The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield, Atria Books, 2006, 406 pp
I have been longing for a book like this. A fascinating tale with unique characters that kept me always wanting to keep reading, that engaged my heart and mind. It involves books, literature, writing, twins, tragedy, mystery, love and loss.
The story takes place in England. Margaret Lea is a young woman who lost her twin soon after birth, whose mother never recovered emotionally or physically, and whose father, an antiquarian book dealer, raised and educated her in his shop.
Margaret works in the shop and terms herself an amateur biographer. She is engaged by Vida Winter, the bestselling fiction author in England, to write the author's biography. Vida Winter has never revealed the truth about her life but is now dying and gradually tells all to Margaret. Ms Winter is also a twin. Margaret is a compulsive reader but only reads 19th century fiction, because she wants a story properly told with a beginning, a middle and a satisfactory ending. Ms Winter narrates her life story in this fashion, almost.
An old country house with mostly crazy people, another house deep in the moors, fog and rain and chilly weather, secrets and servants who try to take care of their masters: it is all so Gothic. Over and over are references to Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, Wuthering Heights and Charles Dickens novels. So the secrets and strange developments of this writer's life unfurl at a perfect pace. Just as I would think I had figured out what was going on, there would be more surprises, with the final bit being the most bizarre of all. Setterfield keeps pulling you on, dying to know how it all came about, until you care about these tortured women as much as anyone you know.
Best of all, she ties up all loose ends while leaving hints of a happier future. Setterfield was an "academic" who specialized in 20th century French literature and is a formidable writer herself. Just great!
Monday, July 02, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
LAST MAN STANDING
Last Man Standing, David Baldacci, Warner Books, 2002, 638 pp
Last month I made a trip to Michigan to help my mom who was ill. This was my airplane read. I had forgotten to pack books in my carry-on, so I bought this in the airport. It is no where near as good as the other two I've read by Baldacci but it got me through the flight.
Web London is FBI, part of a team of snipers who go into danger spots and recover hostages or take live prisoners who will testify against drug lords. The story begins with Web's entire team being killed in a drug raid. He is the last man standing because he experienced a moment when he froze, could not move, so that when he overcame it, he was not in the cross-fire.
There is trouble in the Bureau and it appears that the traitor is inside the organization. Enter shrinks, horse dealers, an undercover agent and the 10 year old son of a local drug dealer. Web has issues due to being abandoned by his father when he was 6 and abused by his stepfather.
So it goes, it all gets solved. The reader knows more than the FBI, Web suffers Bruce Willis style and I was almost bored by page 600. It is a wonder to me how a writer gets worse. Defies logic.
Last month I made a trip to Michigan to help my mom who was ill. This was my airplane read. I had forgotten to pack books in my carry-on, so I bought this in the airport. It is no where near as good as the other two I've read by Baldacci but it got me through the flight.
Web London is FBI, part of a team of snipers who go into danger spots and recover hostages or take live prisoners who will testify against drug lords. The story begins with Web's entire team being killed in a drug raid. He is the last man standing because he experienced a moment when he froze, could not move, so that when he overcame it, he was not in the cross-fire.
There is trouble in the Bureau and it appears that the traitor is inside the organization. Enter shrinks, horse dealers, an undercover agent and the 10 year old son of a local drug dealer. Web has issues due to being abandoned by his father when he was 6 and abused by his stepfather.
So it goes, it all gets solved. The reader knows more than the FBI, Web suffers Bruce Willis style and I was almost bored by page 600. It is a wonder to me how a writer gets worse. Defies logic.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai, Grove/Atlantic Inc, 2006, 357 pp
I read this on the plane to France and in the hotel room in Paris. It is great! A family in a remote part of India lives in reduced circumstances in a crumbling house. The grandfather was a judge. He had been educated at Oxford and risen from his family's poverty; one of those Indian situations where all resources went to the smart son of the family in an effort to raise their status. Now he is a bitter old man.
His granddaughter came to live there when she was nine. Her parents had died in Russia, where her father was involved in the space program and there was no more money to pay for her boarding school. Fascinating the different kinds of lives that people lead.
The entire book was a study in Indian customs and social issues. A cast of odd individuals in the village include two spinster sisters who have English sensibilities left from colonial days and who continue the granddaughter's education. At 16, the granddaughter gets a tutor from the village for science. He is from another very poor family; they fall in love but he gets caught up in a tribal terrorist group.
Finally there is the family cook, who is the person who has actually cared for the granddaughter and who has a son trying to make a life in New York City, working in one restaurant after another and living in the immigrant bowels of the city.
No one's dreams come true, mostly all is lost and in this way it is a sad story. But I found it to be an excellent assessment of the way human beings reach for dreams and love and self-importance in many varied patterns. The interaction of cultures and social levels is an old story on planet Earth, so it is Desai's considerable skill as a writer that makes the novel a unique and fresh tale. She was awarded the Booker Prize and I think she deserved it.
I read this on the plane to France and in the hotel room in Paris. It is great! A family in a remote part of India lives in reduced circumstances in a crumbling house. The grandfather was a judge. He had been educated at Oxford and risen from his family's poverty; one of those Indian situations where all resources went to the smart son of the family in an effort to raise their status. Now he is a bitter old man.
His granddaughter came to live there when she was nine. Her parents had died in Russia, where her father was involved in the space program and there was no more money to pay for her boarding school. Fascinating the different kinds of lives that people lead.
The entire book was a study in Indian customs and social issues. A cast of odd individuals in the village include two spinster sisters who have English sensibilities left from colonial days and who continue the granddaughter's education. At 16, the granddaughter gets a tutor from the village for science. He is from another very poor family; they fall in love but he gets caught up in a tribal terrorist group.
Finally there is the family cook, who is the person who has actually cared for the granddaughter and who has a son trying to make a life in New York City, working in one restaurant after another and living in the immigrant bowels of the city.
No one's dreams come true, mostly all is lost and in this way it is a sad story. But I found it to be an excellent assessment of the way human beings reach for dreams and love and self-importance in many varied patterns. The interaction of cultures and social levels is an old story on planet Earth, so it is Desai's considerable skill as a writer that makes the novel a unique and fresh tale. She was awarded the Booker Prize and I think she deserved it.
Monday, June 18, 2007
BLACK GIRL IN PARIS
Black Girl in Paris, Shay Youngblood, Riverhead Books, 2000, 232 pp
Before I went to Paris, I wanted to read some fiction set in the City of Light. I searched the library catalogue for contemporary fiction set in Paris and this is one of the books that came up. Otherwise I would possibly never have heard of or read this excellent novel. I read it the week before I went. It is just the sort of book I love: a bit quirky with exquisite writing and an admirable heroine.
Eden is an orphan, found in a paper bag as an infant by the poor black couple who kept her and raised her. She grows up and gets educated with a dream to be a writer. She is fascinated by black artists who had gone to Paris for a respite from racism: James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Josephine Baker, and the many jazz musicians who found acceptance and freedom there.
At the age of 26, she sets out for Paris with $200. It is 1986 and terrorism by immigrants is killing people daily in the streets. Eden is looking for freedom to create and freedom from fear. She is courageous and open, surviving by her wits, finding friends and working as an artist's model, a poet's helper, an au pair, just to make enough to eat.
This is a creative coming-of-age tale written as a poetic memoir, in the great black female writing tradition of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Jamaica Kincaid and Alice Walker.
Before I went to Paris, I wanted to read some fiction set in the City of Light. I searched the library catalogue for contemporary fiction set in Paris and this is one of the books that came up. Otherwise I would possibly never have heard of or read this excellent novel. I read it the week before I went. It is just the sort of book I love: a bit quirky with exquisite writing and an admirable heroine.
Eden is an orphan, found in a paper bag as an infant by the poor black couple who kept her and raised her. She grows up and gets educated with a dream to be a writer. She is fascinated by black artists who had gone to Paris for a respite from racism: James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Josephine Baker, and the many jazz musicians who found acceptance and freedom there.
At the age of 26, she sets out for Paris with $200. It is 1986 and terrorism by immigrants is killing people daily in the streets. Eden is looking for freedom to create and freedom from fear. She is courageous and open, surviving by her wits, finding friends and working as an artist's model, a poet's helper, an au pair, just to make enough to eat.
This is a creative coming-of-age tale written as a poetic memoir, in the great black female writing tradition of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Jamaica Kincaid and Alice Walker.
WORD OF THE DAY
It has been a while since I posted a word of the day. I like how some of my readers put sentences for the word in the comments. So here is a new word.
venality
from Postwar by Tony Judt
n. state, quality, or instance of being venal (can be readily bribed or corrupted); willingness to be bribed or bought off, or to prostitute one's talents for mercenary considerations
derived from French venalite which is from Latin venalitas
(ref: Webster's New World Dictionary Third College Edition)
My sentence: A member of one of my reading groups accused Elizabeth Gilbert of venality for writing Eat, Pray, Love.
Sentence, anyone?
venality
from Postwar by Tony Judt
n. state, quality, or instance of being venal (can be readily bribed or corrupted); willingness to be bribed or bought off, or to prostitute one's talents for mercenary considerations
derived from French venalite which is from Latin venalitas
(ref: Webster's New World Dictionary Third College Edition)
My sentence: A member of one of my reading groups accused Elizabeth Gilbert of venality for writing Eat, Pray, Love.
Sentence, anyone?
Sunday, June 17, 2007
TWILIGHT
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer; Little, Brown and Company, 2005, 498 pp
This Young Adult novel is the #1 favorite of my boss's 12 year old daughter. She got all her friends to read it and they talk about it incessantly. These young girls are quite innocent and somewhat protected by their parents as to what they read. I don't think my boss who is the owner of the bookstore where I work has read Twilight.
So here is the deal. Seventeen year old Bella goes from Phoenix, where she has been living with her long-divorced mom, to live with her father in a tiny town in Washington state. She is a smart, self-sufficient girl but she was not a social success in Phoenix. Bella is extremely accident prone, has never had a boyfriend and has a rock bottom self image.
All the boys at her new high school are after her but she falls for the weirdest, though best looking, guy who turns out to be a vampire. Edward the vampire is equally stricken but must control his urge to do what vampires do. Very unusual twist on the whole vampire thing.
What I took away from the story is an unmistakable theme of sexual tension, except there is no sex beyond touching and kissing. The sexual urge has been transmuted into the vampire thing and Edward is a "good" boy because he controls himself and doesn't suck her blood.
If I were anywhere from 12 to 17, I would be so turned on by this book. Do their mothers know? I won't be the one to tell them.
This Young Adult novel is the #1 favorite of my boss's 12 year old daughter. She got all her friends to read it and they talk about it incessantly. These young girls are quite innocent and somewhat protected by their parents as to what they read. I don't think my boss who is the owner of the bookstore where I work has read Twilight.
So here is the deal. Seventeen year old Bella goes from Phoenix, where she has been living with her long-divorced mom, to live with her father in a tiny town in Washington state. She is a smart, self-sufficient girl but she was not a social success in Phoenix. Bella is extremely accident prone, has never had a boyfriend and has a rock bottom self image.
All the boys at her new high school are after her but she falls for the weirdest, though best looking, guy who turns out to be a vampire. Edward the vampire is equally stricken but must control his urge to do what vampires do. Very unusual twist on the whole vampire thing.
What I took away from the story is an unmistakable theme of sexual tension, except there is no sex beyond touching and kissing. The sexual urge has been transmuted into the vampire thing and Edward is a "good" boy because he controls himself and doesn't suck her blood.
If I were anywhere from 12 to 17, I would be so turned on by this book. Do their mothers know? I won't be the one to tell them.
Monday, June 11, 2007
ROUGH STRIFE
Rough Strife, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Harper & Row Publishers, 1980, 200 pp
After reading Ruined By Reading and feeling that here was a kindred spirit, I wanted to read Schwartz's fiction. This is her first novel; it is accomplished and I loved every page. It is the story of a marriage which has lasted twenty years so far. A marriage of two independent spirits bound by passion for sure, but also by whatever mysterious element keeps two individuals anchored to each other through the rough strife of everyday life.
Ivan and Caroline are so well portrayed that I felt I knew them the way I know myself and my husband. You get the story through Caroline's viewpoint and she is a complex and complete individual. She has goals and intelligence and strong personal boundaries. Despite her professional field of advanced mathematics, she has a wild imagination. Ivan also is a strong character who know what he likes and what he doesn't, who handles people well and is not pushed around by anyone. He reminds me of my husband.
Perhaps because in my first marriage I succumbed to the divorce mania of the 70s and because in my second marriage we have hung on through every experience that could have broken us apart, I particularly was enthralled by this story. But I think anyone who has been married to the same person for many years would laugh, cringe and feel rewarded by reading Rough Strife.
After reading Ruined By Reading and feeling that here was a kindred spirit, I wanted to read Schwartz's fiction. This is her first novel; it is accomplished and I loved every page. It is the story of a marriage which has lasted twenty years so far. A marriage of two independent spirits bound by passion for sure, but also by whatever mysterious element keeps two individuals anchored to each other through the rough strife of everyday life.
Ivan and Caroline are so well portrayed that I felt I knew them the way I know myself and my husband. You get the story through Caroline's viewpoint and she is a complex and complete individual. She has goals and intelligence and strong personal boundaries. Despite her professional field of advanced mathematics, she has a wild imagination. Ivan also is a strong character who know what he likes and what he doesn't, who handles people well and is not pushed around by anyone. He reminds me of my husband.
Perhaps because in my first marriage I succumbed to the divorce mania of the 70s and because in my second marriage we have hung on through every experience that could have broken us apart, I particularly was enthralled by this story. But I think anyone who has been married to the same person for many years would laugh, cringe and feel rewarded by reading Rough Strife.
A FUNNY READING STORY
Yesterday I spent the afternoon at a cool bookstore in Malibu called Diesel. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love was speaking and signing. It was mobbed and I had to stand the whole time, but she is as good a speaker as she is a writer and she graciously answered questions for so long that I had to go out for some oxygen before it was over.
For some reason, I didn't buy a book. I don't even know why. On the way home I decided to stop for something to eat only then I didn't have a book! Whenever I go out to eat by myself, I read. I couldn't really deal with parking and walking in to another bookstore. I was SO hungry. Right next door to the Thai restaurant I was going to was a big chain grocery store (Ralph's to you Californians) where I knew they had some books. So I popped in there and it was bad: only Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, some male mystery writer whom I wouldn't even read on an airplane, etc. Then way back I found Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, only one copy and only there because it is the new Oprah pick. I haven't read it so I grabbed it and headed for checkout.
I found a line with no people and three young women in their late teens or early twenties chatting because they had no customers. As I was paying, the girl checking me out said, "I need to get into reading." The other two girls said they did too. So all my guilt about not buying a book at Diesel and on top of that buying a book in a grocery store (it was heavily discounted, of course) flew away as I realized I had done a good reading deed in reminding those girls that they meant to read a book one of these days!
For some reason, I didn't buy a book. I don't even know why. On the way home I decided to stop for something to eat only then I didn't have a book! Whenever I go out to eat by myself, I read. I couldn't really deal with parking and walking in to another bookstore. I was SO hungry. Right next door to the Thai restaurant I was going to was a big chain grocery store (Ralph's to you Californians) where I knew they had some books. So I popped in there and it was bad: only Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, some male mystery writer whom I wouldn't even read on an airplane, etc. Then way back I found Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, only one copy and only there because it is the new Oprah pick. I haven't read it so I grabbed it and headed for checkout.
I found a line with no people and three young women in their late teens or early twenties chatting because they had no customers. As I was paying, the girl checking me out said, "I need to get into reading." The other two girls said they did too. So all my guilt about not buying a book at Diesel and on top of that buying a book in a grocery store (it was heavily discounted, of course) flew away as I realized I had done a good reading deed in reminding those girls that they meant to read a book one of these days!
Thursday, June 07, 2007
THE LIGHTHOUSE
The Lighthouse, P D James, Alfred A Knopf, 2005, 383 pp
I read this for one of my reading groups. I think it is her second most recent book. That is more than 43 years of writing mysteries. So now I have read from both ends of her oeuvre. I don't totally get why people think she is so great. She certainly has the genre down perfectly, but I just didn't find The Lighthouse to be all that exciting. Of the female mystery writers, I still like Sara Paretsky best.
Adam Dalgliesh is the investigator and I understand that he figures in many of her books. Then there are his two assistants. Each has a personal life, which gets some pages, but mainly they are solving a murder which happened on a private island off the Cornwall coast. It is a writer who was killed and every person on the island is a suspect. She does keep you guessing but I didn't feel completely satisfied at the end. The actual murderer kind of comes out of the blue.
Basically I am not a mystery fan. That's all there is to it.
I read this for one of my reading groups. I think it is her second most recent book. That is more than 43 years of writing mysteries. So now I have read from both ends of her oeuvre. I don't totally get why people think she is so great. She certainly has the genre down perfectly, but I just didn't find The Lighthouse to be all that exciting. Of the female mystery writers, I still like Sara Paretsky best.
Adam Dalgliesh is the investigator and I understand that he figures in many of her books. Then there are his two assistants. Each has a personal life, which gets some pages, but mainly they are solving a murder which happened on a private island off the Cornwall coast. It is a writer who was killed and every person on the island is a suspect. She does keep you guessing but I didn't feel completely satisfied at the end. The actual murderer kind of comes out of the blue.
Basically I am not a mystery fan. That's all there is to it.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
WHAT WAS SHE THINKING
What Was She Thinking, Zoe Heller, Henry Holt and Company, 2003, 258 pp
I read this before watching "Notes on a Scandal", the subtitle of the book and the name of the movie made from it. Actually, I haven't seen the movie yet. It is somewhere in my Netflix queue. I was impressed by the writing which is simple but masterful, and by the several layers on which the story works.
Ostensibly it is about a 40 year old married, upper middle class woman who has an affair with a 15 year old pupil at the public school where she teaches pottery. They are found out and a scandal ensues, ruining Sheba's life and marriage. But the real story is about female friendship, which every woman knows is an aspect of life fraught with pitfalls. Barbara Covett is an older teacher at Sheba's school, a lonely spinster, who tells the tale and is Sheba's only friend after the scandal breaks.
Barbara is a piece of work, as they say. Her obsessions with Sheba, with her cat Portia and with the affair are what power the story. I was reminded of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Woven throughout is a rich layer of social satire. Really I haven't read a better, more complex book about modern life in a long time. I am highly anticipating the movie, especially with Judi Dench as Barbara.
I read this before watching "Notes on a Scandal", the subtitle of the book and the name of the movie made from it. Actually, I haven't seen the movie yet. It is somewhere in my Netflix queue. I was impressed by the writing which is simple but masterful, and by the several layers on which the story works.
Ostensibly it is about a 40 year old married, upper middle class woman who has an affair with a 15 year old pupil at the public school where she teaches pottery. They are found out and a scandal ensues, ruining Sheba's life and marriage. But the real story is about female friendship, which every woman knows is an aspect of life fraught with pitfalls. Barbara Covett is an older teacher at Sheba's school, a lonely spinster, who tells the tale and is Sheba's only friend after the scandal breaks.
Barbara is a piece of work, as they say. Her obsessions with Sheba, with her cat Portia and with the affair are what power the story. I was reminded of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Woven throughout is a rich layer of social satire. Really I haven't read a better, more complex book about modern life in a long time. I am highly anticipating the movie, especially with Judi Dench as Barbara.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alfred A Knopf, 1988, 348pp
When I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1999, it made a huge impact on me. It is one of those books I will never forget. At the time I had not ever read such a book and was introduced to a new part of the world and a new type of writing; South America and magic realism. Now I am not so innocent. I've read Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Amado and others. Sad really, because all that experience probably lessened the impact of Love in the Time of Cholera.
Still it was a wonderful read. The story takes place on the Caribbean coast of Columbia in the 1800s. Throughout fifty-one years, nine months and four days, Florentino Ariza nursed his unrequited love for Fermina Daza while a cholera epidemic raged in various parts of the country. Fermina repudiated her promise to marry Florentino, accepting instead the proposal of Dr Juvenal Urbino, one of the richest men in the city.
While the book follows these characters for over fifty years, it is also a meditation on love of many kinds: married love, lust, passion and fidelity. Garcia Marquez can put you into the heart of every sort of character but what amazes me is his equally brilliant portrayals of the hearts and minds of both men and women.
I had a deadline for completing the book, as we were discussing it in a reading group. I would have enjoyed a more leisurely reading mode because there is much to savor. After 300 some pages of wondrous storytelling, the last 40 pages moved into an even more incredible realm, a complete surprise which left me deliriously happy.
When I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1999, it made a huge impact on me. It is one of those books I will never forget. At the time I had not ever read such a book and was introduced to a new part of the world and a new type of writing; South America and magic realism. Now I am not so innocent. I've read Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Amado and others. Sad really, because all that experience probably lessened the impact of Love in the Time of Cholera.
Still it was a wonderful read. The story takes place on the Caribbean coast of Columbia in the 1800s. Throughout fifty-one years, nine months and four days, Florentino Ariza nursed his unrequited love for Fermina Daza while a cholera epidemic raged in various parts of the country. Fermina repudiated her promise to marry Florentino, accepting instead the proposal of Dr Juvenal Urbino, one of the richest men in the city.
While the book follows these characters for over fifty years, it is also a meditation on love of many kinds: married love, lust, passion and fidelity. Garcia Marquez can put you into the heart of every sort of character but what amazes me is his equally brilliant portrayals of the hearts and minds of both men and women.
I had a deadline for completing the book, as we were discussing it in a reading group. I would have enjoyed a more leisurely reading mode because there is much to savor. After 300 some pages of wondrous storytelling, the last 40 pages moved into an even more incredible realm, a complete surprise which left me deliriously happy.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
EAT, PRAY, LOVE
Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, Viking Penguin, 2006, 334 pp
This was a big seller at the store where I work and a book club favorite. I read it for one of my book clubs, where it provoked such a violent discussion that one member quit the group.
The subtitle is One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. Elizabeth Gilbert is a writer who turned her quest for emotional healing and peace of mind into a bestselling memoir. Her writing is witty, spunky and full of new-age sentiments. The book is almost chick-lit meets memoir but I liked it anyway.
After a bitter divorce that dragged out for two years, brought on by Elizabeth's decision not to have a baby, she decides to take a year off and travel. Miraculously she gets an advance on the book she will write about it all, which pays for the trip. She spends four months each in Italy, India and Indonesia. In Italy she eats, each day being a quest for the perfect meal. In India she prays by practicing Yoga at an ashram and achieves her goal to see God. In Indonesia she hangs out with a holy man, an herbal healer and a new love.
Some people in my reading group felt that it was all about her (well, it is a memoir) and that she sold her soul by writing the book. Personally, I enjoyed reading about her travels, her spiritual journey and the events of the physical places where she went. The whole tale was far enough out of mainstream American life to make it engaging and exotic.
This was a big seller at the store where I work and a book club favorite. I read it for one of my book clubs, where it provoked such a violent discussion that one member quit the group.
The subtitle is One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. Elizabeth Gilbert is a writer who turned her quest for emotional healing and peace of mind into a bestselling memoir. Her writing is witty, spunky and full of new-age sentiments. The book is almost chick-lit meets memoir but I liked it anyway.
After a bitter divorce that dragged out for two years, brought on by Elizabeth's decision not to have a baby, she decides to take a year off and travel. Miraculously she gets an advance on the book she will write about it all, which pays for the trip. She spends four months each in Italy, India and Indonesia. In Italy she eats, each day being a quest for the perfect meal. In India she prays by practicing Yoga at an ashram and achieves her goal to see God. In Indonesia she hangs out with a holy man, an herbal healer and a new love.
Some people in my reading group felt that it was all about her (well, it is a memoir) and that she sold her soul by writing the book. Personally, I enjoyed reading about her travels, her spiritual journey and the events of the physical places where she went. The whole tale was far enough out of mainstream American life to make it engaging and exotic.
Monday, May 28, 2007
THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY
The Higher Power of Lucky, Susan Paton, Atheneum Books, 2006, 134pp
This is the book that won the Newbery Award for 2007 and sparked a loud controversy because it contains the word scrotum. So ridiculous. Ten year old Lucky Trimble lives in a trailer in the high desert of California with her guardian Brigette. Lucky's mother died when Lucky was nine and Brigette is the former wife of Lucky's father, who abandoned Lucky's mother when Lucky was born. The father doesn't like children.
But now Lucky is worried that Brigette is planning to return to her home in France. Lucky has a part-time job sweeping the patio of the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, where the many different 12 step program groups hold their meetings: Alcoholics Anonymous, Smokers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, etc. Lucky calls them the anonymous people and likes to eavesdrop on the meetings to hear the stories of how they hit rock bottom and found their higher power.
She also has a best friend named Lincoln who only cares about tying knots. Then there is 5 year old Miles who would prefer to live on cookies and who totes around a battered copy of Are You My Mother? (he lives with his grandmother.)
So to convince Brigette not to leave, Lucky does a dramatic and scary thing. As in all Newbery Award winning books, she meets with life threatening dangers and uses smarts and pluck to survive. There is a happy and sob-inducing ending.
I used to play gigs at a coffeehouse in Joshua Tree, a high desert town full of losers, loners and bail bond offices. Patron gets her invented town of Hard Pan just right. When I was a single mom and always dumping my kids with my sister and various babysitters, my 5 year old son's favorite picture book was Are You My Mother? I loved The Higher Power of Lucky, but then I totally got all the references to the 12 step programs and other fairly sophisticated concepts. I wonder if kids 9-11 would get it. I have not yet met a kid who has read the book. Have you?
Oh yes, and right near the end, Patron defines scrotum--correctly.
This is the book that won the Newbery Award for 2007 and sparked a loud controversy because it contains the word scrotum. So ridiculous. Ten year old Lucky Trimble lives in a trailer in the high desert of California with her guardian Brigette. Lucky's mother died when Lucky was nine and Brigette is the former wife of Lucky's father, who abandoned Lucky's mother when Lucky was born. The father doesn't like children.
But now Lucky is worried that Brigette is planning to return to her home in France. Lucky has a part-time job sweeping the patio of the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, where the many different 12 step program groups hold their meetings: Alcoholics Anonymous, Smokers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, etc. Lucky calls them the anonymous people and likes to eavesdrop on the meetings to hear the stories of how they hit rock bottom and found their higher power.
She also has a best friend named Lincoln who only cares about tying knots. Then there is 5 year old Miles who would prefer to live on cookies and who totes around a battered copy of Are You My Mother? (he lives with his grandmother.)
So to convince Brigette not to leave, Lucky does a dramatic and scary thing. As in all Newbery Award winning books, she meets with life threatening dangers and uses smarts and pluck to survive. There is a happy and sob-inducing ending.
I used to play gigs at a coffeehouse in Joshua Tree, a high desert town full of losers, loners and bail bond offices. Patron gets her invented town of Hard Pan just right. When I was a single mom and always dumping my kids with my sister and various babysitters, my 5 year old son's favorite picture book was Are You My Mother? I loved The Higher Power of Lucky, but then I totally got all the references to the 12 step programs and other fairly sophisticated concepts. I wonder if kids 9-11 would get it. I have not yet met a kid who has read the book. Have you?
Oh yes, and right near the end, Patron defines scrotum--correctly.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
TRAVEL NOTES
I returned a few days ago from a week in Paris. It was the event of the spring for me. My husband is there for business for a month, so I joined him for a week. The weather was perfect: high 60s and low 70s with sunshine every day. My luggage went on to Tahiti, so for the first 48 hours I had to improvise a bit on wardrobe, but found out about a store similar to Target where I got an extra outfit. As promised by Air France, I had my bags in 48 hours.
Being the anti-tourist, I did not exactly do the sites. But our hotel was just a few blocks from the Champs Elysees and the Arch de Triomph. That particular avenue is like being at City Walk in LA with hordes of people and non-stop shopping opportunities. One day I walked all the way to the Tuilleries and then to the Musee D'Orsay, where I saw impressionist paintings. I love seeing the real thing and the Impressionists are my favorites.
Another highlight was Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in the Latin Quarter. It is in another location from the original, in a crumbling old building that looked like it was being held up by the books. I purchased Zazie on the Metro, by Raymond Queneau, a sort of cult classic of French fiction which I learned about when researching what to read before I went. When you buy a book at Shakespeare and Company you get a rubber stamp on the title page that says, "Shakespeare and Company Sylvia Beach Whitman Foundation Kilometer Zero Paris." Today I learned that Paris is measured by kilometers from the Seine and the bookstore is right there on the Left Bank.
Lots of great meals, lots of wine, lots of walking and riding the Metro. The light in the City of Light is truly special and unique. There is no way to describe it. You have to experience it. Cigarettes are purchased at a Tabac, a sort of mini mart that also often has tables out front and coffee, beer and wine are served. When I went to Ireland a couple years ago, I kept saying, "Ireland has a smell." It was a combination of rashers frying, peat burning and sheep shit. Well, Paris has a smell also, made up of a musty sewer, restaurant cooking and perfume. The women all look amazing and wear high heels and the men are dark and skinny. I loved all of it.
Being the anti-tourist, I did not exactly do the sites. But our hotel was just a few blocks from the Champs Elysees and the Arch de Triomph. That particular avenue is like being at City Walk in LA with hordes of people and non-stop shopping opportunities. One day I walked all the way to the Tuilleries and then to the Musee D'Orsay, where I saw impressionist paintings. I love seeing the real thing and the Impressionists are my favorites.
Another highlight was Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in the Latin Quarter. It is in another location from the original, in a crumbling old building that looked like it was being held up by the books. I purchased Zazie on the Metro, by Raymond Queneau, a sort of cult classic of French fiction which I learned about when researching what to read before I went. When you buy a book at Shakespeare and Company you get a rubber stamp on the title page that says, "Shakespeare and Company Sylvia Beach Whitman Foundation Kilometer Zero Paris." Today I learned that Paris is measured by kilometers from the Seine and the bookstore is right there on the Left Bank.
Lots of great meals, lots of wine, lots of walking and riding the Metro. The light in the City of Light is truly special and unique. There is no way to describe it. You have to experience it. Cigarettes are purchased at a Tabac, a sort of mini mart that also often has tables out front and coffee, beer and wine are served. When I went to Ireland a couple years ago, I kept saying, "Ireland has a smell." It was a combination of rashers frying, peat burning and sheep shit. Well, Paris has a smell also, made up of a musty sewer, restaurant cooking and perfume. The women all look amazing and wear high heels and the men are dark and skinny. I loved all of it.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
AN ALPHABETICAL LIFE
An Alphabetical Life, Wendy Werris, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006, 281 pp
Another memoir. Another book about books. Werris started out as a bookseller at Pickwick Bookshop in Hollywood, CA; a store which was later bought by B Dalton and is now gone. She worked at a couple other LA stores and then became a publisher's rep.
Along with her triumphs and trials in the book business, she weaves the story of her personal demons and how she dealt with those. I was captivated by the book business story and learned more than I ever knew about the relationships between publishers and bookstores. That is an area not written about very often.
I was under whelmed by her personal story. Perhaps I have read too many memoirs lately. Her writing style struck me as odd: a combination of good energy, an abundance of cliches and Werris' zany point of view. And isn't there some way to write about encounters with famous people without sounding like blatant namedropping?
Overall a worthwhile read and especially for her insights on the alarming trends in publishing and book selling today.
Another memoir. Another book about books. Werris started out as a bookseller at Pickwick Bookshop in Hollywood, CA; a store which was later bought by B Dalton and is now gone. She worked at a couple other LA stores and then became a publisher's rep.
Along with her triumphs and trials in the book business, she weaves the story of her personal demons and how she dealt with those. I was captivated by the book business story and learned more than I ever knew about the relationships between publishers and bookstores. That is an area not written about very often.
I was under whelmed by her personal story. Perhaps I have read too many memoirs lately. Her writing style struck me as odd: a combination of good energy, an abundance of cliches and Werris' zany point of view. And isn't there some way to write about encounters with famous people without sounding like blatant namedropping?
Overall a worthwhile read and especially for her insights on the alarming trends in publishing and book selling today.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
READING FOR MY LIFE: 1950
Finally after much procrastination and fiddling around, I present the latest installment of Reading For My Life. It is a memoir about me, my life and books. To read the earlier chapters, just click on the Reading For My Life label at the end of this post. (You might want to get some coffee or whatever beverage gets you through long stints of reading from a computer screen. There are 11 previous chapters.) I value any and all comments, such as: Wow that was great! or Huh? I didn't get it. Also, corrections of typos, historical or technical inaccuracies, etc.
Fear and Loathing in Pittsburgh
1950 is the year I ceased to be an only child and became a big sister. Politically the world was in a mess. The USSR and Communist China signed a 30 year pact and Europe was half controlled by communism. The first war of my lifetime, the Korean War, began a decades long effort by the United States to keep communism at bay. (It is not even funny that England and France had thought Hitler would get rid of communism as they dithered with him before World War II finally started.) Congress passed the McCarran Act, hoping it would keep communists out of America, while the Atomic Energy Commission worked on the hydrogen bomb. My take on all this is that the ennui of middle class America was one big state of denial about the extreme dangers bubbling just below the surface. About all that science brought us in 1950 was Miltown for anxiety and antihistamines for colds and allergies.
About half of the books I read from 1950 were historical novels and the other half concerned contemporary times. Only one, The Wall, by John Hersey, was about WWII. The Grass is Singing, by Doris Lessing took place in Africa (riots against apartheid in Johannesburg were in the news that year.) Bright Green, Dark Red, by Gore Vidal was about revolution in Central America. There were best sellers about the Catholic Church; a writer who was a fictional version of F Scott Fitzgerald at work in Hollywood; social upheaval in Boston and another female writer who became a bestselling author and lived an immoral life. There were three science fiction books on my list, all predicting political and social breakdown on Earth. World Enough and Time, by Robert Penn Warren, though it was historical, probed questions about truth and justice that are relevant today.
In film, "All The King's Men" took Best Picture and Best Actor (Broderick Crawford), though I do not think it captured the book well at all. "A Letter to Three Wives" won Best Director (Joseph L Mankiewicz) and was the story of three wives worrying about whether or not their husbands were faithful. Best Actress went to Olivia de Havilland in "The Heiress", a film based on Henry James' novel, Washington Square, which is set in New York society in the 1840s.
Of the songs that were popular in 1950, the only ones I recognize were "If I Knew You Were Coming I'd've Baked a Cake" (first song title with a double contraction?) and "Good Night Irene."
Way back then, so near to the beginning of my life, what was going on? As the year opened, I was almost two and a half years old. It was winter with snow on the boughs of the fir trees surrounding the house. Before spring was more than a suggestion, on March 15, my sister Linda was born. The Ides of March and what used to be Income Tax Day, brought this intruder into my family. Here was another person with whom to share my parents' attention. My first response, when they brought her home from the hospital, was to unwrap her from all her blankets and look her over. What do you know? She was NOT perfect! The second and third toes on each of her feet were stuck together. Well, I had been instructed that I would have to be Mommy's helper with the new baby, so off I ran in search of the screwdriver. I figured I could separate those toes with the tool my father had taught me how to use. Right away, I was in trouble. Laughter and then disapproval greeted my efforts to be the big sister.
And so it went. This baby had colic, she cried for hours, had to be held and carried. She spit up her formula and smelled bad to me. Secretly I thought maybe she could be sent back, but after the screwdriver incident, I kept this idea to myself. I was saved by the regular visits of my grandmother, who seemed to understand my position without having to be told. I had my own little table in the dining room and there she would sit with me, teaching me how to cut with scissors, how to color inside the lines, how to put clothes on paper dolls. With Grandma, I felt smart and special and interesting.
This year also brought new terrors. I seemed to be afraid of everything. I still had nightmares, but there were dangers in the daytime as well. Though I had happily gone to the basement at my grandmother's house, I was in an agony of fear every moment I spent in the basement of our new house. First of all, there were no backs to the stairs. You could see through to the floor far below. It took me forever to get down those steps as I fantasized that my feet would get stuck in the spaces. It was a big basement and had dark corners and spiders and webs, but if I wanted to stay close to my mother (and I followed her everywhere), I had to go down there when she did the laundry.
Outside were further challenges. Behind the house was a narrow strip of flat ground and then began a slope down to the creek. Once I was down there, I loved to watch the flow of the water, the frogs and the minnows. But I needed someone to hold my hand because I was convinced that if I fell, I would roll down the hill and drown in the creek. Where do these terrors of childhood come from? Do we hear the adults worrying over us to each other? Are we told too often to be careful? Do we feel that their dismay over our falls and minor injuries hurt them too? All I know is that a black, shaggy dog as big as I was would visit our yard and jump up on me and I would become hysterical if I was anywhere near that slope to the creek.
But Daddy was good. He would take me outside and patiently show me how to walk down a hill, how to keep my arms at my side when the dog came around and how to say, "Go home!" We would walk around and examine the wonders of the natural world together. My dad knew birds by their songs and he would have me listen and look for the birds. As the good weather came, I had a favorite spot on the top step of the stoop outside our kitchen door. It faced the road in front of the house, so I would watch the cars and trucks go past, look at the shapes in the clouds, sing songs and make up stories in my head.
I turned three years old in August. I knew songs and nursery rhymes by heart because my mother took time to read to me and sing with me. I loved books and the piano and crayons and colored paper. I loved jumping in the piles of leaves my dad would rake up and when winter came again, I loved my snowsuit and my boots and walking in the snow. Linda could sit up now and crawl and she had a great laugh. She survived the bottle and could eat real food. We could play and have our baths together. Perhaps it would turn out all right.
Fear and Loathing in Pittsburgh
1950 is the year I ceased to be an only child and became a big sister. Politically the world was in a mess. The USSR and Communist China signed a 30 year pact and Europe was half controlled by communism. The first war of my lifetime, the Korean War, began a decades long effort by the United States to keep communism at bay. (It is not even funny that England and France had thought Hitler would get rid of communism as they dithered with him before World War II finally started.) Congress passed the McCarran Act, hoping it would keep communists out of America, while the Atomic Energy Commission worked on the hydrogen bomb. My take on all this is that the ennui of middle class America was one big state of denial about the extreme dangers bubbling just below the surface. About all that science brought us in 1950 was Miltown for anxiety and antihistamines for colds and allergies.
About half of the books I read from 1950 were historical novels and the other half concerned contemporary times. Only one, The Wall, by John Hersey, was about WWII. The Grass is Singing, by Doris Lessing took place in Africa (riots against apartheid in Johannesburg were in the news that year.) Bright Green, Dark Red, by Gore Vidal was about revolution in Central America. There were best sellers about the Catholic Church; a writer who was a fictional version of F Scott Fitzgerald at work in Hollywood; social upheaval in Boston and another female writer who became a bestselling author and lived an immoral life. There were three science fiction books on my list, all predicting political and social breakdown on Earth. World Enough and Time, by Robert Penn Warren, though it was historical, probed questions about truth and justice that are relevant today.
In film, "All The King's Men" took Best Picture and Best Actor (Broderick Crawford), though I do not think it captured the book well at all. "A Letter to Three Wives" won Best Director (Joseph L Mankiewicz) and was the story of three wives worrying about whether or not their husbands were faithful. Best Actress went to Olivia de Havilland in "The Heiress", a film based on Henry James' novel, Washington Square, which is set in New York society in the 1840s.
Of the songs that were popular in 1950, the only ones I recognize were "If I Knew You Were Coming I'd've Baked a Cake" (first song title with a double contraction?) and "Good Night Irene."
Way back then, so near to the beginning of my life, what was going on? As the year opened, I was almost two and a half years old. It was winter with snow on the boughs of the fir trees surrounding the house. Before spring was more than a suggestion, on March 15, my sister Linda was born. The Ides of March and what used to be Income Tax Day, brought this intruder into my family. Here was another person with whom to share my parents' attention. My first response, when they brought her home from the hospital, was to unwrap her from all her blankets and look her over. What do you know? She was NOT perfect! The second and third toes on each of her feet were stuck together. Well, I had been instructed that I would have to be Mommy's helper with the new baby, so off I ran in search of the screwdriver. I figured I could separate those toes with the tool my father had taught me how to use. Right away, I was in trouble. Laughter and then disapproval greeted my efforts to be the big sister.
And so it went. This baby had colic, she cried for hours, had to be held and carried. She spit up her formula and smelled bad to me. Secretly I thought maybe she could be sent back, but after the screwdriver incident, I kept this idea to myself. I was saved by the regular visits of my grandmother, who seemed to understand my position without having to be told. I had my own little table in the dining room and there she would sit with me, teaching me how to cut with scissors, how to color inside the lines, how to put clothes on paper dolls. With Grandma, I felt smart and special and interesting.
This year also brought new terrors. I seemed to be afraid of everything. I still had nightmares, but there were dangers in the daytime as well. Though I had happily gone to the basement at my grandmother's house, I was in an agony of fear every moment I spent in the basement of our new house. First of all, there were no backs to the stairs. You could see through to the floor far below. It took me forever to get down those steps as I fantasized that my feet would get stuck in the spaces. It was a big basement and had dark corners and spiders and webs, but if I wanted to stay close to my mother (and I followed her everywhere), I had to go down there when she did the laundry.
Outside were further challenges. Behind the house was a narrow strip of flat ground and then began a slope down to the creek. Once I was down there, I loved to watch the flow of the water, the frogs and the minnows. But I needed someone to hold my hand because I was convinced that if I fell, I would roll down the hill and drown in the creek. Where do these terrors of childhood come from? Do we hear the adults worrying over us to each other? Are we told too often to be careful? Do we feel that their dismay over our falls and minor injuries hurt them too? All I know is that a black, shaggy dog as big as I was would visit our yard and jump up on me and I would become hysterical if I was anywhere near that slope to the creek.
But Daddy was good. He would take me outside and patiently show me how to walk down a hill, how to keep my arms at my side when the dog came around and how to say, "Go home!" We would walk around and examine the wonders of the natural world together. My dad knew birds by their songs and he would have me listen and look for the birds. As the good weather came, I had a favorite spot on the top step of the stoop outside our kitchen door. It faced the road in front of the house, so I would watch the cars and trucks go past, look at the shapes in the clouds, sing songs and make up stories in my head.
I turned three years old in August. I knew songs and nursery rhymes by heart because my mother took time to read to me and sing with me. I loved books and the piano and crayons and colored paper. I loved jumping in the piles of leaves my dad would rake up and when winter came again, I loved my snowsuit and my boots and walking in the snow. Linda could sit up now and crawl and she had a great laugh. She survived the bottle and could eat real food. We could play and have our baths together. Perhaps it would turn out all right.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
MRS KIMBLE
Mrs Kimble, Jennifer Haigh, HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2003, 394 pp
This was a book club book and we were all sorry we picked it. It is the story of a man who had three wives, told from the viewpoint of each of the wives, though in third person. The man is not a good man. He is a con man and lures each of these women by pretending to care for them but actually playing on each one's weaknesses. Yet, you are never given any insight into why Mr Kimble behaves the way he does. In fact, by the end of the book, you feel you don't even know him.
I did not like or admire any character in the story except for one of Kimble's children; a son who eventually pulls some of the people in the story together. But the way she structured the plot gave an urgent propulsion to the novel and made me read on to find out what happened. I suppose there are women who are fooled the way these three women were but the author simply did not make me believe it.
The writing is only barely good, as far as style goes, but it made for fast reading. Jennifer Haigh is another one of those Iowa Workshop MFA grads and her writing is disturbingly similar to that of Kim Edwards, who wrote The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
This was a book club book and we were all sorry we picked it. It is the story of a man who had three wives, told from the viewpoint of each of the wives, though in third person. The man is not a good man. He is a con man and lures each of these women by pretending to care for them but actually playing on each one's weaknesses. Yet, you are never given any insight into why Mr Kimble behaves the way he does. In fact, by the end of the book, you feel you don't even know him.
I did not like or admire any character in the story except for one of Kimble's children; a son who eventually pulls some of the people in the story together. But the way she structured the plot gave an urgent propulsion to the novel and made me read on to find out what happened. I suppose there are women who are fooled the way these three women were but the author simply did not make me believe it.
The writing is only barely good, as far as style goes, but it made for fast reading. Jennifer Haigh is another one of those Iowa Workshop MFA grads and her writing is disturbingly similar to that of Kim Edwards, who wrote The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
Monday, March 26, 2007
RUINED BY READING
Ruined By Reading, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Beacon Press, 1996, 119 pp
I don't remember where I heard about this book. I was trying to read Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose but bogged down because it was way too much like being in English class. Then I started Ruined By Reading and just read it straight through. She meanders, she ruminates, she recaptures the wonder of childhood reading. I loved it.
Reading is truly such a personal thing. Rather like sex, it is unique to each individual. Those of us who are enraptured by books try to share this very intimate connection to the authors of books with other readers. It is a difficult thing to articulate and rarely do I feel completely understood. At those times when comprehension occurs between myself and another reader, the conversation generally devolves into oohs and aahs and oh wows; the expressions of emotion or enlightenment.
Still we try and Ms Schwartz has done well here. I don't agree with or share all of her personal reactions to books. On several books though, it is as if we had one mind. Like me, Schwartz read early and much of what we read was too advanced for our level of knowledge about life. When she described trying to understand such books, I was right there with her. She made me remember some of the odd ideas I picked up when I was small that still influence me today.
Then there is that wondrous aspect of reading: finding what you secretly believed to be true, though others never told you so. Writing about reading The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, she writes:
"Occasionally when I mention A Little Princess I find someone who is startled into rapt recall and we exchange a look of recognition. There is nothing to match the affinity of people who were defined and nourished by the same book, who shared a fantasy life. What we dreamed together, in whatever distant places we grew up, was of something amorphous-large, open and exotic-something for which there was no room at home and even less in school. We groped for the knowledge A Little Princess confers, which is that we truly are what we feel ourselves to be, that we can trust our inner certainty regardless of how others perceive us or what they wish us to become."
Yes!
I don't remember where I heard about this book. I was trying to read Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose but bogged down because it was way too much like being in English class. Then I started Ruined By Reading and just read it straight through. She meanders, she ruminates, she recaptures the wonder of childhood reading. I loved it.
Reading is truly such a personal thing. Rather like sex, it is unique to each individual. Those of us who are enraptured by books try to share this very intimate connection to the authors of books with other readers. It is a difficult thing to articulate and rarely do I feel completely understood. At those times when comprehension occurs between myself and another reader, the conversation generally devolves into oohs and aahs and oh wows; the expressions of emotion or enlightenment.
Still we try and Ms Schwartz has done well here. I don't agree with or share all of her personal reactions to books. On several books though, it is as if we had one mind. Like me, Schwartz read early and much of what we read was too advanced for our level of knowledge about life. When she described trying to understand such books, I was right there with her. She made me remember some of the odd ideas I picked up when I was small that still influence me today.
Then there is that wondrous aspect of reading: finding what you secretly believed to be true, though others never told you so. Writing about reading The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, she writes:
"Occasionally when I mention A Little Princess I find someone who is startled into rapt recall and we exchange a look of recognition. There is nothing to match the affinity of people who were defined and nourished by the same book, who shared a fantasy life. What we dreamed together, in whatever distant places we grew up, was of something amorphous-large, open and exotic-something for which there was no room at home and even less in school. We groped for the knowledge A Little Princess confers, which is that we truly are what we feel ourselves to be, that we can trust our inner certainty regardless of how others perceive us or what they wish us to become."
Yes!
SACRED GAMES
Sacred Games, Vikram Chandra, HarperCollins Publishers, 2007, 900 pp
Yes, this book is long. Yes, it is wordy and heavy to hold while reading. He uses lots of Indian words and though there is a glossary, it doesn't contain all the words he uses. But I liked it anyway.
The story has two main characters. Inspector Sartaj Singh is a divorced, middle-aged Bombay policeman. Ganesh Gaitonde is the ruthless criminal boss of his underworld company. In an unusual story form, they clash at the beginning of the book. From that point on, Sartaj Singh's life continues but Ganesh Gaitonde's backstory unfolds in first person. The result is not unlike watching a tapestry being made.
Chandra covers a wide swath of history and territory, issues and ideas. Certainly readers whose usual diet is fast-paced cinematic thrillers will feel that Sacred Games is too densely packed with unnecessary passages. Personally I like a long story with a balance of action and thought. The sex and violence is heavy but not overdone. I got a sense of what life is for several levels of Bombay inhabitants: the booming economy next to the poverty; the remnants of class prejudice and religious intolerance; the influences of both Hollywood and Bollywood.
Vikram Chandra was born in India but now teaches literature and writing at UC Berkeley. In Sacred Games, he has fused Indian and Western storytelling while depicting an ancient and troubled country's emergence into the 21st century and has done it well.
Yes, this book is long. Yes, it is wordy and heavy to hold while reading. He uses lots of Indian words and though there is a glossary, it doesn't contain all the words he uses. But I liked it anyway.
The story has two main characters. Inspector Sartaj Singh is a divorced, middle-aged Bombay policeman. Ganesh Gaitonde is the ruthless criminal boss of his underworld company. In an unusual story form, they clash at the beginning of the book. From that point on, Sartaj Singh's life continues but Ganesh Gaitonde's backstory unfolds in first person. The result is not unlike watching a tapestry being made.
Chandra covers a wide swath of history and territory, issues and ideas. Certainly readers whose usual diet is fast-paced cinematic thrillers will feel that Sacred Games is too densely packed with unnecessary passages. Personally I like a long story with a balance of action and thought. The sex and violence is heavy but not overdone. I got a sense of what life is for several levels of Bombay inhabitants: the booming economy next to the poverty; the remnants of class prejudice and religious intolerance; the influences of both Hollywood and Bollywood.
Vikram Chandra was born in India but now teaches literature and writing at UC Berkeley. In Sacred Games, he has fused Indian and Western storytelling while depicting an ancient and troubled country's emergence into the 21st century and has done it well.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
ENDER'S GAME
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, Tom Doherty Associates, 1985, 226 pp
Wow! I had heard about this book for a long time, but all I knew was that it was sci fi. It turned out to be one of the most powerful stories I have ever read.
Ender, at the age of six, is a gifted child who is whisked away to battle school. He is the third child in his family at a time when only two are permitted. His older brother has always tortured him and his sister has protected him. At battle school he is on his own.
Ender has been chosen by the military leaders of the world as "the one" who might be able to lead the world's troops against an interplanetary enemy who will attack within the next ten years. His "training" consists in part of experiences where he must perform without any hope of help or rescue from anyone.
As a mom, it was excruciating to read about what Ender was forced to endure at such a young age. Card seems to be saying that the loneliness of command is balanced only by Ender's extremely high intelligence. What I saw was a child who was tricked into doing what he most abhorred: killing. Somehow he did not become psychopathic and while I'm not sure it is realistic that he would not, it sure made a gripping story.
My husband also read Ender's Game and had a distinctly different response. Is that because he is a man or because he's never had his own kids? I was intrigued by Ender's way of atoning for his deeds at the end of the book. My husband was impressed that it was Ender's most humane ability that led him to victory.
Wow! I had heard about this book for a long time, but all I knew was that it was sci fi. It turned out to be one of the most powerful stories I have ever read.
Ender, at the age of six, is a gifted child who is whisked away to battle school. He is the third child in his family at a time when only two are permitted. His older brother has always tortured him and his sister has protected him. At battle school he is on his own.
Ender has been chosen by the military leaders of the world as "the one" who might be able to lead the world's troops against an interplanetary enemy who will attack within the next ten years. His "training" consists in part of experiences where he must perform without any hope of help or rescue from anyone.
As a mom, it was excruciating to read about what Ender was forced to endure at such a young age. Card seems to be saying that the loneliness of command is balanced only by Ender's extremely high intelligence. What I saw was a child who was tricked into doing what he most abhorred: killing. Somehow he did not become psychopathic and while I'm not sure it is realistic that he would not, it sure made a gripping story.
My husband also read Ender's Game and had a distinctly different response. Is that because he is a man or because he's never had his own kids? I was intrigued by Ender's way of atoning for his deeds at the end of the book. My husband was impressed that it was Ender's most humane ability that led him to victory.
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