THE DREAMER

The Dreamer, Pam Munoz Ryan, Scholastic Press, 2010, 370 pp

 (Ages 10-14)

 I have a confession to make. I do not read poetry. I know that sounds odd for someone who has written song lyrics for many years, but there you have it. Somewhere along the way, I got addicted to STORY and I get that from novels more than from poems. If the Adult Reading Group at Once Upon A Time had not chosen The Dreamer for its December read, I would probably not have read it. A fictional retelling of events in the life of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was not really my cup of tea. (Actually I don't drink tea either. I am a coffee drinker.)

  Pam Munos Ryan is a wonderful writer and a poet herself. Many of her picture books feature her poetry as the text. Esperanza Rising, given to me by an eleven year old student I was tutoring in math, was one of the best books I read in 2003. Ms Ryan has so much empathy for her characters and writes with so much heart that she made me love a poet, if not the reading of poetry.

 She tells the story of Neruda's life in a dreamy poetic tone, bringing the images of his surroundings into my mind with her words alone. Accompanying illustrations by Peter Sis compliment her words so perfectly that she must have communicated those images to him as well. 

 As a child, Neruda, whose real name was Neftali Reyes, was frail but filled with fascination about the natural world and possessed of a vivid imagination. He suffered his father's displeasure because he was not a tough energetic boy and had no aspirations to go into business or medicine as his father hoped. Here is another story about a naturally born artistic soul finding himself in a harsh materialistic world. 

 Around the age of 12, Neftali began to assist his uncle who owned and published a small local newspaper. Uncle Orlando also believed in supporting the rights of Chile's native Napuche population, giving Neftali a life-long passion for human rights.

 Before I review books for children, I like to find out what young readers think about them. One of my most trusted sources is a a fifth grader named Laura who has read all of the Newbery winners and much more. She blogs about her reading at Laura's Life. She is a poetry lover and reader and gave The Dreamer a rave review. 

 My opinion is that the book would work for children who already like poetry. It is also a great story about a child who triumphed despite cruelty and misunderstanding from his father. I can imagine it as a book to be read aloud by parents or teachers or even as a good reference for introducing kids to poetry. Thanks to Ms Ryan's writing, I am considering having another go at poetry. 

(The Dreamer is available in hardcover on the shelves for readers 8-12 at Once Upon a Time Bookstore.)

THE SANDCASTLE

The Sandcastle, Iris Murdoch, The Viking Press, 1957, 342 pp

 Interesting story for Murdoch. Mor is a teacher and housemaster at St Bride's school. His wife Nan is a carping, controlling woman who has beaten her husband down with a superior attitude. They have a teenage son who attends St Bride's and a pubescent daughter at another private school. Because I have read Harry Potter, I am familiar with this English school scene.

  A young female painter arrives at St Bride's where she has been commissioned to paint the portrait  of the former headmaster. Mor falls in love with her, wants to throw away his marriage, and Nan must find a way to hold on to him. Because this is Iris Murdoch, there are plenty of hilarious, silly, and nail-biting scenes. 

 I hadn't quite noticed this before in her novels, but I see it now. Murdoch is no feminist. She is as hard on her female characters as she is on the men. She finds the absurdity in any human endeavor and tromps hard. But she also makes it clear how dearly we all hold to our purposes and our ways of life.

 I am just blundering along in my reading of mid twentieth century English literature by women and so just beginning to glimpse what is going on. The major similarity I see between them (Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, etc.) is a dedicated attempt to use intellect and philosophy as a means of going more deeply into human relations. To my thinking, that is a worthy aim.

(The Sandcastle is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

RAISING DEMONS

Raising Demons, Shirley Jackson, Farrar Straus and Cudahy, 1957, 310 pp

 Shirley Jackson's follow-up to Life Among the Savages covers the middle years of her children's lives. I loved every page. She is a consummate writer. The family moves to a larger home, acquires more cats and dogs, while Shirley learns the mixed emotions that come with being a faculty wife.

 Once again I was amazed  at the amount of humor and true affection for children that she brought to this further account of her family life. It is such a contrast to her spooky novels and the troubled characters she created for them.

 Though I only had two children our house was always full of neighborhood kids. I also ran a daycare for a while. So I was right at home with the barely controlled chaos she describes. Her four children are as precocious as ever and she brings their characters to full life, especially in the way she has recorded their speech.

 A huge amount of sheer energy propels this book. I got the sense of a woman driving a run-away buggy, just barely hanging on, who can only laugh at the crazy life she is having. Singlehandedly, she created a whole genre carried on by Jean Kerr and Erma Brombeck, not to mention Ayelet Waldman.

 The final chapter is an account of their family Christmas: the hiding of gifts, the last minute special mail order, the decorating of the tree and the joy of the kids. It was so moving that I wanted to start a family all over again. Parenthood is possibly one of the hardest jobs in life and while Ms Jackson had as hard a time as any mother, I salute her for capturing the frustrations, rewards and humor of it all.

(Sadly, Raising Demons is out of print. I found it at my local library. It is also available at Powells.)

PNIN

Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov, Doubleday, 1957, 191 pp

 Professor Timofey Pnin is a Russian immigrant who came to America via Europe, particularly Paris, and in this account is teaching Russian at small Waindell College in New England. This short novel is more a collection of stories about Pnin. Nabakov puts the reader into the mind and heart of a man who has lost much but continues on in his sometimes endearing, sometimes ridiculous way. 

  I found the book easy to read, unlike some of Nabokov's other novels, and I wanted always to know more about Pnin, what happened to his sad and crazy wife, how he would get along with the artistic genius who is his son. By the end when Pnin suffers yet another blow in his tortured life, I felt I had been living with these characters at Waindell College. I could have gone to the party Pnin hosted at one of his many dwellings and got on just fine.

 The wonder of Nabokov is how he can capture so much in so few words. It is like taking dried foods and adding water to reconstitute all the richness and flavor. Just add a reader and out of the book comes so much experience, location, character and emotion.

(Pnin is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

PAPA YOU'RE CRAZY

Papa, You're Crazy, William Saroyan, Little Brown and Company, 1957, 165 pp

 A man who is a writer and his son Aram, who is ten years old, hang out together at the father's beach shack. The father gives his son tips about life and about how to become a writer. This man is divorced from Aram's mother and the son, who had been living with his mother and sister, asked to go live with his father for a week.

  In another of his short autobiographical novels, Saroyan charmed me, as he always does. I liked the talks they had, the foods they prepared and ate together, such as "writer's rice" made from rice mixed with whatever else is in the cupboard or refrigerator. I liked the road trip they made to San Francisco. Saroyan's succinct lessons on how to become a writer were the best parts of all.

(Papa You're Crazy is out of print. I found it at my local library. It may also be in some of the many collections of Saroyan's writings.)

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, THE WOMAN BEHIND LITTLE WOMEN

Louisa May Alcott, The Woman Behind Little Women, Harriet Reisen, Henry Holt and Company, 2009, 302 pp

 After a slow start, this biography of Louisa May Alcott became great. Her early life was comparable to the childhoods of hippie kids from the 1960s and 1970s. The family moved constantly, were always broke and in debt to friends and extended family. Mr Alcott was a dreamer, impractical and chronically unable to make a living. He started several schools but they all failed as the Puritan families of the day found his methods much too progressive. Alcott's educational ideas reminded me of Summerhill by A S Neill and the ideas I had about schools back in my twenties.

  Harriet Reisen clearly loved her subject. Her excellent research and wonderful writing brought Louisa May to life for me. She was an intrepid woman and determined to take on the role of providing for her family through her writing. She wrote in many genres before Little Women, lurid sensational tales for magazines, as she trained herself to write for money. But it was Little Women that made her famous and rich.

 The second half of the book flew by like a pageturner. Louisa's conflicts between caring for her parents and sisters while craving personal freedom touched me deeply. Though she never married, she had all the responsibilities of a mother, wife, sister and breadwinner without the passion or love of a man. Reisen describes her relationships with Emerson, Thoreau and many of the Transcendentalists, but the relationship with her mother was the most interesting to me.

 This is truly a woman's book for strong, independent, artistic women. It will hold up as a definitive biography of the woman who gave me one of my favorite childhood books.

(Louisa May Alcott, The Woman Behind Little Women is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

REVAMP CAMP

Revamp Camp, Alice Zogg, Aventine Press, 2010, 220 pp

 I have been remiss in not posting a review of Alice Zogg's latest mystery, released in Fall, 2010. Alice is a good friend of mine and I have read and reviewed all but the first of her six previous books. There lies the problem because what does a reviewer and blogger do when she is less than thrilled by her friend's latest book?

  I have long admired Alice for her decision to bypass the whole publishing world in favor of enjoying the writing process without the stress of the traditional publishing world. She took up writing late in life and has a great deal of fun with it. Her strongest suit is plotting and she keeps that up in Revamp Camp. In subject matter she has broadened her scope considerably by taking on the world of a rehab facility for troubled teens including methods of therapy and questions of drug therapy to treat drug abuse. Her earlier books have been strong on vivid descriptions of the surroundings where the stories take place and in Revamp Camp she has taken this to a positively cinematic quality.

 However I feel she may have stepped too far out of her zone or that she failed to do enough homework. The teen characters in the story and their dialogue show that the author has not spent much time with teens or listened to the ways they actually talk, both to each other and to adults. These characters are simply not believable and fail to come alive on the page. I was also unconvinced by the descriptions of Revamp Camp itself as a youth facility and the activities that went on there. After all, it is set in Solvang, CA and must have had to follow certain mental health standards. Perhaps her point is that some private rehab centers get away with gross improprieties but then that should have been included in the plot.

 I met with Alice for lunch the other day, expressed my concerns, and got her blessing to write my review though it would not be wholly positive. I am happy to report that we are still friends! Whew. That was tough.

(Because she is a local author and the store never fails to support our local talent, Revamp Camp is available in paperback on the Mystery shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

PALACE OF DESIRE

Palace of Desire, Naguib Mahfouz, Doubleday, 1957, (US translation 1991), 422 pp

 In the second volume of his Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk is the first), Naguib Mahfouz continues the story of Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family. All but one of his four children are now grown, married and living outside the home. There are in-laws and grandchildren, but they are all still very close and visit each other often. Egypt has not yet achieved independence from Great Britain but is moving through changes of political leaders and their perfidies.

  I found this volume easier to read because this time I knew all the characters. Also the rate of change in each of their lives seemed to increase giving more impetus to the narrative. Al-Sayyid is still, at least in his own mind, the rigid, feared patriarch of the family, but in his other life of debauchery and women, he suffers setbacks due to his increasing age and decreasing health. He continues to take his long suffering wife for granted, to excuse his eldest son's despicable behavior and to torment his youngest son Kamal, whose idealism and innocence are incomprehensible to almost everyone.

 I came to see more clearly the literary feat that Mahfouz pulled off in the trilogy. Imagine a trilogy of American novels that followed a family from 1900 to the middle of the 20th century, with all of the social and political changes. I am sure there are several examples of such, usually centered around a great American city. In the Cairo Trilogy, Mahfouz is creating an awareness of his country as it moved into the modern world.

(Palace of Desire is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, Evelyn Waugh, Little Brown and Company, 1957, 232 pp

 This book falls into my personal category of odd stories. Gilbert Pinfold is an English novelist, a sort of country gentleman whose wife does the farming. He is more than a bit of a stodgy fellow. His middle-aged body is giving him trouble, causing insomnia with twinges of rheumatism. He adds some large drab pills prescribed by his doctor, as well as sleeping powders provided by his druggist to his usual generous consumption of alcohol. We thought self-medicating was a recent phenomenon?

  Soon enough Pinfold is majorly hallucinating, hearing voices and suffering from deep paranoia. As a cure he decides on a sea voyage, during which he plans to complete his latest novel. But his troubles only magnify at sea. There follow a series of  ridiculous incidents which have a slight Kafka flavor mixed with images from an LSD trip gone very wrong.

 My father would have called this a shaggy dog story. It is one of my least favorite types of story to read. But Evelyn Waugh can't help being humorous and the book is short. I made it through and so did Gilbert Pinfold. (Odd coincidence: Also in 1957 Muriel Spark published The Comforters, in which a novelist heard voices.)

(The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

BEST 25 BOOKS READ IN 2010

2010 was a great reading year for me. I started out with a resolution to read more books in a year than I ever had before and I did it! I read 160 books. Last year I found a blog by a woman who read a book a day for an entire year. I wish! Maybe someday. 

 I completed the reading lists for 1957 and 1958 as part of My Big Fat Reading Project. I am excited that in 2011 I will move into the 1960s.

 I wrote 10 paid reviews for BookBrowse.com.

 I made lots of new reading friends in real life and on the internet and Keep The Wisdom had more hits than any earlier year.

 So without any more bragging or boring statistics, here is my list of the best books I read this year:

•  Little Big,  John Crowley
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
• The Small Rain, Madeleine L'Engle
• Darwin's Children, Greg Bear
• 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, Rebecca Goldstein
• Paradise of the Blind, Duong Thu Huong
• Rebel Yell, Alice Randall
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon
• Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat
• The Surrendered, Chang-rae Lee
• The Long Song, Andrea Levy
• Rat, Fernanda Eberstadt
• Telex From Cuba, Rachel Kushner
• The Furies, Fernanda Eberstadt
• The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi
• Rock Paper Tiger, Lisa Brackman
• The Winthrop Woman, Anya Seton
• Await Your Reply, Dan Chaon
• The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall
• In the Woods, Tana French
• Room, Emma Donoghue
• The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouc
• My Hollywood, Mona Simpson
• The Snakewoman of Little Egypt, Robert Hellenga
• Just Kids, Patti Smith 

I hope your reading for the year was as enjoyable as mine and wish you a fantastic year of reading in 2011. Thanks so much to all who visit and read the blog and an extra special thanks to those who leave comments.

JUST KIDS

Just Kids,  Patti Smith, HarperCollins Publishers, 2010, 279 pp

 I loved, loved, loved this book! Patti Smith recreates the lives of so many people who only lived to create. Her love for Robert Mapplethorpe just throbs on every page. She promised Robert, before he died, that she would write their story and she fulfilled that promise with so much taste and passion and exuberance that it made me want to live and die for art.

 I was never a Patti Smith fan. Anyone who reads my blog knows that among singer/songwriters Joni Mitchell is the one I revere. I did however once write a song in the style of "Because the Night." I've only ever played it for my husband and my most intimate songwriter friend, but there it is. As an artist and as a woman though, I have always had great respect for Patti Smith. When a friend whose reading tastes I admire pressed Just Kids on me (literally she put the book in my hands) I knew I would read it.

 I took my time. For me, this was an intense reading experience. Patti and I are almost the same age and both grew up in New Jersey. Like me, she had to wend her way through the sexual mores and expectations for women that prevailed in the 1950s and early 1960s. Unlike me, she was much braver. She makes it clear that meeting and loving Robert was the most momentous event of her life. Together they gave each other the support and unconditional care that every artist needs. They also gave each other unlimited freedom. It could be argued that that much freedom is dangerous and indeed it is. But the danger versus the opportunity to achieve artistic goals was balanced perfectly in their lives.

 A luxurious quantity of photos throughout the book bring the story to life better than any video ever could, though I did go to YouTube immediately on finishing the last page and watched almost every Patti Smith video I could find. Mapplethorpe's photography is stunning. Hard to believe that he took a huge proportion of them on Polaroid because he could not afford a better camera for many years. The Polaroid film was a larger budget item for him than food or rent.

 Stories about nearly everyone who was anyone during their days at the Chelsea Hotel, including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and many more, feel like affection more than anything else. She completely captures those magical years in New York City. I never knew, but of course loved it, that Patti's biggest songwriting hero was Bob Dylan. Her inside look at her poetry writing process was another eye opener.

 The announcement that Patti Smith had won the National Book Award for Just Kids got me to finish the book. Truly I did not want it to end. I must give back the copy I read to my friend but I am going to buy one for myself. I want to read it again and again.

(Just Kids is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MYSTIC MASSEUR

The Mystic Masseur, V S Naipaul, Alfred A Knopf, 1957, 171 pp

 This is Naipaul's first novel, which I found at my local library in a volume of his first three novels. Apparently Naipaul has had two phases in his writing: an early comic vision of which The Mystic Masseur is an example and a later disturbing darker period. 

  V S Naipaul was born in Trinidad, an island in the Caribbean, to which his grandfather had come from India. The island is a polyglot of races, nationalities and languages and has been ruled by various European nations since the 15th century. After slavery was abolished, the plantation owners brought in indentured labor from India.

 Naipaul uses a combination of humor, magical realism and scenes from Indian/Hindu immigrant life to describe the coming of age of Ganesh Ramsumair, an orphan who makes it through some college education, fails as a school teacher and returns to his native village. In an effort to support his wife, he takes up healing as a masseur, though he is a complete quack. Mostly he studies the books he acquires, lining his walls and gaining knowledge until he gains fame as the "pundit."

 The Indians from India who reside in Trinindad comprise a tightly knit and enclosed culture with their own foods, customs and competitions. Ganesh finally rises in the world and enters politics only to find disillusionment in the end. Naipaul's writing is lively and robust but I can't fully agree that his vision is comic. He makes some fun of his own people but what comes through is a rueful account of life as second class citizens in a post colonial world.

(The Mystic Masseur is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HOLIDAY REASONS

Just announcing that I will be absent from Keep The Wisdom until after Christmas Day. Actually I have been absent since Wednesday because I was getting ready for a visit from my son, daughter-in-law and my three grandchildren. Yesterday they arrived from Florida, expecting a nice sunny California day but we are in the middle of some kind of monsoon condition. It has been raining steadily for two days and will continue for three more.

Hopefully the rain will stop by Thursday when I will take us all to Disneyland, fulfilling a dream I have had to take the grandkids there someday.


Unfortunately my husband is missing the whole thing, including Christmas, because he is sailing on the maiden voyage of Disney's newest cruise ship; as a sound technician, not a passenger.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL WHEREVER YOU MAY BE!

FAERY TALE: ONE WOMAN'S SEARCH FOR ENCHANTMENT IN A MODERN WORLD

Faery Tale: One Woman's Search for Enchantment in a Modern World, Signe Pike, Penguin Group USA, 2010, 295 pp

 This enchanting memoir is sort of Eat Pray Love for faery lovers. Signe Pike is a young woman who quit her job as a book editor for a New York publisher and went on a quest to find out if faeries are real. I was maddened, delighted and inspired many times over during my reading of this truly modern faery tale.

  Because that is what it is, a faery tale in the voice of a modern young woman who wanted to believe in magic, in things that cannot be seen and in happy endings. Signe Pike is young enough to be my daughter (or maybe it's that I am old enough to be her mother.) She is almost young enough to be my granddaughter (actually I have no idea how old she is, I'm just guessing.) Anyway, it was inevitable that she would make me mad sometimes.

 I started the book and by about page 30, I threw it down and thought I would not waste my time for another page. The voice of Signe Pike struck me as silly; an amalgam of the tone of Facebook comments, texting between teens and People magazine. I now realize that I was suffering from generation gap. 

 That evening I spent hours with my youngest friend, a 25-year-old aspiring writer. We drank wine, told each other stories, talked about life and read our latest efforts to each other. I love this woman because she reminds me of my younger self and hanging out with her is effortless. Somehow that evening led me to pick up Faery Tale again the next morning and I read it all day until I got to the end.

 I still got mad a few times but mostly I was delighted. I've done my own faery research over the years. I too believed in faeries as a child. I have encountered disembodied beings on an island in Lake Michigan, on Mt Tamalpias, in Ireland, in the Redwoods and in my own backyard. About ten years ago I spent a few months reading up on how to contact faeries and I have always read magical stories, from C S Lewis and E Nesbit as a child to Suzanne Clarke and John Crowley in recent years. As I kept reading Signe Pike, I saw that she was trying as hard as she could to remain objective and not get sucked in to a bunch of airy-fairy, New Age ridiculousness. She was on a quest to find some meaning for her life and to make sense of her relationship with her father who had passed away. She was also looking for hope in a world that seemed to be heading for disaster. I am so down with all of that.

 As she traveled to Glastonbury (where I have always wanted to go), to Ireland (where I have been), to the Isles of Man and Skye, to Scotland and Findhorn, I began to feel I was in pretty good hands. Her process of slowing down, learning to let things happen, listening more closely to her intuition and bonding with the various faery "experts" she interviewed, made me happy for her.

 And that is all I am going to say because I don't want to spoil anymore of the adventure of reading this book. It's cool and it's real and it's magical. Plus there is an awesome bibliography in the back and Signe has one the best author websites I've seen.

(Faery Tale is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE NAKED SUN

The Naked Sun, Isaac Asimov, Street & Smith Pualications, 1957, 196 pp

 This is the sequel to The Caves of Steel, again featuring Detective Lige Baley and his robot assistant R Daneel Olivaw. They go offworld to investigate a murder on Solaria, one of the 50 Outer Worlds inhabited by humans.

  Solaria's most eminent scientist has been found dead and it appears that he was done in by his wife. The planet has something like 200 robots for every human, similar to the slave/master populations of certain ancient civilizations. These robots are all under the Three Laws of Robotics as laid out in I, Robot, but there is an uneasy feeling on Earth about ominous rumors coming from Solaria, so Bayley is also serving as a spy.

 Despite his unreasoning fear of the naked sun after living his entire life in the steel caves of Earth, Bayley's professional skill soon has him flaunting all protocol on Solaria. He finds the murderer of course but also a much more deadly character. 

 I thought The Caves of Steel was better as far as storytelling and suspense, but Asimov has the detective genre nailed and his futuristic observations are as brilliant and icily witty as always.

(The Naked Sun is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

OUT

Out, Natsuo Kirino, Vintage International, 2005, 416 pp

 A young mother in Tokyo, working the night shift in a boxed lunch factory, murders her abusive husband. Her three best friends at work band together to help her dispose of the body. These women are desperate housewives beyond anything we see in American entertainment, though there are undoubtedly women in our great society who live equally on the edge of disaster, hopelessness and criminality. So while Out is brutally bloody and violent, more hard-boiled than almost anything I have ever read, I think it is realistic.

  Natsuo Kirino shows deep insight regarding feminism, male and female psychology, and Japanese society in the late 20th century. She is one hell of a criminal writer and keeps up a relentless pace. Sometimes I could hardly take the sheer amount of gore but I was fascinated and reading as fast as I could. As the friendships between the four women deteriorate following the crime and as one of the women finds herself involved in the Tokyo criminal underworld, it was the psychological aspects of the story that I found the most intriguing. What does getting out actually involve for these women?

 This is dark stuff.  I was put in mind of Patricia Highsmith, Mary Gaitskill, Joyce Carol Oates, Shirley Jackson; female authors who can look the dark underside of female existence straight in the face. The novel is as far as you can get from a feel-good family story. It is probably not the thing for most women readers I know, but it sure is powerful and is as close to horror as I want to get.

(Out is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

MRS DAFFODIL

Mrs Daffodil, Gladys Taber, J P Lippincott Company, 1957, 284 pp

 Back before I invented My Big Fat Reading Project, I was on a quest to read all the fiction in my local library. Crazy, I know. I started out working through all the books authored by anyone whose last name started with A, like Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, from whom I got the idea. But I am easily bored and I had gotten into some author I did not really like, so I moved on. I read the first book I found at the beginning of each letter. That is how I ended up reading Mrs Daffodil. Eventually, because it was recorded in my reading log from 2001, it ended up on the 1957 list of books read for the Big Fat Reading Project.

 Because of the cover, I thought it was going to be a dumb little book, but it was actually charming and humorous. Gladys Taber was a real life author of magazine articles in the 1950s and she turned this experience into a novel. A reviewer I read on Amazon speculated that she got to say things she could not write about in her articles. 

 Mrs Daffodil is a magazine and short story writer who lives with a friend named Kay. I imagined these two women as a sort of harmless American version of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. They live in a house in the country (probably outside of NYC) with a Siamese, a red setter and several other dogs. Mrs Daffodil is always under deadline and stressed out by that, but the two bumble along continuously dieting, hosting weekend visitors, trying to find domestic help and overall being very caring, loving women to each other and their friends.

 I ended up loving it and having lots of laughs. I am a happily married woman and definitely heterosexual but from time to time I think about how much fun it would be to live with a woman friend instead of a man. It would be a whole different set of circumstances. I wonder if there are any modern novels that would compare to Mrs Daffodil. Please let us know in the comments if you know of any.

(Mrs Daffodil is out of print and the lowest price I found on the web for a used copy was $50! It must be some kind of collector's item. I found it of course at the library.)

INTRODUCING...

I haven't had a guest blogger in a long time. Today I am happy to introduce Michael Barron, an up and coming writer who has been commenting on my posts here at Keep The Wisdom. I visited him at his blog and learned that he has written a fantasy novel for Young Adult readers entitled Wilderness. His website, Barron Wilderness, features the first three chapters. I read them and was quite impressed. 

 I invited Michael to write something for my blog and he has sent me a fascinating account of what it was like for him to write his first novel. Welcome Michael!

A few years ago I was driving home from Dover, DE where I bought a birthday present for one of my friends. As I let my mind wander, I glanced to my right at a clump of trees behind a cornfield. There wasn't anything unusual about the sight (there are millions of cornfields in that part of Maryland), but I was struck with the image of a seemingly normal young man slipping out of his girlfriend's house to meet with friends in the woods. These friends would be like family to him but a part of a double life no one else, not even the girlfriend, knew about. For the rest of the drive I thought about this strange young man and tried to figure out his story. As soon as I reached my college's parking lot, I ran inside (so fast that I left my friend's present in the car), grabbed a pen and started writing.

The wonderful thing about rough drafts is all you need to do is just “vomit” your ideas out onto the page without caring how good they are. Seriously, who cares if the characters don't make sense or if the plot is filled with more holes than the car Bonnie and Clyde were shot up in? No one else is EVER going to read it until you're ready for them to. What I learned from Wilderness is: just write and let the story take you where it needs to go. I guarantee that when you finish writing a first chapter a little voice will say “Wait! You need to go back! It isn't perfect yet!” My advice is to gag and hogtie that voice until you write the second draft. Otherwise, you will spend all your time polishing something you will eventually change anyway. The first draft of Wilderness is nothing like the version I am submitting to agents. It was about a thousand pages long, half the characters hadn't been created and the rules of the magical world were confusing. I spent too much time pushing around commas and rearranging sentences when I should have just been writing and discovering the characters. Fortunately, I got wise, plowed my way through and created a rough draft I could later rewrite.

Many writers turn their noses at outlines. There is the attitude that “real writers” just write. I agree with this to a certain extent. The danger of outlines is that a writer won't use them sparingly enough. He or she will spend months (or even years) outlining the story rather than writing it. At the end of the day they will have a very beautiful outline, but when people go into bookstores they want books, not outlines. Then again, jotting down notes can work for some authors. My ideas come to me so rapidly and from so many directions that I can never get them down fast enough. Outlines can be great if you're just jotting down ideas for scenes and character but time spent outlining does not count as time spent writing. Honestly, I didn't even use that many notes until Wilderness' later drafts. By then I had so much material it was impossible to keep it all straight in my head. Making an outline (especially on notecards) can help with revisions because you're rearranging the pieces of the puzzle in front of you as well as in your imagination. I would keep outlining a rough draft to a minimum and save the heavy stuff for the rewrites. Also, never forget the golden rule of outlining: YOU NEVER HAVE TO FOLLOW IT! Just because you've jotted it down doesn't mean you have to include it in the draft.

In a perfect world, I would just tie my manuscript to the talons of an eagle, the bird would fly into the heavens and copies of my novel would rain down all over the world. Unfortunately, getting Wilderness published is going to be much more difficult. I have only just begun submitting the book to agents, but I have spent the past few months preparing. First of all, I created a website where one can view the synopsis along with the first three chapters (see link above). Along with a website I created a “Fans of Wilderness” Facebook page (see link below). The purpose of the Facebook page is to gain as many “friends” as possible for the book. This way I can show it to agents and say “See! A ton of people already know about my novel!” (Feel free to join the group and help out an aspiring author.)

I also learned how to present my book by creating the following pitch:

“Lee is a normal nine-year-old boy...or so he thinks.

“On Fourth of July, a crazy neighbor shoots a coyote outside his house.  As Lee approaches the body, he notices war paint smeared across the animal’s face.  Before the coyote dies, he speaks with a human voice, whispering, "Sister Raven." Lee’s world is blown to pieces.

“Lee discovers that the forest behind his house is a gateway to Mid Country, a world of talking animals and ancient spirits.  There, the lonely boy befriends a warrior raccoon and a girl with a maze of tattoos that tell an ancient story.  He is also hunted by a tribe of demons known as Ashmen.  They were once honorable warriors but became feral beasts  with beautiful faces after selling their souls to the Goddess of Fear.  The Ashmen believe that they can free their mistress from banishment by devouring Lee’s flesh.  

“In our world, Lee’s father abandons the family.  With their money dwindling, the boy and his mother are on the verge of becoming homeless.  Determined to save their house, Lee searches for a treasure hidden in Mid Country’s forbidden territory and in doing so uncovers a conspiracy that goes back to the beginning of time.”

This pitch sums up both the story and spirit of the novel. It describes the main character (Lee), gives us his motives (saving his home), introduces the buddy characters (the raccoon and song) and tells us about his problems (finding the treasure / the Ashmen). Even more importantly it is short. When you are describing your novel to anyone (especially an agent) you don't want to go rambling off on every single subplot. There are several characters and story elements I left out here, but an agent doesn't need to know about them right now. All they need are the characters, the plot, the problem and a cliffhanger that makes them want more.

So that is a (very brief) summary of my adventures writing a novel. While I have just started the submission process (and we all know what kind of road that will be), I am optimistic. With luck, that weird little story that grabbed my imagination while driving home will someday be available for everyone to enjoy. I have started the rough draft of a second novel which is coming along much faster because of all the things I learned from writing the first.

Check out and join Michael's Facebook group: Fans of Wilderness.

I hope you enjoyed Michael's writing story. Of course you can comment here but it would make Michael very happy to hear from you at his website (where you can read his first three chapters) or at his Facebook page.

SNAKEWOMAN OF LITTLE EGYPT

Snakewoman of Little Egypt, Robert Hellenga, Bloomsbury USA, 2010 340 pp

 One of the best things about being a paid reviewer of books is that I find myself reading  amazing books I might otherwise have missed. Reading Snakewoman of Little Egypt was such an experience. And I was so ready for something unique compared to what else I had been reading lately. Sometimes a book has all the elements that I feel make it magically good and Robert Hellenga got that combination: strong female character, snakes (!), varieties of spiritual experience, love of course, and information about things I had formerly known nothing about. 

 My review begins:

"I had not previously read a book by Robert Hellenga, although he has already published five novels, but I was intrigued by the title of his latest. After all, woman's mythical history with snakes stretches back to Genesis and beyond, and I remember reading with great pleasure Marion Zimmer Bradley's Firebrand, in which a snakewoman plays a key role during the Trojan War. But who knew that right now in America we still have fundamentalist Christian sects handling snakes as a method of avoiding hell and reaching heaven?

Sunny, formerly known as Willa Fern Cochrane, was born and raised in the Church of the Burning Bush With Signs Following in southeastern Illinois and married to its most powerful preacher until she got 'backed up on God' and took justice into her own hands..."

 You can read the rest of the review at BookBrowse magazine. Better yet, just read the book. It is really that good and my husband liked it as much as I did, so it has been guy-tested.

 (Snakewoman of Little Egypt is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.

MEMORIES OF A CATHOLIC GIRLHOOD

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Mary McCarthy, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1957, 245 pp

 Mary McCarthy's autobiographical collection of essays originally appeared in "The New Yorker" and "Harper's Bazaar" between 1946 and 1955. For the book she wrote comments on her essays and addressed the perennial question of the veracity of memory. All of this was highly interesting to me since I am writing a memoir myself.

  The McCarthy children, including Mary's three brothers, lost their parents in the flu epidemic of 1918 after an ill-advised move by train from Seattle to Minneapolis during the worst weeks of the epidemic. How would we ever have memoirs to read if young, free-spirited parents did not subject their children to foolish or desperate adventures?

 The author is an example of how a highly intelligent human being overcomes adversity and makes a life for herself, though not without emotional scars. Her family included devout Catholics, Protestants, Jews and the occasional atheist. She attended public schools, convent schools and boarding schools. 

 After a stint with stingy Minneapolis relatives, where the children were practically starved to death, Mary returned to Seattle and lived with her maternal grandparents in a state of over-protection and confused religious beliefs. She became a rebellious, promiscuous feminist until finally settling down to marriage and motherhood, though she never compromised her intellectual pursuits.

 After reading only two of her novels and this memoir, she has become one of my heroines, on a par with Joni Mitchell.

(Memories of a Catholic Girlhood is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE FINKLER QUESTION

The Finkler Question, Howard Jacobson, Bloomsburg USA, 2010, 307 pp

 My review of this year's Booker Prize winner is available for viewing for the next few days by non-subscribers at BookBrowse. I enjoyed it, as I do most of the Booker winners, but it is probably not for everyone. Well, what book is?

 The review begins:

  "There are three good reasons to read The Finkler Question:

• To gain insight into the many views and disparate experiences of Jewish people in the 21st century.
• To experience the almost perfect blend of humor and seriousness in the writing.
• To enjoy a rich story about the human condition that includes friendship, love, religion, ambition, loss, aging and dying."

 To read the rest go here.

 I think that BookBrowse is one of the higher quality on-line book review sites (and not just because I am a reviewer there.) The reviews cover not so much the blockbuster bestsellers but a wide range of books, some of which are a bit more below the radar.  You can sign up for a free trial subscription by going to the home page, but the subscription rate is very reasonable and also makes a great holiday gift. 


(The Finkler Question is available in paperback on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LOSER TAKES ALL

Loser Takes All, Graham Greene, The Viking Press, 1957, 126 pp

 Even Graham Greene takes a shot at the soulless despair of the late 1950s in this silly love story about a lowly middle-aged accountant in a London firm. Mr Bertram is about to be married, for the second time, to a young lighthearted girl he met in a restaurant. He gets summoned to the big boss' office and invited to honeymoon on the man's yacht in the Mediterranean. 

 Of course it all goes wrong and Bertram winds up in the casinos of Monte Carlo trying to use his mathematical powers to beat the house and losing his new bride in the process. The happy ending reads like a Doris Day romantic comedy of the day. (In fact there was a movie in 1956 with Greene writing the screenplay.)

 I know that Greene wrote what he called "entertainments" next to his literary novels to pay the bills and usually they are almost as good but this one was too light for me.

(Loser Takes All is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

JUSTINE

Justine, Lawrence Durrell, E P Dutton & Co, 1957, 253 pp

 I first read Justine when I was in high school. I read it for the sex. I don't think I got much else from it except that it was a tragic love story set in the fascinating city of Alexandria, Egypt. Rereading it was a revelation. Durrell's writing is exquisite though in another way so desultory that I could only read about thirty pages before falling into a deep sleep, no matter the time of day. But the characters!

  Justine herself is a deeply troubled woman who refuses to respond to psychoanalysis. For some reason I respected that. Clea is the sexless or possibly lesbian guardian angel. Balthazar is the mystic and Melissa the phthisic sacrificial lamb. In their "possessive coupling(s)", as Joni Mitchell would say, they are passionate, somewhat frantic and working out their personal histories and destinies. You could say that the story is melodramatic but then so is life when we are not being ironic. Perhaps it was also the melodrama that appealed to me as a teen, the way Twilight appeals to teens today.

 Durrell is on a level with Camus as a writer and deals in the ways of the heart as deeply as Camus dealt with the mind. They are almost polar opposites and so make a very fine pair. I love them both.

 As in much good fiction, the city of Alexandria acts as a character and is in fact accused for a good deal of what happens. Durrell makes its alleyway, shores, dwellings and weather so vivid, I wanted to go there. In fact, Justine is the first volume of what became "The Alexandria Quartet." That means three more visits with these characters and that amazing city.

(Justine is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

CUTTING FOR STONE

Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese, Alfred A Knopf, 2009, 534 pp

 I looked forward to this book for quite a long time. I do love long books but have become wary of them lately because I have such a lot to get through for my memoir research that I get a little nuts when it takes more than a day or two to read one. Thanks to one of my reading groups for selecting Cutting for Stone because now I have read it.

  I must confess that it was not as great as I had been led to believe. All the medical terms and procedures sent me to the dictionary over and over. That's alright. I don't mind learning new things, but it slowed me down just when I wanted to forge ahead in the story.

 Then there was a stylistic problem for me. The tone of the writing was a bit too formal and emotionally restrained, especially since the story contains bottomless wells of emotion existing in almost every character.

 What I did like, very much, was the history of the twin brothers, the setting in Ethiopia, and the mystery of what ever happened to Dr Stone. I was also fascinated by the female characters for their strength and courage, though I thought that Genet was more a victim of her times than the irresponsible and untrustworthy woman portrayed by Verghese. 

 Perhaps I am somewhat old-fashioned (LOL, considering how long I have been reading novels) but I like a big novel to fill my heart as much as my mind. It could be related to the author's birthplace (Ethiopia) and subsequent life, a cultural disconnect, but Cutting for Stone did not have the emotional impact I expected.

(Cutting for Stone is available in paperback on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

GIANTS OF JAZZ

Giants of Jazz, Studs Terkel, Thomas Y Crowell Company, 1957, 189 pp

 Jazz was one of the main musical genres of the 1950s: swing, big band, bop and cool. Studs Terkel started out in radio and got his own show in 1944, playing all styles of music. In 1952, he landed on television with a show called Stud's Place. From there on he developed an interviewing style which he put into a long series of books about various periods of 20th century America. Giants of Jazz was his first book.

  He covers thirteen jazz artists from Louis Armstrong to Billie Holiday to Charlie Parker. Each artist has a chapter combining a life story with quotes from Terkel's interviews. He concentrates on their innovations and achievements; how they overcame race, poverty and changing styles. A musician's hardships are touched on but personal troubles and substance abuse are downplayed.

 The book is a celebration of music and the development of jazz into a unique American music. Studs Terkel revels in the joy and creativity these artists brought to audiences everywhere they went. It is both an educational and uplifting read.

(Giants of Jazz is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

OUR KIND OF TRAITOR

Our Kind of Traitor, John le Carre, The Viking Press, 2010, 306 pp

 The latest novel by John le Carre is getting positive reviews all over the place with sentiments exclaiming that the old le Carre is back and that he has dropped the preaching tone of his last few efforts. Personally, I like it when he preaches to us about the ills of our modern world.

  In Our Kind of Traitor, I felt the master of spy literature was holding back just a tad and I purely hated the way this novel ended. I just felt lost through much of the story, but that could be bcause I do not understand global finance. Not one bit. 

 My take is that this is a gangster-trying-to-go-straight story. Percolating beneath that is the picture of British government being so in the grip of vested interests and greedy politicians that the true traitor lies there. Is that the meaning of the title?

 A Russian gangster, an idealistic young teacher from Oxford, his much more realistic girlfriend, the usual failed spy and the usual rogue spy; all the elements are there but it didn't come together well for me. John le Carre has stumped me before. I remember feeling like I was really missing something in The Little Drummer Girl. My husband liked Our Kind of Traitor just fine and explained some of it to me. 

 If you have read it, liked it and are now laughing up your sleeve about me, please...comment!

(Our Kind of Traitor  is available in hardcover on the New Books Barn at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. It would make a great gift for the male reader(s) in your life.)

THE FLOATING OPERA

The Floating Opera, John Barth, Doubleday & Company, 1967, 252 pp

 The first novel by one of America's most influential post-modern novelists. I was excited and wary about beginning to read this author. No problem; it wasn't a difficult read. I liked it. Of course, his meta-fictional stuff comes later, but even in The Floating Opera there are elements of that style, such as the first person narrator making frequent references to his writing process.

  (A note on the copyright date: Barth first published the book in 1957, making changes suggested by the publisher, especially toward the end of the book. The edition I read, published in 1967, was revised by Barth to restore his original ending. Knowing that, I felt I could include the 1967 version on my 1957 reading list.)

 The narrator, Todd Andrews, is a lawyer with mostly antisocial behaviors. He lives alone in a hotel, has never married though he has a mistress, and cares little for money or public opinion. I can hardly explain why I liked him but I did. I would not like to be his friend, I would certainly never go out with him, but from the distance of a reader I found him a fascinating fellow.

 Throughout the book, he tells his life story including how his best friend's wife came to be his mistress with that friend's knowledge and blessing. He lives in a small Maryland town on the Chesapeake Bay where he was born and raised. Though only in his 30s, he has a rare heart condition from which he could drop dead at any moment. When his is not lawyering, which is most of the time, he engages in his "Inquiries," writing up his questions about life, the answers he discovers and attempting to solve his overall quandary: should he go on living or commit suicide? 

 It is this question which provides suspense; his life story is the plot. Despite all manner of digressions and inward pondering, the writing has a warm intimate style and I was rarely bored or frustrated by this odd tale. I don't know what he did to the end of the story for the first publication but this one was satisfying.

(The Floating Opera is another 1957 book which is out of print and not even available in my local libraries. I got my copy from a used book seller.)

THE UNDERNEATH

The Underneath, Kathi Appelt, Atheneum, 2008, 311 pp

 An old and abused hound dog sings the blues underneath the porch of a sagging cabin in east Texas. His howls attract an abandoned cat about to deliver kittens. Despite his mean drunk of a master, Ranger welcomes the cat and does his best to protect her and her kittens. His best is not good enough.

 Set near the Little Sorrowful Creek, in the bayous of the Sabine River, the animals work out their destinies. The trees, the waters, the weather, a huge alligator and an ancient snake make up the characters of this animal tale. Kathi Appelt also weaves in ancient history and shape shifters, a bit confusing at times but always full of wonder and tension.

 The writing is poetic and atmospheric. The only full human is Gar Face, Ranger's abusive master. He is a perfectly horrid villain. The vocabulary is rather steep for 8 or 9 year olds I think, but the author uses the bigger words many times so once a child looked up or learned the meanings, there are ample chances to get used to the words. But I would rate the book as good for experienced willing readers, probably 10 or above. 

 My nine-year-old granddaughter is currently reading it and is absolutely absorbed in the animals' lives. She has been instructed in how to use a dictionary and how to use the Internet to find pictures of unfamiliar things and places. She does this happily and willingly which may be somewhat unique.

 I can see this being a wonderful read-aloud book in class or at home. It is a story that would get into any child's heart, boy or girl.

(The Underneath is available in paperback on the children's shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE GOD OF WAR

The God of War, Marissa Silver, Simon & Schuster, 2008, 271 pp

 Marisa Silver's second novel made a huge emotional impact on me. I was alternately enthralled and annoyed but by the end I could not recall what had annoyed me. Laurel is a single mom raising two sons in a cramped trailer on the Salton Sea in the late 1970s. The story is told by her older son, twleve-year-old Ares, who chooses to play the god of war in the family.

 Ares is tortured by the conviction that because he dropped his younger brother on his head when Malcolm was a baby, he is responsible for Malcolm's developmental difficulties. As in a Greek tragedy, Ares' guilt drives the story, the incidents and the arc of his life.

 I could relate to Laurel in her extreme determination to live on her own terms. She works as a massage therapist and barely supports her children. She refuses to face Malcolm's troubles, which are either retardation or some form of autism, preferring to see him as merely a child who develops at his own pace, and she flatly rejects any intervention by authorities, social or medical. Ares and Malcolm have different fathers who are long gone.

 Because of their life style, Ares assumes most of the care of his brother, thereby expiating some of his guilt. We are not surprised when things go very wrong, not least because a gun appears early in the tale. I loved the development of each character though not a single one is entirely admirable, just as none of us are. The melding of place, time and character in this novel is an extraordinary feat similar to an expertly cooked meal.

 The Salton Sea, one of those iconic California locations, which fascinates those of us who live here, is as much of a character as Ares or Laurel. I have never visited there but someday I will and I will go with trepidation. It is the perfect setting for a woman like Laurel, whom I simultaneously admired and deplored, because I could have been her.

 In the 70s, many of us went off the grid of middle class life, turning our backs on everything our parents held dear, losing our religion, rejecting Western medicine and mental treatment, tripping down the paths of mysticism, certain that by benign neglect we would raise our children to be free spirits who would inherit the better world we were creating. Reading The God of War was as much an exploration of my own guilt as it was that of Ares' guilt.

 Laurel, Ares and even the unfortunate damaged Malcolm made decisions based on the urge to be free. As in any life such decisions can be life saving and devastating at the same time. Hopefully I have made it somewhat clear how I could be both enthralled and annoyed by this novel. Hopefully I have made you want to read The God of War.

(The God of War is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)