather impetuously proposes to Pauline, remembering how she looked, how she ran toward him to say goodby when he was leaving for the war, her red coat flying behind her. At various times in his later life he remembers that moment and reaffirms his love for her.
The marriage has a rocky beginning. Pauline is expected to move into a tiny apartment above Michael's mother's store, and to live with Michael's mother. She manages to adjust to it but has her eye on a more suburban type life, which she ultimately obtains.
The two don't understand each other and it appears that neither knows quite what to do about it. The rocky beginning extends into the middle and further out into Pauline and Michael's time as grandparents. Through all these years the two struggle against each other's different ways of seeing the world but they never seem to make a real effort to bridge the gap. The marriage never gets past amateur status.
I felt that the descriptions of Pauline in particular are almost mocking, almost parody. Little episodes from their lives as it spans decades are drawn lightly and similarly with almost a smirk, mocking the age and the sensibilities of the time, and the nature of this woman. She isn't particularly likeable.
Michael is drawn with a little more affection, yet his stiffness is always apparent and often irritating. I found myself drawn more, at times, to the children.
Tyler seems to like looking back at the fifties and sixties in particular, and she has an ear for how it sounded, how people talked and thought then. Even though I felt the sets were accurate, I would have preferred more inside work, more of Pauline and Michael inside than out. It may be, of course, that the superficial way she does invade their consciousness does mimic how many in this generation did feel and think.
In general, I like Anne Tyler's work but feel that it touches me lightly rather than deeply. It makes me think a little but does not linger.
Pauline is an energetic, attractive, talkative young woman, who likes to enjoy herself. Michael is quiet and reserved and likes to stay home.
Michael rather impetuously proposes to Pauline, remembering how she looked, how she ran toward him to say goodby when he was leaving for the war, her red coat flying behind her. At various times in his later life he remembers that moment and reaffirms his love for her.
The marriage has a rocky beginning. Pauline is expected to move into a tiny apartment above Michael's mother's store, and to live with Michael's mother. She manages to adjust to it but has her eye on a more suburban type life, which she ultimately obtains.
The two don't understand each other and it appears that neither knows quite what to do about it. The rocky beginning extends into the middle and further out into Pauline and Michael's time as grandparents. Through all these years the two struggle against each other's different ways of seeing the world but they never seem to make a real effort to bridge the gap. The marriage never gets past amateur status.
I felt that the descriptions of Pauline in particular are almost mocking, almost parody. Little episodes from their lives as it spans decades are drawn lightly and similarly with almost a smirk, mocking the age and the sensibilities of the time, and the nature of this woman. She isn't particularly likeable.
Michael is drawn with a little more affection, yet his stiffness is always apparent and often irritating. I found myself drawn more, at times, to the children.
Tyler seems to like looking back at the fifties and sixties in particular, and she has an ear for how it sounded, how people talked and thought then. Even though I felt the sets were accurate, I would have preferred more inside work, more of Pauline and Michael inside than out. It may be, of course, that the superficial way she does invade their consciousness does mimic how many in this generation did feel and think.
In general, I like Anne Tyler's work but feel that it touches me lightly rather than deeply. It makes me think a little but does not linger.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Lisey's Story: Dewey's review
Cross-posted at my blog.
Title, author, and date of book? Lisey's Story, Stephen King, 2006
Genre: fiction, nonfiction, memoir, history, etc.? Fiction. King generally writes horror, and there are aspects of that in this book, as well as thriller and fantasy.
What made you want to read it? Did it live up to your expectations? I generally read everything new that King publishes. No, it didn't really live up to my expectations. Since this was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, I expected it to be one of the best King novels. It's about average on my personal spectrum of King novels.
Summarize the book without giving away the ending. The main character, Lisey, is the widow of a famous writer. She's grieving as well as trying to process some of what she knows about her husband and his past, and trying to deal with an ill sister, and trying to deal with a deranged stalker.
What did you think of the main character? I thought she was very strong; she's one those quiet women you may not notice, but if you get to know them, you realize they're intelligent and strong as hell.
Which character could you relate to best, and why? I didn't relate to any of the characters. The main character, Lisey, has 20 million dollars, a dead husband and several sisters. She's the youngest in her family and she's never had a career. The only thing I really have in common with her is that I know what it's like to travel so much that it's not even fun any more. Her sister, Amanda, is catatonic through most of the novel, so it's hard to identify with her. I certainly don't identify with a male Pulitzer/NBA winning novelist. And most of all, I don't identify with a deranged, violent stalker.
Were there any other especially interesting characters? The dead writer has a father and brother that we meet through flashbacks to his childhood. They were some of the most interesting characters, for me.
Did you think the characters and their problems were believable? Well, no. But I don't think I'm meant to. There is another world that the characters visit in a vaguely Narnia-like way. Those who can visit that world have amazing healing powers.
From whose point of view is the story told? Lisey's.
Was location important to the story? There are a lot of references to King's fictional places in Maine. For details on those connections, click here.
Was the time period important to the story? It seemed more like current technology interfered with the story. For example, in order to make some of the isolation Lisey experiences more plausible, she had to be completely clueless about her own cell phone.
Was the story told chronologically? Was there foreshadowing? No, it wasn't told chronologically. There were a lot of flashbacks, both to the time that Scott (Lisey's husband) was alive and to Scott's and Lisey's childhoods. Yes, there was some foreshadowing.
Did you think the story was funny, sad, touching, disturbing, moving? It wasn't as sad and disturbing as it was probably meant to be. I think a stronger sense of grief was required from Lisey, whereas there was really more a problem-solving air about her.
What did you like most about the book? As always, I enjoyed King's wordplay.
What did you like least? The disgusting scenes featuring the violent stalker. But I think they were meant to be that disgusting.
Share a quote from the book. A "long boy" is a sort of monster from the alternate world the characters travel to.
Share a favorite scene from the book. I have two favorite scenes.
In the first, Lisey and Scott are spending a winter in Germany. King did a wonderful job evoking the sense of despair and desperate homesickness the two experienced. I also like how this scene captured the way in which the mental anguish of one person in a couple can be contagious for the other.
I also enjoyed the flashbacks to Scott's childhood. King has a gift for characterization, particularly with child characters. The events of Scott's childhood are so horrific, but so real in spite of their basic unreality, that I had to wonder if King himself had lived with a mentally ill parent.
What about the ending? To be honest, this book really bogged down in the last 1/3 or so. I got to the point where I just wanted to finish. The end contains some writing of Scott's that Lisey found, which gives her a sort of closure. I'm not sure I believe there is such a thing as closure on losing someone you have lived with and loved for 25 years. But Lisey comes as close as she could probably hope for.
What do you think will be your lasting impression of this book? I think my lasting impression will be "one of the Stephen King books with a female main character." Not one that stands out.
Thanks to Bonnie for her version of the book review questionnaire.
Here's an interview with King about this book, though they don't get to discussing this book in particular until halfway through the four minutes. The playful humor you find in King's books is apparent also in this interivew.
Title, author, and date of book? Lisey's Story, Stephen King, 2006Genre: fiction, nonfiction, memoir, history, etc.? Fiction. King generally writes horror, and there are aspects of that in this book, as well as thriller and fantasy.
What made you want to read it? Did it live up to your expectations? I generally read everything new that King publishes. No, it didn't really live up to my expectations. Since this was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, I expected it to be one of the best King novels. It's about average on my personal spectrum of King novels.
Summarize the book without giving away the ending. The main character, Lisey, is the widow of a famous writer. She's grieving as well as trying to process some of what she knows about her husband and his past, and trying to deal with an ill sister, and trying to deal with a deranged stalker.
What did you think of the main character? I thought she was very strong; she's one those quiet women you may not notice, but if you get to know them, you realize they're intelligent and strong as hell.
Which character could you relate to best, and why? I didn't relate to any of the characters. The main character, Lisey, has 20 million dollars, a dead husband and several sisters. She's the youngest in her family and she's never had a career. The only thing I really have in common with her is that I know what it's like to travel so much that it's not even fun any more. Her sister, Amanda, is catatonic through most of the novel, so it's hard to identify with her. I certainly don't identify with a male Pulitzer/NBA winning novelist. And most of all, I don't identify with a deranged, violent stalker.
Were there any other especially interesting characters? The dead writer has a father and brother that we meet through flashbacks to his childhood. They were some of the most interesting characters, for me.
Did you think the characters and their problems were believable? Well, no. But I don't think I'm meant to. There is another world that the characters visit in a vaguely Narnia-like way. Those who can visit that world have amazing healing powers.
From whose point of view is the story told? Lisey's.
Was location important to the story? There are a lot of references to King's fictional places in Maine. For details on those connections, click here.
Was the time period important to the story? It seemed more like current technology interfered with the story. For example, in order to make some of the isolation Lisey experiences more plausible, she had to be completely clueless about her own cell phone.
Was the story told chronologically? Was there foreshadowing? No, it wasn't told chronologically. There were a lot of flashbacks, both to the time that Scott (Lisey's husband) was alive and to Scott's and Lisey's childhoods. Yes, there was some foreshadowing.
Did you think the story was funny, sad, touching, disturbing, moving? It wasn't as sad and disturbing as it was probably meant to be. I think a stronger sense of grief was required from Lisey, whereas there was really more a problem-solving air about her.
What did you like most about the book? As always, I enjoyed King's wordplay.
What did you like least? The disgusting scenes featuring the violent stalker. But I think they were meant to be that disgusting.
Share a quote from the book. A "long boy" is a sort of monster from the alternate world the characters travel to.
Her own fear is so great it's incapacitating, and any sense of exhilaration at having him back is gone. Has he lived with this all his life? If so, how has he lived with it? But even now, in the extremity of her terror, she supposes she knows. Two things have tied him to the earth and saved him from the long boy. His writing is one. The other has a waist he an put his arms around and an ear into which he can whisper.
Share a favorite scene from the book. I have two favorite scenes.
In the first, Lisey and Scott are spending a winter in Germany. King did a wonderful job evoking the sense of despair and desperate homesickness the two experienced. I also like how this scene captured the way in which the mental anguish of one person in a couple can be contagious for the other.
I also enjoyed the flashbacks to Scott's childhood. King has a gift for characterization, particularly with child characters. The events of Scott's childhood are so horrific, but so real in spite of their basic unreality, that I had to wonder if King himself had lived with a mentally ill parent.
What about the ending? To be honest, this book really bogged down in the last 1/3 or so. I got to the point where I just wanted to finish. The end contains some writing of Scott's that Lisey found, which gives her a sort of closure. I'm not sure I believe there is such a thing as closure on losing someone you have lived with and loved for 25 years. But Lisey comes as close as she could probably hope for.
What do you think will be your lasting impression of this book? I think my lasting impression will be "one of the Stephen King books with a female main character." Not one that stands out.
Thanks to Bonnie for her version of the book review questionnaire.
Here's an interview with King about this book, though they don't get to discussing this book in particular until halfway through the four minutes. The playful humor you find in King's books is apparent also in this interivew.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Laura's Review: Gate of the Sun
Elias Khoury
539 pages
First sentence: Umm Hassan is dead.
Reflections: One of the most valuable lessons of my adult life has been realizing that the history we learn in school is just one point of view. As Elias Khoury writes, "I'm scared of history that has only one version. History has dozens of versions, and for it to ossify into one leads only to death."
In Gate of the Sun, Khoury tells of Arab - Israeli conflict from a Palestinian perspective. Khalil Ayyoub is a doctor caring for a man named Yunes, his mentor and father figure who has fallen into a coma after a stroke. Although the hospital director has declared Yunes will not recover, Khalil maintains a bedside vigil, talking to Yunes in the desperate hope that this will bring him back. Khalil recounts Yunes' youth prior to the formation of the Israeli state in 1948, the displacement of Palestinians, and Yunes' work as a freedom fighter from that point onwards. Yunes is forced to live apart from his wife, Nahila, and their children, because he will be killed if found. His rendezvous with Nahila take place in a cave near their village, the only place they can spend time together. They lived this way for years, with Nahila bearing several children and raising them on her own.
Khalil also tells stories of his own life, including his love for a woman named Shams, who is a sudden victim of the violence surrounding them. Shams' story, and that of their relationship, unfolds gradually throughout the novel. The book proceeds with Khalil sitting by Yunes' bedside weaving tales day after day for nearly seven months. Through these stories we gain an understanding of this period in history as seen by Palestinians; a very different perspective from that of the US government and media.
Khoury writes beautiful, descriptive prose: "A woman walking alone through the rubble of her village looking for the stones that were once her house. A woman alone, her head covered with a black scarf, hunched up in that emptiness that stretches all the way to God, among the hills and valleys of Galilee, within the circle of a red sun that crawls over the ground, passing slowly and carrying with it the shadows of all things." Yet I found the stream of consciousness style a bit difficult to follow, and had trouble keeping names, places, and events straight. In the end, I was ready to finish this book so I could get on to my next read.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Digging to America - kookiejar's review
At first this appeared to be the story of two young families who have adopted infant girls from Korea.
The Yazdans are second generations Iranian immigrants who name their new daughter Susan and let her assimilate seamlessly into American culture. The other couple are the Donaldsons, whose daughter Jin-soo is encouraged to keep and practice the Korean culture (even though she had no real knowledge of it).
However, in the middle of the novel there is a jarring narrative shift and suddenly we are following the lives of Susan and Jin-Soo's grandparents. Specifically, Jin-soo's grandfather, Dave and Susan's grandmother, Maryam. Dave is recently widowed and finds himself drawn to Maryam, while she, although attracted to Dave is put off by her unfamiliarity with American culture and the aggressively strange customs Dave's daughter initiates.
I thought it was weird that on one page we would be reading about 'Bitsy, Dave and Miriam' and a little later (when looking at the world through Jin-Soo's eyes), these same people were 'Jin-Soo's mother, Jin-Soo's grandfather, and Susan's grandmother'. It seemed like a cheap trick (narratively speaking) and completely unnecessary.
I would have preferred if the story has continued to be about the girls and their acclimation to American life (given their foster parents' differing attitudes on the subject), but I guess the author felt differently.
That being said, the story was very affecting and I had tears in my eyes on the last page, when Maryam discovered that you don't get to choose your family, your family chooses you.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Arthur & George reviewed by raidergirl3
also posted to my blog
I am so glad I just finished reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. At times I felt I was reading Arthur Conan Doyle's biography, and the line between fiction and nonfiction has become very blurred for me. Much of what I read will become my belief about Doyle, even though I know it shouldn't. Barnes writes in a note at the end of the book that quotes and excerpts from newspapers are all factual.
This is the story of two men, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, one a famous writer, and one a quiet solicitor wrongly accused of a crime. I found the prose compelling and enthralling as I read the life story of both men, and how they eventually met, and how their stories became entwined. Doyle comes off as priggish and arrogant as his character, Sherlock Holmes. Edalji, son of a Parsee Vicor, is very British as well, with his stiff upper lip and resignation to his fate. Barnes is very ambitious with his story, and I quite enjoyed it.
It felt a little weak at the end, as he tried to connect the ideas of faith, and spiritism and the characters. It was rushed in content and yet slow at the same time. However, overall, a great read, with meticulous details and a wonderful telling of an obscure event in British history. Barnes is now two for two with me, having read and enjoyed A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters.
from the Guardian (UK) " Arthur & George is Julian Barnes's inventive account of a true and important miscarriage of justice... What Barnes adds to the tale--it was cause celebre of its day--is imagination, insight, passion, and of course his beautiful writing."
next up: Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Thursday, July 12, 2007
The Ghost Map - Review by Sally906
Finished: 30/05/07 Review also found here
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 284
Rated: B
Cover: Hard Copy
Obtained from? Own it
Reason(s) for Reading: Wanted to
Opening Sentence "...It is August 1854, and London is a city of scavengers..."
At the end of the summer of 1854, the deadliest outbreak of cholera in London's history erupted. At the time, London was one of the biggest, most populated and relatively modern city in the world. What it didn't have was sewerage systems in place, or access to pure water sources. But that was OK - because every one in the scientific and religious world knew that the people who died of plagues and cholera caught it from bad odors (miasma) - and as London was virtually covered in poo - there was a lot of miasma around.
The book traces the history of the cholera virus, and it is fascinating. It then goes on to describe the investigations of Doctor John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead. Separately at first, then joining forces they set out to prove that the virus was not caused by breathing foul air - but by raw sewerage getting into the drinking water. Totally at odds with the scientific thoughts of the day. Unfortunately Snow never lived long enough to see his theory proved and accepted.
While the book is easy to read and fascinatingly informative - which is hard to find in the scientific Non-Fiction genre. However, I did find it to be very repetitive at times. Often, as I read a paragraph, I virtually rolled my eyes thinking " Hello you've told me this twice already - I get it!!"
He finished up comparing this event to the modern viruses around today, such as bird flu, and how it could potentially happen again. I was disappointed that this was put in at the end, almost as an afterthought - maybe if he had repeated himself less then he could have expanded more on this theory.
On the whole though - it was easy to read, informative and very interesting.
The book traces the history of the cholera virus, and it is fascinating. It then goes on to describe the investigations of Doctor John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead. Separately at first, then joining forces they set out to prove that the virus was not caused by breathing foul air - but by raw sewerage getting into the drinking water. Totally at odds with the scientific thoughts of the day. Unfortunately Snow never lived long enough to see his theory proved and accepted.
While the book is easy to read and fascinatingly informative - which is hard to find in the scientific Non-Fiction genre. However, I did find it to be very repetitive at times. Often, as I read a paragraph, I virtually rolled my eyes thinking " Hello you've told me this twice already - I get it!!"
He finished up comparing this event to the modern viruses around today, such as bird flu, and how it could potentially happen again. I was disappointed that this was put in at the end, almost as an afterthought - maybe if he had repeated himself less then he could have expanded more on this theory.
On the whole though - it was easy to read, informative and very interesting.
The Inheritance of Loss - Review by Sally906
Finished: 16/04/07
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 312
Rated: E
Cover: Trade Paperback
Obtained from?: Library
Reason(s) for Reading: Wanted to
Opening sentence "...All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths..."
I read this book for one of my reading challenges, the New York Times Notable Book Challenge.
Kiran Desai is the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006. Surely as a recipient this means that she is a superb writer, whose books are going to be the ultimate fiction experience. But no, not for me I'm afraid. Despite great reviews and accolades I just couldn't get into the book. I would just start to get engrossed and she whipped me off somewhere else - either jumping forward six months - or backwards thirty years. She has beautiful descriptions, such a poetic turn of words - I mean just look back up at the opening sentence - it is so mood setting. I read them and thought Ahhh - I'm in for a treat. Unfortunately the promise of the opening words just didn't follow through into the plot. I am not sure I even know the meaning of the end - or if the last page is the end - she just stopped. the only character I really cared about and can only imagine her fate - is that of Mutt. I shed a tear as I fear she will end up in the curry pot. I was devastated at her probable end - but again you just aren't told - no closure. I do hate that.
I do have Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard I am a bit reluctant to read it - but many people have told me it is a much better book - so will give it a try.
Read this in April but didn't realise I had not posted the review in this blog. Review can also be found here.
Digging to America - Sally's Review
Finished: 11/07/07
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 277
Rated: C +
Cover: Trade Paperback
Obtained from? Library
Reason(s) for Reading: Wanted to
Opening Sentence: "...At eight o'clock in the evening, the Baltimore airport was nearly deserted..."
Quietly in the background though the two cultures are more alike than they admit - with Bitsi's father and Sami's mother slowly breaking down the barriers and falling in love.
Each year the two families hold an 'Arrival' party to celebrate the arrival of the two little girls. It is over the top and shows the different ways the two families raise their daughters. Betsi insists on her daughter, Jin-Ho, retain her Korean name and culture. Where as Ziba changes her daughter Sookie's name to Sue does not emphasis her Korean roots. As the years progress the families face all sorts of challenges in this gentle book - it is a complex book, with many nuances, and unfolded at a gentle pace. It is not an in-your-face exciting read - but it leaves you well satisfied.
Review also found here
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Everyman - kookiejar's review
I must admit here and now that I am somewhat fascinated by old men. They seem obsessed with death and sex and are unable to do anything about either.The unnamed main character in 'Everyman' is no different. The bulk of the story is a look back on his life, as the opening scene is his funeral. We learn he has been married three times, has two grown children and has battled various physical ailments most of his life.
I got the impression that his inability to maintain a healthy relationship had a lot to do with his life long dance with death. His poor physical health seemed strongly linked to his emotional health.
My favorite part was where our hero tried to 'put the moves' on a pretty, young woman some 40 years his junior. She rebuffs him in the nicest way possible, but I wondered at what age does a man stop being a viable sexual partner and start being a dirty old man.
At times the descriptions of his various medical procedures seemed endless, and I found his sexual conquests to be rather coldly clinical, but all-in-all this was extremely well-written and I was pretty much engrossed from page one.
I have only attempted one other of Roth's novels ("The Plot Against America") and I didn't really like that, but I will try some of his others now that I've read 'Everyman'.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Nemirovsky's Novels in Demand
Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise has sparked an interest in her previous novels.
This from Alan Riding of the New York Times:
This from Alan Riding of the New York Times:
To read more of this article, go here."First published in France in 2004, it has sold 600,000 copies in French and close to 1 million more in 30 other languages. And predictably, a dozen of her earlier books have since been reissued and sold for translation.
Now another previously undiscovered Nemirovsky novel has been unearthed. A powerful tale of love, betrayal and death in a Burgundy village, "Chaleur du Sang" -- provisionally titled "Fire in the Blood" in English -- was published to warm reviews in Paris in March."
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Forgetfulness; reviewed by Lisa
I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Ward Just. I have only read one other of his books, An Unfinished Season (link is my review). I liked that book also, but I liked this one better. Perhaps you have to be "in the mood" for Just's books, and I was this time.In Ward Just's books (it seems...I've only read two) nothing much happens. They are not action-packed. There is a pivotal event, and then you get to ride around in the character's head for the rest of the book while they figure out how they feel about it, what it means, and so forth. When you finish a Ward Just book, you feel like you are losing a friend in a way, so close have you been inside this person's head.
This particular book centers around the murder of a French woman married to an ex-pat American (that's not a spoiler, really, it's on the jacket and comprises the first pages of the book). This takes place post 9/11, and we get a view of how the idea of terrorism has changed the world, and the views of different cultures about it. Fascinating, a quick read, and deep well developed characters.
I said this before, when I read Unfinished Season, but Ward Just has been a prolific writer and more of his books are going on my list.
*Cross posted on my Book Blog
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Alentejo Blue reviewed by raidergirl3
Reposted from my blog.
I just spent a lovely week in the Alentejo region of Portugal, living among the locals, as well as with a few British tourists, and a few ex-pat Brits as well. Each person I met told me a little about their life, but it's funny how they see each other. It is so easy to label someone as 'trouble', or 'know-it-all' or 'nosy' based on a few characteristics. Once you meet the person, and realize why they are, or are not, the way they are, it all changes. As Joao, an old wise man of the village said, "There's more than one way to look at it."
I stayed until the fall festival occurred. At the same time, Marco, a cousin and former resident returned home, successfully from abroad. It was a great festival, lots of food and music, but everyone was there and there were some personality fireworks. Some people stayed, some people left, and then, life continued.
next up: Arthur and George
I just spent a lovely week in the Alentejo region of Portugal, living among the locals, as well as with a few British tourists, and a few ex-pat Brits as well. Each person I met told me a little about their life, but it's funny how they see each other. It is so easy to label someone as 'trouble', or 'know-it-all' or 'nosy' based on a few characteristics. Once you meet the person, and realize why they are, or are not, the way they are, it all changes. As Joao, an old wise man of the village said, "There's more than one way to look at it."I stayed until the fall festival occurred. At the same time, Marco, a cousin and former resident returned home, successfully from abroad. It was a great festival, lots of food and music, but everyone was there and there were some personality fireworks. Some people stayed, some people left, and then, life continued.
next up: Arthur and George
Monday, July 2, 2007
The Echo Maker reviewed by raidergirl3
This is the review I posted to my blog.
I'm somewhat conflicted about reviewing this book, because I know it is an award winner (National Book Award, 2006) and it was recommended by 3M for the Something About Me Challenge. And I can see why it was an award winner, but I think I read it at the wrong time of the year, when my brain has essentially ceased functioning at the end of June. There were some big ideas in this novel - who are we? how is memory of a person compare with their reality? the trust we have in the people around us? And these big ideas would take a lot more thought than I was prepared to give them.
Mark has been in a car accident and when he awakes from his coma, he believes his sister has been replaced, an imposter. This is called Capgras syndrome and Dr Weber, a reknown cognitive neurologist, comes to investigate.
There were several levels to this novel: the cranes which return to Kearney, Nebraska each year; Mark's recovery and dealings with his sister and their past life; the mystery of what happened to Mark on the night of the accident; Dr Weber's tentative hold on reality in his own life; the different syndromes associated with brain injuries; and the existential questions of self and memory. I mostly enjoyed the mystery of the accident and the note that was left for Mark in the hospital. I found my mind wandering during sections about the cranes and about Dr Weber and his problems. It could have been shorter and I wouldn't have missed much of the filler. Mostly, I didn't connect with the characters and found their actions difficult to understand, especially Mark's sister.
I also enjoyed the setting of Nebraska and feel the author did a great job of describing the feel and mood of the location. The science background describing the different symdromes was also very interesting, as was the mystery of the accident and the Capgras syndrome. I wanted to finish the book and never contemplated not finishing, but it was a little long, and I read three other books after I started this one because I couldn't read this very fast. The pages really dragged in parts and I had to concentrate to get through the novel. I blame much of this on me and my tired head this month.
This was a NYT Notable Book of 2006, and while I enjoyed much of the story I don't think I'll be looking for another of Powers' books for quite a while.
next up: Alentejo Blue
I'm somewhat conflicted about reviewing this book, because I know it is an award winner (National Book Award, 2006) and it was recommended by 3M for the Something About Me Challenge. And I can see why it was an award winner, but I think I read it at the wrong time of the year, when my brain has essentially ceased functioning at the end of June. There were some big ideas in this novel - who are we? how is memory of a person compare with their reality? the trust we have in the people around us? And these big ideas would take a lot more thought than I was prepared to give them.Mark has been in a car accident and when he awakes from his coma, he believes his sister has been replaced, an imposter. This is called Capgras syndrome and Dr Weber, a reknown cognitive neurologist, comes to investigate.
There were several levels to this novel: the cranes which return to Kearney, Nebraska each year; Mark's recovery and dealings with his sister and their past life; the mystery of what happened to Mark on the night of the accident; Dr Weber's tentative hold on reality in his own life; the different syndromes associated with brain injuries; and the existential questions of self and memory. I mostly enjoyed the mystery of the accident and the note that was left for Mark in the hospital. I found my mind wandering during sections about the cranes and about Dr Weber and his problems. It could have been shorter and I wouldn't have missed much of the filler. Mostly, I didn't connect with the characters and found their actions difficult to understand, especially Mark's sister.
I also enjoyed the setting of Nebraska and feel the author did a great job of describing the feel and mood of the location. The science background describing the different symdromes was also very interesting, as was the mystery of the accident and the Capgras syndrome. I wanted to finish the book and never contemplated not finishing, but it was a little long, and I read three other books after I started this one because I couldn't read this very fast. The pages really dragged in parts and I had to concentrate to get through the novel. I blame much of this on me and my tired head this month.
This was a NYT Notable Book of 2006, and while I enjoyed much of the story I don't think I'll be looking for another of Powers' books for quite a while.
next up: Alentejo Blue
Intuition - kookiejar's review
Science is the search for facts. It is, however, a discipline steeped in failure, as that is the only way we learn. Unfortunately, too many people are unwilling to allow medical science the failures necessary to advance the field."Intuition" takes place in a laboratory where a vaccine for cancer has proven effective in mice. Of course, a finding that huge cannot be kept secret for long, despite the lack of follow-up tests. The media is alerted, with predictable results (the handsome doctor is profiled in People Magazine, the female doctor lauded for succeeding in a male-oriented field, the Asian doctor applauded for achieving the American dream, etc.)
Then one of the doctors notices a small discrepancy in the notations of the head of the department. Her decision to bring it to the attention of the scientific community brings the wrath of the government and public opinion down on the lab. Instead of focusing on the facts at hand, the investigation turns ugly and personal, threatening to destroy all the good work done there.
The whistle blowing doctor is appalled by what her actions wrought but is powerless to stop the snowball she set rolling. I thought this novel was very well-written and Goodman really nailed some of the uglier aspects of human nature and office politics. I would highly recommend this book to everyone but especially anyone with an interest in science.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
The Road -- Dewey's review
Cross-posted at my blog.
This is my first book for this challenge, and I feel awkward giving an at least partially negative review to such a widely-loved (and critically acclaimed) book my first time posting. Don't hold it against me, please! :)
If I were Cormac McCarthy's editor, here is what I would have said to him: I realize that your stylistic choices in this book are meant to reflect a world so barren that it doesn't have the luxury of such frills as apostrophes, commas and complete sentences. But your post-apocalyptic setting is stark enough, your characters are traumatized enough, your spare prose is Hemingwayesque enough that you don't need to resort to twee gimmicks to get your point across. Stop that.
Well. I feel better now! On to the review.
It took me a long time to warm up to The Road. I could not become immersed in the story because I was too busy working out why some contractions deserve the dignity of apostrophes and some don't. I mean dont. Because it's only the negatives who are forced to walk around naked without their punctuation. Even my favorite sentence of the book, a thought the man has while watching his sleeping son, was ruined for me by McCarthy's aversion to commas: If he is not the word of God God never spoke. God God sounds like something God's mom called him when he was a toddler. When I'm being moved by a father's love for his son and a pretty metaphor, I don't want to be distracted by the idea of God as a toddler with a mom, you know?
If you stripped this novel of all the tedious ash ash ash, walk walk walk, forage forage forage, rain rain rain details, it would be a good short story.
But I did say I eventually warmed up to the book. At about the middle of the novel, the man and the boy find a hatch in the ground, fully equipped and left behind by someone with forethought, but without the luck to have survived long enough to use it. After the man had rested and eaten well, suddenly he thought in paragraphs! He had complex ideas! Now this was some damn good writing, but I stopped and had a WTF? moment while I tried to figure out why the style had changed so drastically.
And then I got it. The man and the boy, on the road, are far too exhausted and hungry to say more than "Okay" and "I don't know." Their thoughts are simple despite their obvious intelligence because their more basic needs are unmet. Their world is nothing but ash ash ash, walk walk walk, forage forage forage, rain rain rain. When their basic needs for cleanliness and sleep and food are met, they become more than just nomadic animals with minimal communication skills. Brilliant! I decided I loved this particular technique.
Compare:
Still spare, still treating commas like McCarthy is a black coffee fan and commas are the whipped cream on some frou-frou Starbucks beverage -- and what more can you expect from a writer who calls semi-colons "idiocy?" But the man is desperate, even suicidal, so I can accept spareness. At least it no longer reads like first grade primer.
Through the entire first half of the novel, the starkness was distracting and irritating, and I found myself reading just to finish the book. After the respite in the underground shelter, when the point of the style clicked for me, I was more ready to accept devices like the tediously simplistic dialogue, though I still felt irritated by the crazy punctuation.
In spite of all this distraction from the actual story, I found myself frequently thinking about the characters when I was away from the book. I absolutely love the relationship between the father and the son. I love the son's intrinsic ethics, which the father doesn't want to squelch, and in another time wouldn't have to, but which he fears are dangerous on the road. And I love that McCarthy got so many of the emotions of parenting just right.
There were three big questions hanging over my head throughout the book.
1. How old is this boy?
2. What the hell happened to the world to make it this way?
3. How did these two survive when most people are dead?
These questions went without any definitive answers, but I found myself absorbed in watching for clues of the boy's age. I settled on seven. He can read in spite of a life without books, but he's still very vulnerably young. I have no idea why I fixated on figuring out the boy's age. He was my favorite character (not that there was much competition) and I think I was given so little information about him that I needed to ferret out more to make him feel more real.
There were more clues to the answer to my second question. The setting seemed to be the southeastern U.S. suffering from the effects of nuclear winter. They couldn't see the sun, it was cold, and there was ash everywhere. So I'm assuming there was a nuclear war, though it could have been some enormous natural disaster, maybe caused by global warming.
Not answering the third question seemed to me a flaw in the narrative. I really want to know what allowed them to survive. Had they found safe shelter? Were they just lucky? It seems essential, because if they survived due to their own cunning, that allows the reader to accept that they could keep surviving on the road.
Before even starting the book, I ran into a spoiler that revealed to me just how it ends. Knowing that ahead of time, combined with the unwavering hopelessness throughout the novel, prepared me for the unbearably sad ending. In fact, the book was so depressing in general that I found myself despairing over the pointlessness of life. Fortunately, I prescribed myself some chocolate chocolate chip Haagen-Dasz and an episode of Family Guy, and I was cured and ready to face life again.
I want to avoid spoilers, but I have to say that in I was even more disappointed by the deus ex machina ending after the sad part than I was by the stylistic oddness. I haven't seen anyone else mention this, either in blog reviews or print reviews, and I'm not sure if that's in an attempt to avoid spoilers or if people just didn't mind it.
Here is an amusing account of Oprah's interview with McCarthy.
This is my first book for this challenge, and I feel awkward giving an at least partially negative review to such a widely-loved (and critically acclaimed) book my first time posting. Don't hold it against me, please! :)
If I were Cormac McCarthy's editor, here is what I would have said to him: I realize that your stylistic choices in this book are meant to reflect a world so barren that it doesn't have the luxury of such frills as apostrophes, commas and complete sentences. But your post-apocalyptic setting is stark enough, your characters are traumatized enough, your spare prose is Hemingwayesque enough that you don't need to resort to twee gimmicks to get your point across. Stop that.Well. I feel better now! On to the review.
It took me a long time to warm up to The Road. I could not become immersed in the story because I was too busy working out why some contractions deserve the dignity of apostrophes and some don't. I mean dont. Because it's only the negatives who are forced to walk around naked without their punctuation. Even my favorite sentence of the book, a thought the man has while watching his sleeping son, was ruined for me by McCarthy's aversion to commas: If he is not the word of God God never spoke. God God sounds like something God's mom called him when he was a toddler. When I'm being moved by a father's love for his son and a pretty metaphor, I don't want to be distracted by the idea of God as a toddler with a mom, you know?
If you stripped this novel of all the tedious ash ash ash, walk walk walk, forage forage forage, rain rain rain details, it would be a good short story.
But I did say I eventually warmed up to the book. At about the middle of the novel, the man and the boy find a hatch in the ground, fully equipped and left behind by someone with forethought, but without the luck to have survived long enough to use it. After the man had rested and eaten well, suddenly he thought in paragraphs! He had complex ideas! Now this was some damn good writing, but I stopped and had a WTF? moment while I tried to figure out why the style had changed so drastically.
And then I got it. The man and the boy, on the road, are far too exhausted and hungry to say more than "Okay" and "I don't know." Their thoughts are simple despite their obvious intelligence because their more basic needs are unmet. Their world is nothing but ash ash ash, walk walk walk, forage forage forage, rain rain rain. When their basic needs for cleanliness and sleep and food are met, they become more than just nomadic animals with minimal communication skills. Brilliant! I decided I loved this particular technique.
Compare:
Is it cold?
Yes, it's freezing.
Do you want to go in?
I don't know.
Sure you do.
Is it okay?
Come on.
He turned and looked at the boy. Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he. He tried to remember the dream but he could not. All that was left was the feeling of it. He thought perhaps they'd come to warm him. Of what? That he could not enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own. Even now some part of him wished they'd never found this refuge. Some part of him always wished it to be over.
Still spare, still treating commas like McCarthy is a black coffee fan and commas are the whipped cream on some frou-frou Starbucks beverage -- and what more can you expect from a writer who calls semi-colons "idiocy?" But the man is desperate, even suicidal, so I can accept spareness. At least it no longer reads like first grade primer.
Through the entire first half of the novel, the starkness was distracting and irritating, and I found myself reading just to finish the book. After the respite in the underground shelter, when the point of the style clicked for me, I was more ready to accept devices like the tediously simplistic dialogue, though I still felt irritated by the crazy punctuation.
In spite of all this distraction from the actual story, I found myself frequently thinking about the characters when I was away from the book. I absolutely love the relationship between the father and the son. I love the son's intrinsic ethics, which the father doesn't want to squelch, and in another time wouldn't have to, but which he fears are dangerous on the road. And I love that McCarthy got so many of the emotions of parenting just right.
There were three big questions hanging over my head throughout the book.
1. How old is this boy?
2. What the hell happened to the world to make it this way?
3. How did these two survive when most people are dead?
These questions went without any definitive answers, but I found myself absorbed in watching for clues of the boy's age. I settled on seven. He can read in spite of a life without books, but he's still very vulnerably young. I have no idea why I fixated on figuring out the boy's age. He was my favorite character (not that there was much competition) and I think I was given so little information about him that I needed to ferret out more to make him feel more real.
There were more clues to the answer to my second question. The setting seemed to be the southeastern U.S. suffering from the effects of nuclear winter. They couldn't see the sun, it was cold, and there was ash everywhere. So I'm assuming there was a nuclear war, though it could have been some enormous natural disaster, maybe caused by global warming.
Not answering the third question seemed to me a flaw in the narrative. I really want to know what allowed them to survive. Had they found safe shelter? Were they just lucky? It seems essential, because if they survived due to their own cunning, that allows the reader to accept that they could keep surviving on the road.
Before even starting the book, I ran into a spoiler that revealed to me just how it ends. Knowing that ahead of time, combined with the unwavering hopelessness throughout the novel, prepared me for the unbearably sad ending. In fact, the book was so depressing in general that I found myself despairing over the pointlessness of life. Fortunately, I prescribed myself some chocolate chocolate chip Haagen-Dasz and an episode of Family Guy, and I was cured and ready to face life again.
I want to avoid spoilers, but I have to say that in I was even more disappointed by the deus ex machina ending after the sad part than I was by the stylistic oddness. I haven't seen anyone else mention this, either in blog reviews or print reviews, and I'm not sure if that's in an attempt to avoid spoilers or if people just didn't mind it.
Here is an amusing account of Oprah's interview with McCarthy.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala (reviewed by Literary Feline)
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
Harper Perennial; 2005
Fiction; 142 pgs
Completed: 06/22/2007
Rating: 5 Stars
First Sentence: It is starting like this.
Reason for Reading: After reading Wendy's (Caribousmom) review of Beasts of No Nation, I was instantly intrigued. This is my fourth selection for the New York Times Notable Book Challenge.
Comments: Uzodinma Iweala first came upon the idea of writing a story about a child soldier after seeing an article in Newsweek. He wanted to get inside the mind of a child soldier and understand what the child goes through. Eventually, after careful research and drawing from his own background, Beasts of No Nation was created.
This novel may seem small in size, however, its content is quite powerful. Beasts of No Nation is the story of a young boy in western Africa whose mother and sister have fled from their village with the war’s approach and who witnesses his own father’s murder. Agu is discovered hiding by a young boy soldier and soon finds himself fighting among the guerrilla fighters in a civil war. He is awed by the commandant’s posture and strength. The commandant can be gentle and kind, ruthless and brutal. Throughout his training and the fighting, Agu remembers his past, his relatively simple life. He loved school and books, he liked playing with his best friend, and dreamt of being an engineer or a doctor someday. His new life was vicious and hard.
Uzodinma Iweala captures the voice of his young narrator, creating a story that is both raw and authentic. The child’s fear and anguish can be felt on every page. I had no difficulty being pulled into the rhythm of the narrative and dialogue and it turned into a surprisingly fast book to read even with the unique nuances in the writing style. However, the subject matter itself was quite disturbing in parts; the experiences Agu had to live through are the kind no human being, much less a child should have to experience.
Favorite Part: The author did a wonderful job at giving his character Agu a voice. Several times throughout the book I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around Agu and save him from the hard life he had to live. I was grateful he and Strika had each other. I think their friendship got them both through the most difficult moments.
I also liked the way the author weaved myth and fable into the novel, specifically the story about the leopard and the ox and then the story of the greedy cloth seller. Such tales offered an insight into the events taking place in Agu’s life, part of which he may or may not have fully understood.
Note about the Author: Here is an interview with the author.
Miscellaneous: I read an article earlier in the week about three Sierra Leonean military leaders being convicted of a variety of crimes, including conscripting child soldiers. This could have a major impact on future cases involving similar charges, something that is long overdue.
(review originally posted at Musings of a Bookish Kitty).
Harper Perennial; 2005
Fiction; 142 pgs
Completed: 06/22/2007
Rating: 5 Stars
First Sentence: It is starting like this.
Reason for Reading: After reading Wendy's (Caribousmom) review of Beasts of No Nation, I was instantly intrigued. This is my fourth selection for the New York Times Notable Book Challenge.
Comments: Uzodinma Iweala first came upon the idea of writing a story about a child soldier after seeing an article in Newsweek. He wanted to get inside the mind of a child soldier and understand what the child goes through. Eventually, after careful research and drawing from his own background, Beasts of No Nation was created.
This novel may seem small in size, however, its content is quite powerful. Beasts of No Nation is the story of a young boy in western Africa whose mother and sister have fled from their village with the war’s approach and who witnesses his own father’s murder. Agu is discovered hiding by a young boy soldier and soon finds himself fighting among the guerrilla fighters in a civil war. He is awed by the commandant’s posture and strength. The commandant can be gentle and kind, ruthless and brutal. Throughout his training and the fighting, Agu remembers his past, his relatively simple life. He loved school and books, he liked playing with his best friend, and dreamt of being an engineer or a doctor someday. His new life was vicious and hard.
Uzodinma Iweala captures the voice of his young narrator, creating a story that is both raw and authentic. The child’s fear and anguish can be felt on every page. I had no difficulty being pulled into the rhythm of the narrative and dialogue and it turned into a surprisingly fast book to read even with the unique nuances in the writing style. However, the subject matter itself was quite disturbing in parts; the experiences Agu had to live through are the kind no human being, much less a child should have to experience.
Favorite Part: The author did a wonderful job at giving his character Agu a voice. Several times throughout the book I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around Agu and save him from the hard life he had to live. I was grateful he and Strika had each other. I think their friendship got them both through the most difficult moments.
I also liked the way the author weaved myth and fable into the novel, specifically the story about the leopard and the ox and then the story of the greedy cloth seller. Such tales offered an insight into the events taking place in Agu’s life, part of which he may or may not have fully understood.
Note about the Author: Here is an interview with the author.
Miscellaneous: I read an article earlier in the week about three Sierra Leonean military leaders being convicted of a variety of crimes, including conscripting child soldiers. This could have a major impact on future cases involving similar charges, something that is long overdue.
(review originally posted at Musings of a Bookish Kitty).
Friday, June 22, 2007
Administrative question about the header
On a duller, more procedural note that I meant to bring up a long time ago: Is anyone else having trouble with the blog's beautiful header? On my computer, perhaps because it is a Mac or because I use Firefox, the photograph is having two effects: it now takes a very long time to load the blog, and the text in the header now runs off the screen. Is it just my computer? If so, does anyone know what I can do to fix it? If not, is there any way to adjust the size of the picture to fix these two problems? I love the picture and would not like to return to the olden days of a purely textual header.
Ariel/Pour of Tor's review of "Beasts of No Nation"
** Cross-posted at http://sycoraxpine.blogspot.com/ **
In the opening pages of Uzodinma Iweala's first novel (adapted from his undergraduate creative
writing thesis, which had no less illustrious an adviser than Jamaica Kincaid) young Agu is snatched from his village - situated in an intentionally unspecific African country - and from his family by a rebel militia he knows would just as happily kill him as conscript him. What unfolds over the next 140 pages is the dense and excruciating tale of a child soldier - that paradox of innocence and immorality that seems so alien to the very concept of childhood, but is the experience of so many around the world right now. Agu's new family, led by the charismatic and despotic Commandant, is held together by bonds of fear, born of the certainty of death for the soldier who shows anything but the most eager obedience, the most frenzied hunger for flesh and blood. This death grip of a familial bond seems claustrophobically tight until it is suddenly - and with nightmarish, vertiginous ease - released.
But how can a child like Agu define himself in the aftermath of this sort of belonging? How do you return to any semblance of youth in the absence of the familial support that the war destroyed and then coopted?
This is a very, very difficult novel to read, and despite its short length, it took me several months and a great deal of willpower to finish it. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable feat of craftsmanship for an author at the beginning of his career. This is, after all, a prolonged and attentive exercise in character and voice. The novel is told entirely in Agu's idiosyncratic and trauma-shattered words, filled with exclamations, elisions, repetitions and unexpected ventriloquisms. We are constantly aware of Agu's childlike but detailed (all part of the central paradox of trauma) impersonations of other voices. This is why it is significant that Agu's only friend in the militia is the silent Strika, whose withholding of speech is both a mark of protest in world virtually without free will and a sign of sincerity and immediacy.
Beasts of No Nation is a book so profoundly oral that it requires absolute concentration, sometimes even in a quiet room, alone, reading aloud. Most often noted by critics among Iweala's many carefully wrought stylistic experiments is his use of an insistent, unsettling present tense. Consider this remarkable passage in which Agu reflects on the violence of coming of age rituals before the war, and the present tense blurs the lines between memory, possibility, actuality, and the current:
The immediacy of Iweala's language takes us dizzyingly into Agu's head, and it is difficult to inhabit someone consciousnous with this level of intimacy. But these same qualities also make it impossible to distance yourself from the events of the novel, or to romantize them, as so many foreign treatments of African narratives do. The present tense seems to me to be in the service of expressing this inescapable immediacy of trauma, of memories that can be approached but cannot be reconciled through masquerade or narrative. Beasts of No Nation is difficult to read because it is so successfully wrought (although, as a study in character, it pays scant attention to plot, moving swiftly through the conventional - if sadly true - landmarks of child abuse and war crime). The immediacy of the prose is truly oppressive. As this sort of tale should be.
Beasts of No Nation
Uzodinma Iweala
(2005)
***1/2
New York Times Notable Books Challenge Selection - 3/12
(Review of Twilight of the Superheroes to come soon, I hope!)
In the opening pages of Uzodinma Iweala's first novel (adapted from his undergraduate creative
writing thesis, which had no less illustrious an adviser than Jamaica Kincaid) young Agu is snatched from his village - situated in an intentionally unspecific African country - and from his family by a rebel militia he knows would just as happily kill him as conscript him. What unfolds over the next 140 pages is the dense and excruciating tale of a child soldier - that paradox of innocence and immorality that seems so alien to the very concept of childhood, but is the experience of so many around the world right now. Agu's new family, led by the charismatic and despotic Commandant, is held together by bonds of fear, born of the certainty of death for the soldier who shows anything but the most eager obedience, the most frenzied hunger for flesh and blood. This death grip of a familial bond seems claustrophobically tight until it is suddenly - and with nightmarish, vertiginous ease - released.But how can a child like Agu define himself in the aftermath of this sort of belonging? How do you return to any semblance of youth in the absence of the familial support that the war destroyed and then coopted?
This is a very, very difficult novel to read, and despite its short length, it took me several months and a great deal of willpower to finish it. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable feat of craftsmanship for an author at the beginning of his career. This is, after all, a prolonged and attentive exercise in character and voice. The novel is told entirely in Agu's idiosyncratic and trauma-shattered words, filled with exclamations, elisions, repetitions and unexpected ventriloquisms. We are constantly aware of Agu's childlike but detailed (all part of the central paradox of trauma) impersonations of other voices. This is why it is significant that Agu's only friend in the militia is the silent Strika, whose withholding of speech is both a mark of protest in world virtually without free will and a sign of sincerity and immediacy.
Beasts of No Nation is a book so profoundly oral that it requires absolute concentration, sometimes even in a quiet room, alone, reading aloud. Most often noted by critics among Iweala's many carefully wrought stylistic experiments is his use of an insistent, unsettling present tense. Consider this remarkable passage in which Agu reflects on the violence of coming of age rituals before the war, and the present tense blurs the lines between memory, possibility, actuality, and the current:
By the river, tied to one palm tree by its horn and its leg an ox was always waiting and stomping and making long low noise that are making you to sadding very much in your heart. The whole village was watching as all the dancer is dancing in the shallow river until the whole water is shining with small small wave. Then the top boy is going to the village chief and kneeling before him while the other leopard and ox dancer are dancing around and around him. The chief is giving him real machete and saying something into his ear until the boy is going and chopping one blow into the neck of the ox. Blood is flying all over his body and he is wiping it from his mask with his hand. Then he is putting his hand where he is cutting and collecting the blood to be rubbing on his body. When he is finishing, all the other is doing the same until everyone is covering in so much blood. They are spinning and spinning in their leopard mask or ox mask until KPWOM! the drum is sounding.
Everybody is knowing that to be killing masquerade you are removing its mask.
All of the dancer is removing their mask.
All of the spirit are dying and now all the boy is becoming men.
I am opening my eye and seeing that I am still in the war, and I am thinking, if war is not coming, then I would be man by now. (56)
The immediacy of Iweala's language takes us dizzyingly into Agu's head, and it is difficult to inhabit someone consciousnous with this level of intimacy. But these same qualities also make it impossible to distance yourself from the events of the novel, or to romantize them, as so many foreign treatments of African narratives do. The present tense seems to me to be in the service of expressing this inescapable immediacy of trauma, of memories that can be approached but cannot be reconciled through masquerade or narrative. Beasts of No Nation is difficult to read because it is so successfully wrought (although, as a study in character, it pays scant attention to plot, moving swiftly through the conventional - if sadly true - landmarks of child abuse and war crime). The immediacy of the prose is truly oppressive. As this sort of tale should be.
Beasts of No Nation
Uzodinma Iweala
(2005)
***1/2
New York Times Notable Books Challenge Selection - 3/12
(Review of Twilight of the Superheroes to come soon, I hope!)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (reviewed by Literary Feline)
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieKnopf, 2006
Fiction; 435 pgs
Completed: 06/18/2007
Rating: 4.5 Stars
First Sentence: Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings and had too much hair.
Reason for Reading: I was drawn to this novel from the very first time I heard about it several months ago, and the more I heard about it, the more I was sure I wanted read it. And so it was with great anticipation that I opened the book to the first page and began to read. This is my third selection for the New York Times Notable Book Challenge and my eighth and final selection for the Spring Reading Thing.
From the Publisher: With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, the Biafran secession and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place.
Comments: Between 1967 through to the beginning of 1970, Nigeria was in the midst of a civil war. A coup over the government by the Igpo people was short lived when another coup by the Hausa followed hot on its heels, becoming a nightmare for the Igbo people in Nigeria. On the back of a massacre that would continue throughout the war, the southeastern provinces of Nigeria declared themselves the Republic of Biafra and attempted to secede from the rest of the country. Although atrocities occurred on both sides, the use of starvation as a weapon to the isolated and war torn Biafra has become one of the grim trademarks of that vicious war.
A number of books have been popping up recently describing life and war in Africa, from a variety of cultures and perspectives. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel is one among many; however, it is one that stands out. The author is a gifted storyteller and her novel drew me in from the very first page and did not let go until long after I breathed in the last word. I am struggling with what to write about this book. The story moved me beyond words. I found myself chuckling during the lighter moments of the book, bubbling with anger at the atrocities described, fearful for the lives of characters I had grown to care very much for, and as if covered by a great veil of sadness, knowing that although Adichie’s novel is a work of fiction, there is much truth there as well.
The author’s words breathe life into the characters. How typical Ugwa was as a thirteen-year-old boy! There was Olanna with her kind heart and self-doubt; Odenigbo, so full of passion for what he believes; Richard whose outsider status never held him back from believing he belonged and yet whose uncertainty made him unsteady on his feet; and Kainene, who stood apart and kept her distance more often than not, hiding behind her sarcastic comments. It was Kainene I was most fascinated by, surprising even myself. I would have expected to be taken in more by Olanna’s gentle but tough character for she is the character I could most identify with.
Adichie painted a vivid picture of the brutality of war and the impact it had on her characters. No one went unaffected in some way, whether they paid the ultimate price or were oblivious throughout most of the war. I especially remember the scene near the end when a woman visits the Nsukka home searching out her old friend, Odenigbo. She makes a comment about how life had gone on for her almost like normal during the war and that she had no idea the extent of the war on her Igbo friends. She only learned of the terrible conditions her Igbo friends endured by reading a London paper while attending a conference. The irony, the dichotomy, of the situation was like a hammer hitting a nail home.
From the interactions of the characters and their relationships, and in the war itself, the author was able to touch up the issues of race and class struggles, the prejudices surrounding them. One aspect I found intriguing throughout the novel was the underlying influence the British colonization had on the various tribes and cultures in Nigeria and how much of that played into the events that would unfold in that country as well as in the book itself. It came as no surprise, mind you; however, it is a reminder of how all actions have consequences, some of which are unforeseen until they completely unravel.
The morning after, I still feel the affects of this marvelous book. Half of a Yellow Sun is a haunting story that took me right into the hearts of the characters and a country torn by jealousy, greed and hate. The story of Nigeria’s Civil War is not so unusual in the grand scheme of things, but it is a story that needs to be told and remembered. Still, Half of a Yellow Sun is not just about the war, it is about the people, their relationships, and their struggle to survive.
Favorite Part: With a novel like this, it is hard to pick out one favorite part, or even two or three. There was not a moment while reading this book I was not riveted to the words on the page. The characters were well drawn and interesting and the story flowed so smoothly that I was surprised at how quickly I moved through the book.
I liked how the author divided up her sections, at times going back and forth in time. The break from the war to return to the pre-war period was a short reprieve from the darker moments in the story, while at the same time proved quite revealing in better defining the characters and their relationships with one another.
Miscellaneous: There is a section on the author's website where people are allowed to share their own experiences regarding Biafra, which I spent a little time perusing and hope to revisit again to read at more length in the future.
(review originally posted at Musings of a Bookish Kitty).
Monday, June 18, 2007
The Translator by Leila Aboulela
My second book for the NYT Notable books; this review was from my blog.The Translator by Leila Aboulela is a simple love story, about finding faith and about the life of an exile. Sammar is a Sudanese widow living and translating in Scotland. She begins coming out of a four year mourning period due to the attention of Rae, an expert on Islam and the Middle East. Sammar has been, I hesitate to say living, but going through the motions in Scotland while her aunt/mother-in-law raises her son in Sudan. Rae begins to bring her back to life and Sammar begins to come alive. Her faith in Islam is a stumbling block and the book details her awakening as she returns to Sudan, but she doesn't fit in there either.
I felt so much sympathy for Sammar as she tries to fit in everywhere - she never fit in to Scotland, and her return to Sudan is rough as they see her as an outsider. She really had no home. The writing was lovely and the two countries are wonderfully described. This is a gentle story, more of a character study, but the settings are important too. I prefer a little more story, less lyrical writing, but I enjoyed the book each time I picked it up, and I really enjoyed Sammar and would have liked to know her. She was a strong woman, but her life is so different from mine, in so many respects. I would like to read more about Islam and I enjoyed how her faith guided all her decisions.
I felt so much sympathy for Sammar as she tries to fit in everywhere - she never fit in to Scotland, and her return to Sudan is rough as they see her as an outsider. She really had no home. The writing was lovely and the two countries are wonderfully described. This is a gentle story, more of a character study, but the settings are important too. I prefer a little more story, less lyrical writing, but I enjoyed the book each time I picked it up, and I really enjoyed Sammar and would have liked to know her. She was a strong woman, but her life is so different from mine, in so many respects. I would like to read more about Islam and I enjoyed how her faith guided all her decisions.
Next up: The Echo Maker
Digging To America
I was very interested in reading this book for several reasons. First, because I really love Anne Tyler and secondly, because we are close friends with multiple couples pursuing overseas adoptions, of both infants and older children. I found in this story that Anne went deeper than the adopted children trying to make a home in America, in fact, their story was almost a side note. What Anne wrote about more was how people who are already Americans, whether by immigration or by birth, make themselves at home in this strange and sometimes frightening country we call home. What is family and culture and how do we respect them, how do we keep them, in this place where all are welcome but no one is quite sure how to fit in. Do we hang on to what makes us comfortable even when there may be nothing there to warm us? Or do we step out into a new world where those we love may not talk like us or look like us but take up residence in our lives just the same?
I have read several people who have not enjoyed this novel very much, but I loved it. In a world that is becoming more, rather than less, segregated by culture which may or may not include nationality, how do we reach out? And whom do we let in? And most importantly, what are we afraid of losing when we do?
I have read several people who have not enjoyed this novel very much, but I loved it. In a world that is becoming more, rather than less, segregated by culture which may or may not include nationality, how do we reach out? And whom do we let in? And most importantly, what are we afraid of losing when we do?
The Emperor's Children - kookiejar's review
This novel is very much about the sense of entitlement that is so pervasive in our culture today. Kids graduating from high school or even college refusing to work certain jobs that they feel are 'beneath' them or even worse refusing to work at all because they feel that they are destined for greatness.
The 'emperor' from the title refers to Murray Thwaite, a very rich and highly respected New York journalist. His daughter, Marina has been trying to write a book (about the historical significance of children's clothes, of all things) since she graduated from college but hasn't found the proper inspiration to complete it. Enter poor relation, Cousin Booty, a slacker from upstate who, on the spur of the moment decides he is destined to be one of the world's great thinkers. So, he decides to apprentice with the greatest thinker he knows -- Uncle Murray.
Spoiled Marina and her equally spoiled and idiotic friends live their lives as if what they do is of Earth shattering importance and when a tragedy (a HUGE tragedy) unfolds around them, it kicks their own self-importance into high gear.
The characters in this book are utterly ridiculous and completely unlikeable. I really didn't care one fig what happened to any of them. Even when the tragedy occurred, I knew they were going to internalize it in a way that made all the suffering about them. They did not let me down.
The prose is slow and plodding for the most part and the only reason I kept reading was to see if Booty (who reminded me of Ignatius P Reilly from 'A Confederacy of Dunces' ) was ever going to make good. He didn't.
I agree with Kim. Don't waste your time with this one.
My update: I've got 7 more to go to finish the 20 I promised myself I would complete. However, with one more, I will have read exactly one half of the entire list (fiction only). Whew!
I am currently reading 'Everyman', and 'Digging to America' and I have dipped my toes into 'Possibility of an Island'. I'm still chugging along.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Laura's Review: Alentejo Blue
Monica Ali
226 pages
First sentence: At first he thought it was a scarecrow.
Refiections: This novel is in effect a series of character sketches, set in Portugal's Alentejo region, a southern agricultural area just north of the Algarve, the popular tourist destination. The book begins in the middle of Mediterranean summer, and Ali vividly evokes the languor of oppressively hot days. The village of Mamarrosa is a sleepy hamlet with the usual local cafe, butcher, shop, church, and village square. An enterprising villager has just opened an Internet cafe, but the information superhighway comes slowly in these parts: "It was an internet cafe without the Internet, and nobody expected any better." (p. 123). The hopes of many villagers are pinned on a prodigal son, who is scheduled to return to the area any day. It is rumored he will be opening a large hotel, raising hopes of employment and prosperity.
Mamarrosa is populated by locals, British expats, and a few tourists, and we meet them all in turn. There's a poor and dysfunctional English family, whose teenage daughter is well known around town: "The Potts girl walked into the cafe preceded by her reputation so that everyone was obliged to stare." (p. 14). A local girl, Teresa, has just been presented with an opportunity to leave the region for London, and wrestles with her decision and the potential impact on her family and boyfriend. Vasco, a widower, married an American and lived in the United States until her death. He now runs the local cafe & bar, and resists the competitive threat of the Internet cafe. Eileen, a mid-50s British tourist, is on holiday with her husband. Their relationship is strained; she has chosen the holiday destination this year and it's not quite to his liking. But for her, it's just right: "I like it better than all those delightful Tuscan towns we 'did' the year before last. All that history and architecture -- it gives you a headache, just shuffling past on sore sightseeing feet, trying to blot out the English voices everywhere." (p. 81).
While there are tiny threads linking chapters together, it's the characters, not the plot, that are the beauty of this book. Ali has written an enjoyable, if not particularly complex or thought-provoking, book.
Friday, June 8, 2007
A Strange Piece of Paradise by Terry Jentz
I wrote a review of this book in my book review blog, so I am copying it here [the link to the book is to my amazon store]:
This large nonfiction book details a woman’s exploration, many years after the event, of a night when a man wielding an axe attacked her and her friend. The two were seven days into a bicycle trip across the country, and camping in the Cline Falls Park in central Oregon.
The attack took place in June 1977. Jentz started to become obsessed with it in 1992, after many years of almost-flippant references to it, a kind of denial of her feelings that lasted 15 years.
She began her investigation by traveling to the scene of the crime and the surrounding area, gathering police reports and interviewing people. The trip left her unsatisfied and she returned two years later to continue the search, even though at the time she wasn’t at all sure what she was searching for. From then on she returned frequently, making dashes at various lines of inquiry, tracking down leads and involving the different law enforcement agencies in the area.
In the course of this long, involved investigation, Jentz discovers that nobody was ever charged with the crime and there were few suspects. The police seemed unable to pursue what leads they had. It appears that the collection, storage, and use of the evidence was far from thorough as well. Eventually her search narrows into a search for the attacker. The statute of limitations on the crime ran out three years after the attack, so she knows the perp will not have to face the justice system, but she desperately wants to find out who he is and, if possible, find a way to keep him from hurting others. She also has a vague idea that when she knows who he is she can start to heal herself.
The story is, as many reviewers have written, gripping and absorbing, and hard to put down. Other reviewers have complained that there is too much “navel-gazing”, too much time spent on introspection. Overall, I find it a book well worth reading. But not perfect.
Jentz is given to a writing style that seems unnecessarily “literary”, yet also incorporates a type of jargon popular in “victims rights” and “women’s rights” articles. It gives in to the passive voice frequently and awkwardly. There is a kind of unevenness to it, as it veers from one style to another, sometimes using words inappropriately. For example,
How could I access the rage?
The use of “access” as a verb seems to have its roots in the women’s rights and group therapy movements.
…I’d never wrapped my mind around what the experience might have been for her;…
I fight in vain for the removal of the term “wrapped my mind around” from the language.
Meticulous cowboy
This is the term Jentz uses for her attacker. He was carefully dressed, with his shirt fastidiously tucked in so there were no creases. He wore western clothing. I find the adjective “meticulous” not really right for this case. Most often it refers to a way of acting, of doing, not a way of appearing. This young man was fastidious, was dressed immaculately, but it’s hard to call his actions - driving over a curb, knocking over a tent, and slashing out at his victims with an axe – “meticulous”. Each time Jentz referred to him this way it jumped out at me. And she uses it constantly, like a drumbeat. Probably her intention.
Almost as often she refers to her attacker as a “headless torso” or “headless cowboy torso”, bringing to mind just the trunk of a man, with no arms. In fact, that’s what the definition of “torso” says. Given that he used his arms to wield an axe, I suspect – I know from her book – she saw the arms, too.
These are picky points and I can’t explain why they bothered me, except that they were repeated so often.
I fully believed that he was guilty of the attack against Shayna and me. But I couldn’t connect the dots between this man and the fingerprints he had left in my psyche. His presence had not triggered a seismic reaction in me.. . .
Some part of me at the edges of consciousness had lost trust in the order of things. The facts of the world broke faith with me. I was no longer deceived that life was following a script in which certain things would never happen.
Passive, passive, passive. “I was no longer deceived”? This type writing suggests that something other than Terri herself was taking control of her life. It’s an interesting perception, given that the book is also saturated with references, both direct and indirect, of fate somehow leading Terri here and there and forcing her to find the meaning in the attack or to make sense of random incidents and comments. She frequently runs into names of places that include “axe” in them and seems to think there is a personal reason for this. The reason is actually simpler than that they were put there for her alone. Oregon in the 1970s and before was a place where axes were far from uncommon.
Well into the book, Terri meets up with a couple who fight for victims’ rights and who do a great deal of investigating for other victims (their daughter was murdered in 1980), to help solve cases or otherwise right wrongs. This couple fills Terri in on their theory of crime and punishment in Oregon: they believe that a misguided “liberal” public favored the view that criminals are not responsible for their actions; “society” is.
I have met a few people who more or less subscribe to this theory, to some extent, in my life. Very few, even though I consort with so-called liberals (and am one). I believe that this couple, and Terri herself, misread the justice system, as do many victims’ rights advocates. They feel that the accused perps are given more attention and more help than are the victims, and that this comes from that perception that it isn’t really their fault.
It’s true that our justice system leans over backwards to protect the rights of the accused. The reason, however, is that it is “better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be convicted”. The laws that protect the accused protect all of us. Terri and her friends forget this. Terri makes it clear again and again that she would never want to see anyone wrongly convicted, yet she rails against a system that tries to prevent wrongful convictions.
Jentz also joins her investigating friends in the view that “permissive parents” are more likely to raise criminals than those who abuse their children. One chapter begins with a quotation from the book Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore, brother of Gary (murderer of two who was eventually executed). The quotation is from a legal system that incarcerated Gary at one point, and it says that Gary’s parents would do anything for him, were overly permissive. If Terri actually read that book (which I did) she would realize that his father repeatedly beat Gary while his mother just watched. Is this a type of permissiveness? The quotation clearly did not represent the truth in that particular case.
I do not lack compassion for the victims. I believe that both the accused and the victims deserve special treatment, and to accord such treatment to one doesn’t automatically exclude it from the other.
This is Terri’s book and these are her thoughts and she has every right to them. Nevertheless, I feel a need to offer my own counter-thoughts to some of her conclusions.
One theme that screams loudly in here, and that needs to be heard, is that the law enforcement agencies did not do a good job investigating this crime. There appear to be many reasons for this lack of attention, which Jentz offers and which make sense:
· The term “serial killer” had not even been coined; what were called “stranger murders” were perceived as near-impossible to solve. The investigators apparently felt helpless without a motive or witness. There was plenty of physical evidence (tire tracks, a footprint, probably more if the forensics team had been really diligent) but the investigators seemed to believe they could do nothing with it.
· The attack did not result in murder. Attempted murder takes a huge backseat to actual murder.
· There were two women involved. Some people believe there was a sense in the community that women should not be bicycling alone, that they somehow brought this on themselves.
· The law enforcement agencies were overworked. They had to set priorities.
· The head of the state police department that investigated this crime was not expert in criminal investigation and tended to block real investigation, certainly did not aid it.
· Although a great many people in the community immediately “knew” who did it (and many had stories to tell that more than backed up this charge) only one or two actually made an attempt to tell the police what they knew. A part of the reason for this strange neglect seems to be the “individualism” so prevalent in Oregon – a preference for staying out of the way rather than accusing someone who may not be guilty. What struck me was that the law enforcement officials did not follow the leads and find these persons themselves.
Jentz also considers a theory that some of the investigation was simply covered up. Records disappeared. To protect the community from its own? There doesn’t seem to be an answer.
Whatever caused this “miscarriage of justice” certainly needs to be evaluated and if there haven’t been changes to address it (current members of law enforcement say major changes have been made – and ultimately these agencies were more than helpful) there should be. I was constantly reminded of how criminal investigations are most often presented in television fiction, and how that representation is more the ideal than the real. Books like this do us a service by letting us see how horrific crimes can be left unsolved, in spite of adequate forensic and witness evidence. More, it gives us insight into how many lives are affected by a single incident, and for how long.
This large nonfiction book details a woman’s exploration, many years after the event, of a night when a man wielding an axe attacked her and her friend. The two were seven days into a bicycle trip across the country, and camping in the Cline Falls Park in central Oregon.
The attack took place in June 1977. Jentz started to become obsessed with it in 1992, after many years of almost-flippant references to it, a kind of denial of her feelings that lasted 15 years.
She began her investigation by traveling to the scene of the crime and the surrounding area, gathering police reports and interviewing people. The trip left her unsatisfied and she returned two years later to continue the search, even though at the time she wasn’t at all sure what she was searching for. From then on she returned frequently, making dashes at various lines of inquiry, tracking down leads and involving the different law enforcement agencies in the area.
In the course of this long, involved investigation, Jentz discovers that nobody was ever charged with the crime and there were few suspects. The police seemed unable to pursue what leads they had. It appears that the collection, storage, and use of the evidence was far from thorough as well. Eventually her search narrows into a search for the attacker. The statute of limitations on the crime ran out three years after the attack, so she knows the perp will not have to face the justice system, but she desperately wants to find out who he is and, if possible, find a way to keep him from hurting others. She also has a vague idea that when she knows who he is she can start to heal herself.
The story is, as many reviewers have written, gripping and absorbing, and hard to put down. Other reviewers have complained that there is too much “navel-gazing”, too much time spent on introspection. Overall, I find it a book well worth reading. But not perfect.
Jentz is given to a writing style that seems unnecessarily “literary”, yet also incorporates a type of jargon popular in “victims rights” and “women’s rights” articles. It gives in to the passive voice frequently and awkwardly. There is a kind of unevenness to it, as it veers from one style to another, sometimes using words inappropriately. For example,
How could I access the rage?
The use of “access” as a verb seems to have its roots in the women’s rights and group therapy movements.
…I’d never wrapped my mind around what the experience might have been for her;…
I fight in vain for the removal of the term “wrapped my mind around” from the language.
Meticulous cowboy
This is the term Jentz uses for her attacker. He was carefully dressed, with his shirt fastidiously tucked in so there were no creases. He wore western clothing. I find the adjective “meticulous” not really right for this case. Most often it refers to a way of acting, of doing, not a way of appearing. This young man was fastidious, was dressed immaculately, but it’s hard to call his actions - driving over a curb, knocking over a tent, and slashing out at his victims with an axe – “meticulous”. Each time Jentz referred to him this way it jumped out at me. And she uses it constantly, like a drumbeat. Probably her intention.
Almost as often she refers to her attacker as a “headless torso” or “headless cowboy torso”, bringing to mind just the trunk of a man, with no arms. In fact, that’s what the definition of “torso” says. Given that he used his arms to wield an axe, I suspect – I know from her book – she saw the arms, too.
These are picky points and I can’t explain why they bothered me, except that they were repeated so often.
I fully believed that he was guilty of the attack against Shayna and me. But I couldn’t connect the dots between this man and the fingerprints he had left in my psyche. His presence had not triggered a seismic reaction in me.. . .
Some part of me at the edges of consciousness had lost trust in the order of things. The facts of the world broke faith with me. I was no longer deceived that life was following a script in which certain things would never happen.
Passive, passive, passive. “I was no longer deceived”? This type writing suggests that something other than Terri herself was taking control of her life. It’s an interesting perception, given that the book is also saturated with references, both direct and indirect, of fate somehow leading Terri here and there and forcing her to find the meaning in the attack or to make sense of random incidents and comments. She frequently runs into names of places that include “axe” in them and seems to think there is a personal reason for this. The reason is actually simpler than that they were put there for her alone. Oregon in the 1970s and before was a place where axes were far from uncommon.
Well into the book, Terri meets up with a couple who fight for victims’ rights and who do a great deal of investigating for other victims (their daughter was murdered in 1980), to help solve cases or otherwise right wrongs. This couple fills Terri in on their theory of crime and punishment in Oregon: they believe that a misguided “liberal” public favored the view that criminals are not responsible for their actions; “society” is.
I have met a few people who more or less subscribe to this theory, to some extent, in my life. Very few, even though I consort with so-called liberals (and am one). I believe that this couple, and Terri herself, misread the justice system, as do many victims’ rights advocates. They feel that the accused perps are given more attention and more help than are the victims, and that this comes from that perception that it isn’t really their fault.
It’s true that our justice system leans over backwards to protect the rights of the accused. The reason, however, is that it is “better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be convicted”. The laws that protect the accused protect all of us. Terri and her friends forget this. Terri makes it clear again and again that she would never want to see anyone wrongly convicted, yet she rails against a system that tries to prevent wrongful convictions.
Jentz also joins her investigating friends in the view that “permissive parents” are more likely to raise criminals than those who abuse their children. One chapter begins with a quotation from the book Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore, brother of Gary (murderer of two who was eventually executed). The quotation is from a legal system that incarcerated Gary at one point, and it says that Gary’s parents would do anything for him, were overly permissive. If Terri actually read that book (which I did) she would realize that his father repeatedly beat Gary while his mother just watched. Is this a type of permissiveness? The quotation clearly did not represent the truth in that particular case.
I do not lack compassion for the victims. I believe that both the accused and the victims deserve special treatment, and to accord such treatment to one doesn’t automatically exclude it from the other.
This is Terri’s book and these are her thoughts and she has every right to them. Nevertheless, I feel a need to offer my own counter-thoughts to some of her conclusions.
One theme that screams loudly in here, and that needs to be heard, is that the law enforcement agencies did not do a good job investigating this crime. There appear to be many reasons for this lack of attention, which Jentz offers and which make sense:
· The term “serial killer” had not even been coined; what were called “stranger murders” were perceived as near-impossible to solve. The investigators apparently felt helpless without a motive or witness. There was plenty of physical evidence (tire tracks, a footprint, probably more if the forensics team had been really diligent) but the investigators seemed to believe they could do nothing with it.
· The attack did not result in murder. Attempted murder takes a huge backseat to actual murder.
· There were two women involved. Some people believe there was a sense in the community that women should not be bicycling alone, that they somehow brought this on themselves.
· The law enforcement agencies were overworked. They had to set priorities.
· The head of the state police department that investigated this crime was not expert in criminal investigation and tended to block real investigation, certainly did not aid it.
· Although a great many people in the community immediately “knew” who did it (and many had stories to tell that more than backed up this charge) only one or two actually made an attempt to tell the police what they knew. A part of the reason for this strange neglect seems to be the “individualism” so prevalent in Oregon – a preference for staying out of the way rather than accusing someone who may not be guilty. What struck me was that the law enforcement officials did not follow the leads and find these persons themselves.
Jentz also considers a theory that some of the investigation was simply covered up. Records disappeared. To protect the community from its own? There doesn’t seem to be an answer.
Whatever caused this “miscarriage of justice” certainly needs to be evaluated and if there haven’t been changes to address it (current members of law enforcement say major changes have been made – and ultimately these agencies were more than helpful) there should be. I was constantly reminded of how criminal investigations are most often presented in television fiction, and how that representation is more the ideal than the real. Books like this do us a service by letting us see how horrific crimes can be left unsolved, in spite of adequate forensic and witness evidence. More, it gives us insight into how many lives are affected by a single incident, and for how long.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Half of a Yellow Sun has won the Golden Country -- kookiejar's review
This book explores the entanglement of three Jewish families in 1950's America. Seymour is a salesman who finds he can make enough money working for a gangster called the Terrier that he can finance the Broadway show he's always dreamed of. Joseph is the inventor of a new kind of household cleaner called Essoil, which he named after his wife, Esther. Frances, whose sister is married to the Terrier, becomes the tv spokeswoman for Essoil.
The novel alternates between the stories of how Seymour and Joseph made their fortunes and the upcoming wedding of their offspring, David and Miriam.
I really liked Joseph's storyline more than the others. He was a gentle man who always tried to please his horrible overbearing wife and be a good father to Miriam. Neither of them really appreciated his work (which made their lives possible) and didn't know what they had in him, until it was too late.
Even though I enjoyed the book, I wish Gilmore had spent more time making each of the characters more distinctive, as I got confused about who was who on more than one occasion. It's exactly like Amy said in her review, you just can't keep the characters straight in your mind because they are all kind of similar and the perspective of the story changes often.
Anyway, I doubt this book will go down in history as anyone's all-time favorite book, but it was okay.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
My goal and a question
I read A Strange Piece of Paradise in January of this year. I wrote a review of it on January 13. I think that I started it in January, not December, but I can't find confirmation. So is it fair to include this book on my list of books I've read for 2007??
I am setting what seems to be a reasonable goal at this point: 12 books.
I am setting what seems to be a reasonable goal at this point: 12 books.
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