STATION ELEVEN

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Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel, Alfred A Knopf, 2014, 232 pp

When I saw the movie based on Cormac McCarthy's The Road, I decided not to read the book yet. It has been four years now and I still haven't read it though I am a fan of his writing. I read Station Eleven and realized that of all the post-apocalyptic novels out there, this is the one I wanted to read. It is The Road written by a woman.

In saying this I take nothing away from Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, because as far as I am concerned nothing can be taken away from those three novels. Atwood, as always, works on a larger canvas. Emily St John Mandel brings us the intimate details of small personal lives. 

I finished reading Station Eleven about three weeks ago and am slightly embarrassed to say that I don't remember what the title refers to. One of the reasons the book is not horrific is that the virus that obliterated over 90% of humanity was an incident from more than a decade earlier, but the characters are survivors of that pandemic and the setting is made up of the best of what's still around.

Most of the characters are members of a nomadic troupe of actors and musicians who call themselves the Traveling Symphony. If I were a post-apocalyptic survivor, I sure would not want to be stuck in some stinking community raising food and scavenging for whatever is left. I'd want to be roaming from settlement to settlement bringing the magic of theater and music to all the sad starving people.

I'd want my closest companions to be called "the second clarinet" and so on and I would be militant towards anyone who messed with my company. I would possess treasured secret memories of actors and musicians who brought salvation to audiences on any given night back when there was electricity, the internet, cell phones, fuel, hotels, abundant food but most of all art.

So it is for the actors and musicians of the Traveling Symphony. They have their memories which become part of the fabric of this tale. They have fierce loyalties to each other and a sense of purpose for their personal and collective existence. This novel is their story.

I have read and loved each of Emily St John Mandel's novels: Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, and The Lola Quartet. She is a magician who creates spells over her readers by means of characters, language, and a special understanding of all types of artists. She is a one woman trauma unit for victims of horrific events. I want her to have a long successful career as a novelist so I can read each book as it is published.

With Station Eleven she moved from the independent publisher Unbridled Books to the big time of Alfred A Knopf. That move is bringing her the increased recognition she deserves. Knopf better be good to her. I'm already miffed that her book tour does not include an appearance in Los Angeles. But I'm not too worried because a talent like hers could survive anything just as the main character of Station Eleven does.

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

THE CHRONICLE OF SECRET RIVEN

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The Chronicle of Secret Riven, Ronlyn Domingue, Atria Books, 2014, 385 pp

Book Two of The Keeper of Tales trilogy takes place 1000 years after The Mapmaker's War. Secret Riven is the daughter of an ambitious historian and a gifted translator. She is silent as a baby, toddler, and young child, not speaking until she is in second grade.

Her silence is only an outward manifestation of Secret's differences. She can communicate non-verbally with plants and animals. She also suffers from unsettling visions and dreams, many of which leave her either ill or in pain. Ronlyn Domingue has an exceptional ability to make you feel Secret's uniqueness and what it is like for her when she is too young to comprehend what is happening.

"Secret's whole body vibrated with the sound, her being a bell struck with full force. She felt suddenly heavy and strong, as if her body were no longer her own."

The novel's subtitle is An Account of What Preceded the Plague of Silences. Exactly true because the account of Secret's first seventeen years occasionally mentions this plague but by the end of the book the plague is still to come. It did not occur to me until just now that Secret will be especially suited to survive a plague of silences.

In such an eerie story, even more fairytale-like than The Mapmaker's War, every chapter is some degree of strange. A mysterious manuscript sent to Secret's mother to translate causes illness and terrible challenges for both of them. The mother is cold and distant toward her daughter but beloved by the father. A set of myths in an appendix explains the mystical history of Secret's country. She is led into a forest by a red squirrel where an old woman teaches her these myths and provides some much needed mother love. Whenever Secret returns from afternoons in the forest, no time has passed in her world.

The life of this unique and amazing girl is revealed chapter by chapter, year by year, as she grows. In fact, the format is similar to the way I am constructing my memoir. Both mine and Secret's birthdays are in late summer, shortly before a new school year begins, an uncanny coincidence for me.

The pace is slow and dreamy, now and then relieved by incidents between Riven and the country's Prince, who becomes one her best friends. Secret's oddness and psychical suffering are intense, her life unpredictable even as it follows the patterns of daily life, school, and yearly growth. Thus the book contains a never ending tension.

I was made part of this girl's life so deeply and intimately that when the book ended I felt adrift. The conflicts she carried with her for 18 years are by no means resolved. Obviously that will happen in the final volume, still being written according to a recent interview with Domingue, but due to be published next year.

I am fairly sure I will not forget anything about Secret Riven and when I start the next book, her story, her chronicle, will be right there.

(The Chronicle of Secret Riven is available in hardcover and ebook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE STING OF THE DRONE

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The Sting of the Drone, Richard A Clarke, Thomas Dunne Books, 2014, 292 pp

Oh, those reading group members! They get me to read books I would otherwise never pick up. Sometimes I even learn new things.

The Sting of the Drone is one of those right up to the moment thrillers written by an author with years of experience in the United States federal government, giving him loads of credibility. Certainly I have been aware of drones as bits of the news trickle into my consciousness. I am notoriously bad at keeping up with the news, mostly because much of it is bad and also because I find news reporting as a writing genre boring.

But put a current event or two into a novel, as long as the writing is passable, and now I'm happy to learn. Drones, what they can and cannot do, what the military are allowed and not allowed to do with them, what it is like to be a drone pilot: it is all fascinating. I am glad I read this book.

Now when I read in the news that the US could possibly take out the current ISIS leader with a drone instead of raining shock and awe on more Iraqi peoples, I get it. As to whether it is a "better" way to wage war, I am still thinking it over.

(The Sting of the Drone is available in hardcover and compact disc by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE ART OF HEARING HEARTBEATS

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The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, Jan-Philipp Sendker, Other Press, 2006, (translated from the German by Kevin Wiliarty, published in Germany in 2002), 238 pp.

This was a reading group pick. From the blurbs and reviews I saw I expected an overly sentimental love story. It is an unusual love story and is "poignant and inspirational" as the cover blurb says. In fact, it was way too sentimental for most of the reading group but not for me.

I guess I am a romantic. I do believe in love even though I have learned that love can bring more hurt and disappointment than anything else in life. I loved this book.

The love between the two main characters, a blind young man and a handicapped young woman, began in Burma in the 1950s when it was still called Burma. The two are separated by events beyond their control and the young man ends up in America living an entirely different life.

Years later the story of the two lovers is told by an elderly Burmese man who presents for a Western reader insight into the culture, beliefs, habits, and views about life in a remote village of this ancient society. The combination of the incredible connection between the lovers and their unique culture created a beautiful and moving tale. 

How good and deep and magical can true love be? This book told me how. I know it sounds corny but I feel I learned how to create a better love with my husband than I had before reading The Art of Hearing Heartbeats.

Favorite quotes:

"Life is a gift full of riddles in which suffering and happiness are inextricably intertwined. Any attempt to have one without the other (is) simply bound to fail."

"...in some cases the smallest human unit was two rather than one."

 

 

(The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE THIEF AND THE DOGS

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The Thief and the Dogs, Naguib Mahfouz, American University in Cairo Press, Egypt, 1984, (published in Arabic in 1961), 158 pp

I haven't read Mahfouz since I was working on my 1959 reading list a couple years ago and read Children of the Alley, an allegorical fable about man's inability to solve the problems of life. That book was a change from the realism of Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy.

The Thief and the Dogs represents another transition for the author: an impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness style and an economy of language.

A man is released from prison after four years. His trial and sentence also lost him his wife and child. A former friend had betrayed the man, testified against him, and stole away the wife and child.

In attempting to reintegrate into society and recover his family, the man only falls upon bad luck and rejection, until finally he descends into despair and madness.

I sensed echos of Camus and Dostoevsky as I read. The translation is excellent but also I think Mahfouz's wide reading of literature from around the world had a large influence on these changes in his novels. Reading nerd that I am, I get excited about things like that.

(The Thief and the Dogs is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

SEPTEMBER READING GROUP UPDATE

September is already a week old. Sorry I am late. But with the evil hot weather we have been having I can't wait for this month to be over. Whine!

Here is the line-up for my reading groups in September:

New Book Club:

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Once Upon A Time Adult Reading Group:

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One Book At A Time:

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Tiny Book Group:

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Girly Book Club:

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A reminder: If you live in the Los Angeles area and are interested in attending any of these reading groups, either this month or later on, leave a comment and I will get you connected.

A request: If you have discussed any of these books in a reading group I would love to hear how it went. Please leave a comment!

MOOD INDIGO

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Mood Indigo, Boris Vian, Gallimand, Paris, 1947 (translated from the French by Stanely Chapman, published by Rapp & Carroll Ltd, London, 1967), 214 pp

Somewhere on the interwebs I heard about this book and that it had been made into a movie to be released in July. I watched a trailer and was completely seduced. It stars Audrey Tatou, whom I adore.

Boris Vian was a multi-talented French fellow. He wrote novels, poetry, and plays. He played jazz, acted, and invented stuff. He was friends with Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean Paul Sartre. He translated two of Raymond Chandler's novels into French.

He published Mood Indigo in 1947, the year I was born. Its title in French was L'Ecume des Jours which literally translated means The Foam of Days, but its first translator called it Froth on the Daydream. As with any deeply imaginative work, all three titles fit. When Michel Gondry made his film adaptation in 2013 (there have been a French movie in 1968 and a Japanese film in 2001) the title was changed to "Mood Indigo" after a song by Duke Ellington featured in the movie. 

Of course, being French, it is a love story and is full of quirky characters, feverish creativity, puns, and melancholy. A mash up of sci fi and magical realism permeates the book and is fully captured in the film.

I started the book, got about 100 pages in, and then saw the movie. I don't usually do that but it worked well in this case. The end of the story is so different from the beginning and I totally did not see it coming. Somehow watching this transformation on a big screen with the colors, the music, the actors, made the rest of the book even more amazing to me.

If you enjoy the French romantic comedy/tragedy mode, I recommend both the book and the movie and assure you it doesn't matter which you consume first.

(Mood Indigo is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

CASE HISTORIES

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Case Histories, Kate Atkinson, Little Brown and Company, 2004, 310 pp

This was a reread. A house guest left paperbacks of all four Jackson Brody mysteries in my office when she departed last August because she could not fit them in her luggage. My husband was out of books to read and picked up Case Histories. He kept exclaiming about how good, funny, and well-written it was. (He had just finished Code Name Verity, described by a blurb on the back cover as "fiendishly plotted.") As he read Atkinson's book he could be heard muttering, "Fiendishly plotted."

So I reread it on a whim and because I did not remember liking it that much, I wanted to see what so impressed my husband. He is a rather picky reader. 

I liked it better this time. Having also read Life After Life, I now have a fixed idea that Atkinson specializes in intricate plots though "fiendish" is too much praise in my opinion.

I still lost track of who was who and had to look back to earlier chapters as I read. Luckily it was a paperback and not an eBook. I still didn't care that much by the end who committed which crimes. I still think Atkinson might be too clever by half. But I was entertained, if not quite as much as my husband. The author clearly entertains herself as she writes and that gives a certain something to the reading experience.

Husband read three of the series in a row and then burned out. I may read the next one someday but not right away. We tried having a mini-reading group discussion but decided what suits us better is to discuss as we go when one of us reads a book the other has read.

 

 

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

BY BLOOD

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By Blood, Ellen Ullman, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2012, 378 pp

I have wanted to read this since it came out two years ago. It got picked from my list of suggestions by one of my reading groups and most of us liked the intricate plot, though a couple readers found too many improbabilities and one took issue with some of the Holocaust facts.

The setting is San Francisco in the 1970s. The subject matter is closed adoption, identity due to family influence vs lack of identity due to being adopted. Psychiatry, lesbian relationships, the Holocaust and Israel, and hardly a single balanced or likable character all added up to an ambitious mix. I could not put it down.

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

AMERICANAH

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Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alfred A Knopf, 2013, 588 pp

I am so behind on writing up the books I have read lately and the task of getting caught up is almost overwhelming. The bookends of discomfort in my life: deadlines and backlogs. My solution is to write one short review a day.

I loved Americanah. It is a love story for our modern transient world. It is a look into the heart of a woman whom Roxanne Gay would call a bad feminist. It is one of the most intelligent pieces of writing about racism I have read. Ms Adichie is right up there with James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Toni Morrison on that topic.

If you are a Nigerian-born person and go to live in America, you are called an Americanah. If you are an American-born person and read novels set in African countries, could you be called an Africanah reader?

I highly recommend reading novels by authors who were born and raised in African countries. Honestly, the news media can only grasp so much.

(Americanah is currently available in paperback on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. It is also available in other formats by order.

THE IVY TREE

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The Ivy Tree, Mary Stewart, William Morrow & Company, 1961, 320 pp

This was Mary Stewart's sixth novel, but the fourth I have read. I skipped her first two. I had some problems reading it.

I started the book soon after I got home from the hospital in May. (And I promise, this is the last book connected with my illness, so I shall say no more about that after this.) My concentration was very poor and I could not figure out what was going on in the story. My attention would wander after a few paragraphs so I gave up.

Then by chance I discovered Mary Stewart had died on May 9, at the age of 97, peacefully in her bed, at home in Scotland. I'm sure there is no connection but it was a bit creepy because May 9 was the day I got sick. In reading her obituaries in the British papers, I learned all kinds of interesting facts about her life. I also read a rare interview she gave in 1989 and gained more insight into her writing.

So I decided to begin again with The Ivy Tree in July and made it to the end in just a few days but still did not like it much. As was usual for her at that point in her career, it is a romance though you don't learn about the love story connected with the main character until the latter part of the book. At first it seems to be almost crime fiction as a man, his sister and the main character collude in a plot to inherit a dying man's property. For sure there is a mystery surrounding the female main character.

What I think is that Mary Stewart decided to up her game and write a more literary book than her previous mystery/romances. She about doubled the amount of words describing the surroundings compared to those earlier books. While it is consummate descriptive writing, it kept interrupting the flow of the plot. Her efforts did not all work together smoothly and she lost the page-turning knack she'd had. Her signature final plot twist was still there however!

After reading the above mentioned interview, I knew that she was not a person to rest on her laurels and she never followed the advice of her publisher as to what she ought to write. I have to admire that. I wonder what she will do next.

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

THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE

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The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, Teddy Wayne, Free Press, 2013, 304 pp

Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be pop stars. Unless perhaps you can be their manager. Jonny Valentine is 11 going on 12. He is in the second year of mega-fame as a tween pop idol. Think Justin Bieber. His single mother, abandoned by his father when he was a toddler, is his manager. For an unreliable narrator, he is pretty savvy, but there are some things an 11-year-old boy just can't figure out.

I read the book because of my long and ambivalent relationship with the music business. It's a manual on how pop stars are created and maintained. It also translates those stories we all pretend we don't read in People Magazine and the tabloids into what really goes on when two stars go on a date or end a romantic relationship, get a bad concert review, etc.

The book is wildly entertaining even while it breaks your heart every time you remember that Jonny is still shy of his 12th birthday. As we follow him on a multiple city tour and learn how he has to sneak around to even send an email, how lonely he is, how little choice he has over what he eats, and on and on.

If you want to maintain your illusions about celebrity in the 21st century, do NOT read this book. I think it belongs in an indestructible box of books we can save and all read after the apocalypse, as we rub our heads and say, "What were we thinking?"

(The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

AUGUST READING GROUP UPDATE

Somehow it is already August. At this very moment in Los Angeles, it is cloudy with a cool breeze. I am not fooled. It will be hot again any minute. I think the above picture looks cool and refreshing though.

Apparently I still can't get enough of discussing books with readers in person. I have joined another group. Crazy I know but though I am on Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger, I still like my social networking to happen with actual live people where possible.

So here are the books I will be discussing with actual live people this month:

New Book Club:

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Tina's Group:

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Once Upon A Time Adult Fiction Group:

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One Book At A Time:

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Bookie Babes:

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LA Girly Book Club:

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Quite a wide variety of books wouldn't you say? Which ones have you read and/or discussed with a group?

BLEEDING KANSAS

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Bleeding Kansas, Sara Paretsky, G P Putnam's Sons, 2008, 431 pp

The novel is not a V I Warshawski book but I read it now because I am going through Sara Paretsky's books in the order in which she published them. The only other non-Warshawski novel so far was Ghost Country but that one was set in Chicago, as are all the Warshwskis. This is a stand-alone set in Kansas.

I guess because of the title I thought it would be about the bloody conflict over slavery, John Brown, etc. Since I read The Good Lord Bird earlier this year, I figured that would be fine. 

Actually the story, though it does take place in Kansas, is set in the very early years of the 21st century, shortly after 9/11 and during the war in Iraq. Sara Paretsky grew up in Kansas, so her sense of place is acute and her experiences with Kansans shows in her characters.

Anyone familiar with her work knows that the author is a longtime liberal. As she says in her introduction, she was raised on the Kansas Territory history of anti-slavery that earned it the "Bleeding Kansas" epithet. She feels she shares a heritage of resistance against injustice. In the novel she also reveals a sharp wit.

Two farm families who histories have intertwined for generations and who have managed to co-exist on neighboring farms have finally come into conflict due to widening political differences. The Schapens are fundamentalist right wingers while the Grelliers are liberal. After the Grelliers lose a son in Iraq and a Schapen son is discovered hiding certain misdeeds behind his grandmother's fundamentalist reputation, 16 year olds Lara Grellier and Robbie Schapen progress from friends to being in a relationship. Confrontations arise and emotions are stirred up to monstrous proportions leading to a sobering climax. 

It is in some ways quite a melodramatic story but Paretsky keeps a firm hand on all the characters, including a Wiccan and an alcoholic aging female hippie, as well as on the incendiary incidents. The result is a fast paced read that sheds both light and humor on the divisive political and religious elements in our society as they play out in everyday life.

I was nicely surprised though I would recommend Bleeding Kansas to my liberal friends and relatives while keeping it out of the hands of conservative types. They don't seem to like being laughed at so probably would not get the humor.

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

SOUTHLAND

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Southland, Nina Revoyr, Akashic Books, 2003, 348 pp

Several months back the World's Smallest Reading Group gained a third member who renamed it the Tiny Book Club. Because all three of us have come to California fairly recently, ie since the 1990s, we decided to read some fiction set in our adopted state. Southland was the perfect novel to begin our new project.

The story ranges from mid WWII, when Frank Sakai was sent with his family to the Japanese internment camp of Manzanar at the age of 15, up to 1994, the year Frank died. We learn Frank's story through the eyes of his granddaughter Jackie Ishida, a third year law school student, who is helping her aunt carry out Frank's will. In the course of learning about this man who was beloved to her, Jackie finds herself and grows from an emotionally frozen young woman into someone capable of opening up to others and to love.

This is not a mushy love story though. It is well done historical fiction and I learned about the origins of the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles where Frank grew up and lived for all of his life. The area is now pretty much a ghetto. Originally a rural area where inhabitants grew wheat and barley and hunted rabbits and squirrels, it was called Angeles Mesa. Those inhabitants were Blacks from the southern states and Japanese immigrants, living side by side in relative harmony. News to me!

Then came World War II, the camps for the Japanese, the postwar industrial and economic growth of Los Angeles, the Watts riots in the 1960s, and the destruction, fires, and racial tensions that were called the Rodney King riots in the early 1990s. Those second riots occurred within a year of my relocation to LA.

Through all these changes, Frank lived in the Crenshaw district, worked, owned a corner store, and had hardly an enemy. He also loved, made the mistakes of a young man, and paid dearly for them. As Jackie penetrates some of the mysteries of Frank's life and of her own heritage, she gets drawn into solving a murder that took place in Frank's store during the Watts riots. 

It is a great read and though the author juggles several story lines and time periods, not to mention the racial and cultural tensions of those times, it never felt like she had overloaded the story. In fact, the story of Los Angeles is a loaded one, far more complex than its Tinsel Town image, and therefore far more interesting.

(Southland is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LIE LAY LAIN

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Lie Lay Lain, Bryn Greenwood, Stairway Press, 2014, 350 pp

Publisher's Summary:  

Jennifer has a great job and a go-getter fiancé. She’s on track for success, until she witnesses a fatal hit-and-run. Mistaking Jennifer for someone else, the dying victim extracts an impossible promise. Jennifer’s fiancé wants her to forget the whole incident, but when she closes her eyes, she can still see the bloody face of the woman who asked for her help.

Olivia is in a rut. Burdened with caring for her brain-damaged brother and already feeling like a spinster at 27, she’s desperate to escape. In a moment of weakness, she tells a lie that draws an unsuspecting paramedic into her life. As she struggles to expiate the lie, a horrible act of violence will test her resolve to be honest.

 

Where Jennifer’s promise and Olivia’s lie intersect, their lives begin to unravel.

 

My review:

I won Bryn Greenwood's second novel by entering a contest on her blog. I have never in my life won anything in this type of contest. Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes, the lottery, even a door prize. Nope. Never. I tried to convey to Ms Greenwood how momentous this was but I'm not sure she got it.

My copy arrived sometime in early May just as I was struck down by the virus that put me in the hospital. The deal on winning the book was I agreed to write an honest review and put it on Goodreads.

Lie Lay Lain features a young church secretary, Olivia. She has plenty of problems in her life but is basically a decent person, a prerequisite for the role of church secretary. My mom was our church secretary for a while and she was one of the most decent people I've known. I guess she passed some of that on to me, because I wrote a note to Bryn explaining my situation and she, very decently, forgave me for my delay in writing the review.

To continue the decent and honest theme, I have to say that I loved Bryn Greenwood's first novel, Last Will but I only liked Lie Lay Lain. 

One of her strongest talents as a novelist is the way she creates characters who feel true, like ordinary everyday people you might know. Olivia and her antagonist Jennifer are young women who suffer from a tendency to avoid the truth in uncomfortable situations, especially with overbearing men. Both are extremely capable women as well as hard workers. They get themselves in sticky situations, even with each other, but you care about their fates.

Possibly because the story is so rife with issues (racism, military veterans, foster care, mental illness, religion, and truth) I felt the pace was too slow at times. The issues provided more action than the characters and somewhere in the middle of the novel, it began to seem too long.

I liked the way Greenwood handled the issues and for a book with so many scenes in church, it never had an overly Christian message. The characters and dialogue get high marks but she let me down on the plot.

One more thing. Some reviewers made derogatory comments on the sex writing. I thought it was good, realistic, even erotic at times. Basically, I will always read novels by this author, I will probably always like them, and sometimes I will love them.

(Lie Lay Lain is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MOONFLOWER VINE

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The Moonflower Vine, Jetta Carleton, Simon and Schuster Inc, 1962, 318 pp

This novel was a reading group pick and I loved it. It is completely American heartland family fiction with feisty daughters, a dad who is imperfect, and a long-suffering but wise mother.

The writing is wonderful and fits the story perfectly. It reminded me of Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows in the way it investigates the flaws of each family member. While it might feel old fashioned to a young woman reading it today, being set in the first half of the 20th century, I think Jetta Carleton paints an accurate picture of life for an American housewife living then in a rural area.

The author herself lived an interesting life running a small publishing house with her husband. She was my mother's age, had a master's degree, and worked in radio and television when that was an exotic career for a woman. The Moonflower Vine was her only published novel.

When I picked up a copy from the library it looked familiar. I realized that we carried the book on our "Books You Always Wanted to Read" shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore when I worked there. In addition, Jane Smiley included it in the list of "A Hundred Novels" that wraps up her unique take on being a novelist: 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. Smiley writes brief reviews of each of those hundred novels and her three pages on The Moonflower Vine are typical brilliant Jane Smiley criticism. She says, 

"Jetta Carlson wrote only this novel, which appears to be autobiographical, at least in part, but Carleton's style is so dense and precise and her method of imagining the inner lives of each character so daring that she seems to have been unconstrained by fears either of remembering things wrongly or of offending her relatives." (page 306 in the hardcover edition)

Smiley also wrote the foreward to the 2009 Harper Perennial reprint of The Moonflower Vine, and positions the novel at the immediate forefront of the women's movement, a year before Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. 1962 was that pivotal year and Smiley points out that Ms Carleton "managed to write her novel in a nonpolitical way; her subject matter has become political in spite of her efforts."

The appeal of The Moonflower Vine to me was exactly as Jane Smiley indicated. In 1962 we did not yet know that women's lives were about to undergo enormous upheaval but somehow we felt the need for it. Four headstrong daughters working out their romantic and professional destinies portrayed amidst the rural magic of Missouri feels like the perfect fictional format to tell the truth about women's lives in 1962 and beyond.

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

THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI

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The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker, HarperCollins, 2013, 484 pp

I have wanted to read this novel since I first learned of it last year. My latest strategy with books I never seem to get to is to convince one of my reading groups to pick it. That is what I did with this one and it was a great read.

I became fascinated by golems when I read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Now I know more about them than I did before; for instance a golem is a beast of burden completely loyal to its master and would do anything to protect that master. Also, golems are prone to running amok.

While a golem is a Jewish supernatural creature made of mud, a jinni is an Arabian supernatural creature composed of flame capable of both assuming human or animal form and dwelling in inanimate objects such as lamps. Delightful twists in this story include the golem Chava being female and falling in love (as much as a clay woman can) with the jinni Ahmad. The only thing these two have in common are their supernatural status.

The Golem and the Jinni is a love story with a mystery embedded in it. Chava and Ahmad live in  1899 New York City neighborhoods of Jewish and Syrian immigrants. Chava has lost her master and thus is prey to the unspoken needs and desires of all humans while Ahmad has recently been freed from a vessel in which he had been trapped by an evil master centuries ago.

 

It is all wonderfully improbable including Chava and Ahmad themselves. Because the assumption that magic is the main force runs beneath the story, I was comfortable with unlikely occurrences and characters who challenge logic. My only quibble is that the golem and the jinni do not meet until almost halfway through the book and eventually I became impatient.

The end was so unexpected and lovely it mollified me completely. In fact Ms Wecker gave me the key to happy relationships in the next to the last paragraph, making sense of my marriage and most of my friendships.

(The Golem and the Jinni is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE BLAZING WORLD

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The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt, Simon & Schuster, 2014, 376 pp

For quite some years I have had a short list of favorite authors comprised of only three: Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, and Barbara Kingsolver. Yes, they are all female and I love each one for different reasons that are hard to articulate. I have read every single novel written by my top three so one of these days I am going to make a sub list of the rest of the female authors I love. Siri Hustvedt will be on it.

She has published six novels, of which I have read three: What I Loved, The Summer Without Men, and now The Blazing World. In my estimation she creates something quite different each time and the only reason I haven't read the other three novels is that reading her is a large investment of mental and emotional energy. For a good time call another writer but if you want to be seduced into exploring your own psyche, if you want to ponder life's mysteries, if you enjoy considering how life and art converge, read Siri Hustvedt.

The Blazing World was her most challenging novel yet for me. Harriet Burden, artist, wife, mother, widow, possesses the talent, intellect, and drive that often lead to wild success. Her husband had all the success however, as an art dealer. He was able to give Harriet wealth but not artistic representation, so she languished as mother of their children and hostess to his social life.

OK, so this is an oft told tale, but once the man dies she comes blazing forth, energized by all her anger, knowledge, and freedom, and creates a dastardly experiment: she has a man pose as the artist for her creations. Suddenly the critical acclaim of the art world is hers, the popularity, positive reviews, all that an artist can hope for. Except no one knows she is the artist.

She repeats her feat twice more but the third time she meets her match and is betrayed on several levels. The challenge for the reader lies partly in the construction of the novel: a male scholar poses as the editor of a collection made up of excerpts from Burden's journals, interviews with her two adult children and friends and cohorts, reviews of her work, etc.

Once you get going it works like a novel should, revealing story and characters and you get a psychological study of the artist herself as well as several others. You must however also wrap your wits around numerous philosophers including Soren Kierkegaard, the psychology of creativity, and the language of art criticism not to mention Harriet's musings on the literature she devours.

BUT...if you are a woman with a talent or skill and have experienced what happens when you take that talent or skill into the world of commerce, then you know deep in your soul that it is still a man's world and the subtle devices by which you can be passed over, invalidated, mocked, in other words suppressed, are myriad. The Blazing World then becomes satisfying, liberating, therapeutic, and a whole lot of a rare type of fun.

Check out this interview with Siri Hustvedt for more insight into the novel.

(The Blazing World is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. The paperback edition will be released in October.)

JULY READING GROUP UPDATE

I wish we could have summer reading groups at the beach! This month only three of my groups are meeting due to vacations, etc. Good for me because I have challenged myself to finish reading the remaining books on the 1961 list for My Big Fat Reading Project. 

Here is the short list of reading group books for July:

Once Upon A Time Adult Fiction Group:

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One Book At A Time:

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Bookie Babes:

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Has anyone else got a big summer reading plan? Or a small one? Where do you like to read in the summer?

THE ORCHARDIST

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The Orchardist, Amanda Coplin, HarperCollins, 2012, 426 pp

The Orchardist and I have a strange history. The book came to me months ago via my niece who got it from her mom, my sister. Then it was chosen for one of my reading groups in May. I started reading it the day I fell ill and read it off and on between naps, read it while in the hospital, and finished it the day after I got home. Much of that time, I was medicated and tired, fearing for my life, then in the foggy state of convalescence. 

It is essentially a deeply sad story. People run away, are abused, die, but other people grieve, love, nurture, and try to do right. I suspect that my state of mind and precarious health had a lot to do with my perception of the book. On some of those days, I could not bear to read it. The slow pace of the story matched my own and I could pick it up after a day or a nap and just be right there again.

The prose is incredibly beautiful. The rural Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th century is described so vividly, I think a reader who had never been there would recognize it on a first visit. The characters are each some unique variation on rugged individual and Ms Coplin evokes their sorrows, their moments of accomplishment, their connections and divisions, as well as John Steinbeck or Wallace Stegner or Marianne Wiggins or Jane Smiley. This is her first novel!

I read the final 100 pages on that first full day at home from the hospital. I had no energy, was weak and dizzy, and felt I needed to get the orchardist and his weird family out of my mind so I could concentrate on getting well. Of course that didn't happen. I did get well several weeks later but the book with its haunting tone of regret and loss seemed to prove, even more than my own experience did, that human beings can survive almost anything, even recover, but none of it leaves our minds.

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

THIS IS THE STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE

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This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett, HarperCollins, 2013, 284 pp

I do not usually read essay collections and that is what this book is. But I was going to see Ann Patchett speak in Santa Barbara for which I had already bought a ticket and had gas plus restaurant meals to cover. Why not splurge on an ebook?

It was not a splurge. It was a necessity! I have read and loved four of Ann Patchett's six novels. I adore her for opening an independent bookstore in Nashville, TN. Her approach to life and to fiction speaks to me. She is basically a kind and hopeful person but not perfect, not mushy, and she admits it. Both the book and her talk showed how she became the person she is.

The talk: she did not read excerpts from This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Author events where the writer reads from his or her latest book bore me to death. She spoke seemingly off the top of her head as she walked about on the edge of the stage. There was a podium but she never stood behind it once. It was like she was making up a rambling story full of many events, many emotions, humor and even suspense. By the end, I realized it was the story of how her new essay collection came to be.

The collection itself is as entertaining as her talk. How she became a novelist, how she got out of a bad marriage by making divorce a sacrament, how she integrated both a sad confusing childhood and a Catholic education into a happy successful life, and more.

Now that I think of it, I have read essay collections by some of my favorite authors: Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Sara Paretsky come to mind. Apparently if someone can write well, they write essays well.

(This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

A NEW LIFE

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A New Life, Bernard Malamud, Farrar Strauss and Cudahy, 1961, 367 pp

Having now read the first three of Bernard Malamud's eight novels, I am less than halfway to knowing him as a novelist. Already I have developed a strong affinity for him. He is drawn to creating stories of how men acquire wisdom through suffering, also a major concern of my father's, and you could say I was raised within a Christian interpretation of that theme. Malamud's was a Jewish viewpoint but I have been surrounded by Jewish people all of my life. It all adds up to feeling comfortable with Malamud.

Not that his protagonists are ever comfortable. They suffer, they have a lack of luck in life and a tendency to dither about most things. S Levin, a thirty year old teacher from New York City with a past soiled by excessive drinking, has been hired as an instructor at a small private college in the Northwest.

Levin sees the new job as a chance to start over and make something of his life. Though he has given up alcohol, he still harbors the traits that drove him to drink. Before long he has made enemies on campus and fallen into a relationship with the wife of his immediate superior.

The sense of impending doom begins in Chapter One and continues up to Levin's decisions and actions in the final chapter. Since the reader does not know the outcome of those decisions and actions, I felt he was most likely still doomed. Malamud's particular genius is to keep the reader hoping for Levin's success despite every wrong move he makes. Exquisitely torturous, as any good novel should be, but so close to the human condition where now and then a guy gets a break.

I have read a good share of campus novels, of which A New Life is one. A college or university setting provides a good microcosm and I suspect Malamud had read some campus novels himself because he covers the major tropes of professional conflict, intellectual competition, town vs gown, and the insularity that leads to immorality amongst the professors, students, and locals. 

He covers a broader array of life than he did in The Natural or The Assistant. That may be because of the woods and fields surrounding his fictional Oregon town and the range of issues both personal and political that Levin confronts. Though he writes with a less precise focus than the troubles of a ball player or a struggling small shopkeeper in a big city, A New Life is an expansion into bigger questions of what make a whole life successful.

THE GHOST OF THE MARY CELESTE

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The Ghost of the Mary Celeste, Valerie Martin, Nan A Talese, 2014, 258 pp

I did not really like this book until I got to the end but it was not because the author won me over. It just finally all made sense. Even then, because I felt a key factor was left unresolved, I had a similar reaction to earlier points in the story. I would just be settling in with a group of characters and a story line when it would switch to another place with other characters in a different time.

The other problem I had was the mash up of historical novel, ghost story, mystery, and an overview of spiritualism in the 19th century. Not that there couldn't be spiritualists or ghosts in a historical tale. My trouble was with the structure. As a reader I was constantly foiled by the way the author put her story together.

The Mary Celeste was a merchant vessel found sailing without a crew. Arthur Conan Doyle, near the beginning of his writing career, writes a story about the ship based on very few facts but filled with plenty of imagination. A medium named Violet Petra, a mysterious person in her own right, after much antagonism toward the writer, agrees to become a subject of study for the newly formed British Society of Psychical Research, of which Doyle is a member.

Plenty of readers raved about this book both on various book sites and in the reading group who got me to read it. If it sounds good to you, I wouldn't want to discourage you, especially because I read it ridiculously fast while on my road trip to see Ann Patchett (stay tuned for my next post). The most intriguing aspect of The Ghost of the Mary Celeste was learning about the life of an actual psychic and the exploitation she had to endure in order to practice her skill.

(The Ghost of the Mary Celeste is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

FALLING OUT OF TIME

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Falling Out of Time, David Grossman, Alfred A Knopf, 2014, 208 pp (translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen

Death is always a part of life no matter one's age, but at my age one begins to lose more and more people to death. I lost my dad ten years ago this month and my mom five years ago in April. Just two days after I fell ill in May, my favorite uncle passed away at 93 years of age. Simultaneously my favorite aunt fell and broke her shoulder. She had just turned 96 and was deemed too elderly to withstand an operation. She died in hospice care a week later.

I am not writing of all this death as a plea for pity or condolences. I had read Falling Out of Time two weeks before and felt my own grief about my parents understood by someone more fully than before, because this book is a work of mourning and an examination of the mourning process more precise, more reverberating, and yet more gentle than anything I have read or heard.

However, I do not recommend it lightly. David Grossman and his wife Michal, live outside Jerusalem where they have raised three children. Their youngest, Uri, a tank commander, was killed in 2006 in Lebanon. After writing To The End of the Land, a novel loosely based on the experience, he had more to say.

Most reviewers and even the publisher have scrambled to describe Falling Out of Time, calling it part play, part prose, part poetry. For us Americans, it rather defies labeling. The work is a hybrid and involves the reader best who takes her time and just lets the words and images sink in.

By involving several characters who are mourning those they have lost, Grossman hits on the truth that each person has his or her own unique reaction to death. No one ritual or series of steps is right for every person.

An even deeper concept is, whether you have a religious belief about where the dead go or if you believe that death is the end of a person, the saddest most unacceptable part is the annihilation of one's connection with the dead one in real time, because he or she has fallen out of time.

Then comes a final conclusion. It may not work for everyone but it clearly worked for the author. Because of that, I was left feeling unburdened of my own past and future losses somewhat. But reading David Grossman's deeply personal meditation on his loss also left me stirred up, my thoughts in a whirl, my heart aching.

The next to the last sentences: "He is dead, he is dead. But his death, his death is not dead."

Read at your own risk.

(Falling Out of Time is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MAPMAKER'S WAR

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The Mapmaker's War, Ronlyn Domingue, Atria Books, 2013, 223 pp

Amazing! Another woman who can write and who tackles the conflicts inherent in being female with wisdom as well as a wry humor. The mapmaker is female and defies conventional roles for women. In her young years she manages to get pregnant by the Prince of her kingdom, impress him enough to get him to marry her, and unwittingly start a war between her kingdom and a peaceful neighboring people.

She pays dearly for her adventurous ways and lives a conflicted life. In this book, the first of a trilogy, she looks back over her life from the vantage point of an old woman. Despite loss and sorrow, she does not regret her past but only seeks to understand how she ended up with the life she has.

Though the book must be labeled fantasy, it is so much more. The time span gives it the feel of historical fiction and the intrigues provide plenty of adventure. Running beneath all this, like an underground river, is the clear intelligence of Ronlyn Domingue whose perception of humanity, male or female, old or young, is visionary. I know that sounds over the top but I have no other explanation for the impact The Mapmaker's War had on me.

This book is not for grumpy cynics or doomsayers, it is not for those who prefer the status quo and believe in puritanical, patriarchal, warlike societies. It is for dreamers of what mankind could be, believers in magic, kindness, equality, cooperation, and a joyful sensuality.

The second book, The Chronicle of Secret Riven, has just been released. Can't wait to read it.

(The Mapmaker's War is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE LIAR'S CLUB

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The Liar's Club, Mary Karr, Viking, 1995, 320 pp

I finished reading this six weeks ago, before I got sick, so my memory of reading it is foggy. I read it for a reading group and we had a lively discussion. In fact, we didn't want to stop talking about it.

In 1995, when The Liar's Club was published to glowing reviews and achieved a lengthy run on the bestseller lists, I was trying to live with a positive attitude and make a success of being an independent singer/songwriter. According to my reading log, I was reading historical fiction, trashy bestsellers, some literary novels I stumbled upon, the Stephen Lawhead King Arthur trilogy, but not confessional memoirs about dysfunctional childhoods. The Liar's Club was one of those memoirs and helped define the genre but I've put it off for almost 20 years.

Of course, since then I have read The Glass Castle, With or Without You, and many more. In fact, The Liar's Club is almost mild in comparison but the writing is excellent. I blew through the book in two days. I was the most impressed by how she showed her life so vividly rather than telling us about it. Also since there was an aura of mystery surrounding Mary's mother, not fully revealed until near the end, this is a memoir with a plot. And the ending is mystically wonderful, as one would expect from a poet.

There are two sequels: Cherry (sexual coming of age) and Lit (getting drunk and getting sober). I will be reading them.

JUNE READING GROUP UPDATE

Since the best thing for my recuperation is lying about reading books, I guess I am fortunate that all 6 of my reading groups are meeting in June. At least I have read two of the books. Here is the line-up:

The New Book Club:

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Once Upon A Time Adult Fiction Group:

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One Book At A Time:

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Tina's Group:

 

 

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 Bookie Babes:

 

 

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Tiny Book Group:

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I've got a new question for you this month. If you could choose, what book would you love to discuss with your favorite readers?

Happy reading and discussing!