THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY

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The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O'Connor, Farrar Straus & Cudahy, 1960, 243 pp

I just didn't like this very much. I have liked Flannery O'Connor's earlier novel Wise Blood and her story collection A Good Man Is Hard To Find, because of the way she digs deep into evil.

I don't mind dark tales. In fact, I seek them out. But the main character, Tarwater, orphan raised in the backcountry by a truly insane fundamentalist great-uncle, is so unrelievedly screwed up, so utterly devoid of humanity. The surrounding characters do not fare much better.

Some readers and reviewers found humor and satire here. I was waiting for it, looking for it; I didn't find any. A battle between Tarwater and his uncle Rayber concerns the baptism of Rayber's idiot son. Tarwater wins through a hideous scene of violence.

"The violent bear it away" is a quote from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 11, verse 12, according to the frontispiece. In all the versions of the Bible on my shelves it is written, "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and men of violence take it by force." Well, if she  was writing a parable of Tarwater trying to take the kingdom of heaven by force, she succeeded.

It could be that because I was not raised Catholic nor in the South, I am missing something. It could be because I see heaven and hell side by side in the world, not somewhere or sometime else. I wish I could talk to Flannery O'Connor. I guess I will have to read her collected letters and her biography.

Comments welcome.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

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The Sot-Weed Factor, John Barth, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1960, 756 pp

So there I was, excitedly embarking on my reading list for 1960, expecting all things more modern. I checked The Sot-Weed Factor out of the library and hit a few barriers.

First off was the title. Sometimes I go around for years with a tantalizing title in my mind but without any conception of what the book is about. For example, The View From Pompey's Head, a 1954 bestseller by Hamilton Basso. I'd picked it up at a going-out-of-business sale at a local used bookstore, thinking it must be about ancient Rome and Pompey's ideas. Ha! It was about a New York lawyer who returned to his sleepy South Carolina hometown and got embroiled in racism.

I don't remember now what I thought The Sot-Weed Factor was about except that with John Barth as the author, who knew anyway. Turns out sot-weed was the name for tobacco in colonial American days and a factor was a colonial agent who took care of business in the colonies for the owner, who was usually back in England.

It took me almost two weeks to read this tome of satirical historical fiction. Frustrating? Yes, I normally read three books a week. Boring? Never. I did read the revised edition from 1967 which is purported to be 50 pages shorter than the original. Another 50 pages might have done me in. (I tried downloading an iBook of the original but it had so many typos I went back to the book, which weighed 4 pounds. I was already suffering from a pinched nerve, so I read under the influence of large doses of ibuprofin.)

Anyway, Maryland, 1600s, starring Ebenezer Cooke, poet and virgin. Catholics vs Protestants, white man vs Negro slave vs Native American (called "salvages," Geraldine Brooks in Caleb's Crossing was not the first to resurrect that term.) Wild, lawless pioneers, more whores than tobacco plants, more plot twists than whores. All written in a sort of Old English patois.

Clearly not a book for everyone, but hey, I have read two thirds of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy and I do enjoy history, especially historical fiction laced with irony and pathos. Someday I hope to read Don Quixote but if I never get to it, I have read The Sot-Weed Factor. 

Now I know that our fine country has ever been made up of criminals and dreamers and whores.

(The Sot-Weed Factor is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE SNOW CHILD

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The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey, Little Brown and Company, 2012, 388 pp

I complained the other day about The Newlyweds being too lightweight as a novel and some readers felt that way about The Snow Child. These quibbles fall under a category of artistic criticism I call "a sense of the fitness of things."

The Snow Child is written in the style of an updated fairytale and quite successfully so. In 1920, a middle-aged couple left their home and family in New England and moved to Alaska. The husband came from a farming background so he figured he would do well as a homesteader in Alaska.

They had been disappointed when their first child was stillborn and never conceived again. It was a sorrow the wife could not get over and left her feeling inadequate as a woman. For Jack, Alaska was a chance for independence; for Mabel it was an escape from constant reminders of her failure to have children.

During their first hard winter, in a rare moment of happiness, this increasingly estranged couple built a child out of snow and that is where the fairytale began. The snow child melted away but a real child appeared, a feral blond-haired girl wearing the red scarf Mabel had wrapped around the snow child's neck.

Mabel was a life long reader. She brought her collection of books to the Alaskan wilderness, among which was an ancient tome of folktales. One of those tales is about a child made of snow who grows up to fall in love with a human man. It is not one of those stories with a happy ending.

The novel moves slowly at the pace of a dream. There in the passage of time and seasons events transpire, but these are presented as vignettes, almost like scenes in a play. I knew it would end in tragedy, I could recognize and feel the progression towards that. Mabel knows the end of the folktale but lives and hopes as though she has a daughter of her own at last.

I read the book while on vacation in Marin County, CA. The trip was a respite from weeks of hot weather, from months of dieting and exercise, from my so-called real life. A nephew's wedding took place on the shores of the San Francisco Bay followed by the reception at a rustic bed-and-breakfast deep in the fog of Muir Woods near the top of Mt Tamalpias. We spent lovely sunny days surrounded by extended family and grandchildren.

The pace of The Snow Child fit perfectly. It calmed and relaxed me. Children are a gift, they grow and leave, they rarely turn out the way you planned, they are sometimes spiteful and ungrateful for all your sacrifices on their behalf. Sometimes they die before you. All of that is contained in this novel. The complex tangled strands of parenthood presented simply as part of the truth of life. Not a pageturner, not a thriller, not a bit pretentious, but stark and raw and full of love and wonder.

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

THE NEWLYWEDS

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The Newlyweds, Nell Freudenberger, Alfred A Knopf, 2012, 337pp

Let me just say right at the start that I read this less than impressive novel for a reading group. I have many highly anticipated novels on my TBR list and would much rather have been reading Michael Chabon (Telegraph Avenue), Zadie Smith (NW) or Susan Straight (Between Heaven and Here).

I have not read Ms Freudenberger's earlier novel, The Dissidents. I have been aware of her status as a hot young author. She did not measure up for me to the young authors who have blown me away in my reading this year: Jennifer Egan, Emily St John Mandel, Hari Kunzru, Scarlett Thomas, and more.

Her purpose in writing about Amina, a young Bangladeshi woman who marries an American man she met on an internet dating site, is to show the stresses and confusions of living between two cultures. She does make those stresses and confusions clear but compared to Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake or Brick Lane by Monica Ali, The Newlyweds felt too light, too thin; the characters lacked depth; and the story was weak on tension and emotional heft.

Of course, these are merely my opinions. The reading group members all enjoyed the book and felt they had learned something. The Newlyweds is a nice, easy read for those who don't like to be challenged too much. I know that sounds so condescending but I can't help it.

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

THE STATUS SEEKERS

The Status Seekers, Vance Packard, David McKay Co, 1959, 323 pp

This volume is Packard's follow-up to The Hidden Persuaders. In it he posits that despite our fond belief in America being a democratic society, we are in fact not classless. According to his studies of sociology and observations based on his travels and interviews, he outlines a "system of horizontal social strata" consisting of five divisions. In addition he presents a vertical system of cross-strata based on differentness, such as racial (Blacks, immigrants) and religious (Jews.) In other words you can be a wealthy, educated African American but that does not mean you are wholly or truly considered upper class.

He also points out trends following World War II and their results as of the the 1950s: the growing emphasis on college education, the tendency of big business to hire college grads for management positions instead of people with experience in running their own businesses, and the increase in technology as it influences blue collar professions.

I was not convinced that all his data adds up in the way he seemed to think it did, but he is one of only a few writers at that time who tackled the subject. He presents his findings in everyday language, taking them out of academia and to the streets.

As I read, I realized the stresses my parents were under while raising a family. They were both college graduates from families who were blue collar, second generation German immigrants. Although they claimed to resist the marketing pressures of the 1950s, they were proud to be homeowners who could afford to put an addition on the house as we grew up and to raise us in a "good" neighborhood in Princeton, NJ. They sent me and my two sisters to college. I think they felt they had achieved a somewhat upper middle class status and wanted us to live that way.

Of course, we entered college in the 60s, all became hippies, dropped out and took up alternative lifestyles. Then those lifestyles ended up being mainstream in the yuppie 90s. We were also raised with plenty of encouragement and opportunities in the arts. Packard states that artists, musicians, and writers float more effortlessly among the classes and I have found that to be true.

The Status Seekers is slanted against big business because of its regimentation which he documents at length. Packard is also clearly on the side of the common man and considers himself free of racial and religious prejudice. I suppose today he would be called a bleeding liberal. 

The writing style is less lively than in his previous book. I did a good bit of skimming. He gets downright preachy in the final chapters and comes across as an innocent utopian. "If only people would..." People don't, in my experience. I admire him though, for telling it like it was and I hope he made some people uncomfortable. He provides a sociological perspective on how we ended up in a deep recession with the one percenters holding most of the wealth.

(The Status Seekers is out of print but can be found through used booksellers.)

ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET

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Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume, Yearling, 1970, 149 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

Judy Blume is nine years older than I am. I did not read her books growing up because they weren't published yet. They would have helped me a great deal but by the time this one was published in 1970, I was married and having my first baby.

I decided to read this now because I have come to the part of my memoir where I need to write about my early awareness of sex and all that goes along with changing from a child to a teen to a young woman. I found myself very blocked and finally decided that early taboos about the discussion of these subjects were damming up my creativity. I'd heard that Judy Blume addressed these issues and thought maybe reading her books would help. It has!

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is not much about sex; it is about waiting for and finally getting that first period. It is also about family, friends, boys, and religion.

Margaret is eleven, almost twelve, and entering the 6th grade. She is an only child and has been brought up with no religion because her mom was Catholic, her dad Jewish. The marriage caused Margaret's mom to cut all ties with her parents. So big issue right there. Though her parents are fairly cool, Margaret feels she needs to learn about both religions.

That is all I am going to say because if you haven't read it, I would spoil it for you. It is a fabulous, honest, and open book about a girl growing up in America, full of humor and heartbreak. I think every 6th grade girl should read it but of course the book banners and challengers don't agree.

If you are a mom and your daughter wants to read it, I advise you read it first yourself and make your own decision. If you are a daughter and your mom or teacher or anyone tells you not to read it, you will have to make your own decision as well. All I can say is that I have found out lots of things no one would tell me about by reading books.

(Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is available in paperback on the children's shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE REVISED FUNDAMENTALS OF CAREGIVING

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The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, Jonathan Evison, Algonquin Books, 2012, 276 pp

 Ever since his debut novel, All About Lulu, I have been in love with Jonathan Evison. He wowed me again with last year's West of Here. I am thrilled to say he has done it yet another time with his new one. He is among a handful of current novelists who reassure me that the age of fiction is far from over, no matter what the doomsayers would have us believe. I am going to see him read and regale us next Tuesday night at Skylight, one of LA's ultra cool indie bookstores.

Ben Benjamin is one of those early 21st century men who walk the fine line of gender roles as we slowly balance the male/female spectrum of existence. His wife got the better job early in their marriage, so he stayed home to raise the kids. I love the truthful, heartfelt, and hilarious rendition of what that is like for a guy. Funny thing is, it's not that different from what it's like for a woman.

If there is a theme to this novel, it is that we are all called upon to be caregivers at some point in our adult lives and we all fail in so many ways. Ben fails miserably when his children die in an accident for which he is pretty much fully responsible, even if it was an accident.

Having lost everyone and everything he truly loves (his wife leaves him after the accident), having run out of money and nearly maxed out his credit lines, having no marketable job skills, having really no reason to go on living but just keeping on the way most of us do, Ben enrolls in a class: The Fundamentals of Caregiving. Evison serves up more truth, heart, and hilarity.

So, bolstered only by the barest essentials of bodily care, professional bullet points, and the unlikely recommendation to keep an emotional distance from your client, Ben becomes the caregiver for Trev, a 19-year-old, horny, moody, domineering victim of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Instantly the already wobbly Ben is in way over his head.

The story careens its way into a redemption tale that only Jonathan Evison could have written. Poised on the exact brink between antic humor and deep despair, he depicts Ben, Trev, and a collection of desperate, heartbroken human beings as they take a road trip worthy of Kerouac or Steinbeck.

In my professional review at BookBrowse, I attempt to explain how great is Jonathan Evison's writing. He has always been great but now he has honed and fine-tuned everything: plot, characters, description, emotion. He makes it look effortless, as if he is merely tossing off a tall tale at the pub over a few pints.

Just read it! It is short, it is not ever boring even for a paragraph. Best of all, during this election season when all you hear is recycled bullshit, you will get the truth of modern American life.

(The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving is available by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

CALEB'S CROSSING

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Caleb's Crossing, Geraldine Brooks, Viking, 2011, 300 pp

The plot (or is it the theme?) of Geraldine Brooks' latest novel could be "life sucks and then you die."

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed reading it because Brooks is a good storyteller and a competent writer, if a bit careful and self-controlled.

Set in the mid 1600s during the pioneer days of English Puritans, it is based on the true story of how a Native American youth, Caleb, became the first of his people to graduate from Harvard. The tale reeks with adversity: "good" versus "bad" Puritans; white man versus native; male versus female; human versus the elements; and more. The minister father of Bethia, the heroine, even pits his one God against the magic and pantheism of Caleb's uncle, the medicine man.

I have a horror of attempts at religious conversion; the idea that a person must believe in a certain god in order to attain eternal life just makes me cringe and always has ever since I was a five-year-old in Sunday School. But it is a prevalent practice among human beings and Brooks does well using it for tension without too much of a judgmental tone.

Bethia is one of Brooks' signature females. She is put through the wringer and holds up for a good long time. I kept thinking about The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton, though Bethia is more Anne Hutchinson than she is Mrs Winthrop. As in all her other novels, Ms Brooks made me care about her heroine and kept me interested in her suffering, which was huge, and her triumphs, which were puny by comparison.

Bethia first meets Caleb when they are children and he opens her eyes to new ways of looking at life and the world, while she teaches him to read. That time of innocence, when a child begins to look outside her family and upbringing, when we have that certainty that anything is possible and are clueless about the dangers of trying to change the status quo, is one of the shining sections in Caleb's Crossing.

I don't think it is a spoiler to say this tale is a tragedy. Surely we are supposed to see that these characters were trail blazers and opened doors to those who came after them. But at the end of the book I did not feel uplifted. I felt like, no matter how hard someone tries, life sucks and then you die.

(Caleb's Crossing is available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HORSE HEAVEN

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Horse Heaven, Jane Smiley, Alfred A Knopf, 2000, 561 pp

 Jane Smiley's novel about horse racing is one of the best books I have read this summer. It was loaned to me by my sister-in-law, a horse woman herself and daughter of a horse woman. Jane Smiley owns a race horse or two and clearly knows plenty about the subject. A big part of the book's success is the way she makes the horses characters in the story as much as she does the humans.

I knew nothing about the world of horse racing, except that people like to go to the races and bet money. I learned more than I knew there was to know about the individuals who own race horses (usually wealthy), the ones who train them (often fanatical), the jockeys, and the major races of each year along with their locations and prizes. Smiley provides a list of characters and horses but not a glossary, so I kept my iPhone handy and the terminology is easy to find on the web.

For the most part, reading the book was a perfectly painless way to learn because the facts are couched in the stories of individuals, including their dreams, their interpersonal troubles, the highs and lows of the racing life, and the many, various ways that these persons relate to horses.

Smiley takes on the big issues and questions of live, love, business, ethics, etc. Her novel is sprawling and long and rich with emotion. I always enjoy her fiction because of the non-judgmental approach she takes to human foibles; the heady brew of dry humor plus pathos by which she makes us know that often the bad guy wins and the nice people lose. In this one, almost every character, human or horse, gets what he or she wants in one way or another, deserved or not.

It is a long book, cleverly plotted with intertwining destinies, and I never wanted it to be over. I will probably not ride a horse again in my life and, unless someone invited me along, I would not attend a race, even though the Santa Anita track is just down the freeway. But I don't think I will ever forget the animals or the humans, so well did she bring them to life. Now I understand completely how people can love horses so much.

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

HOUSEBOAT GIRL

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Houseboat Girl, Lois Lenski, J B Lippincott Company, 1957, 176 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

Houseboat Girl is another Lois Lenski book that stands out in my memory as a favorite when I was growing up. I was ten years old when it was first published and I bet I found it at the library. I did not find it at the library in 2012, but my sister collects the Lenski books and she had a copy. It has also recently been republished in paperback and as an eBook by Open Road Media.

Patsy is going through that most wrenching experience for a ten-year-old girl of moving away from all your friends. On top of that, her family is setting off in a houseboat, planning to live on the Mississippi River all summer with no firm destination in mind. Patsy's parents are river people who get restless when they stay too long in one place.

Patsy's story is similar to Birdie Boyer's in Strawberry Girl. Both girls are in new locales and situations and have to learn about "mean people" when their fathers get into conflicts with other men. Like Judy in Judy's Journey, Patsy wants to settle down in a real house somewhere so she can go to school and have friends. But she also discovers the wonders of the river and the excitement of being on a journey.

The book is part of Lenski's American Regional Series. I'm amused at myself to have discovered that I read all the "girl" stories and skipped the "boy" ones when I was a kid. Obviously I was not boy crazy yet. By the time I was, I had moved on to Beverly Cleary's teen books.

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

READING LIST FOR 1959

A couple weeks ago I completed my reading list for 1959. These lists are part of what I call My Big Fat Reading Project. I have been working on the project since June 2002, when I started with a reading list from 1940. So finishing 1959 is a milestone because I have now completed the second decade of the project. I also turned 65 last month and am beginning to realize that I may never complete the darn thing. I mean, do the math. Also the lists keep getting longer. However I am getting the education in literature that I envisioned and that is what matters to me.

The 1959 list took me a year and a half to complete for all kinds of reasons. I was distracted by several life changes but most of all it felt like because it was the end of a decade and I was so eager to get into the 1960s, it just went dragging on and on.

You can find reviews for almost all of these books here on the blog. Just put the title into the search window in the top left corner. You can also find all the earlier lists by looking through the archives. I suppose I should gather the links for these in the sidebar. If even one person comments with such a request, I will do it!

BESTSELLERS:

Exodus, Leon Uris

Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak

Hawaii, James Michener

Advise and Consent, Allen Drury

Lady Chatterley's Lover, D H Lawrence

The Ugly American, William J Lederer and Eugene L Burdick

Dear and Glorious Physician, Taylor Caldwell

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris, Paul Gallico

Poor No More, Robert Ruark

AWARD WINNERS:

PULITZER: The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, Robert Lewis Taylor

NEWBERY: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare

CALDECOTT: Chanticleer and the Fox, Barbara Cooney

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD: The Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud

HUGO: A Case of Conscience, James Blish

EDGAR: The Eighth Circle, Stanley Ellin

OTHERS:

Absolute Beginners, Colin Macinnes

The Borrowers Afloat, Mary Norton

The Cave, Robert Penn Warren

Children of the Alley, Naguib Mahfouz

Coal Camp Girl, Lois Lenski

Free Fall, William Golding

The Good Conscience, Carlos Fuentes

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow

Jean and Johnny, Beverly Cleary

The Mansion, William Faulkner

Miguel Street, V S Naipaul

Momento Mori, Muriel Spark

My Brother Michael, Mary Stewart

Passage of Arms, Eric Ambler

The Poorhouse Fair, John Updike

Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut

The Status Seekers, Vance Packard

Time Out of Joint, Philip K Dick

Zazie in the Metro, Raymond Queneau

 

 

THE MAN WHO JAPED

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The Man Who Japed, Philip K Dick, Ace Books, 1956, 172 pp

It is a post-nuclear war society run by a reactionary government that pushes a puritanical morality via the media. A Philip K Dick world if there ever was one. And this is only his third novel.

Jape is an intransitive verb meaning to say or do something jokingly or mockingly. Philip K Dick is a japer. It is also a transitive verb meaning to make mocking fun of. Alan Purcell, successful creator of propaganda, in a moment of madness, japes the statue of the current government's founder.

You can imagine the rest but reading the book is worth it because Philip K Dick wrote it. I am finally starting to figure out, though vaguely, his female characters. They are subtle commentaries on the effects of a straight-laced society on the female psyche.

Alan Purcell reminded me of Winston Smith in 1984. His moment of madness becomes his first attempt at freedom. How he finally breaks loose is the story.

Pretty good. I still like Solar Lottery best of the four I've read so far.

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

UNBROKEN

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Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand, Random House Inc, 2010, 398 pp

Surely I don't need to relate any details on the contents of Unbroken. I think everyone in the world has read it; definitely every book club/reading group has. Well, finally one of my reading groups picked it and of course they all loved it.

Among other things it falls into a genre I have named "prison camp lit." I feel that having made it through Andersonville, I have earned divine dispensation and never again need to read about prisoners of war sitting in shit eating not enough rotten food, etc, etc.

I also felt emotionally manipulated by Hillenbrand's rendering of this man's life.

It was too long and repetitive. It was uneven. And maybe I am just a hopeless cynic, but I could not quite swallow the "facts' about the guy's life. Spoiler: I am happy for him that Jesus saved him.

PS: If you still feel that you or your children should join the military and go off to fight one of our endless array of wars, you should read Unbroken. If after reading it you still believe that war is a solution...

(Unbroken is available on the adult non-fiction shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

I'LL NEVER GET OUT OF THIS WORLD ALIVE

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I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, Steve Earle, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, 243 pp

I am a big fan of Steve Earle's music, so I had to read his first novel. It was OK.

The ghost of Hank Williams haunts the renegade Doc Ebersole, who kept Hank somewhat alive until he didn't. Doc is a bum, a doctor who has lost his license and lives on the edge of a Texas town. He gets by providing abortions and other medical services to skid row characters who for various reasons can't or won't go to a hospital. He is also a drug addict who kicks and is kept alive by a young Mexican girl-a sort-of angel/saint with healing powers.

Anyway, Earle has all the elements of a good Texas story and I think he made a worthy effort but did not quite pull it off. On the other hand, I have to admire a guy who kicked all his own nasty habits and keeps on keeping on with constant self-reinventions.

(I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

WHO FEARS DEATH


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Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor, Daw Books, 2010, 386 pp

Onyesonwu, the heroine of Who Fears Death, is an African young woman, engendered through the rape of her mother by a fierce soldier from an enemy tribe. Thus she is part of a generation of outcasts called Ewu who are half-breeds with light skin and hair, rejected by both tribes. Her heritage is one of anger and violence but she is no victim. Instead, due to a strong will and fearless nature she becomes a rarity: a female sorceress. Her name means "Who Fears Death?"

The novel is dark, exciting, dangerous and feminist. In a quasi-postapocalyptic setting (computers and handheld devices in the African villages) with added magical elements, it fits into that elusive category called slip-stream. 

I was held captive on every page by the heady brew of the characters, the setting, and some of the best plotting I have read in a while. Ms Okorafor's feminism is soundly embedded in humanism and she writes about love, passion, sex, loyalty, friendship, and violence with an astounding degree of competence, even wisdom.

Not since I first read books such as The Secret Garden, The Mists of Avalon, The Left Hand of Darkness, or The Robber Bride, have I been so completely seduced by an author. She leaps nimbly across the great divides of race, men/women, material/spiritual, and politics. I think she is probably a genius. There is no one I admire more than a female genius.

I proposed this book to one of my reading groups in another dastardly attempt to bust my fellow reading women out of their comfort zones. You know what? They were dubious but like good sports they all read it AND loved it. We discussed for almost two hours!

(Who Fears Death is available in several formats including paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

OUR TRAGIC UNIVERSE

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Our Tragic Universe, Scarlett Thomas, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, 372 pp

Oh my god, I loved this book! I have a first edition hardcover with that cool black/gray, white, and gold cover and the black-edged pages. I bought it at City Lights when I was on my way home from hiking in the Redwoods and then left it sitting on my shelves for two years. After slogging through In the Garden of Beasts, I just wanted to read something I wanted to read, so I grabbed Our Tragic Universe, flopped onto my bed and practically stayed there until I had read to the end.

The whole story is so 21st century British, so off-the-beaten-track of even that, so literary in a non-literary way. Meg Carpenter (broke, writing book reviews and genre fiction to pay the rent while she works on her novel everyday but deletes everything she wrote the next day) is such a sympathetic character. She is like Anne Lamott without the Christianity and with an even more dry sense of humor. 

Plot is not the essence of this novel. It moves slowly. You want Meg to maybe have a little more grit or something but then she wouldn't be Meg. It's a novel about a novelist by a novelist and about being a novelist in an insane, uncaring world. It's about friendships and love and relationships but has an exactly zero mush factor. 

I haven't looked up any other reviews before writing my thoughts but I would say Our Tragic Universe might not please the wide majority of readers. It pleased me a great deal. It made me want to keep reading books when I was despairing about contemporary novels. It made me want to work on my own writing.

Best of all, by sort of blandly being true to herself, all good things come to Meg in the end. I did not expect a happy ending. (This is not a spoiler.) I wanted Meg to be happy but I would have understood had Scarlett Thomas decided to go another way. Possibly this is a book about faith--in yourself, in our tragic universe. If you are a writer, you owe it to yourself to read it.

(Our Tragic Universe is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

A BURNT-OUT CASE

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A Burnt-Out Case, Graham Greene, The Viking Press, 1960, 248 pp

Some people complain about Graham Greene always writing the same story: a combination of doubts about God and marital infidelity. He writes so well, it doesn't bother me in the least. Most great writers explore the same territory for their entire career, turning the subject like a precious stone, shedding light on every facet. 

Querry is a fugitive from his own life. He had been a successful architect, achieving fame for his cathedrals. His years of womanizing had led him to decide he was incapable of loving anyone.

Therefore he has taken himself to the back-end of nowhere deep in the heart of the Congo darkness. Of course, a newspaperman finds him, giving Greene a chance to riff on reporters, the press, and the gullibility of the public. More importantly, Querry does find a kindred spirit in Dr Colin, physician to a monastery devoted to serving God through lepers. Dr Colin is an atheist and a gifted healer of more than leprosy.

I have read every novel Greene wrote from 1940 to 1960 and can attest that he continues to confound me. I had some idea of where he was going in this novel, but he went somewhere else. The end took me by surprise.

A "burnt-out case" is a leper who can only be considered cured after the disease has eaten away all that can be eaten away. The victim lives but cannot usually re-enter society. Querry is a moral leper who calls himself "cured."

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

JEAN AND JOHNNY

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Jean and Johnny, Beverly Cleary, William Morrow, 1959, 247 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

Jean and Johnny is the third of Cleary's novels for young adults. For me it did not have the magic of Fifteen or The Luckiest Girl. Even so, she captured pretty exactly the feelings of a 14-year-old girl who wonders whether or not a boy likes her. I especially could relate to the phenomenon of becoming completely tongue-tied when in the presence of said boy.

What bothered me was how passive Jean would be in any situation concerning Johnny. She was so blind to how much of a self-centered player he was. I am aware that I was the same way at that age but I am not proud of it.

I am pleased to say that my granddaughter, who just turned 14, is much more self-possessed. We HAVE come a long way baby!

(Jean and Johnny is available on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. It is also available by order as an eBook.)

LAST WILL

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Last Will, Bryn Greenwood, Stairway Press, 2012, 279 pp

I don't recall how this book came to my attention. Stairway Press is the tiniest of indie publishers and the only unfortunate result of that is a possible lack of publicity. Because this is a great novel that falls just enough off the beaten track of current fiction to make it refreshingly unique. 

Bernie Raleigh is a 30-year-old man to whom nothing good has ever happened. He is the grandson and sole heir of the richest man in Oklahoma City. Kidnapped when he was almost 10 by a local psychopath hoping for a large ransom, he was traumatized, psychoanalyzed to no avail, rejected by his mother, and grew up to be a useless failure. He finally found a job he liked as a librarian and had been hiding away in Kansas City. Then his grandfather dies and Bernie finds himself back in the Raleigh mansion, the loneliest and most confused billionaire in the world.

Meda Amos is a direct descendant of two Russian immigrant sisters who were forced to turn to prostitution when their parents died of influenza in the 1800s. Teenagers in a frontier town, without relatives or friends, they had no other resources. Meda is blessed and cursed with great beauty, making her a magnet to men but also a victim. She is raising a daughter, working as a maid at the mansion, living with her aging grandmother and trying to look out for her alcoholic mom, who believes in UFOs and alien abduction.

Last Will is an almost perfect summer read, because it is a romance set in the freezing cold Oklahoma winter. With exquisite wry tenderness, Bryn Greenwood has written a modern Cinderella tale in three first person voices: Bernie, Meda, and Aunt Ginny, who is Bernie's aunt but is really his guardian angel/fairy godmother. As soon as I turned the last page, I wanted to go to the beginning and read it all over again. I suspect I may reread this captivating story many times in the years to come.

It took Ms Greenwood a decade to get her first novel published. Only the mysterious ways of publishing can explain such a thing. She makes you love her characters, introducing them so smoothly I felt I already knew them and would never forget them. The back-stories of Bernie and Meda are revealed in bits but so expertly, giving out details only as needed to further the plot.

Because of his past, Bernie's depression and wish to be anonymous combine with the unconscious assurance of the rich, making him an unpredictable mix of hapless kindness and hopeless estrangement from others. Because of her past, Meda is tough, wise beyond her years, but oh so conflicted about the attentions of this young man with all that money. Watching them grope towards understanding as they help each other heal is maddening but irresistible. 

Last Will may not be great literature but it is consummate storytelling. In another era, it may have been great literature in the tradition of Charles Dickens, Alexander Dumas, George Eliot, or Jane Austen. This is a deeply engaging tale of love, money, tragedy, and society with a healthy dose of humor and a healthy respect for humanity. So curl up with the A/C on or by the pool and lose yourself in a good read!

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

IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS

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In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson, Crown Publishing Group, 2011, 365 pp

Here is another book I would not have read if not for a reading group. So why do I read books I don't particularly like for these groups? Some members just choose not to read certain picks. Three reasons: 

1) I feel it is part of being a member to come to discussions prepared to discuss.

2) I am interested in how other readers react to books whether I like them or not, because I am both a writer and a book reviewer.

3) For the same reason that I read the Top 10 bestsellers of each year in My Big Fat Reading Project: to learn about the social factors which make books widely read.

Erik Larson is not my favorite non-fiction writer. I read The Devil in the White City (also for a reading group) and was bothered by the odd juxtaposition of a serial killer true crime story with the history of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. In the Garden of Beasts combines the growth of Hitler's power with the sad case of a US diplomat. For added thrill and sex appeal, Larson includes the adventures of the diplomat's promiscuous daughter.

Many readers in my reading groups and among the reading public like Larson's books just fine. I have been left both times with a confused palate, as if I have eaten a meal of foods that don't go well with each other.

Because I have read pretty widely about the rise of Hitler and the dastardly ways of the Nazis, I felt that Larson's story construction rather downplayed the insanity of all that. In addition, the inefficiencies and faults in our diplomatic corps, about which the author goes on ad nauseum, were hardly the major cause of Hitler's igniting the Second World War, but the book suggests as much.

Finally, William E Dodd, ambassador to Germany from late 1933 until 1937, was not an especially interesting character. To center a book about the years leading up to WWII around such a lackluster man was a bad idea in my opinion. If he hadn't had that wild daughter Martha, who ran around Berlin having serial affairs with members of the Gestapo, a Russian diplomat, and other colorful fellows, In the Garden of Beasts would have bogged down early and never recovered.

(In the Garden of Beasts is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)