Review: Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl)

First, an admission: I am a sucker for fiction that includes parenthetical asides, quasi-scholarly annotations, bibliographic references, et al. I take great pleasure (and great humor) in the snobby intellectualism of the overly educated literati and my participation in that world. So Marisha Pessl’s much-lauded first novel, compared favorably to Donna Tartt at her best (which I would argue was not The Secret History but rather The Little Friend, but that’s a different post entirely), would seem, for me, the perfect book. And while it delivered on the pseudo-intellectualism and quasi-scholarly charm (many of the texts referenced in the novel are fictional, I know, I checked) the novel itself was... slightly problematic. For example, Pessl’s (intentionally?) poorly-drawn Visual Aides are weirdly juvenile and off-putting, making the reader briefly suspect this to be a young adult novel (albeit a well-written one). I would like to think this was intentional, that the author was pointing out the fact that our narrator is, in fact, just a teenager despite her sophistication and intelligence.

Our narrator is the gifted only child of a political science professor. She attends a private school and falls in with an odd but popular group of students (whom she nick-names The Bluebloods) and their charming enigmatic teacher. But here’s the rub. The teacher fell flat. She didn’t seem interesting or charming, she just seemed aloof and depressed which is not enough to compel a group of teenagers to hang out at your house on the weekends. Fortunately the other characters make up for her lack of depth and authenticity. 

Just when you think you know where the book is going, it takes a turn. It gets BIG and weird and there’s a murder or a suicide (it’s intentionally unclear) and the narrator is forced to take responsibility for her behavior and her actions which leads the book to its (mostly) satisfying conclusion.

Pessl’s writing leans towards bombasity but this, in itself, is forgivable because of her obvious talent and vision. Her raw voice is compelling and in the instances when her prose is stripped down to its true core, devoid of all the stylistic trickery, the reader is spellbound. There was also an oddly New Southern Gothic tone to the novel. More Flannery O’Connor than William Faulkner [from me, this is HUGE praise, I adore both]. One is left feeling that, in time, Pessl could be an important voice in fiction

Review: The Heart Goes Last: Positron Episode Four (Margaret Atwood)

A confession: there are few people I adore blindly and turn into a crazed fangirl about. Margaret Atwood is one of those people.

That said... every author must write their share of "stage directions," the necessary dull bits, the "s/he saids," the do-ing. To reference this blog, they must get Raoul into the elevator. It's not fancy but Raoul must get in the elevator. This was Positron's stage directions.

Positron is Margaret Atwood's serialized novel published through byliner. [If you don't subscribe to byliner, you should. It's fantastic.] Atwood creates another dystopian world (think: a highly structured alternative to the world of her MaddAddam trilogy). Episodes 1-3 were tense and titillating(ep. 1), frustrated (2), and hopelessly bleak (3).  Episode 4 was simply necessary.

However, Atwood's prose is, as ever, unique, sharp, and wholly entertaining. Stage directions or no, I will read anything by a writer who describes two characters as “fornicating like weasels on a griddle.”

Review: Tell The Wolves I'm Home (Carol Rifka Brunt)

I was sucked in by the title and the cover. It’s graphic and lovely and weird and yes, I judged a book by its cover. But after I’d read the synopsis, Brunt’s novel already had three strikes against it:

1. The narrator is a teenage girl. I do not like teenage narrators mainly because I do not like teenagers. They are, with a few exceptions, petulant and uninteresting creatures.

2. It is nostalgically set in the 1980s, a time I feel is far too recent for nostalgia.

3. It’s about dying and grief and AIDS and I’m tired of the literature of dying.

True to my expectations, the novel was overall disappointing.

1. Teenage Narrator Problem... Brunt required far too much suspension of disbelief from the reader; no fourteen or sixteen girl is that selfless and magnanimous. Both the narrator and her sister displayed unrealistic levels of insight and compassion to their own and others’ circumstances. They were gawky Buddhas in teenage bodies and it made the text feel forced and unrealistic. If she had written the story from the perspective of a reflective adult narrator recalling a story, this would have worked.

2. Nostalgia for the 1980s... It wasn’t as bad as I had expected. If anything, it felt more distracting than anything else. It was contextually necessary to set the novel in the 1980s but references to 80s music and fashion drew the reader’s attention away from the seriousness of the situation and leant it a kitsch that was inappropriate.

3. Death and Dying... I was pleasantly surprised. This was the one area the narrator seemed to be a fully developed character. The stigma of AIDS in the 1980s was handled with compassion and respect and illustrated beautifully how far we’ve come (which, sadly, isn’t that far)  in our understanding of the disease and our treatment of people living with AIDS.

Despite all of this, I liked the novel. Truly. There was something about the narrator and her family that was authentic in that beautifully fucked-up way “healthy” families have. Everyone loves each other but they are all essentially and profoundly alone in struggling with their own problems. Brunt’s construction of the family dynamic was brilliantly subtle and that for me that raised the book from mediocre and disappointing to “surprisingly pretty good.”

Plus, the cover and the title. Really. Take a look, it’s lovely.

Review: The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (Rhonda Riley)

Before I started this book, I did something I normally never do: I read the reviews. It’s not only that I want to form my own opinion of a book, it’s that I don’t care if “the masses” didn’t like it. “The masses” have terrible taste in literature (see Twilight, see 50 Shades of Grey, see the entire career of Danielle Steele). If the review is from someone whose tastes and discernments parallel my own, I pay attention. But otherwise... no. But I read the reviews for one specific purpose: I wanted to figure out to what gene The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope belongs.  Science fiction? Romance? Christian literature? A brief plot synopsis as explanation of my confusion: a genderless creature (A.) is pulled from the earth, turns into a woman (Addie), falls in love with the woman (Eve) who found her, turns into a man (Adam), and lives happily ever after (sort of). However, the reviews gave me no meaningful clue; it was called a sweeping romance, it was called paranormal, it was called “somewhat biblical.” It was all those things and none of them. What it was, was brilliant.

First, the basics. Rhonda Riley can write a damn good scene. Her prose is clear and clean, never feels forced, and her pacing are impeccable. Her characters are entirely believable and when one dies, the loss is felt in appropriate proportion to their importance in the story (a reader pet peeve of mine). Arguably the novel was overpopulated but it covered forty plus years. Overpopulation is to be expected. Riley has been criticized for never answering the novel's Big Question (namely, who/what is Adam?). I say: EXACTLY. That is why the book is  genius and transcends all genre labels. This book is about Truth. Not answers. Riley never explains who/what Adam is because it is not important. Riley’s novel is a reflection on the things we don’t and can’t know about the inner lives and true selves of anyone, despite our relationship with them. Hers is a novel of truth-telling and truth-knowing and the inability to know anyone (including oneself)  fully. It is about the necessary and unnecessary lies we tell ourselves and others. The book is about trust and loving someone. It is about creating a life and learning to accept an essential otherness about one's  partner. It is about the known and the unknown in families, histories, and communities and how we navigate around these truths.

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope unfolds slowly, revealing a family’s truth, revealing a life that has been purposefully and intentionally created. It is deceptively brilliant, subtle, and dazzling and hums with necessary and startling honesty.
In the space between pleasantly surprised and completely blindsided, I found my reaction to Rhonda Riley’s first novel. But as for my original question: what genre is this? It is truth. Just truth. Nothing else. I anxiously await Ms. Riley’s next work.

A side note for anyone who (like me) makes it a point to avoid romance or Christian fiction: fear not. It’s not that kind of romance and it certainly isn’t Christian fiction.

(mini)Reviews: A Baker's Dozen

Three months. It's a new personal best for procrastination, it is also how long it’s been since I’ve posted here and/or written about books. I have, of course, been reading but I haven't been writing about reading. And really, what’s the point of reading if you don’t think about what you’re reading? And I can’t truly think about the text unless I’m writing about it. So thus, mini-reviews of all full-length books I've read in the last three months. I promised myself I would do this and by gum! I shall!

1. The Real Cool Killers, Chester Himes
This was the second book in the Harlem Cycle (A Rage in Harlem being the first). This was a fun read. Sexy, dirty, angry, fun. It was not challenging. It didn’t blow my mind or titilate me the way A Rage in Harlem did. Disappointing.

2. The Crazy Kill, Chester Himes
Implausible, silly, and irritating. It’s like a bad riddle you don’t even care about solving. There’s a reason this was the last book of the series that I bothered to read.

3. My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: 40 New Fairy Tales, Kate Bernheimer, ed.
It’s a book dedicated to the late, great Angela Carter. Let me say that again: it's dedicated to ANGELA MOTHERFUCKING CARTER. What’s not to love? The woman has been my literary fairy godmother since I stumbled onto The Bloody Chamber. Any book dedicated to her is alright by me. But unfortunately, that’s what this one was... just alright. Some of the stories were exceptional, others were duds, causing the collection to average out to, well, average. Although, I believe Ms. Carter would have approved of even the mediocre attempts at creating/recreating fairy tales. It’s a genre that, sadly, seems to be gasping its last breath. The world is poorer for that; we need more magic.

4. Emotional Intensity in Gifted Children, Christine Fonesca
Why? Because Zola. My seven year old daughter is a 10 all the time. Whatever the emotion is (happiness, sadness, boredom, anger, excitement)  it’s always a 10. Zola, do you want to go skydiving? OF COURSE! Zola, do you want to eat octopus and eel? ABSOLUTELY! Zola, how do you feel about beets? I HATE THEM, THEY’RE RUINING MY LIFE! It’s fun and fabulous and exhausting and horrific.
This book provided some help, mainly in the form of “yeah, unfortunately for you, your kid is totally normal. You didn’t honestly think ‘genius’ wouldn’t come with a hefty price tag, did you?” Every parent of a gifted child is probably going through the same thing I’m going through and there is a small measure of comfort in that. If nothing else, it forced me to stop trying to pathologize my daughter’s normal (for her) behavior. It also gave me ideas and resources to advocate for her education. But that's a whole other post...
Bottom line: I’m glad I read this. If anyone has a gifted child, I will recommend it to them. It wasn’t exactly life-changing but it was definitely helpful.

5. Stupid Children, Lenore Zion
Side note: by some fabulous coincidence I found myself reading Stupid Children and the previous book on gifted children at the same time.
Zion's memoir-ish novel is about a girl growing up in a cult foster home after her father tries to kill himself. Very well written, compelling, great characters, sharp prose. Definitely one of the better books I’ve read lately. And I read it old-school: paper pages, spine, cover, the whole thing. I bow to the gods of technology most of the time but it felt good to read something tangible. The tablet is so... sterile.
I finished Stupid Children and immediately ordered her collection of short stories (My Dead Pets Are Interesting).

6. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright
This was recommended to me by my boss who knows I’m obsessed with cults. It’s a tell-some (as opposed to a tell-all) nonfiction book about Scientology. But it morphs about half-way through into a weird biography of Tom Cruise’s time in the church. There seemed to be far more “story” there than what was printed, like the author left out things because he didn’t want to get sued by the infamously litigation-happy church.
However, it gave a bit of historical context for the rise of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard. I learned quite a bit about the founding of the church and their cosmology.
But the best part of the book was by far the most absurd line I’ve read in a very long time. It was said as a threat to misbehaving Scientology members and attests to the absurdity of the intersection of celebrity and religion.  “Don’t make me get Tom Cruise to come in here and punch you in the face.” It puts a smile on my face every damn time.

7. Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi
Ugh. This took forever to finish. Yes, it’s a classic. Yes, it’s "one of the greatest true-crime tomes every written." But, as I’ve stated before in my complaint of the true crime genre, the middle of the book gets bogged down in the minutiae of court proceedings and police procedures. It was mind-numbing. I wanted Capote. I wanted In Cold Blood. I wanted prose and I got legalese! I wanted... something better than what I got.
That said: yes, it’s a great example of the true crime genre and much better written than almost every true crime book ever written. Sadly.
There needs to be a movement to get true crime back into the respected nonfiction world. Like a nonfiction version of what's happening with sci-fi in capital-L Literature right now. But I digress.

8. Revenge, Yoko Ogawa
A gem! A little Japanese creep-fest gem of a book. I loved it! It weirded me out and made me squidgy. Yes, squidgy. It made me have a feeling that has no translation in any language because it’s completely visceral. Read it. It’s uniquely entertaining. Get squidgy with me.

9. Outlining Your Novel, K.M. Weiland
Like most books about writing, this was 80% pep-talk, 10% literary masturbation, and 10% instruction manual. When you're looking for instruction manual, this can be frustrating. However, Wieland did present a great idea to help explore where you want your story to go: The What If List. You sit down and list literally every question that pops into your head about your plot. Everything. Even the most absurd ridiculous things. When I tried it with a few story ideas it gave new directions for all of them.
It also made me realize that I don’t think I’ll ever be the compulsively organized writer that gets everything done on a tight timeline and cranks out a finished book every 18 months. I also don’t think I’ll ever be a chaotic mess who never finishes anything. And I’m okay with that.

10. 1Q84, Haruki Murakami
Really big. Really good.
I’m not saying more because you should just read it. Seriously. Go buy it and read it. It's a substantial time commitment but it’s worth it. All the reviews that say it’s crap or over-rated or not Murakami’s best? All those people are fucking morons. True, it’s not his best, but his worst is still better than 90% of what’s out there so ignore the critics and go read some fucking Murakami already. Do it.

11. Reconstructing Amelia, Kimberly McCreight
I’m fascinated with mean girls. I have been the victim of mean girls and I was a mean girl. Fuck, I’m still kind of mean. But my meanness has been honed into a sharpened spear that is only aimed at deserving victims. I believe there is no crueler creature on earth than the 14 year old girl. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot... put any of them up against a couple of junior high girls and they'd crumble.
However, McCreight's offering in the Mean Girl genre was okay. It was nonlinear (yay!) and had lots of fun epistilary sections (yay!) but the ending fell flat (no pun intended... Amelia falls off a building at the beginning of the book) and made the whole book not really about mean girls at all but about lying. Although one could argue that lying is a quintessential part of the mean girl experience. It just didn't seem true.
This was one of those “I must finish this tonight” kind of novels that you seem to really love while you’re reading it but as soon as you step away from it, you realize “yeah, it was okay, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else.” 
Side note: the best of the mean girl genre so far is Megan Abbot's Dare Me. It's a delightfully wicked book!

12. The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer
Alternative Titles Include:
The Irritatings,
The Snarky Little Bastards Behaving Badly,
The Pretentious-es...es,
The Overly Self-Aware Overly Ironic Characters That The Reader Will End Up Hating,
The Spoiled Pseudo-Intellectual Rich Kids of New York City Written By A Spoiled Pseudo-Intellectual Rich Kid of New York City,
The Every Theme Ever In a Book In Forever With The Hope That Every Modern Lit Prof Everywhere Will Make Their Students Buy It Just To Write Crappy Theme Papers,
The Why Do I Keep Reading These Overly Hyped Mainstream Bullshit Fests They’re Always Woefully Disappointing! Even The Fucking Synopsis Irritated Me!

13. Faces of Fear, John Saul
A confession: John Saul is my literary rinse-and-spit. He’s my palate cleanser, my dry crappy cracker between wine tastings, my reset button, the Ctrl-Alt-Delete of my reader brain. It’s shameful and ugly but it’s the truth. I make no excuses. I read John Saul.
I’m Dawnelle and I’m a Saul-aholic. Hi Dawnelle.
Here’s everything you need to know about this book: Beverly Hills, plastic surgery, Frankenstein, creepy step-dad, gay dads, clueless mom, mean girls (yay!), butchering serial killer, lots of misleading details and plot holes. Also it follows the EXACT formula for every single one of his previous 35 novels... most of which I’ve read.
Until next time, Mr. Saul, thank you. My brain has been scrubbed clean and refreshed. On to better texts!

And...

14. Endless Love, Scott Spencer
[This book was so unbelievably bad that I'm saving a full review for a different post which I have titled, in my head, "In Defense of Bad Writing."] It makes John Saul look like Dostoyevsky.

Genius

We found out this week that The Bean's IQ tested in the top 99.5%. Yay! Right? Not so much. I am worried (because that's my go-to emotion with anything Bean-related). I won't start into the particulars because this will turn into a neurotic manifesto and I don't have time for that right now... I want to watch New Girl and read my book.

But then she cut off all her bangs because she couldn't figure out how else to get tree sap out of it. Later she repeatedly hit herself in the head with a pillow until she got dizzy and fell down. Why? Because she's six and that's what six year olds do.

Tonight she started planning her science fair project on electromagnetism while singing a song about the scientific method and asking me questions I had to look up the answers to. Five minutes later she was laughing so hard she almost peed herself because I was singing Chic's "Everybody Dance" chorus: "everybody dance, da-da-doo-doo, crap your pants, crap your pants" instead of "clap your hands, clap your hands."

I've always known she was smart. She started talking at nine months old and reading before she was two. But because she's silly and goofy and clutzy and fun, I assumed she was bright or moderately gifted. But genius? That looks different, right? That's serious and studious and maladjusted and unpleasantly weird, yes? Apparently not. Genius is a six year old with stupid bangs, a wicked sense of humor, and a collection of weird things she finds on the ground.

Bean is a genius. Her IQ places her in "genius range."

And she likes poop jokes and blowing bubbles and having dance parties.

I can do this. She's Bean. I've got this.

Review: We Disappear (Scott Heim)

This novel could have been so much better than it was. It was one of those cases where you finish the book and think "where the fuck was the editor? why didn't somebody cut out about 30% of this and have him rewrite some of the stronger parts?" It was unnecessarily frustrating.

Scott Heim's protagonist is the meth-addicted gay son of a woman dying of cancer. He's a tweaker, truly and fully, and Heim pulls absolutely no punches showing exactly what this means. It's unapologetically real and raw. But the reader truly cares about him. He's flawed but you want to know him, you wouldn't leave him alone in your apartment but you'd meet him for coffee any day. Heim also doesn't write a stereotype. His sexuality is only brought into focus in the most relevant ways and there is never any dramatic "coming out" moment. He doesn't use the character's sexuality as a theme, as so many authors still do (thus creating a sense of "otherness" that is disrespectful and exploitative at its core). His homosexuality is simply is part of who he is, like his brown hair or the fact that he has a sister. I found that profoundly respectful and was quite moved by it.

However the story is slightly far-fetched, there are far too many unnecessarily confusing plot twists, many of the characters read like extras from central casting, and the conclusion is a unsatisfying pathetic little sigh. But again: I think this could have been fixed in editing. Perhaps this kind of editorial sloppiness is a side effect of e-publishing and print-on-demand, perhaps not. But it has to end! Too many good books are being lost in their own "should have been cut" detritus.

Review: Dora: A Headcase (Lidia Yuknavitch)

I wasn't sure I even wanted to read this book. A retelling of Freud's quintessential case study but from the perspective of the case study herself? Freud in present day? Really? No one even offers Freudian psychotherapy anymore (and for good reason!). But after reading the first few pages, I was hooked.

Yuknavitch's Dora is a sharp-edged hilariously profane Seattle punk being raised by distant dysfunctional wealthy parents. She may be a bit more savvy than most seventeen year olds and far wittier than any seventeen year old. But you like her. She's fucked up and fabulous.

Freud is... well, Freud. Except the reader gets to experience more of Freud (truly!) than we've been privy to before. Jung's in there too in all his ethically questionable rave-attending drug-fueled goodness. Jung fits modern day so much better than Freud ever could. The relationship between Freud and Jung was the only disappointment in the novel. It's never fully explored. Yuknavitch's inclusion of it seemed perfunctory and obligatory rather than truly part of the plot.

Yuknavitch's writing is fast, funny, and good. Solidly, profoundly good. Her plots are slightly unbelievable and there a few too many coincidences, but the novel is readable and highly enjoyable. Also, Yuknavitch's construction of Dora's home life is gloriously rich for Freudian analysis and was truly a nod to Freudian theory.

Review: Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (Maria Semple)

Suspend disbelief.

Put aside your hatred for the wealthy worried-well.

If you're from Seattle, set aside your cold Nordic humorlessness.

This book is fun. It's not brilliant, it's not life-changing, it's not The Next Great American Novel. But it works for what it is: a light, funny, epistolary novel chronicling the minorly disastrous consequences of one woman's snobbery, social phobia, and artistic discontent. It is also about her fifteen year-old daughter who is trying desperately to find her now-missing mother and save her parents from their stupid selfish decisions.

The mother-daughter relationship is what holds this book together and makes it something more than the dreadful "breezy beach read" it seemed destined to be (seriously... the cover? Why not just put lipstick and a shopping bag on the front. Jesus H. Christ...) However, the husband/wife relationship is not as well developed. It feels hollow and flat and we never truly understand why Bernadette is with her uptight computer-programming husband.

Semple skewers Seattle-ites, Microsofties, gifted teens, and grasping middle-class soccer moms. Many of Semple's jabs are predictable and clichéd but her region-specific pokes are spot-on and appreciated by this region-specific reader.

Review: A Rage in Harlem (Chester Himes)

Why I haven't read Chester Himes before now is beyond me.

As the title suggests Himes writes Harlem,  not about Harlem, not stories set in Harlem. He writes Harlem. Harlem becomes more than a setting, it becomes bigger than the story, bigger than the characters, bigger than Himes. Harlem is a presence, a power, a force that can not/ will not/ should not be stopped. It's filthy and violent and gorgeous and alive. Harlem breathes in this book. It exists in a way that the human characters don't. His writing takes you there and you're horrified and thrilled and left feeling like the safety net of "just reading about it" isn't enough, you feel vulnerable. It's wonderful. Truly wonderful.

But... there has to be a "but"... you may not like Himes's Harlem. The book is a blood-soaked hard-boiled crime-ridden romp. Yeah, I said romp, you dirty mother-rapers... forgive me that Himes-ism; my brain is Himes-drunk and happy. But I digress...

There is no good or bad in this novel. You cannot point to anyone and say "s/he is the hero/villian." The main characters are either seasoned criminals and con-men or "squares." And even though you probably wouldn't want to know them in real life, you find yourself rooting for Jackson (the square), his dope-fiend twin brother who makes his living dressing as a nun and selling tickets to Heaven,  and Jackson's anything-but-faithful girlfriend Imabelle. The detectives are brutal, crooked, and intentionally create an environment of terror in order to hold onto the little power their badges give them. Despite this, you actually like the detectives. They are the very definition of bad ass.

Some books I finish and wish I could have written. I finished A Rage in Harlem and wondered why this hadn't been made into a movie. Turns out, it has. There's a 1991 film version that I must now track down.

I am praying that it won't suck. PLEASE PLEASE don't fuck this one up, Hollywood! Himes, and his writing, deserve so much more than that.

Review: After Life (Rhian Ellis)

Rhian Ellis's "After Life" is the first novel I've read from Nancy Pearl's "Rediscoveries" series, a collection of previously out-of-print books Librarian of the Gods and NPR Morning Edition regular Pearl identified as unread and/or under praised gems of the 20th century.  Hand-picked by Pearl, these novels have been republished and given a second chance (helped along with a heavy dose of publicity and buzz by Pearl herself).

I trust Nancy Pearl. She has an infectious passion for books and while I don't always agree with her opinions on certain books and authors (don't get me started on John Irving or Ann Patchett) I trust anyone who dedicates their life to books. Not just writing, but books, and getting people excited about reading.

"After Life" is full of mediums, spiritualists, and New Age tarot-reading psychics. Not usually something I'd go in for, but Ellis's novel is surprisingly down-to-earth and relatable. She presents spiritualism in a solid, respectful, meticulously well-researched way that gives the reader a better understanding of its history and evolution.

Ellis's novel is also a novel of a dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship novel. Except where other novelists paint their characters as grotesquely unhealthy and abusive, Ellis's women are realistic and live in the real world, specifically the world in which mothers and daughters destroy and rebuild each other with everyday slights and gestures. It's subtle, something sadly lacking in most books that exploit the modern domestic relationship trope.
And then there's murder. It's not a whodunit, you know the who from the first page. But it asks the much more interesting and relevant question: why. This question ("why") kept me reading and I was not disappointed.

My only complaint is pacing, something I've become all but obsessed with lately. It drags in parts and moves far too quickly in others. However, this is mainly an issue of editing and I would have liked to see what could have been done with this novel under the hand of an expert editor.

An exceptionally brief mid-life crisis

It's a horrible cliche: middle-age woman in her second marriage and third career decides to pursue a particular path - an adult path, an "appropriate" path, certainly not the path she wanted but one she can "live with" - and she commits to said path.

And then everything breaks down. She overreacts to normal office politics and administrative ass-fuckery, she becomes withdrawn and uncommunicative, and in an impressive example of psychosomatic resistance she comes down with a stomach flu and ends up in bed for four days. She's not unhappy; she's miserable. She's trapped and depressed and starts to isolate and she thinks her life is a giant out-of-control lie. 

Now here's where it starts to get... if not good, then at least better, more specific. Husband #2, being frighteningly adept at reading her sometimes mercurial moods, though she tries her best to hide these things, says to her "something feels off, I think we need to get the hell outta Dodge for a while." They plan a weekend trip. Several destinations are discussed but they decide on- correction: she decides on the town in which she felt most like herself, the last place she felt completely whole and (though she cringes at the term) "fully realized."

When they get there she is reminded of all of this, of how she felt the first time she spent any significant length of time in a community of like-minded people. Back then she felt, if not happy, then the absence of an overwhelming sadness that she had not noticed until it was missing. In the absence of this sadness she realized that she could never go back to it. She scrapped her old life and started a new one, a better one, a happier and more complete one. It was hard but it was good.

And now, in the present, she walks with Husband #2 to all the places she remembers herself. She goes to the locations of (unironic) Major Life-Changing Decisions. She sees signs of her past self, her real self, everywhere. Literal signs. It's awful and heavy-handed and part of her rolls her eyes at how obvious it all is. She is sad and desperate and wants to change her name and run from The Wrong Path. She falls apart. Husband #2, who calls her on her shit better than anyone she has ever known, who is not afraid of her anger or her tendency to withdraw, who tells her to knock that shit off because he's on to her and knows what's she's trying to do and she's not fooling him... tells her to start being honest with herself and him. So she is. And the world starts to feel right again.

She's not good at being honest with herself but she's much worse at trying to live a life that doesn't feel right. She is, quite frankly, awful at being an appropriate adult and doing appropriate adult things and would much rather spend her days thinking and writing about books and writing. She has always been this way; she prefers books to people. She prefers books to sleep, food, sex, drugs, children, husbands, breathing. She prefers books.

And now she feels like Bartleby and will call The Arbiters of The Wrong Path and tell them she'd rather not continue on that path but rather to pursue The Right Path. The Only Path. And she realizes, at last, that there was never really any question, the choice had already been made years ago. This is her One True Thing and she has grown tired of trying to make it be something else.

And while she feels foolish that she again tried to deny what is obvious to herself and to everyone else, she does take some small pleasure in the fact that hers was, perhaps, the most succinct and efficient midlife crisis in history. This small pleasure is of course diluted by the sudden bitter realization that she likely could have successfully angled for some kind of murdered-out souped-up V12 Hemi-powered muscle car in the process.

Fuck. Maybe I should try that again.

Review: A Friend of the Family (Lauren Grodstein)

I will try my best not to lapse into hyperbole. To say I liked this book, that this book is good, is not sufficient.

This books tricks you. You think it's about a young woman who seduces the son of a middle-aged Jewish doctor living in New Jersey. She's troubled, Dad disapproves, conflict ensues. And on the surface it is but Grodstein gives us so much more than that. She gives us a novel of obsessive parental love, in particular the love of Peter Dizinoff (the aforementioned doctor) for his son Alec. The primary problem is Peter's refusal to see his son as an adult. He orchestrates every major decision in his son's life and the twenty-one year old Alec is, understandably, resistant to this.

It's a slow build from reasonably concerned father to completely control freak. Peter is sympathetic and his evolution (devolution) is believable. The story is tense and subtle, Grodstein's prose is carefully crafted and precise. It was, in almost every way, one of the most satisfying and enjoyable novels I've read in years.

My only issue with Grodstein's novel is the weirdly hands-off presence of Elaine Dizinoff, Alec's mother and Peter's wife. She is, at times, a strong influence in her family but when her husband and son start to rip each other apart she stands back and observes. It doesn't feel natural. Writing Elaine this way may have been convenient for the narrative but it rings false.

Clearly the Elaine Issue was small enough to overlook because the first thing I did after finishing the book... I downloaded her first novel ("Reproduction is the Flaw of Love"). Review soon to come.

Review: Sin (Josephine Hart)

Josephine Hart's "Sin" was the most inconsistent and frustrating book I've read in a long time. Brilliantly spare and concise, Hart's prose was (at times) surprisingly good. She drops these perfect little phrases throughout the text but she won't let them lie! For lack of a better term, she doesn't "leave the power with the punch." I found myself wanting to smack her and yell "WHY?! Why did you keep going? Leave it alone. If was perfect the way it was." The text becomes an aggravating pattern of tiny explosive phrases intermixed with these purple prose-y unnecessary expository crap.

But while the writer-me was gritting my teeth through page after frustrating page, the therapist-me was wiggling with excitement at the best literary depiction of antisocial personality disorder I have ever read. In Ruth, Hart has created character that is both relatable and completely alien. The reader identifies with her jealousy, her rage, her desire to destroy the epitome of what she is not and can not have. But her nearly complete lack of empathy and feeling towards her "family" is disturbing and, to most people, hopelessly depressing.

From a clinical point of view Hart's novel is nearly perfect. From a literary point of view (and one must necessarily judge all fiction from this point of view) Hart's novel fails. Not miserably but it still fails.

It's not successful.

At all.

[Yeah, I did that on purpose.]

Review: In the Land of the Long White Cloud (Sarah Lark, trans. DW Lovett)

I did not expect to like this book. It's a 700 page "sweeping epic" [said with the requisite eye roll] promising small-r romance and more than you'd ever want to know about sheep farming in late 1800s New Zealand. In other words, over 700 reasons for me not to read this book. But I have a fascination with New Zealand (the impact of colonialism on native cultures, in particular) and I'm a sucker for any kind of Big Adventure. Strong female characters + Adventure = why not?!

The good: the novel starts strong, the characters are interesting and (for the most part) realistic, and the plot is compelling. While the writing is, at times, clunky and a bit overblown but this may be the fault of the translator. I was more than willing to overlook a few linguistic inconsistencies and head-scratchers because the meat of the story was strong.

The bad: they're in rural New Zealand in the 1880s on a sheep farm but never a single mention of the bug bites, the mud, the shit? For the sake of small-r romance (no one wants to get it on in a barn that is swarming with flies and smells like dung... not sexy), Lark unintentionally traipsed into the land of capital-R Romantic literature and this is where she lost me. Like bad Romantic literature, everything in this novel was too clean. The farms, the houses, the children, the story. Even the "war" between Maori and the colonists is a bloodless short-lived thing. Lark wraps everything up too neatly and it's all a bit too coincidental: the deaths, the marriages, the births, all of it.

All that said, I don't know if I'd be thrilled to spend another 700 pages in Lark's New Zealand but I could see myself trying out other of her work should translations become available.

Review: Fatal Vision (Joe McGinniss)

Maybe I'm setting myself for disappointment but ever since reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood I've been looking for its modern-day equal. Midnight in  The Garden of Good and Evil came close but slightly missed the mark. I was cautiously optimistic when I read a description of Fatal Vision describing it as "a true-crime classic." It became clear very quickly that I was in for another disappointment.

The journalistic ideal of remaining objective and keeping the writer out of the story is necessary in short form and hard news reporting but in longer works it creates an unnatural distance between the reader and the story and a linguistic frigidity that leaves the prose feeling awkward and clunky. In Fatal Vision the absence of the writer-voice is noticeable to the point of being unsettling.

Furthermore McGinniss, like many true-crime writers, relies far too heavily on investigative and court transcripts leaving large sections of the text unedited, dull, and stylistically incongruent. The reader never connects with the killer, the victims, or the investigators. The story feels like it's being told by a dispassionate omnipotent narrator, the proverbial god who doesn't care. And if the writer can't be bothered to care, why should the reader?

Before In Cold Blood I had written off true-crime as drugstore counter trash. Surely no good prose could be wrapped in glossy salacious packaging with raised bubbles promising "26 Pages of Crimes Scene Photos!" And unfortunately Joe McGinniss does nothing to change this perception.

Review: The Voice of Our Shadow ( Jonathan Carroll)

This didn't work for me. In fact, it just doesn't work at all. Ghost story, love story, bildungsroman... it is unclear what Carroll was trying to accomplish but he was not successful on any of those levels. It worked on only one level and I will get to that briefly. 

My main complaint is the clunky, wooden, ridiculous dialogue. No one talks like this, no one has ever talked like this. No one has ever called their illicit lover "Sporty" or "Champ." At times the dialogue actually harms the story due to its wild inappropriateness in context. An example: our protagonist interrupts a violent sexually motivated assault and manages to extract a (previously unknown) female character from the situation. Her response? "Gee, what part of heaven did you say you came from?" She then insists he spend the night in her apartment... because it is a well-known fact that women who have just been sexually assaulted feel safer with strange men sleeping in their homes. Yeah...

The novel changes tone about two-thirds of the way through which makes the ending feel forced and completely implausible (even more so than the aforementioned scene). The author's intent for the ending is clear albeit somewhat obvious, but he executes so poorly the reader is left rolling their eyes and muttering "that's it?!"  

However, I said this novel works on one level and it does: as an extended love letter to Vienna. The city becomes the most intriguing and well-developed aspect of the story and feels more like an authentic character than any sentient (or non-sentient) being. Carroll's descriptions of the city are thoughtful and original and one is left with a better understanding of Vienna, and Austria in general. 

If Carroll could put that amount of care and attention into his dialogue and storytelling, he'd be onto something. 

[Review on Goodreads]