The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson, Alfred A Knopf, 2008, 465 pp
This financial thriller, set in Sweden, has already been a bestseller in Europe. The author spent his life fighting racial and religious intolerance, exposing neofascism in Europe. He completed a trilogy of thrillers and then died in 2004. This is the first of the three novels and is written in a refreshing new style and voice while resting firmly in the Ludlum, Grisham, Baldacci thriller tradition.
The closest I've ever been to Sweden was a horrific 5 hour layover in Amsterdam airport on the way home from Paris last year, so I was initially challenged by unfamiliar names of streets, cities, persons, magazines, newspapers and other elements of modern Swedish life. But the story is exciting and smart and ultra modern, comprising a closed-room murder mystery, a dastardly financial villain, psychopathic descendants of Nazis and the girl in the title. She is in fact an extra mystery all in herself and as good as any heroine in a Neal Stephenson novel.
I could tell that it was a first novel, though that could be partly due to the translation, but except for a few clunky sections, Larsson dept me turning the pages. There is a decidedly European take on love and sex, again refreshing compared to the American psychosis of puritanism vs porn. I suspect a bit of hype in the title because I was let down by the ending as concerns the dragon tattooed girl, but presumably there will be more about her in the sequels.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
THE GOD OF ANIMALS
The God of Animals, Aryn Kyle, Scribner, 2007, 305 pp
This book was recommended to me by a co-worker at the bookstore, who is herself a budding writer. I loved it and will be putting it on my top favorites list for the year. It is a first novel and only strengthened my opinion that we are in a Golden Age of new novelists.
Alice Winston is 12 years old and lives a young life of quiet desperation on a run-down horse ranch in a small Colorado desert town. Her older sister, Alice's idol and and an excellent prize winning horse woman, has run off with a rodeo cowboy. The mother of the family has been bedridden with a case of postpartum depression, having rarely left her room since the day Alice was born.
As she tries to be the good daughter and right hand man to her overworked, demanding yet reticent father, Alice is looking, listening, actually lurking in life, trying to understand what the hell is going on. The author masterfully creates the environment of horse ranch and desert small town life juxtaposed with the new rich on the other irrigated side of town, who board their horses at the ranch and send their daughters for riding lessons.
I grew to love Alice and to feel her search for love and understanding like it was my own. Her tragedies, her moments of triumph and breakthroughs in figuring our what happened in her family are all revealed in a haunting prose, as spare as the desert, that is some of the most effortless reading I have done.
This book was recommended to me by a co-worker at the bookstore, who is herself a budding writer. I loved it and will be putting it on my top favorites list for the year. It is a first novel and only strengthened my opinion that we are in a Golden Age of new novelists.
Alice Winston is 12 years old and lives a young life of quiet desperation on a run-down horse ranch in a small Colorado desert town. Her older sister, Alice's idol and and an excellent prize winning horse woman, has run off with a rodeo cowboy. The mother of the family has been bedridden with a case of postpartum depression, having rarely left her room since the day Alice was born.
As she tries to be the good daughter and right hand man to her overworked, demanding yet reticent father, Alice is looking, listening, actually lurking in life, trying to understand what the hell is going on. The author masterfully creates the environment of horse ranch and desert small town life juxtaposed with the new rich on the other irrigated side of town, who board their horses at the ranch and send their daughters for riding lessons.
I grew to love Alice and to feel her search for love and understanding like it was my own. Her tragedies, her moments of triumph and breakthroughs in figuring our what happened in her family are all revealed in a haunting prose, as spare as the desert, that is some of the most effortless reading I have done.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
WORD OF THE DAY
Today's word is eremite, read in the New York Times Book Review. It means a religious recluse; a hermit. It comes from Middle English from Old French ermite, hermite.
My sentence: After years of prayer and meditation in a remote monastery, the eremite returned to a world changed beyond recognition.
Sentence anyone?
My sentence: After years of prayer and meditation in a remote monastery, the eremite returned to a world changed beyond recognition.
Sentence anyone?
BECOMING ABIGAIL
Becoming Abigail, Chris Abani, Akashic Books, 2006, 121 pp
In this novella, Abani's follow-up to Graceland, a young African woman is brought to London by her uncle and put into the sex trade. It is a harrowing story of loss and abuse set amid the ancient sites of modern day London. Through the eyes of Abigail, you see both the clash of culture as well as the universal theme of men using women.
It is beautifully written but highly disturbing. Even when Abigail finds love, it cannot save her. I am not sure I really liked it. One of the darkest stories I have ever read.
In this novella, Abani's follow-up to Graceland, a young African woman is brought to London by her uncle and put into the sex trade. It is a harrowing story of loss and abuse set amid the ancient sites of modern day London. Through the eyes of Abigail, you see both the clash of culture as well as the universal theme of men using women.
It is beautifully written but highly disturbing. Even when Abigail finds love, it cannot save her. I am not sure I really liked it. One of the darkest stories I have ever read.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
HOPE'S BOY
Hope's Boy, Andrew Bridge, Hyperion, 2008, 303 pp
Andrew Bridge was taken from his mother by Social Services in Los Angeles when he was seven years old and raised in foster care until he was 18. This is his memoir. He went on to become a lawyer all on his own efforts without help from anyone and is now an advocate for children in foster care.
As usual I tore through this book in 12 hours with only a break for making and eating dinner. I still don't understand my fascination for the orphan/abandoned child story. I've had it since I was five years old.
The writing is not great but it does the job. Bridge indulges in virtually no self pity. He emphasizes how he never stopped loving or missing his mother, who ended up in a mental health facility. He seems to be in favor of families staying together unless it is utterly impossible to help the family. I am starting to agree with this position and perhaps that is the direction my novel should take.
Andrew Bridge was taken from his mother by Social Services in Los Angeles when he was seven years old and raised in foster care until he was 18. This is his memoir. He went on to become a lawyer all on his own efforts without help from anyone and is now an advocate for children in foster care.
As usual I tore through this book in 12 hours with only a break for making and eating dinner. I still don't understand my fascination for the orphan/abandoned child story. I've had it since I was five years old.
The writing is not great but it does the job. Bridge indulges in virtually no self pity. He emphasizes how he never stopped loving or missing his mother, who ended up in a mental health facility. He seems to be in favor of families staying together unless it is utterly impossible to help the family. I am starting to agree with this position and perhaps that is the direction my novel should take.
Monday, September 08, 2008
WHAT I AM READING
I had a rough week in reading. I was doing OK on my 50 pages a day of The Second Sex but by Tuesday I just could not bring myself to read it. It is highly interesting though the writing style is a bit scholarly, but also highly disturbing. I found myself getting upset, angry, sad and just generally feeling sort of crazy, as I read about the history of woman in society, the patriarchal views and the myths of man toward woman. The worst part was noticing the ways I have fallen under the influence of it all. But then, that is part of my quest in writing the memoir; to discover my own journey to full self hood as a female.
Last Monday, I had an attack of book lust and went to a bookstore (not the one where I work). I bought a book about writing, a book on how to write biography and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman, who is married to Michael Chabon. I read a good deal of the book on writing and got inspired to work on my novel again, except then I did not write a word.
I also read a memoir about growing up and reading called An Open Book by Michael Dirda, one of my favorite book reviewers. Through the second half of the week I felt somewhat ill, due to either the heat or allergies or that ****ing sex book, who knows. Finally on Saturday, I cracked open The Second Sex and got going on it again. It is still disturbing but I can tell that I will get through it and be better for it.
I also read Three Cups of Tea in full this weekend and though I was prepared to be somewhat bored, I was fascinated. It is a great story, full of hope, and I learned much about Pakistan, Afghanistan, terrorists, Muslims, just the whole scene that we have been living in for seven years. How appropriate with September 11, 2008 coming up this week.
What have you been reading? I really want to know!
Last Monday, I had an attack of book lust and went to a bookstore (not the one where I work). I bought a book about writing, a book on how to write biography and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman, who is married to Michael Chabon. I read a good deal of the book on writing and got inspired to work on my novel again, except then I did not write a word.
I also read a memoir about growing up and reading called An Open Book by Michael Dirda, one of my favorite book reviewers. Through the second half of the week I felt somewhat ill, due to either the heat or allergies or that ****ing sex book, who knows. Finally on Saturday, I cracked open The Second Sex and got going on it again. It is still disturbing but I can tell that I will get through it and be better for it.
I also read Three Cups of Tea in full this weekend and though I was prepared to be somewhat bored, I was fascinated. It is a great story, full of hope, and I learned much about Pakistan, Afghanistan, terrorists, Muslims, just the whole scene that we have been living in for seven years. How appropriate with September 11, 2008 coming up this week.
What have you been reading? I really want to know!
MRS DALLOWAY
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, Harcourt Inc, 1925, 190 pp
Mrs Dalloway is not a person I would care to know or hang out with, so despite my readiness to be impressed by Virginia Woolf's fiction, I found this book a long and sleepy go. The story covers one day in the life of Mrs Dalloway. She is giving a party in the evening in her home in London, a society affair, so we follow her through the day as she gets ready and through the party itself. A few other characters are also living through that day in London, though not all interact with Clarissa Dalloway.
One of these characters is Peter Walsh, a former flame whom Clarissa almost married 30 years earlier. You get back stories on all these characters which makes the one day a device for telling several stories at once and for taking up topics such as love, marriage, careers, society, politics and the Great War.
I was reminded most of Jane Austen in the style of writing and the subject matter, though the story is in the 20th century. According to the introduction to the edition I read (Harcourt Annotated, 2005), Woolf was part of a whole group of writers including T S Eliot, D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and James Joyce, who were each attempting to modernize poetry and the novel. Due to Sigmund Freud also publishing at that time, psychology was a big subject, though Woolf, who had mental issues herself, did not care for or respect her male doctors' application of psychology to her. This aversion comes through in Mrs Dalloway.
In any case, I have now read the book; I will read the rest of her fiction one day. I consider it part of my literary education. Since My Big Fat Reading Project begins in 1940, I have missed almost half of the 20th century, so I will have to fill that in eventually. Next in this particular study is to read The Hours by Michael Cunningham and then see the movie.
Here is a quote from Woolf's essay "How Should One Read a Book?: "The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions."
Mrs Dalloway is not a person I would care to know or hang out with, so despite my readiness to be impressed by Virginia Woolf's fiction, I found this book a long and sleepy go. The story covers one day in the life of Mrs Dalloway. She is giving a party in the evening in her home in London, a society affair, so we follow her through the day as she gets ready and through the party itself. A few other characters are also living through that day in London, though not all interact with Clarissa Dalloway.
One of these characters is Peter Walsh, a former flame whom Clarissa almost married 30 years earlier. You get back stories on all these characters which makes the one day a device for telling several stories at once and for taking up topics such as love, marriage, careers, society, politics and the Great War.
I was reminded most of Jane Austen in the style of writing and the subject matter, though the story is in the 20th century. According to the introduction to the edition I read (Harcourt Annotated, 2005), Woolf was part of a whole group of writers including T S Eliot, D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and James Joyce, who were each attempting to modernize poetry and the novel. Due to Sigmund Freud also publishing at that time, psychology was a big subject, though Woolf, who had mental issues herself, did not care for or respect her male doctors' application of psychology to her. This aversion comes through in Mrs Dalloway.
In any case, I have now read the book; I will read the rest of her fiction one day. I consider it part of my literary education. Since My Big Fat Reading Project begins in 1940, I have missed almost half of the 20th century, so I will have to fill that in eventually. Next in this particular study is to read The Hours by Michael Cunningham and then see the movie.
Here is a quote from Woolf's essay "How Should One Read a Book?: "The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions."
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
ALL ABOUT LULU
All About Lulu, Jonathan Evison, Soft Skull Press, 2008, 338 pp
I learned about this book in the Poets and Writers Magazine feature called "Page One," where they print the first sentence of several books. All About Lulu is a first novel by a young author and is excellent.
Will Miller, Jr, is the son of a body builder who used to be a hippie. (I love all these stories about kids raised by hippies and former hippies because of me and my kids.) Will is the wuss of the family while his younger twin brothers are sturdy and follow their dad into body building. But the mom dies when Will is 8, followed by a new wife who brings into the family her daughter Lulu. Will and Lulu are the same age and become best friends who fall in love as they reach puberty.
However there is a problem and a deep dark secret concerning Will and Lulu. The reader figures this out before Will does, but in the end that does not matter. This is Will's coming-of-age tale told by him and though Lulu, her mother and Big Bill have their own stories, these are all seen through Will's eyes.
All About Lulu is a tragedy, but is filled with humor, satire and an authentic hipness. I don't know how old Jonathan Evison is but he has not forgotten the teen experience, not one whit. He has also got the college years right. When the whole truth about Lulu comes out and Will gets his closure, at first I thought that section might have been better written. It was all so well, well. Then I realized that is the way it is at that age in the 21st century.
This is a very fine first novel. I eagerly await more from Evison and feel once again optimistic about the fiction of the future. (I sent Evison an email, which he answered, and he has another novel coming out in 2009!)
I learned about this book in the Poets and Writers Magazine feature called "Page One," where they print the first sentence of several books. All About Lulu is a first novel by a young author and is excellent.
Will Miller, Jr, is the son of a body builder who used to be a hippie. (I love all these stories about kids raised by hippies and former hippies because of me and my kids.) Will is the wuss of the family while his younger twin brothers are sturdy and follow their dad into body building. But the mom dies when Will is 8, followed by a new wife who brings into the family her daughter Lulu. Will and Lulu are the same age and become best friends who fall in love as they reach puberty.
However there is a problem and a deep dark secret concerning Will and Lulu. The reader figures this out before Will does, but in the end that does not matter. This is Will's coming-of-age tale told by him and though Lulu, her mother and Big Bill have their own stories, these are all seen through Will's eyes.
All About Lulu is a tragedy, but is filled with humor, satire and an authentic hipness. I don't know how old Jonathan Evison is but he has not forgotten the teen experience, not one whit. He has also got the college years right. When the whole truth about Lulu comes out and Will gets his closure, at first I thought that section might have been better written. It was all so well, well. Then I realized that is the way it is at that age in the 21st century.
This is a very fine first novel. I eagerly await more from Evison and feel once again optimistic about the fiction of the future. (I sent Evison an email, which he answered, and he has another novel coming out in 2009!)
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
THE ANGEL OF GALILEA
The Angel of Galilea, Laura Restrepo, Random House Inc, 1997, 193 pp
I have found a new author to love. She is Colombian, she is literary and political in life, but she has an element of the magical/spiritual in her writing.
In this novel, Mona is a frustrated journalist in Bogota, Columbia, making her living writing junk for a tabloid. When she is sent to cover sightings of an angel in the slums, she falls headlong into a whole other world, as well as headlong in love with the angel. The angel means many different things to many different people, as angels often do. Is he truly from God, a sexual deviant, a psychotic or the work of the devil?
In the process of trying to love and save this being, Mona is brought face to face with the evils and glories of life in her city and revives a certain deadness in her heart. I liked the several juxtapositions that Restrepo sets up as well as her humorous and pointed remarks about modern life in Columbia.
This is possibly her first novel (it is always hard to tell with foreign fiction) and she has at least five more which I look forward to reading.
I have found a new author to love. She is Colombian, she is literary and political in life, but she has an element of the magical/spiritual in her writing.
In this novel, Mona is a frustrated journalist in Bogota, Columbia, making her living writing junk for a tabloid. When she is sent to cover sightings of an angel in the slums, she falls headlong into a whole other world, as well as headlong in love with the angel. The angel means many different things to many different people, as angels often do. Is he truly from God, a sexual deviant, a psychotic or the work of the devil?
In the process of trying to love and save this being, Mona is brought face to face with the evils and glories of life in her city and revives a certain deadness in her heart. I liked the several juxtapositions that Restrepo sets up as well as her humorous and pointed remarks about modern life in Columbia.
This is possibly her first novel (it is always hard to tell with foreign fiction) and she has at least five more which I look forward to reading.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
WHAT I AM READING
I have been reading the books for 1955 (for My Big Fat Reading Project) since April of this year. My goal was to finish the list by the end of June. Ha. I still have 12 books to go. But I have made some progress since I returned from Michigan.
I read the Marcia Brown version of Cinderella which won the Caldecott Medal in 1955.
Arthur C Clarke died this year and reading about him and his work made me decide to add him to my list of sci fi authors. So I read my first book ever by him, Earthlight, published in 1955, which takes place on the moon. It was great.
The God of Animals, by Aryn Kyle, is a first novel and one of the best books I have read lately.
I power read through an advance readers copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stief Larsson, so I could post my opinion on BookBrowse.com (a very cool site about new books that come out.) It was entertaining and has a fantastic heroine. It publishes in September.
Falling Man by Don DeLillo was for one of my reading groups. It is about people in the aftermath of 9/11 and VERY disturbing. But finally I have read a book by this author.
For another reading group I read The Savage Garden by Mark Mills. It is supposed to be a literary mystery but it was BORING.
Last weekend I started work on the chapter about 1953 for my memoir, Reading For My Life, and realized that I had neglected to read The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. She published the book in France in 1949, but it was released in English in America in 1953. At 720 pages, it is a tome, so I started the other day with a target to read 50 pages a day, which I have now done for three days in a row. Definitely not a page turner, but so amazing. She is one of the most intelligent writers I have read. Every woman needs to read this book.
Meanwhile I read The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith. Wow. I loved the movie but the book is so much better. And I had not realized that she wrote it in 1955.
Tonight I will start Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor, which was #3 on the bestseller list for 1955 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956. This one is 760 pages! Plus it is about a prisoner of war camp in the South during the Civil War. I'll have to read some chick lit after all this.
(Just so you don't think wrongly about me, the above reading was done over a three week period.)
So...what are you reading? Have you read any of the above books? Any recommendations? Can you tell I am hungry for comments?
I read the Marcia Brown version of Cinderella which won the Caldecott Medal in 1955.
Arthur C Clarke died this year and reading about him and his work made me decide to add him to my list of sci fi authors. So I read my first book ever by him, Earthlight, published in 1955, which takes place on the moon. It was great.
The God of Animals, by Aryn Kyle, is a first novel and one of the best books I have read lately.
I power read through an advance readers copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stief Larsson, so I could post my opinion on BookBrowse.com (a very cool site about new books that come out.) It was entertaining and has a fantastic heroine. It publishes in September.
Falling Man by Don DeLillo was for one of my reading groups. It is about people in the aftermath of 9/11 and VERY disturbing. But finally I have read a book by this author.
For another reading group I read The Savage Garden by Mark Mills. It is supposed to be a literary mystery but it was BORING.
Last weekend I started work on the chapter about 1953 for my memoir, Reading For My Life, and realized that I had neglected to read The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. She published the book in France in 1949, but it was released in English in America in 1953. At 720 pages, it is a tome, so I started the other day with a target to read 50 pages a day, which I have now done for three days in a row. Definitely not a page turner, but so amazing. She is one of the most intelligent writers I have read. Every woman needs to read this book.
Meanwhile I read The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith. Wow. I loved the movie but the book is so much better. And I had not realized that she wrote it in 1955.
Tonight I will start Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor, which was #3 on the bestseller list for 1955 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956. This one is 760 pages! Plus it is about a prisoner of war camp in the South during the Civil War. I'll have to read some chick lit after all this.
(Just so you don't think wrongly about me, the above reading was done over a three week period.)
So...what are you reading? Have you read any of the above books? Any recommendations? Can you tell I am hungry for comments?
WORD OF THE DAY
These word of the day posts are a bit hard to do and I have been lazy. Actually I have been reading, but I have put this off for too long, thinking that it takes up too much of my time. But for readers and writers alike, building vocabulary is key. Do you agree?
Today's word is pilaster and comes from page 16 of Children of Men by PD James. (She, by the way, gave me 8 words to look up in the first 98 pages.) This is a word that I have read and not known (except that it is something on a building) for years, so I finally got honest and looked it up.
pilaster noun
a rectangular support or pier projecting partially from a wall and treated architecturally as a column, with a base, shaft and capital.
derived from the French, pilastre from the Italian pila, a pile, column
My sentence: She dreamed of a room with four pilasters on each wall, every one of which was painted a different color.
Please feel free to leave your sentence in the comments.
Today's word is pilaster and comes from page 16 of Children of Men by PD James. (She, by the way, gave me 8 words to look up in the first 98 pages.) This is a word that I have read and not known (except that it is something on a building) for years, so I finally got honest and looked it up.
pilaster noun
a rectangular support or pier projecting partially from a wall and treated architecturally as a column, with a base, shaft and capital.
derived from the French, pilastre from the Italian pila, a pile, column
My sentence: She dreamed of a room with four pilasters on each wall, every one of which was painted a different color.
Please feel free to leave your sentence in the comments.
A SLIPPING DOWN LIFE
A Slipping Down Life, Anne Tyler, Alfred A Knopf, 1970, 186 pp
This is Tyler's third novel and reads somewhat like an early novel, yet has her signature characters: people who live just outside the mainstream.
Evie Decker is a plump, motherless high school girl in a small town. She becomes, in her own detached way, infatuated with a local rock singer. As the story goes on she gets increasingly involved in Drumstrings Casey's life. Nothing really bad ever happens to her but there is a sort of underlying menace throughout the story. Evie is smart and fearless but also pretty clueless so you fear for her.
I was intrigued and pulled along all the way. There is just no one quite like Anne Tyler. And there is a movie!
This is Tyler's third novel and reads somewhat like an early novel, yet has her signature characters: people who live just outside the mainstream.
Evie Decker is a plump, motherless high school girl in a small town. She becomes, in her own detached way, infatuated with a local rock singer. As the story goes on she gets increasingly involved in Drumstrings Casey's life. Nothing really bad ever happens to her but there is a sort of underlying menace throughout the story. Evie is smart and fearless but also pretty clueless so you fear for her.
I was intrigued and pulled along all the way. There is just no one quite like Anne Tyler. And there is a movie!
Friday, August 29, 2008
THE BOOK OF AIR AND SHADOWS
The Book of Air and Shadows, Michael Gruber, William Morrow, 2007, 466 pp
I admit it. Sometimes I pick a book because of its title. This one was promoted as being a smart thriller. Well, yes, it had plenty of smart people in it, including a compulsively philandering intellectual properties lawyer, his perfect wife who made millions as a financial advisor, his brilliant but fairly autistic son, a Shakespeare scholar, etc.
It is a thriller combined with a sort of literary style and quite a scathing wit. The book is all about the plot, which I won't go into except to say that various people are after a supposedly never before seen Shakespeare play. (Worth millions of course.) It was the plot that kept me reading; its many twists kept me guessing right until the final page. The characters, the wit, and the info on Shakespeare dressed it up. Really nothing wrong, though it was a bit wordy for a pleasure read, which it was clearly meant to be. I think I was hoping for another Shadow of the Wind, but I didn't get that.
I admit it. Sometimes I pick a book because of its title. This one was promoted as being a smart thriller. Well, yes, it had plenty of smart people in it, including a compulsively philandering intellectual properties lawyer, his perfect wife who made millions as a financial advisor, his brilliant but fairly autistic son, a Shakespeare scholar, etc.
It is a thriller combined with a sort of literary style and quite a scathing wit. The book is all about the plot, which I won't go into except to say that various people are after a supposedly never before seen Shakespeare play. (Worth millions of course.) It was the plot that kept me reading; its many twists kept me guessing right until the final page. The characters, the wit, and the info on Shakespeare dressed it up. Really nothing wrong, though it was a bit wordy for a pleasure read, which it was clearly meant to be. I think I was hoping for another Shadow of the Wind, but I didn't get that.
Monday, August 25, 2008
COAL RUN
Coal Run, Tawni O'Dell, Viking Penguin, 2004, 351 pp
This is her second novel, preceded by Back Roads and followed by Sister Mine. I've now read all of them. Once again she writes about the depressed coal mining region of Pennsylvania but of the three novels, I would say this is her weakest.
The story opens explosively when a mine blows and many men are killed. Ivan Zoschenko is just three years old when he loses his father in the debacle. Then it is 30 years later and Ivan is telling his story: how he adopted his next door neighbor Val as a father figure, how he grew up to become a football hero but then missed out on a pro career due to an injury, how he went off to Florida and became a zero to his family.
Now he is back because his old nemesis is about to be released from prison. He is working as a law enforcement deputy, drinking heavily and harbors a dark secret.
O'Dell has created her usual cast of strong but flawed characters and evokes the small town just as well as in the other books. The story kept me hooked. What left me less than impressed was Ivan's voice, which was inconsistent and often sounded nothing like a man in his early 30s.
So, good story, great characters, excellent sense of place with weak narrator. Well, Ivan was a pretty weak guy and at the end he is still weak. He faced some demons but he didn't grow, which is perhaps appropriate for a miner's son.
This is her second novel, preceded by Back Roads and followed by Sister Mine. I've now read all of them. Once again she writes about the depressed coal mining region of Pennsylvania but of the three novels, I would say this is her weakest.
The story opens explosively when a mine blows and many men are killed. Ivan Zoschenko is just three years old when he loses his father in the debacle. Then it is 30 years later and Ivan is telling his story: how he adopted his next door neighbor Val as a father figure, how he grew up to become a football hero but then missed out on a pro career due to an injury, how he went off to Florida and became a zero to his family.
Now he is back because his old nemesis is about to be released from prison. He is working as a law enforcement deputy, drinking heavily and harbors a dark secret.
O'Dell has created her usual cast of strong but flawed characters and evokes the small town just as well as in the other books. The story kept me hooked. What left me less than impressed was Ivan's voice, which was inconsistent and often sounded nothing like a man in his early 30s.
So, good story, great characters, excellent sense of place with weak narrator. Well, Ivan was a pretty weak guy and at the end he is still weak. He faced some demons but he didn't grow, which is perhaps appropriate for a miner's son.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie, Little Brown and Company, 2007, 230 pp
Big book in terms of recognition and awards. It won the National Book Award in the Young Adult category. I liked it just fine but I would not call it great.
Junior is a smart but nerdy weakling who has grown up on a Spokane Indian reservation. He decides to go to high school in an all white neighboring town instead of attending the reservation school because he wants a good education and he suspects it might be a way out of a preordained life on the rez, where most people die alcohol related deaths. Throughout the book, he suffers; at home, where he is looked upon as a traitor and at school, where he is the only Indian besides the school mascot.
The story draws you in, the humor is truly funny, Junior's trials affect your heart and Alexie makes plenty of important points about Native American life in the 21st century. In the end though, the story arc is predictable. Instead of a white nerd overcoming social and personal barriers, it is a Native American nerd.
Having said that, I do think it is an important book for raising awareness about Native Americans, especially if they are still teaching the altered history I had in school.
Big book in terms of recognition and awards. It won the National Book Award in the Young Adult category. I liked it just fine but I would not call it great.
Junior is a smart but nerdy weakling who has grown up on a Spokane Indian reservation. He decides to go to high school in an all white neighboring town instead of attending the reservation school because he wants a good education and he suspects it might be a way out of a preordained life on the rez, where most people die alcohol related deaths. Throughout the book, he suffers; at home, where he is looked upon as a traitor and at school, where he is the only Indian besides the school mascot.
The story draws you in, the humor is truly funny, Junior's trials affect your heart and Alexie makes plenty of important points about Native American life in the 21st century. In the end though, the story arc is predictable. Instead of a white nerd overcoming social and personal barriers, it is a Native American nerd.
Having said that, I do think it is an important book for raising awareness about Native Americans, especially if they are still teaching the altered history I had in school.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
PEONY IN LOVE
Peony in Love, Lisa See, Random House Inc, 2007, 284 pp
I can unreservedly say that I loved this book. It is even better than Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and I don't know why it didn't sell as well. Perhaps because the main character is a ghost for most of the story. Ghost stories of any kind rarely seem to stay on any bestseller list for long.
Peony is a young Chinese girl from a wealthy family in the 17th century. A new dynasty has taken over and the country is in turmoil politically and socially. For women, this means a chance for some unusual freedoms. On her birthday, her doting father presents a showing of the famous opera, The Peony Pavilion, a story of romantic love. Though Peony is already betrothed by custom to a man she has never seen, she is just at the age of romantic love and sexual longing.
She breaks several taboos and meets a young poet. They fall deeply in love but it is all a secret and of course tragedy strikes. As does the heroine in the opera, Peony gets the "love sickness," is unable to eat and dies. Due to various circumstances, her burial is not properly done and she is left to wander as a "hungry ghost" watching over her lover and trying desperately to re-enact the story in the opera.
It is a dramatic and touching tale. Peony comes to an understanding with the mother who kept her trapped and obedient while Peony was growing up. In fact, she comes to understand women, men, art, literature and how to determine her own destiny. There are wonderful scenes where women writers gather to discuss literature, which are like the world's first reading groups. As usual, in a Lisa See novel, the reader learns much about the traditions and culture of China. Though it is a tragedy, Peony in Love has a happy and satisfying ending. This is Lisa See's best book so far.
I can unreservedly say that I loved this book. It is even better than Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and I don't know why it didn't sell as well. Perhaps because the main character is a ghost for most of the story. Ghost stories of any kind rarely seem to stay on any bestseller list for long.
Peony is a young Chinese girl from a wealthy family in the 17th century. A new dynasty has taken over and the country is in turmoil politically and socially. For women, this means a chance for some unusual freedoms. On her birthday, her doting father presents a showing of the famous opera, The Peony Pavilion, a story of romantic love. Though Peony is already betrothed by custom to a man she has never seen, she is just at the age of romantic love and sexual longing.
She breaks several taboos and meets a young poet. They fall deeply in love but it is all a secret and of course tragedy strikes. As does the heroine in the opera, Peony gets the "love sickness," is unable to eat and dies. Due to various circumstances, her burial is not properly done and she is left to wander as a "hungry ghost" watching over her lover and trying desperately to re-enact the story in the opera.
It is a dramatic and touching tale. Peony comes to an understanding with the mother who kept her trapped and obedient while Peony was growing up. In fact, she comes to understand women, men, art, literature and how to determine her own destiny. There are wonderful scenes where women writers gather to discuss literature, which are like the world's first reading groups. As usual, in a Lisa See novel, the reader learns much about the traditions and culture of China. Though it is a tragedy, Peony in Love has a happy and satisfying ending. This is Lisa See's best book so far.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC TO GIRLS
The Importance of Music to Girls, Lavinia Greenlaw, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2007, 205 pp
I learned about this book in Susan Salter Reynold's "Discoveries" column in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. She made quite a discovery. It is a memoir of a girl growing up in the 70s and 80s in Great Britain, seen through her relationship to music. I can't express how amazing the book is because I am still trying to figure out how she did it. Lavinia Greenlaw is a poet, so that might partly explain how she distilled twenty years of life into short gem like chapters of pure essence.
Also, though I was a mother while she was growing up; though I grew up in the USA and she in England, I could easily experience through her writing how it was for her. Remembering those moments of pure music throughout my childhood and especially my teen, college and early adult years, was like a gift to me from her. She had her punk, I had Joni, but the music ran deep into our lives and it was how we made sense of our worlds.
I learned about this book in Susan Salter Reynold's "Discoveries" column in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. She made quite a discovery. It is a memoir of a girl growing up in the 70s and 80s in Great Britain, seen through her relationship to music. I can't express how amazing the book is because I am still trying to figure out how she did it. Lavinia Greenlaw is a poet, so that might partly explain how she distilled twenty years of life into short gem like chapters of pure essence.
Also, though I was a mother while she was growing up; though I grew up in the USA and she in England, I could easily experience through her writing how it was for her. Remembering those moments of pure music throughout my childhood and especially my teen, college and early adult years, was like a gift to me from her. She had her punk, I had Joni, but the music ran deep into our lives and it was how we made sense of our worlds.
I HAVE A GREAT FAMILY
I am back from Michigan. OK, I confess, I have been back for 8 days. And catching up and feeling guilty about not blogging. It was a wonderful trip filled with happy and hilarious moments and I did not want to come home. I am so blessed to have a family that is not one bit dysfunctional and full of love and respect for each other.
I got to do quite a bit of reading despite all the goings on (a Big Birthday BBQ celebrating 5 birthdays plus the Family Reunion to celebrate my Mom's 90th which is coming up on Jan 1, 2009. The reunion was attended by 80 friends and family members. My two sisters and I made all the food, with lots of help from sons and daughters.)
I read a great first novel, All About Lulu, by Jonathan Evison.
I got to read my friend Laurie Gailunas' first sci fi novel in manuscript form; about infertility and how a planet dealt with and overcame it. Very good, very full of women and sex and hormones. I can't wait until she gets published so you all can read it.
At long last I read Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. Now I can read The Hours and see the movie.
The latest foster child memoir, Hope's Boy, by Andrew Bridge was fabulous.
I napped my way through A World of Love, by Elizabeth Bowen; a book from the 1955 reading list.
I started but have not finished: Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, by Brad Barkley and Heather Hepler, recommended by my daughter-in-law's sister, who is a twin and both sisters read more than I do.
I also started Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, Volume Two of his Baroque Cycle. After 800+ pages of that plus another 800 or so in Volume Three, The System of the World, I will get to read his new book, Anathem, which was just released. My husband is reading it now.
So that is the roundup. I am thinking of starting a weekly post called What I am Reading. What do you think?
As always, I love to hear from you, my readers, to find out what you are reading and anything else you have to say about the reading life.
Stay tuned for micro-reviews of the books mentioned above.
I got to do quite a bit of reading despite all the goings on (a Big Birthday BBQ celebrating 5 birthdays plus the Family Reunion to celebrate my Mom's 90th which is coming up on Jan 1, 2009. The reunion was attended by 80 friends and family members. My two sisters and I made all the food, with lots of help from sons and daughters.)
I read a great first novel, All About Lulu, by Jonathan Evison.
I got to read my friend Laurie Gailunas' first sci fi novel in manuscript form; about infertility and how a planet dealt with and overcame it. Very good, very full of women and sex and hormones. I can't wait until she gets published so you all can read it.
At long last I read Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. Now I can read The Hours and see the movie.
The latest foster child memoir, Hope's Boy, by Andrew Bridge was fabulous.
I napped my way through A World of Love, by Elizabeth Bowen; a book from the 1955 reading list.
I started but have not finished: Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, by Brad Barkley and Heather Hepler, recommended by my daughter-in-law's sister, who is a twin and both sisters read more than I do.
I also started Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, Volume Two of his Baroque Cycle. After 800+ pages of that plus another 800 or so in Volume Three, The System of the World, I will get to read his new book, Anathem, which was just released. My husband is reading it now.
So that is the roundup. I am thinking of starting a weekly post called What I am Reading. What do you think?
As always, I love to hear from you, my readers, to find out what you are reading and anything else you have to say about the reading life.
Stay tuned for micro-reviews of the books mentioned above.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
I AM OUT OF HERE
I am off on vacation tonight. I am taking a break from phones, computers, email, blogs. Of course I will be reading as much as I can.
I will be with family celebrating my mom's 90th birthday. So it will be all about family and luckily I have a great family with a minimum of dysfunction and only a few weirdos to keep life interesting.
I'll be back in two weeks. If you miss me, you can catch up on earlier posts you might have missed or hey, read some books yourself instead of blogs. While it is fun to read about books, I believe it is much more fun to read them. What do you think?
See ya'!
I will be with family celebrating my mom's 90th birthday. So it will be all about family and luckily I have a great family with a minimum of dysfunction and only a few weirdos to keep life interesting.
I'll be back in two weeks. If you miss me, you can catch up on earlier posts you might have missed or hey, read some books yourself instead of blogs. While it is fun to read about books, I believe it is much more fun to read them. What do you think?
See ya'!
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
THE MARTIAN CHILD
The Martian Child, David Gerrold, Tom Doherty Associates, 2002, 190 pp
Another book about adoption, recommended to me by my friend Laurie, the sci fi writer. This one is from the viewpoint of the adopting parent. Gerrold turned his experience into a novel and I devoured it in a few hours.
The man is single, gay and a sci fi writer living in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The boy he adopted was 8 years old, abandoned by his mother (who was a drug abuser) and in foster care since he was a year old. He was considered not adoptable because of all his behavior troubles plus he told everyone that he was from Mars.
Despite qualms and self-doubt, David adopted him and made a success of it. Another child saved by love. Good writing and excellent insight into the Martian thing. Apparently it is somewhat common for kids in the foster care system to believe they are from Mars.
Another book about adoption, recommended to me by my friend Laurie, the sci fi writer. This one is from the viewpoint of the adopting parent. Gerrold turned his experience into a novel and I devoured it in a few hours.
The man is single, gay and a sci fi writer living in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The boy he adopted was 8 years old, abandoned by his mother (who was a drug abuser) and in foster care since he was a year old. He was considered not adoptable because of all his behavior troubles plus he told everyone that he was from Mars.
Despite qualms and self-doubt, David adopted him and made a success of it. Another child saved by love. Good writing and excellent insight into the Martian thing. Apparently it is somewhat common for kids in the foster care system to believe they are from Mars.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
WORD OF THE DAY
Today's word is crenelate. It comes from p 16 of Children of Men by P D James. This is a word that I usually go past, knowing that it has something to do with buildings but not really knowing what it means. So this time, I got honest and looked it up. Then I was in a can of worms known by dictionary users as a word chain. Here we go:
crenelate transitive verb meaning to furnish with battlements or crenels, or with squared notches.
which led me to crenels.
crenel noun meaning any of the indentations or loopholes in the top of a battlement or wall, embrasure.
which led me to battlement and embrasure.
battlement noun meaning a parapet with open spaces for shooting built on top of a castle wall, tower or fort.
which led me to parapet (at which point I moved to an easier dictionary.)
parapet noun meaning a wall or bank for protecting troops from enemy fire. From French from Italian from papare, to guard + petto, breast from Latin pectus.
Sentence: OK guys, get behind the parapet before you get shot.
enbrasure noun meaning an opening, as in a parapet, with the sides slanting outward to increase the angle of fire of a gun. (Here we got a much needed picture.) From an obsolete French word, embraser, to widen an opening.
Sentence: Even though the guy was over to the right, I managed to pick him off thanks to the embrasure I was shooting through.
OK back to battlement noun meaning a parapet with open spaces for shooting built on top of a castle wall, tower or fort. From Middle English batelment from Old French bataillier, to fortify from battaille, fortification on a wall or tower. (Another great picture.)
Sentence: The soldiers were placed along the battlement with their bows, arrows and kettles of boiling oil.
OK, cool, so a crenel is a noun meaning any of the indentations or loopholes in the top of a battlement or wall, embrasure. (A crenel is an embrasure, one of those openings with the slanted sides.) It is from Old French, diminutive of the Vulgar Latin crena, a notch.
Sentence: While stooping behind the battlement, I shot an arrow through the crenel.
Back to the original word crenelate transitive verb meaning to furnish with battlements or crenels, or with squared notches.
Sentence: We finished the sand castle but it looked a bit plain so we crenelated the tops of the walls.
There, now you and I can read lots more historical fiction and know what they are talking about instead of guessing. We can also name the parts of our sand castles. All thanks to P D James. How about some sentences, guys?
crenelate transitive verb meaning to furnish with battlements or crenels, or with squared notches.
which led me to crenels.
crenel noun meaning any of the indentations or loopholes in the top of a battlement or wall, embrasure.
which led me to battlement and embrasure.
battlement noun meaning a parapet with open spaces for shooting built on top of a castle wall, tower or fort.
which led me to parapet (at which point I moved to an easier dictionary.)
parapet noun meaning a wall or bank for protecting troops from enemy fire. From French from Italian from papare, to guard + petto, breast from Latin pectus.
Sentence: OK guys, get behind the parapet before you get shot.
enbrasure noun meaning an opening, as in a parapet, with the sides slanting outward to increase the angle of fire of a gun. (Here we got a much needed picture.) From an obsolete French word, embraser, to widen an opening.
Sentence: Even though the guy was over to the right, I managed to pick him off thanks to the embrasure I was shooting through.
OK back to battlement noun meaning a parapet with open spaces for shooting built on top of a castle wall, tower or fort. From Middle English batelment from Old French bataillier, to fortify from battaille, fortification on a wall or tower. (Another great picture.)
Sentence: The soldiers were placed along the battlement with their bows, arrows and kettles of boiling oil.
OK, cool, so a crenel is a noun meaning any of the indentations or loopholes in the top of a battlement or wall, embrasure. (A crenel is an embrasure, one of those openings with the slanted sides.) It is from Old French, diminutive of the Vulgar Latin crena, a notch.
Sentence: While stooping behind the battlement, I shot an arrow through the crenel.
Back to the original word crenelate transitive verb meaning to furnish with battlements or crenels, or with squared notches.
Sentence: We finished the sand castle but it looked a bit plain so we crenelated the tops of the walls.
There, now you and I can read lots more historical fiction and know what they are talking about instead of guessing. We can also name the parts of our sand castles. All thanks to P D James. How about some sentences, guys?
THE WHISTLING SEASON
The Whistling Season, Ivan Doig, Harcourt Inc, 2006, 345 pp
I had heard about this author. He writes about Montana in the homesteading days of the early 20th century. And I liked this book a great deal, though some say his earlier books are even better. He reminds me of Wallace Stegner but he is less ponderous-that's a good thing. He does not judge his characters.
The Whistling Season could be a Young Adult novel. Paul is the oldest of three sons and tells the story, looking back on his thirteenth year. His father, Oliver, is a homesteader who had lost his wife and the boys' mother a year ago to a medical emergency. Oliver decides to hire a housekeeper from an ad in the paper. Rose and her brother Morris arrive from Wisconsin and bring change to the area.
These two interlopers are surrounded by a certain amount of mystery and Doig does not reveal their secrets until the last few pages, so all through the story, though they each do wondrous deeds that improve life for Paul and his family, there is a certain uneasiness simmering just beneath.
All the characters are fabulously created. Paul and his brothers attend a one-room schoolhouse complete with bullies, buddies, lug heads and scholars as well as annoying girls. Morris becomes the school teacher and being well-educated as well as the flamboyant character he is, he teaches like his hair is on fire. My favorite parts of the book were the schoolhouse scenes.
It all ends happily with a sense of uprightness tempered by wisdom about people and the vagaries of the human heart. Doig has recreated a time we shall never see again in America and yet the juxtaposition of goodwill and values with lawlessness and a certain anarchy is still the essence of our country's character.
I had heard about this author. He writes about Montana in the homesteading days of the early 20th century. And I liked this book a great deal, though some say his earlier books are even better. He reminds me of Wallace Stegner but he is less ponderous-that's a good thing. He does not judge his characters.
The Whistling Season could be a Young Adult novel. Paul is the oldest of three sons and tells the story, looking back on his thirteenth year. His father, Oliver, is a homesteader who had lost his wife and the boys' mother a year ago to a medical emergency. Oliver decides to hire a housekeeper from an ad in the paper. Rose and her brother Morris arrive from Wisconsin and bring change to the area.
These two interlopers are surrounded by a certain amount of mystery and Doig does not reveal their secrets until the last few pages, so all through the story, though they each do wondrous deeds that improve life for Paul and his family, there is a certain uneasiness simmering just beneath.
All the characters are fabulously created. Paul and his brothers attend a one-room schoolhouse complete with bullies, buddies, lug heads and scholars as well as annoying girls. Morris becomes the school teacher and being well-educated as well as the flamboyant character he is, he teaches like his hair is on fire. My favorite parts of the book were the schoolhouse scenes.
It all ends happily with a sense of uprightness tempered by wisdom about people and the vagaries of the human heart. Doig has recreated a time we shall never see again in America and yet the juxtaposition of goodwill and values with lawlessness and a certain anarchy is still the essence of our country's character.
Monday, July 14, 2008
LIFE OF PI
Life of Pi, Yann Martel, Harcourt Inc, 2001 319 pp
I finished this book several weeks ago, so some of the impact has faded, but it was a large impact at the time. I dreamed about it all night after finishing it right before bed.
The story begins in India when Pi is a young boy. His parents own and run a zoo, so he grows up surrounded by hundreds of animals from all over the world. He is a bookish boy, taunted by his schoolmates and given to spiritual yearnings. By the time he is a teen, he is a practicing Christian, Muslim and Buddhist.
But hard times come and his family decides to emigrate to Canada. The animals are sold to other zoos and they set out on an ocean journey with some of the animals, which are bound for America, on board. Their ship is a Japanese freighter and sinks. Pi is left on a lifeboat with a hyena and a Bengal tiger for company.
He spends seven months on that lifeboat and manages to survive, living on fish and learning to use the meager emergency supplies he finds. Alone with the tiger, who would eat him in a heartbeat, Pi uses his knowledge of animals to keep the beast at bay, while he practices his three religions to keep from succumbing to hopelessness.
Martel writes the book as though it were Pi's true story but according to interviews he made up the whole thing. Some people found all kinds of symbolism in the story, others found it to unbelievable. I just let myself be completely taken in and marvelled at the contrasts between faith and despair. It is one of the best books I've read so far this year. I don't know how I missed reading it for seven years with everyone telling me how great it was. They were right.
I finished this book several weeks ago, so some of the impact has faded, but it was a large impact at the time. I dreamed about it all night after finishing it right before bed.
The story begins in India when Pi is a young boy. His parents own and run a zoo, so he grows up surrounded by hundreds of animals from all over the world. He is a bookish boy, taunted by his schoolmates and given to spiritual yearnings. By the time he is a teen, he is a practicing Christian, Muslim and Buddhist.
But hard times come and his family decides to emigrate to Canada. The animals are sold to other zoos and they set out on an ocean journey with some of the animals, which are bound for America, on board. Their ship is a Japanese freighter and sinks. Pi is left on a lifeboat with a hyena and a Bengal tiger for company.
He spends seven months on that lifeboat and manages to survive, living on fish and learning to use the meager emergency supplies he finds. Alone with the tiger, who would eat him in a heartbeat, Pi uses his knowledge of animals to keep the beast at bay, while he practices his three religions to keep from succumbing to hopelessness.
Martel writes the book as though it were Pi's true story but according to interviews he made up the whole thing. Some people found all kinds of symbolism in the story, others found it to unbelievable. I just let myself be completely taken in and marvelled at the contrasts between faith and despair. It is one of the best books I've read so far this year. I don't know how I missed reading it for seven years with everyone telling me how great it was. They were right.
WORD OF THE DAY
I haven't posted one of these in a while so I have a huge backlog. Please play the game and leave a sentence in the comments.
accidie
Found on page 3 of Children of Men by P D James.
accidie may also be spelled accidia or acedia. In Webster's New World Third College Edition the definition is given after acedia.
It means spiritual sloth or apathy and is one of the seven deadly sins.
It is derived from the Greek akedia which comes from a-, not + kedos, care.
My sentence: In college she discovered drinking which often happened on Saturday nights and led her to accidie on Sunday mornings.
What is your sentence?
accidie
Found on page 3 of Children of Men by P D James.
accidie may also be spelled accidia or acedia. In Webster's New World Third College Edition the definition is given after acedia.
It means spiritual sloth or apathy and is one of the seven deadly sins.
It is derived from the Greek akedia which comes from a-, not + kedos, care.
My sentence: In college she discovered drinking which often happened on Saturday nights and led her to accidie on Sunday mornings.
What is your sentence?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
THREE LITTLE WORDS
Three Little Words, Ashley Rhodes-Courter, Atheneum, 2008, 297 pp
One day at work, business was slow and I was there alone. I was looking through the Young Adult shelves and came across this memoir of a foster child who finally got adopted. I read anything I find on this topic as research for the novel I am not writing. By the time I went to bed that night I had finished the book.
The story takes place in South Carolina and Florida, where Ashley lived with her single mom and brother, later with her maternal grandmother and then in a long succession of foster homes. As usual, it is a heart wrenching tale of loss, neglect, sometimes abuse; of bureaucratic inefficiency and heartlessness, sometimes corruption.
Finally after nine years in fourteen different foster home, Ashley is adopted and has to work through lots of issues like trust, eating and accepting a new mother. She makes it. The new mother is novelist Gay Courter. I read and loved two of her novels in the 1990s: Flowers in the Blood and The Midwife. Gay Courter was instrumental in helping Ashley write her memoir and it is well written. They are both advocates for children who are lost in our failed foster care system.
I fully realize that this is a naive question with no easy answers, but how can the wealthiest nation in the world have so much poverty, messed up health care and so many children who are left adrift in our society? Lest we become complacent or over-confident, books like this should be required reading for all citizens.
One day at work, business was slow and I was there alone. I was looking through the Young Adult shelves and came across this memoir of a foster child who finally got adopted. I read anything I find on this topic as research for the novel I am not writing. By the time I went to bed that night I had finished the book.
The story takes place in South Carolina and Florida, where Ashley lived with her single mom and brother, later with her maternal grandmother and then in a long succession of foster homes. As usual, it is a heart wrenching tale of loss, neglect, sometimes abuse; of bureaucratic inefficiency and heartlessness, sometimes corruption.
Finally after nine years in fourteen different foster home, Ashley is adopted and has to work through lots of issues like trust, eating and accepting a new mother. She makes it. The new mother is novelist Gay Courter. I read and loved two of her novels in the 1990s: Flowers in the Blood and The Midwife. Gay Courter was instrumental in helping Ashley write her memoir and it is well written. They are both advocates for children who are lost in our failed foster care system.
I fully realize that this is a naive question with no easy answers, but how can the wealthiest nation in the world have so much poverty, messed up health care and so many children who are left adrift in our society? Lest we become complacent or over-confident, books like this should be required reading for all citizens.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
GIRLS LIKE US
Girls Like Us, Sheila Weller, Atria Books, 2008, 527 pp
Though the writing is weak and actually slowed my reading, this is the best book I've read about music, the 60s and 70s and the female musicians of my generation. Joni Mitchell, Carole King And Carly Simon are featured section by section, in an ambitious triple biography that is also social history. Weller follows each of these woman from early childhood through their respective peaks of fame and on up to the present.
Carly Simon is the only one who consented to interviews so the rest is based on research and interviews with people surrounding these women. One wonders about the reliability of those other interviewees. Still I was absorbed in these women's lives, their many love affairs and marriages, and the stories behind their songs. The organizing principle behind the book is the connection with feminism which the author handles well.
Having been a fan of Joni Mitchell since I first heard her perform in 1968 and even met her backstage, just before her first album was released, I was most interested in the Joni sections. I learned things about her that I've not read elsewhere. Carole and Carly have never been favorites of mine though I like reading about Carly and James Taylor.
But this is a good book for any woman born between the mid-1940s to early 1950s, because whether famous or obscure, we all lived through the second women's movement toward independence and self hood and our story must be preserved. We've come a long way and it is not over yet for the women of this world.
Though the writing is weak and actually slowed my reading, this is the best book I've read about music, the 60s and 70s and the female musicians of my generation. Joni Mitchell, Carole King And Carly Simon are featured section by section, in an ambitious triple biography that is also social history. Weller follows each of these woman from early childhood through their respective peaks of fame and on up to the present.
Carly Simon is the only one who consented to interviews so the rest is based on research and interviews with people surrounding these women. One wonders about the reliability of those other interviewees. Still I was absorbed in these women's lives, their many love affairs and marriages, and the stories behind their songs. The organizing principle behind the book is the connection with feminism which the author handles well.
Having been a fan of Joni Mitchell since I first heard her perform in 1968 and even met her backstage, just before her first album was released, I was most interested in the Joni sections. I learned things about her that I've not read elsewhere. Carole and Carly have never been favorites of mine though I like reading about Carly and James Taylor.
But this is a good book for any woman born between the mid-1940s to early 1950s, because whether famous or obscure, we all lived through the second women's movement toward independence and self hood and our story must be preserved. We've come a long way and it is not over yet for the women of this world.
Monday, July 07, 2008
THE HOST
The Host, Stephenie Meyer, Little Brown and Company, 2008, 619 pp
In her first novel for adults, Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight series, delves into sci fi. It is the sort of sci fi that anyone could like because it is about people and their interactions, something like The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. In fact, I was amused to see a sci fi novel take #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for two weeks in a row.
Thank goodness that she is a good storyteller because the writing is just OK, as it was in Twilight. She repeats herself and draws out the tension too long. I had to gulp down all 600 pages in a weekend because I was assigned by my boss at the bookstore to read it and rule on whether we could sell it to our teenage customers. (We can. No explicit sex, no gratuitous violence, though as in Twilight, plenty of sexual tension and rough stuff and injuries. It is one of Meyer's feats that she can do sex and violence without upsetting the YA censors.)
A race of outer space beings, known as souls, has invaded earth. No war or weapons are involved. They take over human bodies, replacing the personality while using the body as a "host." The emotions, senses and memories of the original person are left intact but the humans naturally feel invaded and look on these souls as parasites.
Melanie is invaded by Wanderer but in this case, she fights back hard and the two female personalities just about equally share one mind and one body. Melanie had a brother and a lover before the invasion and she convinces Wanderer to search until they are found.
Some humans have escaped capture and live literally underground in caves. Wanderer/Melanie find Jamie (the brother) and Jared (the lover) in such a hideout. At this point in the story, events get more tense than ever. The souls' purpose in coming to Earth is to bring peace to a violent and warlike planet, but that's a dicey proposition since human beings don't like being told how to behave by an outside influence.
Stephenie Meyer has amazing powers of imagination in all this and in the way she moves the story through all the conflict. I liked how Melanie and Wanderer become best friends. Imagine if you had an imaginary friend in your mind who was a fully realized personality. The ideas here include honor, courage and sacrifice in dealing with love, loyalty and anger. The theme is that love conquers all and is handled without sentimentality or melodrama though with plenty of drama. Pretty impressive actually, if you can stick with it for over 600 pages.
In her first novel for adults, Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight series, delves into sci fi. It is the sort of sci fi that anyone could like because it is about people and their interactions, something like The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. In fact, I was amused to see a sci fi novel take #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for two weeks in a row.
Thank goodness that she is a good storyteller because the writing is just OK, as it was in Twilight. She repeats herself and draws out the tension too long. I had to gulp down all 600 pages in a weekend because I was assigned by my boss at the bookstore to read it and rule on whether we could sell it to our teenage customers. (We can. No explicit sex, no gratuitous violence, though as in Twilight, plenty of sexual tension and rough stuff and injuries. It is one of Meyer's feats that she can do sex and violence without upsetting the YA censors.)
A race of outer space beings, known as souls, has invaded earth. No war or weapons are involved. They take over human bodies, replacing the personality while using the body as a "host." The emotions, senses and memories of the original person are left intact but the humans naturally feel invaded and look on these souls as parasites.
Melanie is invaded by Wanderer but in this case, she fights back hard and the two female personalities just about equally share one mind and one body. Melanie had a brother and a lover before the invasion and she convinces Wanderer to search until they are found.
Some humans have escaped capture and live literally underground in caves. Wanderer/Melanie find Jamie (the brother) and Jared (the lover) in such a hideout. At this point in the story, events get more tense than ever. The souls' purpose in coming to Earth is to bring peace to a violent and warlike planet, but that's a dicey proposition since human beings don't like being told how to behave by an outside influence.
Stephenie Meyer has amazing powers of imagination in all this and in the way she moves the story through all the conflict. I liked how Melanie and Wanderer become best friends. Imagine if you had an imaginary friend in your mind who was a fully realized personality. The ideas here include honor, courage and sacrifice in dealing with love, loyalty and anger. The theme is that love conquers all and is handled without sentimentality or melodrama though with plenty of drama. Pretty impressive actually, if you can stick with it for over 600 pages.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
HIGHWIRE MOON
Highwire Moon, Susan Straight, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001, 305 pp
What a great book! It is the story of a mother and daughter who are separated when the daughter is only three. Serfina was an illegal Mexican immigrant who came to California from Oaxaca to work the oranges. Being Mexican Indian, she is considered the lowest even by other Mexicans. She was only 16 and got stranded in Rio Seco, which is Straight's fictional town based on Riverside, CA.
Serfina ends up with Larry, a white man who works various construction jobs, uses speed and was raised in foster homes. They have a daughter, Elvia, but they hardly connect because Serfina does not learn English or even venture out much. She pines for home. When Elvia is three, immigration gets Serafina and sends her back to Mexico. Elvia winds up in foster care for many years until her father finds her, takes her back into his crazy life and becomes fiercely protective of her in his own way.
When the story opens, Elvia (now called Ellie) is 16 and living with Larry and his speed freak girlfriend. For all these years she has thought that her mother abandoned her but now she is pregnant (though Larry does not know this) and decides to find Serafina. Meanwhile, Serafina is stuck in Tijuana caring for her own sick mother and pining for Elvira.
It could be an Oprah-like sentimental story but it's actually more like a prayer or an aria as these two women overcome dangers and pitfalls in their search for each other. The writing is perfect: images, just enough story, the viewpoints of the main characters clearly evolving in each one's distinctive voice. The life is hard, violent, unpredictable; there is barely enough love and hope to keep life going. Possibly this book is too dark for some, too lightweight for others. For me it was a jewel of a book.
MIDDLESEX
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2002, 529 pp
I guess everyone in the world had already read this book. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and went on to be an Oprah selection. I even found two copies of it in my house. Finally it was picked as a selection in one of my reading groups. (I am currently in 5 reading groups.) So now I have read it too!
I liked it; it is a bit over-written in sections and thus over-long, but generally I enjoy long books. I learned plenty about human hermaphrodites, which caused me to recall that I became interested in genetics back in high school, except then I got a steady boyfriend and my sexual research took place with him. Since I lived in Ann Arbor, MI, for all of my early adult years, I loved that the book is mostly set in Detroit from 1922 to 1975.
What I enjoyed most was the main character. Calliope Stephanides was born a girl with Greek parents and a big fat extended family, but because of a recessive mutation on her fifth chromosome, she turned out to be a boy. As Cali becomes Cal, we learn the entire story of her family from a small Turkish town where Greeks lived in the shadow of oppressive Turks, to how that quirky chromosome showed up and made this character's life a misery.
It is not however a book about misery. It is about large characters, American society, love and coming of age. I now have scenes of joy, despair, humor, sex, shady business, and private girls school indelibly in my mind. Middlesex raised as many questions as it answered and maybe that is why I will never forget it.
I guess everyone in the world had already read this book. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and went on to be an Oprah selection. I even found two copies of it in my house. Finally it was picked as a selection in one of my reading groups. (I am currently in 5 reading groups.) So now I have read it too!
I liked it; it is a bit over-written in sections and thus over-long, but generally I enjoy long books. I learned plenty about human hermaphrodites, which caused me to recall that I became interested in genetics back in high school, except then I got a steady boyfriend and my sexual research took place with him. Since I lived in Ann Arbor, MI, for all of my early adult years, I loved that the book is mostly set in Detroit from 1922 to 1975.
What I enjoyed most was the main character. Calliope Stephanides was born a girl with Greek parents and a big fat extended family, but because of a recessive mutation on her fifth chromosome, she turned out to be a boy. As Cali becomes Cal, we learn the entire story of her family from a small Turkish town where Greeks lived in the shadow of oppressive Turks, to how that quirky chromosome showed up and made this character's life a misery.
It is not however a book about misery. It is about large characters, American society, love and coming of age. I now have scenes of joy, despair, humor, sex, shady business, and private girls school indelibly in my mind. Middlesex raised as many questions as it answered and maybe that is why I will never forget it.
Monday, June 30, 2008
A PERSON OF INTEREST
A Person of Interest, Susan Choi, Viking Penguin, 2008, 356 pp
A "person of interest" is an FBI term meaning someone deemed important to an investigation. Professor Lee, a Japanese immigrant and American citizen for over 30 years, a mathematician in his 60s who has tenure at an insignificant mid-western college, is possibly one of the least interesting persons around. Yet after a bomb explodes in the office next to his, killing a colleague, Professor Lee becomes of interest to the FBI and finds himself a suspect in the eyes of his department, his students and his neighborhood.
He enters a state of extreme fear and anxiety. Susan Choi so expertly details Lee's turmoil that as a reader, I was in that state along with him for the several days I was reading this literary thriller. And literary it is. Long sentences, somewhat deep ideas about math, competition, love, insecurity, the immigrant experience, made for a slow start but I could not stop reading and the pages turned fairly rapidly.
The novel could be called When Bad Things Happen to Ordinary People. No one comes out as a particularly likable person. Lee and his main FBI contact become enmeshed in a curiously symbiotic relationship and completely unexpectedly become heroes, each in his own way. The last 100 pages left me breathless, panting really, and deeply satisfied. As they say in the blurbs, a triumph.
A "person of interest" is an FBI term meaning someone deemed important to an investigation. Professor Lee, a Japanese immigrant and American citizen for over 30 years, a mathematician in his 60s who has tenure at an insignificant mid-western college, is possibly one of the least interesting persons around. Yet after a bomb explodes in the office next to his, killing a colleague, Professor Lee becomes of interest to the FBI and finds himself a suspect in the eyes of his department, his students and his neighborhood.
He enters a state of extreme fear and anxiety. Susan Choi so expertly details Lee's turmoil that as a reader, I was in that state along with him for the several days I was reading this literary thriller. And literary it is. Long sentences, somewhat deep ideas about math, competition, love, insecurity, the immigrant experience, made for a slow start but I could not stop reading and the pages turned fairly rapidly.
The novel could be called When Bad Things Happen to Ordinary People. No one comes out as a particularly likable person. Lee and his main FBI contact become enmeshed in a curiously symbiotic relationship and completely unexpectedly become heroes, each in his own way. The last 100 pages left me breathless, panting really, and deeply satisfied. As they say in the blurbs, a triumph.
I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK
I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron, Alfred A Knopf Inc, 2007, 170 pp
Nora Ephron is famous for her screenplays of "When Harry Met Sally", "Sleepless in Seattle", "Michael" and "Bewitched." She is very good at making people laugh as I did, out loud, through much of this collection of essays on getting to be a woman of a certain age.
Though I have no plans to go under the knife, the title essay is all too true about what happens to aging female bodies. "I Hate My Purse", her futile search for a purse that works, pretty much paralleled my own experiences. I loved "Parenting in Three Stages" and my personal favorite "On Rapture" captures the joy of reading.
Funny thing though: like her movies, once I was done I could hardly remember a thing about the book. Just a few bright scenes remain. Perhaps when a writer so closely identifies certain human feelings common to many, it is so similar to what is already in our minds and hearts that there is a canceling out of emotion. More like therapy than art. We discussed this book at one of my reading groups and had hardly anything to say. Well thanks, Nora. That was the cheapest therapy session I ever had.
Nora Ephron is famous for her screenplays of "When Harry Met Sally", "Sleepless in Seattle", "Michael" and "Bewitched." She is very good at making people laugh as I did, out loud, through much of this collection of essays on getting to be a woman of a certain age.
Though I have no plans to go under the knife, the title essay is all too true about what happens to aging female bodies. "I Hate My Purse", her futile search for a purse that works, pretty much paralleled my own experiences. I loved "Parenting in Three Stages" and my personal favorite "On Rapture" captures the joy of reading.
Funny thing though: like her movies, once I was done I could hardly remember a thing about the book. Just a few bright scenes remain. Perhaps when a writer so closely identifies certain human feelings common to many, it is so similar to what is already in our minds and hearts that there is a canceling out of emotion. More like therapy than art. We discussed this book at one of my reading groups and had hardly anything to say. Well thanks, Nora. That was the cheapest therapy session I ever had.
Friday, June 27, 2008
RESERVATION NATION
Reservation Nation, David Fuller Cook, Boaz Publishing Company, 2007, 199 pp
This is a priceless little treasure of a book. The narrator is Warren, a young Native American man, who was raised on a reservation in the 50s and 60s. His grandparents brought him up after he lost his parents in a car crash and imparted to him, through stories and example, the truths of what it means to be Indian.
As Warren relates the incidents of his childhood, you meet many of the key characters on the reservation. Some maintain the traditional ways and others struggle with assimilation into the white man's world. It is Warren's grandfather who trains him to recognize his power and his role. Despite tribal politics, continuous betrayals and rip-offs by white government and business, even murder, Grandfather's wisdom brings clarity to Warren's quest for understanding life.
In the final chapter Warren has become The Seed, his Indian name and role. He states the Indian view of the universe and of life. It was deeply moving to me as he said, "The ways of the white man will pass, their influence will fade like the waning moon, because they are founded upon lies." Truth in fiction.
This is a priceless little treasure of a book. The narrator is Warren, a young Native American man, who was raised on a reservation in the 50s and 60s. His grandparents brought him up after he lost his parents in a car crash and imparted to him, through stories and example, the truths of what it means to be Indian.
As Warren relates the incidents of his childhood, you meet many of the key characters on the reservation. Some maintain the traditional ways and others struggle with assimilation into the white man's world. It is Warren's grandfather who trains him to recognize his power and his role. Despite tribal politics, continuous betrayals and rip-offs by white government and business, even murder, Grandfather's wisdom brings clarity to Warren's quest for understanding life.
In the final chapter Warren has become The Seed, his Indian name and role. He states the Indian view of the universe and of life. It was deeply moving to me as he said, "The ways of the white man will pass, their influence will fade like the waning moon, because they are founded upon lies." Truth in fiction.
THE MONSTERS OF TEMPLETON
The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff, Nyperion, 2008, 361 pp
I wish I could say that I loved this book, but I didn't. I was looking forward to it with high expectations because I had read a story by the author in the 2007 Best American Short Stories which just took my breath away.
I think this is an ambitious novel with plenty of elements that I usually like: a young woman who is quirky and intelligent, history, a family tree which figures in the story and a bit of the supernatural. But I found it hard to follow, which is saying a lot because I can follow even the most convoluted novels. I just could not completely believe Willie Upton, the twenty-something heroine, and I could not get a grasp on her mother Vi in such a way as to feel involved with either one.
Willie has gotten herself in a jam and come home from an archeology dig that would have figured in her graduate thesis. She feels she has totally blown it and that her life is ruined. For such an independent and intelligent young woman, she spends the whole book being nasty to the mother she came home to for shelter and being about as silly emotionally as any chick lit heroine. It didn't seem to fit together right.
Getting through the novel was an effort, took way too long for a mere 361 pages and while the reader is supposed to feel that Willie changed and grew, I did not feel that she did. However, due to the short story that introduced me to Lauren Groff and to the large amount of potential I see in the novel, I will certainly read the next one she writes.
(The Monsters of Templeton is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
LOST CITY RADIO
Lost City Radio, Daniel Alarcon, HarperCollins Publishers, 2007, 257 pp
I was attracted to this book by the reviews and by the idea that a radio show called "Lost City Radio" brought separated people and families back together after a decade of civil war in an unnamed South American country. As it turned out, while the story is centered on the radio announcer Norma and her missing husband, it is not really about the show or its results.
The story is about war, displacement of peoples, oppressive government versus rebels and most deeply, about the effects of all this on a marriage and the great love between Norma and Rey. Since this is a novel about South America, the story goes in a South American trajectory, which is so different from the North American story telling tradition. I like this sort of story and after reading much of other such writers, I am beginning to see the influences of it in contemporary North American fiction.
Some readers I know get annoyed by a story that goes back and forth in time, circling round and round itself until all is told. It doesn't bother me. I could say that not a lot happens in Lost City Radio in terms of events, yet much occurs in the lives of the characters. The degree of uncertainty and upheaval portrayed here would most likely do me in and books like this make me realize how stable life is in the United States, how predictable, at least for the middle class. Alarcon writes about all these factors in wonderful prose. I felt the city and the jungle, the terrible fear and instability in these people's lives, the complete unreliability of the government and the news.
Somehow he has written a powerful story in a quiet way. I won't forget it soon.
I was attracted to this book by the reviews and by the idea that a radio show called "Lost City Radio" brought separated people and families back together after a decade of civil war in an unnamed South American country. As it turned out, while the story is centered on the radio announcer Norma and her missing husband, it is not really about the show or its results.
The story is about war, displacement of peoples, oppressive government versus rebels and most deeply, about the effects of all this on a marriage and the great love between Norma and Rey. Since this is a novel about South America, the story goes in a South American trajectory, which is so different from the North American story telling tradition. I like this sort of story and after reading much of other such writers, I am beginning to see the influences of it in contemporary North American fiction.
Some readers I know get annoyed by a story that goes back and forth in time, circling round and round itself until all is told. It doesn't bother me. I could say that not a lot happens in Lost City Radio in terms of events, yet much occurs in the lives of the characters. The degree of uncertainty and upheaval portrayed here would most likely do me in and books like this make me realize how stable life is in the United States, how predictable, at least for the middle class. Alarcon writes about all these factors in wonderful prose. I felt the city and the jungle, the terrible fear and instability in these people's lives, the complete unreliability of the government and the news.
Somehow he has written a powerful story in a quiet way. I won't forget it soon.
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
Tender is the Night, F Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933, 315 pp
I read this for one of my reading groups and I was the only one who finished it. In fact, this group is now defunct. I am done with Fitzgerald. Not that I have read all of his novels but I've read three and with the possible exception of The Great Gatsby, he has let me down every time.
In The Beautiful and the Damned he at least wrote well. In Tender is the Night, I had no idea who was who or what was going on in the first 50 pages. I pressed on and found out that Dick Diver was the main character and a psychologist who married his schizophrenic patient. I mean, how dumb was that? Because: she was ridiculously rich, he lost his self-respect and his purpose in life and then due to his efforts, she eventually got well only to leave him.
I'm sorry but I really could not feel any pity for any of the characters and their collective tragedy seemed inevitable, due to many stupidities which could have been avoided. Someday I will read Zelda Fitzgerald's autobiography and biography to get the other side of the story. Fitzgerald's low opinions of mankind in general are only topped by his misogynist views of women in particular.
I read this for one of my reading groups and I was the only one who finished it. In fact, this group is now defunct. I am done with Fitzgerald. Not that I have read all of his novels but I've read three and with the possible exception of The Great Gatsby, he has let me down every time.
In The Beautiful and the Damned he at least wrote well. In Tender is the Night, I had no idea who was who or what was going on in the first 50 pages. I pressed on and found out that Dick Diver was the main character and a psychologist who married his schizophrenic patient. I mean, how dumb was that? Because: she was ridiculously rich, he lost his self-respect and his purpose in life and then due to his efforts, she eventually got well only to leave him.
I'm sorry but I really could not feel any pity for any of the characters and their collective tragedy seemed inevitable, due to many stupidities which could have been avoided. Someday I will read Zelda Fitzgerald's autobiography and biography to get the other side of the story. Fitzgerald's low opinions of mankind in general are only topped by his misogynist views of women in particular.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
THE GATHERING
The Gathering, Anne Enright, Grove/Atlantic Inc, 2007, 261 pp
This dark novel won the Booker Prize in 2007. I liked it pretty well because the writing is great. The story however is not too original: a woman's brother commits suicide, she gathers with her family, re-lives her childhood and uncovers hidden incidents to make sense of her brother's death. In fact, it was the same story told in Mary Morris's The Waiting Room, though much better written.
Really it is a story of abuse and how that poisons a family. Veronica, the sister, is a woman who rose out of the pit of her family only to become somewhat unhinged when her brother dies. But she comes through all sorts of grief, denial and fear of life, so there is hope in the end. Clearly a message is being sent here that what families sweep under the carpet will come back to haunt them. Also she does an excellent job of showing how children cannot make sense of many things in childhood but can unravel those confusions as adults.
We discussed the book at one of the reading groups I attend and not many liked it at all. For those women it was way too heavy and upsetting. I think they had their own issues of denial going on.
This dark novel won the Booker Prize in 2007. I liked it pretty well because the writing is great. The story however is not too original: a woman's brother commits suicide, she gathers with her family, re-lives her childhood and uncovers hidden incidents to make sense of her brother's death. In fact, it was the same story told in Mary Morris's The Waiting Room, though much better written.
Really it is a story of abuse and how that poisons a family. Veronica, the sister, is a woman who rose out of the pit of her family only to become somewhat unhinged when her brother dies. But she comes through all sorts of grief, denial and fear of life, so there is hope in the end. Clearly a message is being sent here that what families sweep under the carpet will come back to haunt them. Also she does an excellent job of showing how children cannot make sense of many things in childhood but can unravel those confusions as adults.
We discussed the book at one of the reading groups I attend and not many liked it at all. For those women it was way too heavy and upsetting. I think they had their own issues of denial going on.
THE SPARROW
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell, Villard Books, 1996, 405 pp
Wow! Amazing! So good. One of those books you stumble upon that takes you by surprise. I first saw it on the backlist shelf at the bookstore where I work. (Once Upon A Time in Montrose, CA) Then I saw it mentioned on several lists of top sci fi books. While on a trip to Ann Arbor, MI, I bought it at my favorite Ann Arbor bookstore: Shaman Drum.
Set in 2059, the story combines space travel, Jesuits, aliens and a group of flawed but wonderful human characters. All you know at the beginning is that Emilio Sandoz has returned from a journey into space, sick, broken and without the rest of his party. He is a Jesuit priest and is taken in by his order for healing, but there are some huge shameful aspects to the mission. The rest of the book, shifting back and forth in time, reveals the whole story.
In an interview, the author says she wanted to write a story about the pitfalls of first contact between two alien cultures and at this point in time, had to go offworld to do so. She has tackled here also issues of faith, belief and duty in religion; of family and love and recovery from horrific childhoods; of time and science, linguistics and society.
Hard to believe that it is a first novel. She weaves through all that heavy stuff with the lightest of touch. On top of all that, she never over-explains, so I felt I was discovering the alien culture right along with the mission and that I was recovering from devastating memories right along with Emilio. A masterpiece! Even if you think you don't like science fiction, give it a try.
THE WAITING ROOM
The Waiting Room, Mary Morris, Doubleday, 1989, 273 pp
After reading Mary Morris's travel memoir Nothing to Declare, I wanted to read more of her work. This is her second novel, published the year after the memoir and the lyrical but reportorial style I liked in that book did not enchant me in her novel.
Zoe Coleman returns to her Wisconsin hometown because her younger brother Badger has come back from Canada, where he had gone to escape the draft, and is now a drug casualty in a facility for various types of rehab patients. I think it would have been a pretty good and relevant book in the 80s. The quirky characters in Zoe's back story and the troubles with her mother make this a sort of Lisa Alther meets early Anne Tyler novel.
Morris does too much telling without showing and the deadpan delivery is at odds with the emotionally charged story. It did not make me want to read it but I made it through.
After reading Mary Morris's travel memoir Nothing to Declare, I wanted to read more of her work. This is her second novel, published the year after the memoir and the lyrical but reportorial style I liked in that book did not enchant me in her novel.
Zoe Coleman returns to her Wisconsin hometown because her younger brother Badger has come back from Canada, where he had gone to escape the draft, and is now a drug casualty in a facility for various types of rehab patients. I think it would have been a pretty good and relevant book in the 80s. The quirky characters in Zoe's back story and the troubles with her mother make this a sort of Lisa Alther meets early Anne Tyler novel.
Morris does too much telling without showing and the deadpan delivery is at odds with the emotionally charged story. It did not make me want to read it but I made it through.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
GHOSTWALK
Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott, Spiegel & Grau, 2007, 284 pp
This was a good companion to Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, because it is about Isaac Newton, though the main characters are contemporary. Stott combines historical fiction, obsessive love and a sort of supernatural blend of past and present where incidents from the past show up in various present locations in Cambridge, both the town and the university.
Lydia Brooke is a writer who returns to Cambridge for the funeral of historian Elizabeth Vogelsang, who died while working on a history of Newton and his involvement with alchemy. Lydia had left Cambridge to escape a hopeless affair with Vogelsang's married son Cameron, a medical researcher who is developing a psychiatric drug. On her return, she again gets involved with Cameron, who asks her to finish his mother's book.
Lydia moves into Elizabeth Vogelsang's house and immediately things get strange with mysterious lights in the house among other things, including a psychic, animal rights activists and further deaths. She finally solves it all and the story is therefore also a mystery.
I liked it. The writing is rather dreamy, time is fluid and while events are confusing, I felt I was in the hands of a good writer who moved the story along at a brisk pace. It was helpful to already know quite a bit about Newton and his life in the 1760s. Also I found it interesting to get a look at Newton from a different slant than Stephenson's. I was reminded of Hawksmoor, by Peter Ackroyd, which I read years ago, where murders committed in the 20th century had parallels in the 18th century.
This was a good companion to Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, because it is about Isaac Newton, though the main characters are contemporary. Stott combines historical fiction, obsessive love and a sort of supernatural blend of past and present where incidents from the past show up in various present locations in Cambridge, both the town and the university.
Lydia Brooke is a writer who returns to Cambridge for the funeral of historian Elizabeth Vogelsang, who died while working on a history of Newton and his involvement with alchemy. Lydia had left Cambridge to escape a hopeless affair with Vogelsang's married son Cameron, a medical researcher who is developing a psychiatric drug. On her return, she again gets involved with Cameron, who asks her to finish his mother's book.
Lydia moves into Elizabeth Vogelsang's house and immediately things get strange with mysterious lights in the house among other things, including a psychic, animal rights activists and further deaths. She finally solves it all and the story is therefore also a mystery.
I liked it. The writing is rather dreamy, time is fluid and while events are confusing, I felt I was in the hands of a good writer who moved the story along at a brisk pace. It was helpful to already know quite a bit about Newton and his life in the 1760s. Also I found it interesting to get a look at Newton from a different slant than Stephenson's. I was reminded of Hawksmoor, by Peter Ackroyd, which I read years ago, where murders committed in the 20th century had parallels in the 18th century.
Monday, June 16, 2008
CHILDREN OF MEN
While I write the chapter for 1953, I'll keep blogging about books I have read recently.
Children of Men, P D James, Alfred A Knopf, 1993, 241 pp
What if the human race became sterile and no more children were born? That is the premise here and all the ways this would affect society and daily life are played out.
Along comes a small sort of revolutionary group protesting some of the government's policies. An Oxford professor gets involved with them which is complicated by the fact that he is a cousin of the head of government. Then one of the women in the revolutionary group gets pregnant!
From that point on the suspense and pace are relentless to the end, at which point the question is raised: what now? It is a good story, with excellent characters and a much better pace than the two of her mysteries I've read. Though it is set in 2021, I didn't find much technological evidence of a society almost 30 years in the future, which surprised me, but the state of the world politically was definitely in a worse way.
I will probably be alive in 2021. I will be turning 73 in that year. I wonder if I will remember this book then. The other night I saw the movie made from this book. It is so much changed that it is a different story but I have to say that it was good. Actually it was almost better than the book.
Children of Men, P D James, Alfred A Knopf, 1993, 241 pp
What if the human race became sterile and no more children were born? That is the premise here and all the ways this would affect society and daily life are played out.
Along comes a small sort of revolutionary group protesting some of the government's policies. An Oxford professor gets involved with them which is complicated by the fact that he is a cousin of the head of government. Then one of the women in the revolutionary group gets pregnant!
From that point on the suspense and pace are relentless to the end, at which point the question is raised: what now? It is a good story, with excellent characters and a much better pace than the two of her mysteries I've read. Though it is set in 2021, I didn't find much technological evidence of a society almost 30 years in the future, which surprised me, but the state of the world politically was definitely in a worse way.
I will probably be alive in 2021. I will be turning 73 in that year. I wonder if I will remember this book then. The other night I saw the movie made from this book. It is so much changed that it is a different story but I have to say that it was good. Actually it was almost better than the book.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
BOOKS READ FROM 1953, PART SIX
This post contains the prize winning books from 1953. This year there was a new award: The Hugo Award, named in honor of Hugo Gernsback, "The Father of Magazine Science Fiction," as he was described in a special award given to him in 1960. The Hugo Award, also known as the Science Fiction Achievement Award, is given annually by the World Science Fiction Society. Like most awards it has many categories but I am reading the best novel winner.
PULITZER PRIZE: The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway. This book was the #7 bestseller in 1952 and I reviewed it in the post BOOKS READ FROM 1952, PART TWO, posted on Feb. 11, 2008.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD: Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, Random House Inc, 1952, 581 pp
This book has been called the greatest American novel in the second half of the twentieth century. Hm. I was ready to be wowed.
The main character, whose name we never learn, is a young black man at a prestigious college for Negroes in the South. He is trying to rise in the world as a Negro but is woefully oblivious of the real dynamics going on between the races, economically and politically.
He gets expelled for trying to do what he thinks is the right thing, ends up in New York City and has many disastrous experiences, including becoming a spokesperson for the Communist Party in Harlem. But all along, he is used by white men and women, until he decides that he, as a person, is invisible.
Sounds exciting, yes? Well, the story did get me through but the storytelling would bog down often and leave me napping. It took me 5 days to read this book; days when I had plenty of time to read. At least I can say that I have now read, along with Richard Wright's books, the seminal novels of the Black male experience.
HUGO AWARD: The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester, Nelson Doubleday Inc, 1953, 183 pp
This science fiction novel won the first ever Hugo Award. It is about a manic business mogul who will stop at nothing to succeed. In this future civilization, many people are able to read minds and communicate telepathically with each other. They are called "peepers" and they permeate society.
The drama is whether or not the businessman will be caught for a murder he committed. If he is convicted he faces demolishment. The writing is mediocre and in that slangy style of certain sci fi and mystery novels. The emotional impact comes at the end when you learn what it means to demolish a man. Ultimately it is a hopeful book with the theme of the betterment of mankind. Interesting!
NEWBERY AWARD: Secret of the Andes, Ann Nolan Clark, The Viking Press, 1952, 130 pp
This is a most beautifully written story of a young Inca boy raised by an old man in a secret valley high in the Andes. He comes of age, gradually getting his urgent questions answered about who he is and what is his destiny.
Having recently read Ines of My Soul, by Isabel Allende, which is set in the same locale and time period, I was overjoyed to read a story from the Inca viewpoint. One of the first things the Spanish conquerors did was to defeat the ancient Inca civilization.
Cusi, and thus the reader, learns that it is possible to keep beliefs and wisdom alive in one's heart and mind. So great.
CALDECOTT AWARD: The Biggest Bear, Lyn Ward, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952, 85 pp
The Caldecott winner for 1953 features Johnny Orchard, a farm boy who is humiliated because theirs is the only barn without a bear skin on the side. In the illustrations, also by Ward, Johnny looks about 8 or 9 years old. He roams the entire countryside with his own rifle, hunting for a bear.
Finally he brings home a baby bear who grows up and becomes a nuisance, so Johnny tries to return the bear to the forest. Naturally the bear keeps coming back and finally winds up in the zoo.
Great illustrations but a highly improbable story and what is so great about the zoo? Would a kid buy this story?
PULITZER PRIZE: The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway. This book was the #7 bestseller in 1952 and I reviewed it in the post BOOKS READ FROM 1952, PART TWO, posted on Feb. 11, 2008.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD: Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, Random House Inc, 1952, 581 pp
This book has been called the greatest American novel in the second half of the twentieth century. Hm. I was ready to be wowed.
The main character, whose name we never learn, is a young black man at a prestigious college for Negroes in the South. He is trying to rise in the world as a Negro but is woefully oblivious of the real dynamics going on between the races, economically and politically.
He gets expelled for trying to do what he thinks is the right thing, ends up in New York City and has many disastrous experiences, including becoming a spokesperson for the Communist Party in Harlem. But all along, he is used by white men and women, until he decides that he, as a person, is invisible.
Sounds exciting, yes? Well, the story did get me through but the storytelling would bog down often and leave me napping. It took me 5 days to read this book; days when I had plenty of time to read. At least I can say that I have now read, along with Richard Wright's books, the seminal novels of the Black male experience.
HUGO AWARD: The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester, Nelson Doubleday Inc, 1953, 183 pp
This science fiction novel won the first ever Hugo Award. It is about a manic business mogul who will stop at nothing to succeed. In this future civilization, many people are able to read minds and communicate telepathically with each other. They are called "peepers" and they permeate society.
The drama is whether or not the businessman will be caught for a murder he committed. If he is convicted he faces demolishment. The writing is mediocre and in that slangy style of certain sci fi and mystery novels. The emotional impact comes at the end when you learn what it means to demolish a man. Ultimately it is a hopeful book with the theme of the betterment of mankind. Interesting!
NEWBERY AWARD: Secret of the Andes, Ann Nolan Clark, The Viking Press, 1952, 130 pp
This is a most beautifully written story of a young Inca boy raised by an old man in a secret valley high in the Andes. He comes of age, gradually getting his urgent questions answered about who he is and what is his destiny.
Having recently read Ines of My Soul, by Isabel Allende, which is set in the same locale and time period, I was overjoyed to read a story from the Inca viewpoint. One of the first things the Spanish conquerors did was to defeat the ancient Inca civilization.
Cusi, and thus the reader, learns that it is possible to keep beliefs and wisdom alive in one's heart and mind. So great.
CALDECOTT AWARD: The Biggest Bear, Lyn Ward, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952, 85 pp
The Caldecott winner for 1953 features Johnny Orchard, a farm boy who is humiliated because theirs is the only barn without a bear skin on the side. In the illustrations, also by Ward, Johnny looks about 8 or 9 years old. He roams the entire countryside with his own rifle, hunting for a bear.
Finally he brings home a baby bear who grows up and becomes a nuisance, so Johnny tries to return the bear to the forest. Naturally the bear keeps coming back and finally winds up in the zoo.
Great illustrations but a highly improbable story and what is so great about the zoo? Would a kid buy this story?
Sunday, June 08, 2008
BOOKS READ FROM 1953, PART FIVE
The Long March, William Styron, Random House, 1953, 120 pp
This is the only other piece of fiction (The Bridges at Toko-Ri by James Michener being one) I have read, chronologically speaking, that has the Korean War in it. The setting is a Marine training camp in the Carolinas and features two former marines who fought in WWII, then became reserves and have now been called back as the armed forces mobilize for Korea.
One of these men, Culver, tells the story as he watches his friend Mannix fall apart during a 30-mile forced march, dreamed up as a training exercise by their colonel. The book is a study of military psychology, human strengths and weaknesses, as well as the effect of an exercise in futility on different types of men.
Intense.
Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1953, 191 pp
In the final volume of the Foundation trilogy, the Mule rises again with an altered method for conquest of the universe. But the real surprise is the emergence of the "Second Foundation," mentioned in Hari Seldon's plan but never before taken into account.
This is the most exciting of the three books and I can't say more without giving it away. What was most interesting to me was the idea that the two foundations, having the same goal, would come into conflict. Also the idea of science versus spirit is part of the story. Is there anything this writer did not cover?
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, Ballantine/Del Rey Books, 1953, 165 pp
This is probably Bradbury's most famous book but I had never read it before. It is said that the book is about censorship but it is actually about the loss of literacy and the willingness of mankind in general to agree with being dumbed down and giving up their freedom to think for themselves.
Guy Montag is a fireman whose job it is to burn books and any houses that contain them. 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns. He meets a young girl who opens his eyes to the actual pleasure of life and the beauty of literature, which leads him to rebel against the powers that be. He eventually goes underground and joins up with people who are trying to preserve the knowledge found in books.
I had a problem with the writing; I thought it was his worst so far. But the story is a unique take on a universal theme (Keep the Wisdom!). I especially liked the image of the TV room in people's houses. All four walls of a room comprised the TV screen. How prescient.
The Golden Apples of the Sun, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1953, 209 pp
Another collection of Bradbury's stories from 1947 to 1953. He covers a wide range of subjects from all his usual concerns. Some of the stories are only a few pages and not many of them really thrilled me. I read two stories a day for 11 days and was bored most of the time. Part of it is his writing which just makes me cringe. Another part is that he may have been one of the first to put forth some of these thoughts and ideas but over 60 years later, they are no longer new ideas.
The best story is "Powerhouse" in which a woman finds faith and understanding about life while sleeping in a power station and having her first out of body experience. In it, his idea overcomes his writing.
The Silver Chair, C S Lewis, HarperCollins Inc, 1953, 243 pp
In the fourth book of the Chronicles of Narnia (by the old numbering system), cousin Eustace and his school chum Jill enter Narnia to help Aslan release the son of Prince Caspian from an enchantment. I don't recall ever having read this volume and found it to be a good story that kept me enthralled.
Lucy and Edmund can no longer go to Narnia, being too old now. Eustace has no traces of the disgusting side of his personality, having been cured in The Voyage of the Dawntreader. Jill is a sensible girl who readily adapts to Narnia. They journey through moors, mountains and even the underground, encountering yet another wicked witch as well as giants.
None of the later stories quite measure up to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but this is one of the better ones with not so much moralizing or religious symbolism and some good tips on breaking enchantments.
This is the only other piece of fiction (The Bridges at Toko-Ri by James Michener being one) I have read, chronologically speaking, that has the Korean War in it. The setting is a Marine training camp in the Carolinas and features two former marines who fought in WWII, then became reserves and have now been called back as the armed forces mobilize for Korea.
One of these men, Culver, tells the story as he watches his friend Mannix fall apart during a 30-mile forced march, dreamed up as a training exercise by their colonel. The book is a study of military psychology, human strengths and weaknesses, as well as the effect of an exercise in futility on different types of men.
Intense.
Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1953, 191 pp
In the final volume of the Foundation trilogy, the Mule rises again with an altered method for conquest of the universe. But the real surprise is the emergence of the "Second Foundation," mentioned in Hari Seldon's plan but never before taken into account.
This is the most exciting of the three books and I can't say more without giving it away. What was most interesting to me was the idea that the two foundations, having the same goal, would come into conflict. Also the idea of science versus spirit is part of the story. Is there anything this writer did not cover?
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, Ballantine/Del Rey Books, 1953, 165 pp
This is probably Bradbury's most famous book but I had never read it before. It is said that the book is about censorship but it is actually about the loss of literacy and the willingness of mankind in general to agree with being dumbed down and giving up their freedom to think for themselves.
Guy Montag is a fireman whose job it is to burn books and any houses that contain them. 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns. He meets a young girl who opens his eyes to the actual pleasure of life and the beauty of literature, which leads him to rebel against the powers that be. He eventually goes underground and joins up with people who are trying to preserve the knowledge found in books.
I had a problem with the writing; I thought it was his worst so far. But the story is a unique take on a universal theme (Keep the Wisdom!). I especially liked the image of the TV room in people's houses. All four walls of a room comprised the TV screen. How prescient.
The Golden Apples of the Sun, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1953, 209 pp
Another collection of Bradbury's stories from 1947 to 1953. He covers a wide range of subjects from all his usual concerns. Some of the stories are only a few pages and not many of them really thrilled me. I read two stories a day for 11 days and was bored most of the time. Part of it is his writing which just makes me cringe. Another part is that he may have been one of the first to put forth some of these thoughts and ideas but over 60 years later, they are no longer new ideas.
The best story is "Powerhouse" in which a woman finds faith and understanding about life while sleeping in a power station and having her first out of body experience. In it, his idea overcomes his writing.
The Silver Chair, C S Lewis, HarperCollins Inc, 1953, 243 pp
In the fourth book of the Chronicles of Narnia (by the old numbering system), cousin Eustace and his school chum Jill enter Narnia to help Aslan release the son of Prince Caspian from an enchantment. I don't recall ever having read this volume and found it to be a good story that kept me enthralled.
Lucy and Edmund can no longer go to Narnia, being too old now. Eustace has no traces of the disgusting side of his personality, having been cured in The Voyage of the Dawntreader. Jill is a sensible girl who readily adapts to Narnia. They journey through moors, mountains and even the underground, encountering yet another wicked witch as well as giants.
None of the later stories quite measure up to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but this is one of the better ones with not so much moralizing or religious symbolism and some good tips on breaking enchantments.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
BOOKS READ FROM 1953, PART FOUR
Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrar, Penguin Putnam Inc, 1953, 329 pp
My husband gave me this book for Christmas many years ago and it just sat on the shelf. Then I saw the movie which came out in 1997 and starred Brad Pitt, where I found out what it was all about. Much as I liked the movie and was glad for the images it gave me, the book is, of course, way better.
In 1939, the author, who is German, was interred in a POW camp in India. England had declared war on Germany, so while these prisoners were not mistreated, they could not be free. Harrar and some of his friends were mountain climbers and refused to be stuck in a prison camp, so after several attempts finally escaped in order to continue with their plans of crossing the Himilayas and entering Tibet. Harrar's goal was Lhasa, home of the Dalai Lama and center of Tibetan Buddhism.
He and one other man made it mostly by walking, occasionally by yak. It took them two years and because they had no papers, they were under constant danger of being kicked out of the country. Their journey makes Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods look like a walk in the park. I found similarities to The Places in Between, Rory Stewart's record of his walk across Afghanistan.
Finally in Lhasa, Harrar becomes part of the city and eventually tutor to the 14 year old Dalai Lama. He loved it there so much and makes the reader love it as well. He would probably still be there but in 1950, Communist China invaded and he had to flee, as did the Dalai Lama. Tibetan Buddhism, its thousands of monasteries and tens of thousands of monks, was almost obliterated by the communists and Tibet, land of mystery and spiritual practice, will never be the same.
I felt extremely sad about that as I finished the book and suffered from a mild depression for several days afterwards. Though Harrar was a scientist and atheist, he did a fine thing for the spiritual history of mankind by writing this book. Though steeped in superstition, Tibet was basically at peace for a thousand years because of Buddhism.
The Bridges at Toko-Ri, James A Michener, Random House Inc, 1953, 147 pp
This is the only other book about the Korean War that I have read so far in this project. Unlike William Styron's The Long March, it actually takes place in Korea and features a jet pilot named Harry Brubaker, a WWII vet who was recalled from his civilian life as a lawyer and married man with two daughters, to fight another war to save democracy. He is conflicted between doing his duty and wanting his contented civilian life.
Michener manages to pour it on pretty thick about how important the war is and how much the regular American citizen doesn't realize that or even care. Personally I am ready for this author to move on, which he does in 1959 with Hawaii.
The Marmot Drive, John Hersey, Alfred A Knopf, 1953, 237 pp
Oh my, this was a boring book. It is one of those stories about city people versus small town people. Hester, born and raised in New York City, goes home for the weekend with her boyfriend Eben to a small Connecticut village. Turns out that Eben's father, the Selectman of the village, has organized a plan to drive out the marmots (groundhogs) who have overrun the place.
The whole story then is hung on this marmot drive and used to show up a bunch of rugged individualists and to give Hester a chance to make her decision about whether or not to marry Eben. Quite a small canvas after the vast tale of the Warsaw ghetto in The Wall. I suppose a small town is a sort of ghetto but marmots are not Nazis.
The Outsider, Richard Wright, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1953, 405 pp
It was clear from the first page that Cross, a young Black man in Chicago, is doomed. Then you read 400 pages to find out how he engineered his doom. He deserts everyone to whom he has committed himself; he murders several men; he relocates to New York City and acquires a new identity; he becomes involved with the Communist Party. But he never changes. He is so disassociated from humanity that, while he is very intelligent and well-read and has built up an entire personal philosophy, he cannot grow or learn from his experiences.
I do not know what Wright is trying to say here. Something about morality or the lack of it in human beings. Yes, there is the subject of race but he seems to feel that men of any race are deluded and depraved.
I read it to the end and was not left with any feeling of satisfaction. Are we all doomed? Are we all outsiders?
Nine Stories, J D Salinger, Little Brown and Company, 1953, 198 pp
I read a story a day, which is the successful way for me to get through a story collection. I had read a few of them before.
"For Esme-with Love and Squalor" is one I remembered and I still loved it. Salinger does kids so well and in the final story, "Teddy" he wowed me again. A couple others were clearly New Yorker types about odd and messed up adults. I didn't like those as well.
Cress Delahanty, Jessamyn West, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1953, 311 pp
Jessamyn West's books fall into a category I call comfort fiction. She takes up the quirks of everyday people but it all comes out right in the end. Not too exciting but I keep reading her because she plumbs the human spirit with a unique voice.
Cress Delahanty is 12 years old at the beginning of this series of vignettes. By the end she is 16. She lives on a citrus ranch, an only child with two decent and understanding parents. Her volatile personality, influenced by reading and nature, makes her a bit more than the usual teen, but all the hyper-emotional world of the teen years is portrayed quite well by West, as well as the learning experiences about boys, men and family.
Still this was not the best of her books so far.
My husband gave me this book for Christmas many years ago and it just sat on the shelf. Then I saw the movie which came out in 1997 and starred Brad Pitt, where I found out what it was all about. Much as I liked the movie and was glad for the images it gave me, the book is, of course, way better.
In 1939, the author, who is German, was interred in a POW camp in India. England had declared war on Germany, so while these prisoners were not mistreated, they could not be free. Harrar and some of his friends were mountain climbers and refused to be stuck in a prison camp, so after several attempts finally escaped in order to continue with their plans of crossing the Himilayas and entering Tibet. Harrar's goal was Lhasa, home of the Dalai Lama and center of Tibetan Buddhism.
He and one other man made it mostly by walking, occasionally by yak. It took them two years and because they had no papers, they were under constant danger of being kicked out of the country. Their journey makes Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods look like a walk in the park. I found similarities to The Places in Between, Rory Stewart's record of his walk across Afghanistan.
Finally in Lhasa, Harrar becomes part of the city and eventually tutor to the 14 year old Dalai Lama. He loved it there so much and makes the reader love it as well. He would probably still be there but in 1950, Communist China invaded and he had to flee, as did the Dalai Lama. Tibetan Buddhism, its thousands of monasteries and tens of thousands of monks, was almost obliterated by the communists and Tibet, land of mystery and spiritual practice, will never be the same.
I felt extremely sad about that as I finished the book and suffered from a mild depression for several days afterwards. Though Harrar was a scientist and atheist, he did a fine thing for the spiritual history of mankind by writing this book. Though steeped in superstition, Tibet was basically at peace for a thousand years because of Buddhism.
The Bridges at Toko-Ri, James A Michener, Random House Inc, 1953, 147 pp
This is the only other book about the Korean War that I have read so far in this project. Unlike William Styron's The Long March, it actually takes place in Korea and features a jet pilot named Harry Brubaker, a WWII vet who was recalled from his civilian life as a lawyer and married man with two daughters, to fight another war to save democracy. He is conflicted between doing his duty and wanting his contented civilian life.
Michener manages to pour it on pretty thick about how important the war is and how much the regular American citizen doesn't realize that or even care. Personally I am ready for this author to move on, which he does in 1959 with Hawaii.
The Marmot Drive, John Hersey, Alfred A Knopf, 1953, 237 pp
Oh my, this was a boring book. It is one of those stories about city people versus small town people. Hester, born and raised in New York City, goes home for the weekend with her boyfriend Eben to a small Connecticut village. Turns out that Eben's father, the Selectman of the village, has organized a plan to drive out the marmots (groundhogs) who have overrun the place.
The whole story then is hung on this marmot drive and used to show up a bunch of rugged individualists and to give Hester a chance to make her decision about whether or not to marry Eben. Quite a small canvas after the vast tale of the Warsaw ghetto in The Wall. I suppose a small town is a sort of ghetto but marmots are not Nazis.
The Outsider, Richard Wright, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1953, 405 pp
It was clear from the first page that Cross, a young Black man in Chicago, is doomed. Then you read 400 pages to find out how he engineered his doom. He deserts everyone to whom he has committed himself; he murders several men; he relocates to New York City and acquires a new identity; he becomes involved with the Communist Party. But he never changes. He is so disassociated from humanity that, while he is very intelligent and well-read and has built up an entire personal philosophy, he cannot grow or learn from his experiences.
I do not know what Wright is trying to say here. Something about morality or the lack of it in human beings. Yes, there is the subject of race but he seems to feel that men of any race are deluded and depraved.
I read it to the end and was not left with any feeling of satisfaction. Are we all doomed? Are we all outsiders?
Nine Stories, J D Salinger, Little Brown and Company, 1953, 198 pp
I read a story a day, which is the successful way for me to get through a story collection. I had read a few of them before.
"For Esme-with Love and Squalor" is one I remembered and I still loved it. Salinger does kids so well and in the final story, "Teddy" he wowed me again. A couple others were clearly New Yorker types about odd and messed up adults. I didn't like those as well.
Cress Delahanty, Jessamyn West, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1953, 311 pp
Jessamyn West's books fall into a category I call comfort fiction. She takes up the quirks of everyday people but it all comes out right in the end. Not too exciting but I keep reading her because she plumbs the human spirit with a unique voice.
Cress Delahanty is 12 years old at the beginning of this series of vignettes. By the end she is 16. She lives on a citrus ranch, an only child with two decent and understanding parents. Her volatile personality, influenced by reading and nature, makes her a bit more than the usual teen, but all the hyper-emotional world of the teen years is portrayed quite well by West, as well as the learning experiences about boys, men and family.
Still this was not the best of her books so far.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
BOOKS READ FROM 1953, PART THREE
This post is the first of four which will cover other books I read for 1953. This is a list I make up myself featuring authors I am interested in or who have written important novels and non-fiction.
The Lying Days, Nadine Gordimer, Simon and Schuster Inc, 1953, 340 pp
This is Nadine Gordimer's first novel and is set in South Africa in post WWII times. Helen Shaw grows up at "The Mine", with English parents living the proper colonial life in the sheltered white community. In her teens she becomes aware of the isolation and utter boredom of that life and begins to see the racism and the plight of the natives. She breaks away by going to university in Johannesburg, taking up with radical friends, living with a man who works to "help" the natives.
It is the coming of age story of women in the generation just before mine. I liked it but it seemed to take forever to read. She is true in her observations but a bit wordy and reserved in her style. She never really lets go in her writing but keeps it under some kind of strict control. Since it was her first novel and better than the book of stories I read (The Soft Voice of the Serpent, 1952), I have hope for her. Plus she has remained a respected and well-known writer for her whole life.
Five, Doris Lessing, Michael Joseph Ltd, 1953, 382 pp
This volume collects five short novels and was hard to find. None of my libraries or book stores had it and as far as I can tell, it was never published in the United States. I finally found some copies at Alibris. Yet these five novels are easily worth more than any five of the 10 bestsellers I read for 1953.
First of all, Doris Lessing is such a stunningly good writer and it can only be because she is a woman and an opinionated one at that, that she did not receive a Nobel Prize until this year. Four of the stories take place in South Africa. As in The Grass Is Singing, her ability to put the reader in that place, where I have never been, is astounding, as is her skill at making the inner lives of both whites and native so real. While she tells these South African tales she also delves into universal themes about men and women, a search for meaning and happiness, issues of personal freedom and deep matters of the heart.
I think that is the greatest thing an author can do, because while racism, political idiocracies, clashes of social classes, are fairly unique depending on place, an understanding of the hopes and failings of all mankind is the key to unlocking the struggles. Because Lessing's plotting and characterization and storytelling are so good, she does this great thing, compromising nothing and entertaining fully.
I hope that because of the Nobel Prize, more people will read her books.
The Heart of the Family, Elizabeth Goudge, Servant Publications Edition, 1953.
I read this back in 1998 when I was reading through all of Goudge's books. She is quite Christian in her philosophy with her most sterling quality being her tolerance of human foibles. My life in the 90s was full of stress and she brought me a much needed dose of peace. The Heart of the Family is the third and last of the Eliot family series, which began with The Bird in the Tree in 1940, followed by Pilgrim's Inn in 1948.
At first and for about half of the book, I was annoyed by it. There was too much spiritual stuff and almost a preaching tone, which is unusual for Goudge. She was clearly getting down her own philosophy and thoughts rather than letting the story tell them. But by the end, she won me over and it became that usual Goudge magical thing that she does. She makes me be a better person somehow.
Life Among the Savages, Shirley Jackson, Farrar Straus and Young, 1953, 241 pp
This is a wonderfully funny account of Ms Jackson's life as a mother of young children in a huge old house in Connecticut. It is hard to believe that this is the same author who penned the creepy Hangsaman.
She begins when her first child is a toddler with a hilarious account of their search for a place to live after she and her husband were evicted from their NYC apartment because they forgot to renew their lease. Each chapter is another phase in their lives: a child's first days at school, a new baby, Shirley learning to drive, etc. She and her husband are clearly writers but she does not go into how or when she writes, only mentioning that she reads a lot of mysteries. Her insight into children is deep and while she is a conscientious and loving mother, she is also somewhat unconventional. The kids are smart, precocious really, but not brats.
I was highly entertained throughout and found myself wishing I could have grown up in that family. Somehow she made being a mother and housewife in the 50s sound fun, not boring, though I suspect some irony because of how much she goes on about all the chocolate pudding she made.
The Siege, Illes Kaczer, Dial Press, 1953
This is another book I read a while back, 1994 to be exact. That was before I had conceived of My Big Fat Reading Project, when I was trying to read all the fiction in the library alphabetically by author. When I got tired of the A's, which I never got through, I would go through the other letters. It was also before I knew that it was cool to read translated literature from other countries. I was just reading books as I came to them.
Well, that is how I found out for myself that it is cool to read translated literature because it would take me into worlds which were utterly new to me. The Siege is a story about Jews in Hungary in the 1800s, written by a Hungarian Jew. There is just no comparison as far as getting the real feel between this and some historical fiction written by an American author. I really got what it is like to be an oppressed people.
The Return of Lanny Budd, Upton Sinclair, The Viking Press, 1953, 555 pp
Yes, Lanny is back one more time and does his bit at the beginning of the cold war. This volume is heavily anti-communist, anti-Stalin and very pro-American. But the pages went by quickly and I learned a good deal about the days when Berlin was split into East and West.
Sinclair makes a good point about the lack of funding for positive propaganda concerning America as opposed to funding for arms. I also saw the birth of the fight against communism in this country. He makes a convincing case for the need to fight that political system, though he was once fairly enamored of it. I couldn't quite buy everything he had to say but it was timely.
The Lying Days, Nadine Gordimer, Simon and Schuster Inc, 1953, 340 pp
This is Nadine Gordimer's first novel and is set in South Africa in post WWII times. Helen Shaw grows up at "The Mine", with English parents living the proper colonial life in the sheltered white community. In her teens she becomes aware of the isolation and utter boredom of that life and begins to see the racism and the plight of the natives. She breaks away by going to university in Johannesburg, taking up with radical friends, living with a man who works to "help" the natives.
It is the coming of age story of women in the generation just before mine. I liked it but it seemed to take forever to read. She is true in her observations but a bit wordy and reserved in her style. She never really lets go in her writing but keeps it under some kind of strict control. Since it was her first novel and better than the book of stories I read (The Soft Voice of the Serpent, 1952), I have hope for her. Plus she has remained a respected and well-known writer for her whole life.
Five, Doris Lessing, Michael Joseph Ltd, 1953, 382 pp
This volume collects five short novels and was hard to find. None of my libraries or book stores had it and as far as I can tell, it was never published in the United States. I finally found some copies at Alibris. Yet these five novels are easily worth more than any five of the 10 bestsellers I read for 1953.
First of all, Doris Lessing is such a stunningly good writer and it can only be because she is a woman and an opinionated one at that, that she did not receive a Nobel Prize until this year. Four of the stories take place in South Africa. As in The Grass Is Singing, her ability to put the reader in that place, where I have never been, is astounding, as is her skill at making the inner lives of both whites and native so real. While she tells these South African tales she also delves into universal themes about men and women, a search for meaning and happiness, issues of personal freedom and deep matters of the heart.
I think that is the greatest thing an author can do, because while racism, political idiocracies, clashes of social classes, are fairly unique depending on place, an understanding of the hopes and failings of all mankind is the key to unlocking the struggles. Because Lessing's plotting and characterization and storytelling are so good, she does this great thing, compromising nothing and entertaining fully.
I hope that because of the Nobel Prize, more people will read her books.
The Heart of the Family, Elizabeth Goudge, Servant Publications Edition, 1953.
I read this back in 1998 when I was reading through all of Goudge's books. She is quite Christian in her philosophy with her most sterling quality being her tolerance of human foibles. My life in the 90s was full of stress and she brought me a much needed dose of peace. The Heart of the Family is the third and last of the Eliot family series, which began with The Bird in the Tree in 1940, followed by Pilgrim's Inn in 1948.
At first and for about half of the book, I was annoyed by it. There was too much spiritual stuff and almost a preaching tone, which is unusual for Goudge. She was clearly getting down her own philosophy and thoughts rather than letting the story tell them. But by the end, she won me over and it became that usual Goudge magical thing that she does. She makes me be a better person somehow.
Life Among the Savages, Shirley Jackson, Farrar Straus and Young, 1953, 241 pp
This is a wonderfully funny account of Ms Jackson's life as a mother of young children in a huge old house in Connecticut. It is hard to believe that this is the same author who penned the creepy Hangsaman.
She begins when her first child is a toddler with a hilarious account of their search for a place to live after she and her husband were evicted from their NYC apartment because they forgot to renew their lease. Each chapter is another phase in their lives: a child's first days at school, a new baby, Shirley learning to drive, etc. She and her husband are clearly writers but she does not go into how or when she writes, only mentioning that she reads a lot of mysteries. Her insight into children is deep and while she is a conscientious and loving mother, she is also somewhat unconventional. The kids are smart, precocious really, but not brats.
I was highly entertained throughout and found myself wishing I could have grown up in that family. Somehow she made being a mother and housewife in the 50s sound fun, not boring, though I suspect some irony because of how much she goes on about all the chocolate pudding she made.
The Siege, Illes Kaczer, Dial Press, 1953
This is another book I read a while back, 1994 to be exact. That was before I had conceived of My Big Fat Reading Project, when I was trying to read all the fiction in the library alphabetically by author. When I got tired of the A's, which I never got through, I would go through the other letters. It was also before I knew that it was cool to read translated literature from other countries. I was just reading books as I came to them.
Well, that is how I found out for myself that it is cool to read translated literature because it would take me into worlds which were utterly new to me. The Siege is a story about Jews in Hungary in the 1800s, written by a Hungarian Jew. There is just no comparison as far as getting the real feel between this and some historical fiction written by an American author. I really got what it is like to be an oppressed people.
The Return of Lanny Budd, Upton Sinclair, The Viking Press, 1953, 555 pp
Yes, Lanny is back one more time and does his bit at the beginning of the cold war. This volume is heavily anti-communist, anti-Stalin and very pro-American. But the pages went by quickly and I learned a good deal about the days when Berlin was split into East and West.
Sinclair makes a good point about the lack of funding for positive propaganda concerning America as opposed to funding for arms. I also saw the birth of the fight against communism in this country. He makes a convincing case for the need to fight that political system, though he was once fairly enamored of it. I couldn't quite buy everything he had to say but it was timely.
Monday, May 26, 2008
BOOKS READ FROM 1953, PART TWO
This post contains the second half of the bestseller list for 1953.
The High and the Mighty, Ernest K Gann, William Morrow & Company Inc, 1953, 342 pp
This novel was the #6 bestseller for 1953 and takes place on an airplane during a flight from Honolulu to San Francisco, a trip which took 12 hours in those days. It is an early version of books like Night Over Water, by Ken Follett. The plane develops trouble and the main suspense concerns whether or not they will have to "ditch" which means "land" on the ocean.
Gann was a pilot himself and wrote many novels about flight. This one was also made into a movie starring John Wayne, for which Gann wrote the screenplay. He was considered a good writer in his time, but I found the book formulaic: introduce the characters, both the flyboys and the passengers; finally the plane takes off; several odd bumps and noises foreshadow the trouble to come; personal issues of the characters come to light during the crisis; then the last minute save.
What was interesting to me were the facts about air travel in the early 50s: propellers not jets, slower speeds and lower altitudes (no pressurized cabins), rudimentary radio contact and radar. The end of the book was highly dramatic and made it a good read finally. I also saw the movie which was not bad.
Beyond This Place, A J Cronin, Little Brown and Company, 1953, 247pp
This was #7 on the 1953 bestseller list and is the fourth bestseller I've read by this author. His first book, The Keys of the Kingdom, still rates with me as his best. All of his books concern young men with unusual childhoods and hardships they must overcome.
In Beyond This Place, Paul was raised by his pious Christian mother in Belfast, Ireland. He remembers a father from his very young years and has always been told that the father died in an accident. At the age of 20 he learns that all this time his father has been in prison, serving a life sentence for murder.
Paul sets out for a small town in England, where the murder occurred, determined to find his father. He faces innumerable obstacles but is finally reunited with his dad. The entire story is overwrought with emotion which I found to be a bit much. Luckily it is a fairly good tale, involving an examination of how politics corrupts justice.
Time and Time Again, James Hilton, Little Brown and Company, 1953, 286 pp
At #8 on the list, James Hilton suffers from the opposite problem that plagued Beyond This Place. Here we have Hilton's accomplished and readable prose but not much in the way of a story.
Charles Anderson is a minor English diplomat and is reflecting back over his life, including two World Wars, two women and one son. For anyone who has read as much fiction from the 1940s as I have, there is really nothing new here. Hilton's point seems to be that life moves on and youth will take over. Not an original idea but so nicely put.
Lord Vanity, Samuel Shellabarger, Little Brown and Company, 1953, 397 pp
This is the last of Shellabarger's historical novels to reach Top 10 Bestseller status. It was #9 in 1953 and takes place in 18th century Italy, France and England.
Richard Morandi is the bastard son of an English lord and at the opening of the story works as an actor and musician entertaining Venetian nobility. He falls in love with a young equally impoverished ballerina. Throughout the story, his fortunes fall and then rise to great heights when he is reunited with his father. Finally he must choose between fortune and his true character as well as between two women.
The author, as in his earlier books, does well on historical detail and evoking the sense of the time, but Richard's tale is just not as exciting as that of the heroes and heroines of his earlier novels.
The Unconquered, Ben Ames Williams, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953, 698 pp
This was the hardest longest slog of the 1953 bestsellers. It was #10 on the list and oh how I wish it could have been #11. Williams continues with the families from A House Divided, to tell a story of reconstruction. Most of the story takes place in New Orleans, where the clash between carpetbaggers and old Southern gentlemen; between freed slaves and poor whites; and between Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans was the most brutal.
The point of the story seems to be the refusal of the South to admit defeat after the Civil War and the deeply ingrained racism that was born in the practice of slavery. A point well taken but the story telling is pedantic in the extreme and the political details way too detailed. It took me three separate segments of reading over many months to make my way through this tome and may I never have to read Ben Ames Williams again.
The High and the Mighty, Ernest K Gann, William Morrow & Company Inc, 1953, 342 pp
This novel was the #6 bestseller for 1953 and takes place on an airplane during a flight from Honolulu to San Francisco, a trip which took 12 hours in those days. It is an early version of books like Night Over Water, by Ken Follett. The plane develops trouble and the main suspense concerns whether or not they will have to "ditch" which means "land" on the ocean.
Gann was a pilot himself and wrote many novels about flight. This one was also made into a movie starring John Wayne, for which Gann wrote the screenplay. He was considered a good writer in his time, but I found the book formulaic: introduce the characters, both the flyboys and the passengers; finally the plane takes off; several odd bumps and noises foreshadow the trouble to come; personal issues of the characters come to light during the crisis; then the last minute save.
What was interesting to me were the facts about air travel in the early 50s: propellers not jets, slower speeds and lower altitudes (no pressurized cabins), rudimentary radio contact and radar. The end of the book was highly dramatic and made it a good read finally. I also saw the movie which was not bad.
Beyond This Place, A J Cronin, Little Brown and Company, 1953, 247pp
This was #7 on the 1953 bestseller list and is the fourth bestseller I've read by this author. His first book, The Keys of the Kingdom, still rates with me as his best. All of his books concern young men with unusual childhoods and hardships they must overcome.
In Beyond This Place, Paul was raised by his pious Christian mother in Belfast, Ireland. He remembers a father from his very young years and has always been told that the father died in an accident. At the age of 20 he learns that all this time his father has been in prison, serving a life sentence for murder.
Paul sets out for a small town in England, where the murder occurred, determined to find his father. He faces innumerable obstacles but is finally reunited with his dad. The entire story is overwrought with emotion which I found to be a bit much. Luckily it is a fairly good tale, involving an examination of how politics corrupts justice.
Time and Time Again, James Hilton, Little Brown and Company, 1953, 286 pp
At #8 on the list, James Hilton suffers from the opposite problem that plagued Beyond This Place. Here we have Hilton's accomplished and readable prose but not much in the way of a story.
Charles Anderson is a minor English diplomat and is reflecting back over his life, including two World Wars, two women and one son. For anyone who has read as much fiction from the 1940s as I have, there is really nothing new here. Hilton's point seems to be that life moves on and youth will take over. Not an original idea but so nicely put.
Lord Vanity, Samuel Shellabarger, Little Brown and Company, 1953, 397 pp
This is the last of Shellabarger's historical novels to reach Top 10 Bestseller status. It was #9 in 1953 and takes place in 18th century Italy, France and England.
Richard Morandi is the bastard son of an English lord and at the opening of the story works as an actor and musician entertaining Venetian nobility. He falls in love with a young equally impoverished ballerina. Throughout the story, his fortunes fall and then rise to great heights when he is reunited with his father. Finally he must choose between fortune and his true character as well as between two women.
The author, as in his earlier books, does well on historical detail and evoking the sense of the time, but Richard's tale is just not as exciting as that of the heroes and heroines of his earlier novels.
The Unconquered, Ben Ames Williams, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953, 698 pp
This was the hardest longest slog of the 1953 bestsellers. It was #10 on the list and oh how I wish it could have been #11. Williams continues with the families from A House Divided, to tell a story of reconstruction. Most of the story takes place in New Orleans, where the clash between carpetbaggers and old Southern gentlemen; between freed slaves and poor whites; and between Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans was the most brutal.
The point of the story seems to be the refusal of the South to admit defeat after the Civil War and the deeply ingrained racism that was born in the practice of slavery. A point well taken but the story telling is pedantic in the extreme and the political details way too detailed. It took me three separate segments of reading over many months to make my way through this tome and may I never have to read Ben Ames Williams again.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
BOOKS READ FROM 1953, PART ONE
Here begins the lists of books I read for 1953 as part of my Big Fat Reading Project. Briefly, that is an ongoing project in which I am reading the Top 10 Bestsellers and other selected books from every year beginning in 1940. I am doing this as research for my autobiography which has the working title of Reading For My Life.
To see the lists from earlier years, simply click on the label at the bottom of this post and you will get all posts for the Big Fat Reading Project, in reverse chronological order. Then scroll to find the year you want or go all the way to the end and read the posts from then to now. You will get quite an overview of literature from the second half of the 20th century.
1953 was unique in the number of bestsellers that had already appeared on the list in earlier years: three to be exact. Especially these days, it is very unusual for any novel to be a top 10 bestseller two years in a row. In 1953, the #1 book had been a bestseller in 1942, eleven years earlier! I don't know why that happened and if anyone does, please share the info with us in the comments.
Here we go:
BESTSELLERS
The Robe, Lloyd C Douglas
This was the #1 bestseller in 1953. It was published in 1942 and was the #7 bestseller of that year. It is a story of the years immediately after the life of Jesus Christ. I reviewed it on March 1, 2006 in a post entitled "Books Read From 1942, Part Two."
The Silver Chalice, Thomas B Costain
At #2 on the list is a book which was #1 in 1952. It is a fictional account of the creation of the Holy Grail. Apparently Christianity was a big seller in 1953. In fact, The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version was #1 on the non-fiction list in both 1953 and 1954.
My review of The Silver Chalice appears in "Books Read From 1952, Part One" posted on February 10, 2008.
Desiree, Annemarie Selinko, William Morrow & Company, 1953, 594 pp
I was not looking forward to this book because of its length and in fact it took me three tries to get started reading it. It was #3 on the 1953 bestseller list and is actually a great story about the rise, reign and fall of Napoleon told through the eyes of a woman who once loved him.
Desiree was the daughter of a silk merchant in Marseilles. The story opens in 1794, shortly after the French Revolution and sometime during the Reign of Terror. Desiree meets and falls in love with the young Buonoparte (as he called himself in those days). She was only 16 and he had recently arrived with his mother and siblings from Sicily. He is an officer in the Republican army and gets engaged to Desiree, whom he seems to love but he is also in need of her dowry.
As Napoleon begins his rise to power, he throws her over for Josephine who can help him politically. Desiree, who was raised to know Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" by heart, believes in the Republic. She is a bold and daring young woman with a good mind. Comparisons to Forever Amber which I came across in various reviews, are only true in that both women were connected to men of power. Amber was merely an opportunist while Desiree had the good of France at heart.
Once I got going, which involved a bit of study on the history of France in this time period, I was not bored for even a page of this long novel. It filled in for me a part of history about which I knew little. The translation from German was lively and read like a contemporary historical novel. The theme is a cry for political freedom.
Battle Cry, Leon Uris, G P Putnam's Sons, 1953, 505 pp
This paean to the US Marines caused me to name a new genre: dick lit. It was the #4 bestseller in 1953 and takes place during World War II. I did not enjoy its 505 pages and felt it was a poor imitation of From Here to Eternity.
The boys, boot camp, the lovers, wives and whores, the drinking, the dirt, the battles, the esprit de corps; it's all there ad nauseum. The writing is mediocre. The theme is that war is just one of those things that have to get done and real men give their all against hopeless odds.
Leon Uris followed this first book with many other bestsellers, including Exodus and Armageddon, so we will see how his writing develops.
From Here to Eternity, James Jones
At #5 is the third book to have appeared on an earlier bestseller list. This book was #1 in 1951 and the movie came out in 1953, going on to win Best Picture in 1954. Both the book and the movie are excellent. My review of this novel was posted on October 5, 2007 in "Books Read From 1951, Part One."
To see the lists from earlier years, simply click on the label at the bottom of this post and you will get all posts for the Big Fat Reading Project, in reverse chronological order. Then scroll to find the year you want or go all the way to the end and read the posts from then to now. You will get quite an overview of literature from the second half of the 20th century.
1953 was unique in the number of bestsellers that had already appeared on the list in earlier years: three to be exact. Especially these days, it is very unusual for any novel to be a top 10 bestseller two years in a row. In 1953, the #1 book had been a bestseller in 1942, eleven years earlier! I don't know why that happened and if anyone does, please share the info with us in the comments.
Here we go:
BESTSELLERS
The Robe, Lloyd C Douglas
This was the #1 bestseller in 1953. It was published in 1942 and was the #7 bestseller of that year. It is a story of the years immediately after the life of Jesus Christ. I reviewed it on March 1, 2006 in a post entitled "Books Read From 1942, Part Two."
The Silver Chalice, Thomas B Costain
At #2 on the list is a book which was #1 in 1952. It is a fictional account of the creation of the Holy Grail. Apparently Christianity was a big seller in 1953. In fact, The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version was #1 on the non-fiction list in both 1953 and 1954.
My review of The Silver Chalice appears in "Books Read From 1952, Part One" posted on February 10, 2008.
Desiree, Annemarie Selinko, William Morrow & Company, 1953, 594 pp
I was not looking forward to this book because of its length and in fact it took me three tries to get started reading it. It was #3 on the 1953 bestseller list and is actually a great story about the rise, reign and fall of Napoleon told through the eyes of a woman who once loved him.
Desiree was the daughter of a silk merchant in Marseilles. The story opens in 1794, shortly after the French Revolution and sometime during the Reign of Terror. Desiree meets and falls in love with the young Buonoparte (as he called himself in those days). She was only 16 and he had recently arrived with his mother and siblings from Sicily. He is an officer in the Republican army and gets engaged to Desiree, whom he seems to love but he is also in need of her dowry.
As Napoleon begins his rise to power, he throws her over for Josephine who can help him politically. Desiree, who was raised to know Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" by heart, believes in the Republic. She is a bold and daring young woman with a good mind. Comparisons to Forever Amber which I came across in various reviews, are only true in that both women were connected to men of power. Amber was merely an opportunist while Desiree had the good of France at heart.
Once I got going, which involved a bit of study on the history of France in this time period, I was not bored for even a page of this long novel. It filled in for me a part of history about which I knew little. The translation from German was lively and read like a contemporary historical novel. The theme is a cry for political freedom.
Battle Cry, Leon Uris, G P Putnam's Sons, 1953, 505 pp
This paean to the US Marines caused me to name a new genre: dick lit. It was the #4 bestseller in 1953 and takes place during World War II. I did not enjoy its 505 pages and felt it was a poor imitation of From Here to Eternity.
The boys, boot camp, the lovers, wives and whores, the drinking, the dirt, the battles, the esprit de corps; it's all there ad nauseum. The writing is mediocre. The theme is that war is just one of those things that have to get done and real men give their all against hopeless odds.
Leon Uris followed this first book with many other bestsellers, including Exodus and Armageddon, so we will see how his writing develops.
From Here to Eternity, James Jones
At #5 is the third book to have appeared on an earlier bestseller list. This book was #1 in 1951 and the movie came out in 1953, going on to win Best Picture in 1954. Both the book and the movie are excellent. My review of this novel was posted on October 5, 2007 in "Books Read From 1951, Part One."
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