THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS

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The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1951, 216 pp

I first learned about this book through Jo Walton, whose heroine in Among Others read it, among many other books. (Here is a list.) Naturally I then kept coming across the title on blogs, etc. My husband saw me reading it and remembered seeing the movie. (1962, British film.)

The book is short. Pretty good 1950s science fiction. I was struck by the way Wyndham interwove ideas with the plot, but then realized that was the way it was done in most of the 1950s sci fi I have read. Some authors do it better than others; Asimov was the best but Wyndham is not bad.

The triffids are odd plants that can move. Somewhere just before I read the book, I came across an article (probably on the web) about trees that can "walk" by putting down roots ahead of them and letting go of roots behind them. Now I can't remember what they are or where I read it. The wonders of the reading life!

 

Triffids are carnivorous, except they kill people first with a poisonous sting, then eat them when they are fully dead. Technically they are carrion eaters which is actually more gross.

Otherwise The Day of the Triffids is about the aftermath of a planetwide disaster and the ways people figure out where to go from there. It was never exactly clear how the green flashes of light from a meteor shower were connected to the menace of the triffids. Nor was it clear where the triffids came from, though they became a menace when men began to farm them and use one of their byproducts for fuel. 

I see why it became a classic and how it influenced many later sci fi books. If you intend to be or are a writer of science fiction, you must read John Wyndham. But he is more than historically relevant. The Day of the Triffids is a good read.

(The Day of the Triffids is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

NO LONGER AT EASE

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No Longer at Ease, Chinua Achebe, Ivan Oblensky Inc, 1960, 170 pp

Chinua's second novel, following Things Fall Apart, jumps several generations in time. Obi Okonkwo, an Ibo from eastern Nigeria, has returned from university studies in England and takes a position as a civil servant in Lagos.

Obi was the brightest boy from his village and had been granted a scholarship by the Umuafia Progressive Union, a social group that keeps current and former inhabitants of the village connected even after they move to other towns. He is a young man to whom much has been given and much is expected. But it is the mid 1950s and rapid change is the order of things.

Soon enough, despite a salary beyond the wildest dreams of anyone from Umuafia, Obi finds himself short of funds, as he tries to keep up with a higher standard of living. In addition, he is engaged to a young woman who will never by accepted by his family or village because of an ancient curse that haunts her family. Tragedy looms and finally arrives.

At first I missed the powerful story of Things Fall Apart. By the end I realized that it could not be the same. The tragedy is the same: the loss of certainty and the surrender of old tribal values in an effort to mix with the White Man. But the times are so different that Obi mistakenly hopes his modern views and education will see him through.

Thus, it seems the story is more tawdry, less shocking. Not only have native Africans lost their spiritual center, so have the English and indeed much of the world. The horror of colonialism has become the commonplace. Yet Obi's efforts to carry on as an African while trying to assimilate into modern times are just as tragic as the headman's failure in Things Fall Apart. Things have fallen apart further.

(No Longer at Ease is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

AMERICAN RUST

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American Rust, Philipp Meyer, Spiegel & Grau, 2009, 367 pp

Oh my. Oh my. This is a dark depressing novel. I was already depressed when I started it and more so when I finished. A small town near Pittsburgh, PA, in the early years of the 21st century, consists of the people who have remained after the demise of the steel industry in America. All is rundown: the people, the structures, the restaurants, even the police department. It is as though the apocalypse already happened.

Meyer's seamless conjunction of the personal, the political and the sociological does more than any documentary or series of news reports to make the effects of America's loss of manufacturing comprehensible to readers.

 

The protagonists, Isaac English and Billy Poe, are 20-year-olds who have missed the ring that young men must grab in order to make a life as adults. They both have their reasons, which forms the back story. Isaac has a crippled father and a mother dead by her own hand. Billy has a mother full of broken dreams and an unreliable father. 

 

As these two young men get themselves into a world of trouble, as they each try to outrun it, the story builds with unbearable tension. About two thirds of the way through I gave up hope that any sort of redemption or happiness was possible for any single character.

 

I read American Rust because I have meant to read it since it came out. (Philipp Meyer has a new novel, Son, coming out later this month and I wanted to read this one first.) My father worked for US Steel all his adult life until he retired around 1980. My comfortable middle class upbringing and my inheritance were paid for by that corporation. My father's dreams were crushed by it, even though he worked in offices at headquarters in Pittsburgh and then on Wall Street in New York City. I can't ask him now because he has passed from this life, but I wonder if he took early retirement because he saw what was coming.

Another theme in American Rust is the innumerable ways that parents fail their children and are in turn disappointed by them. A hard hit for me because I am dealing with all that in my own life at this time. As painful as it was to read about, I did realize that this theme is ancient; it happens to us all. I also became aware that in times of accelerated change, the generational conflicts are magnified.

This is a novel that obliterates any boundaries between fiction for men versus fiction for women. It is not for the faint of heart, but it is for those of us who care about what is happening to our lives and our country.

(American Rust is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

WOKE UP LONELY

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Woke Up Lonely, Fiona Maazel, Graywolf Press, 2013, 323 pp

The publisher's letter to the reader in the front of my review copy of Woke Up Lonely suggests there are two ways to read the novel: speedily while being propelled by the action or taking one's time to savor Maazel's precision, wit, and prose. In my first reading I attempted the speed method but kept being foiled by the prose. I got to the end feeling supremely annoyed. Who is this Fiona Maazel anyway, I thought, and why is she considered to be so hot?

She tells us the story of Thurlow Dan, founder and leader of Helix, a cult that promises to cure loneliness. The opening pitch in Dan's words:

"Here is something you should know: we are living in an age of pandemic. Of pandemic and paradox. To be more interconnected than ever and yet lonelier than ever. To be almost immortal with what science is doing for us yet plagued with feelings that are actually revising how we operate on a biological level. Want to know what that means? I'll tell you."

Of course, in the way of people who found cults in an effort to solve their own problems, Thurlow Dan is hopelessly disconnected from other people. He deserted his wife and year old infant nine years earlier after being serially unfaithful and has wound up rich, famous, under investigation by the American government for possible acts of terrorism, still in love with his ex-wife, and lonely as hell.

Esme, the ex-wife, is a freelance agent working for Homeland Security. She does her best to raise her daughter Ida in her spare time while secretly trying to save Thurlow from himself. Time is running out though because the cult leader's misguided attempt to test his theories on North Korea's Dear Leader has landed him in some very hot water. The lunatic fringe of his cult harbors terrorist leanings and if Esme doesn't pull off something brilliant, the man she still loves is going down.

My problem was that I did not figure all this out until I had almost finished the book. Due to the author's impressive vocabulary, I had to keep stopping to look up words. Nothing wrong with that; I love words. But I kept losing track of the plot as Maazel's brilliant set pieces, such as the speed dating as procurement method for Helix and the creation of Esme's elaborate disguises and the mother/daughter scenes with Ida, kept flashing like rooms from a fun house. Not to mention that at least six of the main characters each has his or her own plot.

The advance-praise blurbs for Woke Up Lonely left me sputtering with refutation. "I may have bruised ribs from laughing." I didn't remember laughing. Once. "This is a book you need." Why do we need to be told how lonely and disconnected we are? "It leaves your ears, mind and soul ringing for days." Well, actually a few days later I had to admit it did. So I tried the second suggested reading approach. I began again, taking my time, paying attention, letting Fiona Maazel talk to me.

Sure enough, like meeting someone who at first comes across as despicable and later becomes a great friend, the whole thing fell out and I got it. This author writes with the absurdist sense of early Iris Murdoch. She comports herself with the linguistic showmanship of Michael Chabon. Woke Up Lonely is a satirical social critique, a modern day romance, a literary thriller, and a tragedy that as it turns out, is also comedy. In my second reading, I am laughing.

I am not worried about bruising any ribs though. I've come through denial, anger, and bargaining. We are in deep trouble. I am depressed and don't plan on achieving acceptance. In the final scene comes the ultimate mockery of achieving acceptance. Instead, I challenge readers to finish this book and report back.

(Woke Up Lonely is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MAGICIAN OF LUBLIN

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The Magician of Lublin, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Noonday Press, 1960, 243 pp

Yasha Mazur, magician, lover, free spirit in prewar Poland, "could never understand how other people managed to live in one place and spend their entire lives with one woman without becoming melancholy." He had a dutiful and loving Jewish wife in his hometown, but most of the year he traveled the country. A woman in every town, a young female assistant for his act, an industrious agent, all assure Yasha money, variety and freedom from melancholy.

He could open any lock, escape from any enclosure, walk a high wire. His master plan was to escape Poland by converting to Catholicism and marrying one of his lovers. They would move to Italy and he would perform in the capitals of Europe amassing riches and fame.

Singer makes you admire this fellow with his carefree outlook, his allegiance to no particular God, woman, or country. Yasha reminded me a bit of Franz Liszt, the first world famous, touring musician.

But like Liszt, his wanderlust masked the deep melancholy and fractured conscience that was Yasha's true character causing a life of indecision, worry, and depression. The Magician of Lublin is a moral tale about the consequences of rejecting the faith of one's family and the country of one's origin. Or it could be seen as a creative example of the human condition.

Oh the writing! So evocative of location and times. So perceptive with regard to the protagonist, his friends, and the women. It is as if the entire story walks a tightrope and when the inevitable fall comes, everyone falls with this energetic, lovable, inspiring freedom seeker into the pit of darkness and retribution.

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

SOUTH OF THE ANGELS

South of the Angels, Jessamyn West, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1960, 564 pp

I read this book while going through extreme emotional distress due to a family matter. I love Jessamyn West and she is one of those treasures I've discovered while pursuing My Big Fat Reading Project. South of the Angels is her longest book so far. Due to the state I was in it took me over a week to read, but whenever I would let her have my heart and mind, I would come away feeling blessed and healed.

Jessamyn West is about as far from sappy as you can get. She writes about people and families from a wise and wry perspective. Her characters may be fictional but they are so much like real people, with all their graces and faults, that I trust her insights implicitly. She was raised a Quaker in Indiana, then relocated to California, so became known as a Western writer.

The time is just prior to and during the outbreak of World War I. A less-than-upright businessman based in Los Angeles is developing a property south and east of LA in what is now Orange County. He has sold lots to all kinds of people promising sun, irrigation, no frost--a Garden of Eden waiting to be turned into orange groves.

Sylvester Perkins, the developer, is the first character we meet, but his purpose in the story is to be a foil to the settlers of what is called The Tract. These settlers are united only by a common dream: to start a new life away from whatever had made them unhappy so far. Otherwise, each is unique.

Without much of a plot, the first two years on The Tract meander along as these people and families live in tents, build houses, endure water shortages, Santa Ana winds, killing frost and blazing sun. Today this would be a reality TV show like Survivor, but in Jessamyn West's hands it is almost an instruction manual for life. Babies are born, people fall in love, children rebel, men compete. By the end everyone is changed in many ways.

The world abounds with pioneer novels but South of the Angels stood out for me as something special. I wish Ms West were still alive so I could write her a lovely note. Instead, I can post this review and hope that a few more readers discover her and find the peace of mind I did.

(South of the Angels is out of print. It is available from used booksellers. I found a copy in the library.)

THE CHILD BUYER

The Child Buyer, John Hersey, Alfred A Knopf, 1960, 258pp

This was an odd book. John Hersey has a theme in most of his novels: the juxtaposition of individuals with societal/government actions. In this case, a Mr Wissey Jones arrives in a small American town with the intention to literally buy a child. Barry Rudd is that child, 10 years old, from a somewhat poor and uneducated family but showing signs of genius. Mr Jones is a consummate salesman with that ability to ferret out the true objections, fears, and wants of people in order to get said people to agree with what he wants them to do.

Mr Wissey Jones, it turns out, works for a secret United States government department. I have no idea if the story is based in fact and I don't really want to know. The government is looking for young geniuses in order to train them for specific uses related to defending democracy. Jones is authorized to pay significant reimbursement to any family who will turn over a child to him.

What a creepy idea! Especially in a "democracy." Unfortunately Hersey frames the story within a series of hearings by a state senate committee appointed to investigate the case of Mr Jones and Barry. The book is written as the transcript of those hearings. Inventive though this approach may be, it made for some strange reading.

I give Hersey credit for creating a pretty good satire attacking the wacky ideas on education which grew out of the communist scare and the space race as well as the involvement of psychology in American education. I wonder how many people read this book when it was published in 1960.

(The Child Buyer is out of print. It is best found through used book sellers. It was not even in any of my libraries.)

BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK

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Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2012, 267 pp

I enjoyed reading this novel. Ben Fountain won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, was a contender in the Tournament of Books, and had written daily for 18 years before his first book was published. He knows about dreams, struggle, and delayed rewards.

Billy Lynn is one of several novels to come out recently about the war in Iraq. I haven't read any of the others so I can't say it is the best, but it is a good one.

The eight soldiers in this novel are the survivors of a firefight with Iraqui insurgents. Because a Fox News tape of the battle went viral, Bravo Squad became America's most famous heroes of the moment. Due to falling public support for the war, they have been dispatched on a nationwide media "Victory Tour" and for Billy Lynn and his comrades it is a Magical Mystery Tour as surrealistic as anything ever conceived by John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

I can't imagine what this would be like, being feted and fawned over, fed and boozed and drugged, back in the USA with full blown PTSD and knowing all the while that you would return to the war to finish your tour of duty. Yes, you survived but you still stand a 99% chance of being killed.

Ben Fountain imagined it for me. Billy gets to have an early Thanksgiving dinner with his mother and sister, he and Bravo Squad spend a hungover day at the Dallas Cowboys stadium and participate with nearly disastrous results in the halftime show alongside Destiny's Child. Billy, who has a crashing headache all day but can't find a single aspirin, falls in love/lust with a cheerleader. A Hollywood agent has come along on the tour, trying to get a movie deal for the squad, promising untold riches, if it happens, if they live to see it.

Billy Lynn is a 19-year-old Texas native. He is just a guy with no prospects, barely any experience except as a soldier and tries to process what he sees. It is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.

The novel could be called anti-war, anti-American, anti-big business, and I suppose it is. Fountain portrays us as we are and it's not pretty. When the Dixie Chicks protested the war, it ultimately ruined their career. Billy and his buddies are faced with a similar quandary but enough time has passed that Ben Fountain made his career instead.

What a country. What a world. When will we ever learn?

(Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE SAND CHILD

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The Sand Child, Tahar Ben Jeloun, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc, 1987, 165 pp

Although something is always lost in translation, I love reading novels by authors from other countries. Tahar Ben Jeloun is Moroccan and writes in French. His style of storytelling is curvy, almost circular, with repeating motifs and multiple tellers, making it a challenging proposition for all of us in the reading group who chose it.

But it was provocative, poetic writing about a female child whose father decided to claim was a boy. Desperate for a male heir after his wife had presented him with seven daughters, without a single thought about the effects it might have on this child, he just faked it. Those effects were myriad and devastating.

The book encompasses several levels or themes: gender, post-colonial conditions in Morocco, Islamic mores, and storytelling itself. 

As I read, I could feel the grit of the sand, smell the dung and spices of the market place, and reel in the confusion of this unfortunate female as she grows up and grapples with her identity. It was like taking a trip to a foreign land where nothing at all feels American.

THE MOTHERS

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The Mothers, Jennifer Gilmore, Scribner, 2013, 275 pp

There is a new word in the zeitgeist: Fertility. It appears to be a problem aligned to a socioeconomic level.  Middle class women who put off baby making for careers, who rack up stress out in the cold, hard, competitive world of the workplace, then find it hard to conceive and/or carry a baby to term.

The story telling in Jennifer Gilmore's novel about mothers encompasses the ones with children, the pregnant ones, adoptive mothers looking for babies, and birth mothers looking for other mothers to take their babies. What grabbed me by the throat was the voice of Jesse.

Jesse's voice is a raw and naked scream of anger, anxiety, and longing. Because Jesse's mother was so busy flitting around the world working for social justice, Jesse and her sister were mostly raised by an African American nanny. Now approaching 40 and having endured years of fertility treatments and In Vitro Fertilization, she and her husband Ramon have resigned themselves to adoption. The process only gets more complex and nerve wracking as it sends them into new roller coasters of hopes raised and dashed.

Rarely have I read any dialogue of marital fighting that sounds so much like real life. Still more rare is the re-creation in fiction of female emotion as it really and truly feels. You see, we've been quelled, we've been told over and over to calm down. Jesse says to Ramon, "Do not tell me to calm down. A word of advice? Don't tell any woman to calm down. Ever."

Ramon is not a bad guy or a bad husband. He is in there pitching all the way. He has his own hurts on the father side of things. But he is not ever going to be a mother. Jesse is. She will not be denied.

I think The Mothers is not a universal story. It is about an array of particular mothers and their particular experiences. Most of all, it is Jesse's story. There could well be women who would hate this novel. I know for sure there are men who would tell Jesse not only to calm down but also to shut up already.

I read, impelled by this woman's anger, anxiety, and longing. I emerged at the end emotionally ravaged, not convinced that Jesse would be a good mother but certain that she would raise a daughter who had free emotions. We don't find out. The book ends.

(The Mothers is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

BRING UP THE BODIES

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Bring Up The Bodies, Hilary Mantel, Henry Holt and Company, 2012, 410 pp

Just great! Hilary Mantel is hands down my current favorite historical fiction author. In her sequel to Wolf Hall (and her second in a proposed trilogy about Thomas Cromwell) she continues her fascinating study of a man who served Henry VIII, doing most of the king's dirty work for him, and who lived in conflict both internal and external.

This volume concerns the elimination of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. She had also failed to give him a male heir, but worse she was wildly, recklessly adulterous, opening the door to Cromwell when it was time for her to go.

Anyone who claims that Bring Up The Bodies can be read with enjoyment and full understanding without having read Wolf Hall is probably just trying to sell you the book. Not possible!

You need to know Henry VIII in all his megalomaniac obsession with obtaining a male heir. You must be one with Mantel's version of who Thomas Cromwell really was. It is required to have lived with Katherine, the first wife, and Anne Boleyn in her early days as the usurper. Not to mention having the background on the Seymours of Wolf Hall and why they would even agree to put forward the virginal Jane as the next queen.

As Cromwell goes about his work of being the henchman, wending multiple paths between the gossip, self-seeking, and power struggles, I felt his every self doubt and his sense of impending doom. He never loses his cutting edge but knowing the outcome and knowing the stakes takes nothing away from the intrigue, tension, and danger of his machinations.

Waiting for and watching the progression of events that lead to Boleyn's exposure, trial, and final demise is deliciously excruciating. It is Mantel's triumph that she can wring so much drama and insight from what has been recorded history for almost 500 years. She deserves all the acclaim and prizes she has won.

(Bring Up The Bodies has now been released in paperback. It is available also in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

ONION JOHN

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Onion John, Joseph Krumgold, Thomas Y Crowell, 1959, 248 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

 

 

What a difference six years can make, at least in writing for children. Joseph Krumgold won a Newbery Award in 1954 for And Now Miguel, a book written in what I would call the old style of kid lit. In 1960, he won again with Onion John. Despite the somewhat off-putting title and a truly odd dust cover illustration, this middle grade novel is as hip as Beverly Cleary was in her day.

Original dustcover

Andy Rush, Jr is coming of age in a small New Jersey town. His father owns a hardware store where Andy works after school when he isn't running with his gang of friends. The boys are into baseball and roaming the town. The tone is completely late 1950s and makes the story clip along.

Krumgold however is really following the same theme as he did in Miguel: that cusp of childhood dealing with the awareness of adults as people with their own flaws and worries.

Onion John is the community's nickname for a Polish immigrant who lives in a rundown house on the edge of town, barely speaks English, and survives by means of odd jobs and finding stuff at the dump. Andy learns how to understand what Onion John is saying and they become friends. 

In fact, Onion John becomes a hero to Andy. The boy falls under the spell of this man's folk wisdom. Of course, Andy Sr, has big plans for his son and they don't include a weirdo like Onion John. Worse, Andy Sr enlists the whole town in a project to make Onion John into a "normal" guy, with disastrous results.

That is the conflict and Andy must work his way through his loyalties and love for two very different father figures. This is a well told story with great characters and no preaching. I liked Andy's friends as much as I liked Onion John. Actually Onion John rocks, both the man and the book.

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

WHERE'D YOU GO BERNADETTE?

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Where'd You Go Bernadette?, Maria Semple, Little Brown and Company, 2012, 221 pp

 

 

 

A Tournament of Books contender recommended by a friend whose tastes often parallel mine, this is an easy entertaining read that makes humor out of many contemporary foibles but has the offbeat Bernadette, who keeps it from being trite.

The story takes place in Seattle with side trips to LA and Antarctica. Bernadette, who used to be one of only a few famous female architects, suffered a "big, bad thing." She and her Microsoft genius husband are raising a daughter in an odd decrepit "home" that used to be an asylum for disturbed girls. Bernadette is not as bad a mother as the one in The Glass Castle, but I kept thinking of that deranged artist as I read. Bee, the daughter, is precocious and self-sufficient; not surprising given the parents.

I had fun reading it but it faded fast from my memory. Maria Semple has been a successful screenwriter which explains to me why reading her book felt like watching a movie. I don't usually remember movies unless they have a huge impact on me.

The use of documents (emails, faxes, letters, articles, journal entries) is I guess a modern version of the epistolary novel. Semple does it well but it felt somewhat precious or contrived to me.

Actually I liked Bernadette and was kept engaged as her story revealed why she ran away but I felt bad for Bee. She deserved better parents. I suppose most kids do.

To summarized this disjointed review, I had mixed feelings.

(Where'd You Go Bernadette? is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE DISSIDENT

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The Dissident, Nell Freudenberger, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006, 427 pp

This is her first novel. I liked it much better than her second, The Newlyweds. I see now why she got such glowing reviews her first time out and was chosen as one of Granta Magazine's best young novelists.

The writing is excellent: tight, witty yet serious, with a plot that moves and pulls you despite frequent doses of back story.

Yuan Zhao is a young Chinese artist on a one-year residency in Los Angeles. Because of his past links to radical movements in late 20th century China, he is called "the dissident." For reasons not made clear, he is being hosted by a wealthy Los Angeles family, living in their guest room, and teaching a class at their daughter's private school.

The American family is almost a caricature of upper middle class dysfunction except that each family member is so clearly drawn, especially the self-deluded mother and wife. What impressed me even more was the author's authentic grasp of the sections set in China.

Best of all, as I read along, getting more and more involved, it suddenly dawned on me that for Yuan Zhao something quite fishy was going on. By the time I reached the amusing but happy ending I was amazed by the intricate and sure handed way Freudenberger had led me through a maze I hadn't fully recognized I was in before I knew I might have gotten lost.

Great read!

(The Dissident is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

STARSHIP TROOPERS

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Starship Troopers, Robert A Heinlein, G P Putnam's Sons, 1959, 263 pp

Starship Troopers won the Hugo Award in 1960. (Until 1965 when the Nebula Award was created, the Hugo was the only major science fiction award.) I have also learned that a sub-category of sci fi is called military sci fi. This book falls in that category and has a reputation of being Heinlein's most controversial work.

As far as I could tell it is a story in praise of soldiers: their toughness, bravery, and loyalty to each other and to the country, planet or intergalactic entity for which they fight. Heinlein took his experiences in the US Navy and made up a story about a soldier named Rico who trained with and fought for a futuristic military branch called the Mobile Infantry.

These guys wore atomic powered armor and were dropped on enemy planets with orders to wreak as much destruction as possible. The enemy against mankind was an intelligent arachnid species nicknamed the Bugs.

I belong to that much maligned segment of humanity called pacifists. I am staunchly antiwar. My spiritual heroes include Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, etc. I was educated to understand that as Americans, we fight for democracy, we always win, and we have God on our side. As far as I can tell, in any war, each side feels justified by some kind of spiritual belief that they are in the right and should be proud to kill and destroy the enemy for the good of their own portion of mankind. Sounds like insanity to me.

Therefore I pretty much hated this book the whole way through. It is an age-old quandary. If someone or some group of someones is out to conquer or destroy you, what should you do? Is mankind doomed to a tooth and claw existence or do we have abilities which should enable us to rise above such animalistic tendencies and find a more constructive method of resolving differences?

If we spent as much money and sacrificed as much human life as we do on war to create a harmonious existence with each other, I don't see how we could fail. But where is the fun and excitement in that, eh?

Heinlein was a consummate storyteller and a fine writer. I suppose his curse was that he was also a deep thinker but failed himself to find answers. He wrote it all down in his stories and if Starship Troopers was controversial, his next book went beyond controversial to provocative. Within two years, Heinlein won the Hugo Award for Stranger in a Strange Land. I am eagerly anticipating my rereading of one of the hippy manuals I read in my youth.

(Starship Troopers is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HEIDI

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Heidi, Johanna Spyri, published in Switzerland 1880, 243 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

Heidi was one of my most read books as a child. I think our family owned it so I could just pick it up and read it whenever I wanted to. I remember being entranced by the fact that Heidi's aunt made her wear ALL her clothes so there would be nothing to carry on the journey to Grandfather. It was a hot spring day when Heidi made that first climb up the mountain to her grandfather's cabin. I felt sorry for her being so over-dressed but I knew right away that the aunt was a "bad person."

As soon as they got to Grandfather, even though he was thought of as a "bad person," I could tell he was good. It only made the aunt more bad for leaving her niece with someone considered to be dangerous.

There you have the wonder of Johanna Spyri's writing. She didn't come right out and say who was bad, good, or otherwise but showed these qualities by her storytelling. Her heavy religious message did not bother me as a child because it fit right in with what I had been taught. It didn't bother me during this rereading either, even when Clara's grandmother was clearly preaching Christian theology, because it is done with so much love and understanding while doing no one any harm.

I did notice that the first half of the book is more interesting and exciting while the second half has more lessons, as it were, and gets a bit serious. It turns out that Ms Spyri wrote two books: Heidi's Years of Learning and Travel, then Heidi Make Use of What She Has Learned, later combined into one. Those titles hint at the shift in emphasis. I did always like the first half the most, but remember being so happy when everything turned out well for Heidi, Peter, Clara and all the grandparents. 

In any case, I loved it just as much as ever, I cried a few times, and was overjoyed to spend time with someone whom I once considered a friend.

(Heidi can usually be found on the Children's Classics shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore or can be ordered in a variety of versions.)

THE ACCURSED

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The Accursed, Joyce Carol Oates, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2013, 667 pp

Joyce Carol Oates!!! She is a force to be reckoned with. I haven't read her for several years but I grew up in Princeton, NJ. When I learned that her new novel was historical fiction set on and around the campus of the Ivy League University where she has been a professor of creative writing for over 30 years, I knew it was time to revisit both the author and the town.

I first read JCO in the late 1980s. Languishing in Los Angeles, where I was involved in an attempt to "go straight" after years of rebellion and excess, by taking a course in management training, I haunted a used bookstore on Franklin Avenue and picked up Marya: A Life (1986). Plunged into a world of impoverished grit and abuse that shocked my soul, I began to suffer from delusions of being followed by creepy people. I even managed to get mugged one evening. The novel reawakened all my deepest childhood fears.

Over the next decade I made my way through her first eight novels. I became aware of her mixed critical reception, including complaints about her overheated prolixity and the inevitable mockery that results from such relentless productivity. I moved on to other authors but never forgot her ability to take me to those dark places inherent in any human soul.

I am here to tell you that she has not lost her touch. The Accursed chronicles a curse or horror that fell upon the upper crust of Princeton society in 1905-1906. Just beyond the Gilded Age, during which the rise of railroads and steel and coal mining created the most wealth our young country had ever known, the early years of the 20th century saw the stirrings of socialism, muckraking, workers unions and strikes. This novel captures it all.

An array of well-known characters appear: Woodrow Wilson, then President of Princeton University; ex-President of the United States Grover Cleveland; current President Teddy Roosevelt; Upton Sinclair, living just outside of town where he completed The Jungle; Jack London; Mark Twain; and even an individual claiming to be Sherlock Holmes. The main character though is none other than the Devil himself.

The issue addressed is passion in its variegated forms and the manifestations that suppression of passion creates in society: illness, abduction, oppression, abuse, injustice, and madness. All of these roil beneath a veneer of wealth, privilege, religion, and intellectual pursuit amongst the wealthy businessmen and professors and clergy of Princeton, disturbing their families to the point that most are convinced a curse is abroad in the town.

 

Oates speaks through the measured narrative voice of an historian, son of one accursed professor; also through the hysterical journal of a rich matron reduced to invalidism due to an "unspeakable" accident suffered during her honeymoon; and even through Woodrow Wilson's letters to his wife as well as to a love interest. When she is portraying the scenes of violence and degradation stemming from the curse, the voice is unmistakably hers.

 

Not one character escapes the underlying satire wafting through this tale. While the novel masquerades as historical fiction it brings the reader face to face with our hypocrisies, our Puritan heritage, and our cruelties. As I said, Joyce Carol Oates has not lost her touch.

 

I finished The Accursed feeling as ill as some of the characters, as insane as others, and as despairing. There are villains, there are heroes, there is evil and God, but who is who and which is which had confounded me for almost 700 pages. The world we see" is not the world that is. As one of Oates' titles exhorts us, "You Must Remember This."

(The Accursed is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN

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The Forgotten Garden, Kate Morton, Atria, 2009, 549 pp

I am almost ashamed to admit I liked it, but The Forgotten Garden pleased me in many ways. Mostly I fell in love because it put me back into the delicious reading mode of The Secret Garden, one of my most loved books as a young girl. In fact, this piece of women's fiction is The Secret Garden for grown-up females. Frances Hodgeson Burnett even makes a cameo appearance.

The book has everything: an orphan, a mystery, three generations, Australia, an English manor house, romance, and a secret garden, and two awesome heroines. The writing is pretty good, with some odd quirks. Though the plot is predictable she still keeps you guessing until the very end. That end is a long time in coming but I was a happy reader on almost every page.

The accomplishment is that Morton took the elements that made The Secret Garden so captivating to me as a child and that made me a lifelong voracious reader, and adapted them to a contemporary novel. Really she did not miss a trick. 

 

I realized why I like The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield so much, why I love Tana French and even Joyce Carol Oates. All of these authors (and more like Charles Dickens, Charles Frazier, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to give the boys a chance) create a magical brew of storytelling wherein the mundane facts of daily life are imbued with the wonder and somewhat supernatural essence that hides behind the illusion of what we call "real life."

I look for many different experiences when I read but most of all I look for that magical brew.


(The Forgotten Garden is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

BEAUTIFUL RUINS

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Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter, HarperCollins Publishers, 2012, 292 pp

You can read all the reviews and reader comments and blog posts and blurbs, but you never really know about a book until you read it yourself. I was excited to open Beautiful Ruins but my high hopes were gradually but steadily reduced to disappointment.

Too bad because the premise was great: aspiring actress finds herself in the midst of the filming in Rome of  "Cleopatra," a movie that was plagued by the contentious love affair between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, budget overruns, and box office disaster. It was the early 60s and Jess Walter's descriptions of the Italian coast are great.

But description hardly makes a novel. Unfortunately most of Walter's characters are flat. I don't mind a novel that jumps back and forth in time but in Beautiful Ruins the jumps are awkwardly placed. Much of the drama in this tale of life's disappointments is written without originality and did not move my emotions.

A few sections are excellent. His portrayal of Richard Burton shimmers with that actor's power, alcoholism, and self-absorption. A chapter where a washed up rock star tries to make a comeback at a festival in Scotland gets the details, the sordidness, and the exploitation just right. The long-suffering reluctant hero, Pasquale Tursi, a young Italian man in love with two women and with honor, was the character who held the story together and made me keep reading.

As uneven as the shores of Italy's Cinque Terre, the novel has peaks of stark wonder and slimy pools of quite mediocre writing. It kept me off balance and hoping but ultimately left me bruised and tired.

In this year's Tournament of Books, the book was paired against The Song of Achilles and both suffer from similar problems. Beautiful Ruins won that round but fell to Gone Girl in the quarter finals. If I had been the judge of either round Beautiful Ruins would have won both times. Comments anyone?

(Beautiful Ruins is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID

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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson, Random House, 2007, 404 pp

I read Bryson's memoir of growing up in the 1950s as research for my own memoir. As he did in A Walk in the Woods, he had me laughing out loud, long and hard. But the biggest revelation for me was the huge disparity between life as a boy child and life as a girl child during that decade. 

At least from his point of view, boys had much more freedom to roam, they were encouraged to be physical (sports, getting into fights, etc) and daring (trying cigarettes and booze, ditching school.) Emulating superheroes played a huge role in establishing a boy's identity. 

His mother worked outside the home; mine stayed at home being a housewife. His dad was a sports writer and traveled often; my dad was a secret writer but was home every night. Making parallels is always tricky.

I was reminded of the polio scare, how bad it was at the dentist, the things we didn't worry about such as fallout from nuclear testing, food additives and those clouds of DDT spray.

When I returned to my own writing, I had been fairly annihilated. Compared to Bryson's hyperbolic humor, my own recounting sounded serious, perhaps dull. It took a while but as I found my own voice again I also had to admit that for this female, growing up in the 1950s was not that funny.

(The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS

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The Light Between Oceans, M L Stedman, Scribner, 2012, 319 pp

I must say, my reading group picks so far this year have pleased me. This one is clearly women's fiction but was overall a rewarding read addressing heart-wrenching questions about motherhood.

Tom Sherbourne, an Australian WWI veteran, took a post as lighthouse keeper on a remote point in SW Australia. He had emotional wounds from the war so the solitude and required orderliness of his tasks suited him.

One day during his biannual leave, he met Isabel, the bold, rebellious, and only surviving child in a family who lost two sons in the war. Eventually they married and she moved to the lighthouse with him.

Though they were happy together, two miscarriages and a still birth had cast shadows over the marriage. When a small boat washes up carrying a dead man and a living baby, Isabel convinces her husband they should keep the baby, who is the answer to Isabel's prayers. So Tom compromises his moral principles and falsifies the lighthouse records to make his wife happy.

Of course, anyone who commits such treachery, no matter how good the reasons for doing so, must suffer eventually. Tom and Isabel pay in perhaps more ways than are plausible when the baby's real mother appears.

What I found intriguing about the story was the historical event of WWI having caused the loss of so many young men. A side of war not often considered is the pain, especially for mothers, of all those lost sons, not to mention the dearth of available young men to marry. Isabel suffered the loss of her brothers along with her parents. She remained their only living child and I thought she felt compelled to give her parents grandchildren. In her small town, there was not anyone she wanted to marry until Tom came along.

The birth mother of the found baby lost her husband due to war related issues. The baby was all she had left of a man she had loved dearly. Ultimately both women went to extremes over the little girl, producing loads of melodrama and tragedy for many people. I could see how such a result was traceable to the havoc of war.

While these conflicts were drawn out past the point of suspense to weariness for the reader, the novel rings true. Those two mothers had been driven to desperation and so could not find a way to reconcile. I'm not sure the effects on the child were realistic. The bittersweet ending felt less true. Can people really heal from war related familial damage in just one generation?

(The Light Between Oceans is currently available in hardcover on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE PICTUREGOERS

The Picturegoers, David Lodge, MacGibbon and Kee, 1960, 238 pp

The Picturegoers is David Lodge's first novel and it read very much like one. He has continued to release novels for over 40 years, was short-listed twice in the 1980s for the Booker Prize, and always gets respect from British book reviewers. Therefore he is included in My Big Fat Reading Project. Therefore I read his first novel.

The charming aspect of The Picturegoers is its portrayal of the end of an era when everyone went to the movies because there was not yet any television. The movie theater of the novel works, somewhat awkwardly, as a micro-environment for several disparate characters and their stories.

The key character, Mark Underwood, is a self-centered literature student who comes to board with a Catholic family. Mark falls in lust with the family's eldest daughter (a convent-raised 19 year old recently rejected in her desire to become a nun) and pretends to return to the church from which he had lapsed. As the daughter falls in love with Mark and becomes a modern woman, Mark falls back into Catholicism and decides he may become a priest.

I think this rather TV sitcom type plot was meant to be tongue in cheek, but it made me queasy. David Lodge admits as much in his introduction to the 1993 Penguin reissue. So I will continue to read his novels as I move through the decades and see where he went from here.

(The Picturegoers is out of print but the Penguin paperback is available from used book sellers.)

IVYLAND

Ivyland, Miles Klee, OR Books, 2011, 528 pp

It seems that every year the Tournament of Books features one off-beat, somewhat experimental novel by an under known author. Ivyland takes that spot this year.

A sort of post apocalyptic, disjointed, phantasmagorical romp by way of multiple voices, it left me confused and reeling.

At least it is set in New Jersey, where I grew up, so I am familiar in a hazy way with Trenton and the Pine Barrens and the Jersey shore. The characters are mainly teens from broken families but everyone suffers from a Big Pharma created scourge, either economically, emotionally, mentally, or because of a gruesome physical disability. Everyone is also on multiple drugs plus heavy alcohol intake.

So the story is a nightmare, owing much to Kafka, Bob Dylan and television...I could go on but I would only be showing off or feeling more confused. Underlying all the weirdness is a deep, pulsing sadness, festering like a wound not healing properly. By the time I reached the end I felt quite hopeless about the future of anyone or anything.

Did I like Ivyland? Not really. But somehow I kind of respected whatever Miles Klee was trying to do. I would read his next book just to see where he goes from here.

(Ivyland does not appear to be available through independent bookstores, except through the Kobo Reader link at Once Upon A Time Bookstore, but can be obtained on-line from OR Books. I read it as an eBook from Barnes&Noble.)

SERMONS AND SODA WATER

Sermons and Soda Water, John O'Hara, Random House, 1960, 328 pp

O'Hara hit the 1960 bestseller list twice. This collection of three novellas was #10 and was originally released as a boxed set of three volumes. (I found the three volumes at my local library without the box.) I liked these novellas better than any of his novels so far. He curbed his wordiness and made excellent use of his skill with dialogue. They each went down like eating ice cream.

Some male friends from O'Hara's usual haunt of Gibbsville, PA, turn up in each novella so you get a picture of their lives as young people growing older and wiser. The period covers the stock market crash of the 1930s and the years beyond.

The first thing I read by O'Hara was his debut, Hellbox, a short story collection. He had written most of them for The New Yorker and had the sound of a hot new writer on the make. Again it was his snappy dialogue that impressed me. I think he was at his best when he was not taking himself so seriously.

In Sermons and Soda Water, you really get the feel of the 1920s wildness being drowned in the troubles of the Depression and can see what life was like for the middle class in those days. I realized that while his female characters are drawn in ways annoying to me now, they are portraits of how women were then due to how men perceived them.

(Sermons and Soda Water is out of print. Try your local library or used booksellers.)

MAY WE BE FORGIVEN

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May We Be Forgiven, A M Homes, Viking Penguin, 2012, 466 pp

I started out almost hating this book and ended up loving it. A M Homes appears (if you believe everything you read on the Internet) to have a prickly reputation for upsetting people and going out on limbs as a writer. This is the first I have read by her.

She DID upset me for the first long while in the novel. Despicable George, the younger asshole brother, who by the way is the only character who changes not a whit. All the violence, gratuitous to the max. I thought I was in for a slog through our dysfunctional, medicated, materialistic world including horrid kids.

Then there is Harry, the older brother. Such an interestingly complex character who changes big time from indecisive, sexually weird victim to responsible, caring human being. In fact, the degree of change is almost not believable except that A M Homes so competently chronicles his every experience and his inner life through a first person voice without excess of any kind. By the end I was wishing there were more men like him in the world.

Lest I have made it sound like this is merely a sad, heavy story (actually it is), let me assure you that great heaps of absurdity, satire, and laugh out loud moments abound. Did I mention the kids? Yes, she does kids perfectly and they are not wholly horrid.

Instead of a slog, I was treated to a romp through our dysfunctional, medicated, materialistic world which addresses the true questions of our times: what is the meaning of family anyway and how do we recreate it out of the mess we have made?

Out of a list of 16 novels for the 2013 Tournament of Books, I have found six so far that are exceptionally good and May We Be Forgiven is one of them.

(May We Be Forgiven is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

OURSELVES TO KNOW

Ourselves to Know, John O'Hara, Random House, 1960, 408 pp

Either John O'Hara got better as the years went by or I am getting to know him better as an author. This novel earned him the #5 spot of the 1960 bestseller list and I liked it more than his earlier novels.

He works over most of the tropes found in the popular fiction of 1960: sex, psychological insight, homosexuality, and bad women. The main character is one of the richest men in his small eastern Pennsylvania community. He has issues, especially with women. When in his forties, he marries a 19-year-old sex-crazed woman and eventually murders her. (No spoiler: you learn about the murder early in the book.)

Though he kept me turning the pages and took various turns I wasn't expecting, I was bothered because the guy got away with it due to his wealth and connections. Certainly the double standard when it comes to women and sex was in full force in the early 20th century when the story takes place. But it still enrages me to read about it. If he had killed his wife's lover he probably would have been sent to prison, but it was "understandable" that he would murder an unfaithful wife. End of rant.

The psychological portrait of the protagonist was more interesting to me as well as a sort of meta-fictional technique which put the reader into the consciousness of the man telling the story. 

O'Hara claimed that he wrote to record what American life was like before World War II and I suppose he did. At the same time he was obviously keeping up with literary trends and sneaking them into his potboilerish best sellers. He was no Thomas Wolfe or William Faulkner, but he tried hard to make the grade.

(Ourselves to Know is out of print, available at libraries and from used book sellers.)

THE ROUND HOUSE

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The Round House, Louise Erdrich, HarperCollins Publishers, 2012, 317 pp

I wish I could say I have read all of Louise Erdrich's novels. She has written 14 for adults and 6 for children. I've read 3 of the adult novels, one of the children's, and each time I have finished with a sense of fulfillment and of having had some of the mysteries of life made clear. I can't ask for more from an author.

That Erdrich won the National Book Award for The Round House was a wonderful, if somewhat long in coming, acolade. I suppose the award led to the novel being chosen for the Tournament of Books. She has written another masterpiece.

Let's say you are a member of that utterly dispossessed segment of America known these days as Native American. Then let's say you are female, educated, a wife and mother, as well as dedicated to keeping good records of the parentage of all children in your community. I would call such a woman a saint, a rare and vital link of spiritual proportions between the past and the future. Let's say that you were brutally raped and survived due to equal parts chance and bravery.

That is the story of Geraldine Coutts. The Round House is the story of thirteen-year-old Joe Coutts and his quest to solve the crime spurred on by his devotion to his mother. I suppose such a story has been told before in novels, but this is the res. The law does not fully apply there so Joe must go outside the restraints that cripple his father, a tribal judge, in finding any justice for Geraldine. As Bob Dylan says, "To live outside the law you must be honest."

As usual in a Louise Erdrich novel, there are numerous threads, so the story is rich with tribal lore, reservation survival tactics, and intricate webs of family relations and loyalties. All of this plays out in what amounts to another world juxtaposed with contemporary American life.

Joe is one of Erdrich's better creations. You would think she had once been a thirteen-year-old boy. The incessant hunger, the sexual urges and antics, the primal love for his mom, and the bravery of an Indian on the cusp of manhood. It is enough to break your heart. It broke mine, but also filled it with thanks because I too have good sons.

(The Round House is available in hardcover on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. The paperback will be released on 4/13/2013.)

THE DAY I BECAME AN AUTODIDACT

The Day I Became an Autodidact, Kendall Hailey, Delacorte Press, 1988, 278 pp

I consider myself an autodidact (a self-taught person.) I dropped out of college midway and decided to learn what I wanted to learn by reading books. When Kendall Hailey's 1988 memoir came across my radar, I had to check it out.

I whizzed through the first half, delighting in Hailey's open minded parents (her father a playwright, her mother the author of the backlist classic, A Woman of Independent Means.) Along with her younger sister, they led a free-wheeling literary life of opening nights, book signing, and travel.

Kendall started her self education at the age of 16 by reading Will Durant's Life of Greece as well as most of the famous dramatists, philosophers, and historians from antiquity. She then went on to Caesar and Christ, Durant's history of Rome and its empire, then another reading list of ancient Romans. Boy, could I relate to that as I am doing a similar, though less thorough, study.

But about midway, the whole thing bogs down, becomes repetitive and loses its zing. Looking back on the reading experience a week or so later, I can see that the narrative arc went from cocky, self-determination to emotional dithering and then petered out.

In a recent interview on Book Riot, Ms Hailey comes across as breezy and contented, but I can't help thinking that she lost her courage at some point and settled for less than her 16-year-old dreams imagined. I know that happens to many dreamers, myself included, but I was looking for a heroine and didn't find one.

(The Day I Became an Autodidact is out of print. It is best found in libraries and from used book sellers.)