Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl’s getting a lot of buzz since it came out a year ago - I finally got around to reading it recently and got so mad on Facebook I said it made me QUESTION THE VERY PURPOSE OF BOOKS.  In retrospect, I don’t know what I really meant by that, and I’ve kind of settled down about the book.  I’m about to drop some Crazy-town spoilers, so don’t read on if you intend to read Gone Girl yourself.

So, at the beginning, there’s a double-narrative about the disappearance of Amy on her 5th wedding anniversary.  Nick, her husband, gives his perspective, and the other half is from Amy’s old diary.  Nick comes off like a jerk and Amy seems like sweet and likable woman that’s WAY too good for Nick.  So, it seems fairly obvious that Nick “did it”, because you can only assume that she is dead and that she was killed by her domestic partner.  

So, then there’s a twist.  If you talk to anyone who’s read Gone Girl, they’ll want to know when or if you knew there would be a twist.  I’ll admit that I saw the twist coming only about 2 pages in advance.  Some people will tell you they saw it a mile ago.  It turns out, Amy’s a psychopath, and she staged her own death and framed Nick for her murder, mostly just to stick it to him.  So, the double narrative continues, but from Nick’s increasingly befuddled POV and from Amy’s vindictive POV, where she explains how she “did it” and observes how the case goes forward.  Amy admits that she’s taking advantage of the general assumption that in case of a missing or dead woman, it’s fairly likely that her domestic partner had something to do with it.

I thought the entries turned out nicely, and it wasn’t simple. I had to maintain an affable if somewhat naive persona, a woman who loved her husband and could see some of this flaws (otherwise she’d be too much of a sap) but was sincerely devoted to him - all the while leading the reader (in this case, the cops, I am so eager for them to find it) toward the conclusion that Nick was indeed planning to kill me.

For a while that really cheesed me off until I was finally able to doff my cap to Flynn and admit she’d really pulled a good one.  I mean, not only that, but put together an extremely well-crafted narrative structure followed by a beautifully executed twist. Although, the truth is, if a woman is injured or killed, it’s actually fairly likely that her intimate partner did harm her - somehow I felt like this whole switcher-oo was a kick in the pants to the very real issues of domestic violence.  So, ok, I’m naturally willing to concede this is FICTION and for entertainment purposes, but what Gone Girl turned into for me was a particularly over-the-top episode of CSI, which I stopped watching years ago specifically because of their propensity to veer toward ridonkulous plot twists.  I mean, the only rational explanation for what Amy does is that she’s like, an honest-to-God psychopath.  And then the book turns to the area of truly inconceivable when Amy double-frames and murders her ex-boyfriend, comes home to Nick and somehow convinces him that they’re going to live together even though he knows what she did and then she impregnates herself with old sperm he had a bank and traps him forever with the threat that otherwise she’ll turn their kid into another psychopath or... something?  

Anyway, aside from a handful of friends who discreetly whispered to me that they too, were annoyed by Gone Girl, it’s been very well received since it’s publication.  It was also a finalist in the Tournament of Books, a kind of cool showdown between some of the year’s hottest and, in some cases, overlooked fiction in a sports-like bracket thing.  Anyway, Gone Girl made it to the next-to-last bracket-thing (I’m not very good at describing this).  Here’s what Kate Bolick has to say about the book, even as it beats out the competition:  “And then: Hah! The joke is on Amy! And also on Nick. And also on you.”  That’s the truth.  

A Tale for the Time Being

My review of A Tale for the Time Being on Newcity!  What a great book!  I'm a long-time Ozeki fan, this is a fine addition to her cannon.

Bring Up the Bodies

Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy continues to amaze with Bring Up the Bodies, which chronicles the dissolution (to put it gently) of Henry VIII's second marriage to Anne Boleyn.  I read Wolf Hall, despite my general rule, that I break all the time, not to consume culture about capital punishment, which makes me feel queasy inside.  Bring Up the Bodies is all about Henry giving Anne the boot, which leads to her eventual (spoiler?) decapitation.  Boy, did that make me feel queasy.  Both books have won the Booker Prize. This entire trilogy trajectory is going to end with (mini-spoiler) Thomas Cromwell's decapitation.  Eek!  But I can't. Stop! Reading!

Mantel got in a teensy bit of hot water recently when it was perceived that she was denigrating the duchess Kate in her talk on Royal Bodies.   Even David Cameron jumped into the fray.  I found the whole thing very amusing - and an especially inept reading of what she actually said, which was a feminist examination of the "royal body", from Marie Antoinette to Anne Boleyn to Kate to Queen Elizabeth, who Mantel shamefully admits:

I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner, my gaze sharp enough to pick the meat off her bones. I felt that such was the force of my devouring curiosity that the party had dematerialised and the walls melted and there were only two of us in the vast room, and such was the hard power of my stare that Her Majesty turned and looked back at me, as if she had been jabbed in the shoulder; and for a split second her face expressed not anger but hurt bewilderment.

Yowza.  I mean.  The way this woman writes!  Bring up the Bodies was largely a thrilling experience for me - like a joyride of gorgeous unravelling language from a master of the craft.  By now I've noticed that critics seem to enjoy sharing what they consider the Most Beautiful Sentence Mantel has written.  For me, it's this one:

The susurration, tapestry-muffled, of polyglot conversation.

Sure, it's an incomplete clause but uh, in context it's really great.  Also I had to remind myself what "susurration" means.  Suddenly studying for the GRE came flooding back.  Actually, I am not ashamed to list the following words whose meanings I had to look up (see below if you want to quiz yourself):

• Tonsured
• parvenu
• opprobrious
• suborn
• oubliette
• sauve qui peut
• sprezzatura
• subfusc
• fulminating

Also "phlegmatic" doesn't mean what I thought.  All this time I thought it was a person with a lot of phlegm.  Thank you, Reader-dictionary-tool!

An interesting aspect of this trilogy so far is that Henry VIII actually comes off as a fairly likeable character despite almost all evidence to the contrary.  Makes sense - almost everything's gone right for him his entire life, surrounded by yes-men with his every whim fulfilled. Why shouldn't be be a jovial character?  But, it's wise to be careful around him:

You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.  

That's the rub, of course. Out of the mannered civility of the court come the absolutely barbaric actions of the crown, and by the end, (spoiler?) everyone's literally slipping around in the blood of Anne Boleyn and five men on trumped-up charges of treason.  Whew!  What a book!  Read it!

____________________________________

• the bald part of a monk's head
• a person of obscure origin who has gained wealth
• disgraceful, shameful. Not to be confused with approbation, of course
• bribe
• a secret dungeon accessed by a trapdoor at the top.  
• a general stampede, panic. Literally: "save who can"
• studied nonchalance 
• drab
• hurling denunciations or menaces.  Underused, isn't it?  I mean, I fulminate almost daily.  

Looking for something to read?

Here's a great list of books that were longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize).

There are a few you'd expect to see - Bringing Up the Bodies, NW, How Should a Person Be, Kate Atkinson's new book, Life after Life (I'm working on my review now for Newcity) and Gone Girl (I just finished it and will have excessive words about that later).... but a few I've never heard of that look great!

From Potter's Field

I cannot release myself from Patricia Cornwell's unholy hold over me.  Nor can I easily resist a free mystery book in a give away pile.  If you see a pile of free books, there's a 82% chance  a Cornwell is nestled in its thorny depths.

I hesitate to even summarize From Potter's Field, which I do not recommend, but for my own sake (ie, I spy a free copy of From Potter's Field in a box in 6 years and wonder, "Have I read this?") I will.  It's one of her Kay Scarpetta books.  She's a forensic something-or-other and for some reason (this book assumes you've read a previous book called I Don't Know What COME ON!) this serial killer is obsessed with her and she's sort of obsessed with him and ends up nearly getting killed a few times.  It's not really a mystery because it's quite clear who this serial killer is, it's more of a how-are-they-going-to-catch-him?  And, obviously they are going to catch him.

Once again, I'm going to try to make a vow not to read any more Cornwell paperbacks that throw themselves in my path...

Code Name Verity

It's impossible to talk about the plot of Code Name Verity very much because I'm in danger of giving away the whole thing if I get started, so, I'll describe it in broad terms.  It's about these two young women (20ish? 18, maybe?) during WWII.  One's Scottish, her nickname's Queenie and she's a spy (YES!), the other is English, she's a pilot.  They meet while in training and become best friends.  We learn this while Queenie is writing her "confession" to the Nazis, who've captured her in France.  That's not a spoiler, you learn that right away.

So, poor Queenie's captured in France and being held in a hotel turned prison, tortured and forced to write down everything she knows.  I just finished an unputdownable book, So Much Pretty, and then, what do you know but THIS book is keeping me up way past my bedtime because I can't put it down either!  I may have mentioned when I was a kid I loved reading books about WWII - if this YA book had come out when I was a teenager, I probably would've just gone to Spy Heaven.  Forever Young Adult has gone so nuts over this book they even made a style board about it.  (Yes, I would like those shoes, thank you.)

I was a bit disappointed by the end, for reasons I can't really talk about, but something compelling happened that forced me to go back and read about half of the book again, right after finishing it, and I'm fairly eager to put this in the mail immediately for my sister to read.  I wish there had been more kissing.  Oh, if you don't know what "Kiss me, Hardy" means, you'll need to read this in advance.  And this, just for fun.

Elizabeth Wein sprinkles bits of French and German through the book, and translates most of it for you.  I think that's one of the aspects of this book that puts it in the YA category.   (I'm currently working on a complicated theory of what makes a YA book....).  I don't like it when authors translate bits, I prefer to figure it out myself.  Also there's no romance, although there's an implied future between Maggie and Queenie's brother.

So, trust me, if you like spy stuff, and girl-power stuff, and WWII stuff, read it.  The characters are really plucky and terrific; you'll wish they were your best friends.

This is How You Lose Her (2012)

I finished This is How You Lose Her in 2012, but we just had our book club about it this weekend.   Here's a watercolor I made from this scene:

The chief rocker, though, was Doña Rosie, our upstairs neighbor, this real nice boricua lady, happiest person you've ever seen even though she was blind. Halleluja! You had to be careful with her because she had a habit of sitting down without even checking if there was anything remotely chairlike underneath her, and twice already she'd missed the couch and busted her ass - the last time hollering, Dios mío, qué me has hecho? - and I had to drag myself out of the basement to help her to her feet.

"Boricua" is a person from Puerto Rico
"Dios mío, qué me has hecho" means, My God, what have you done to me?

So Much Pretty

Small towns are well regarded in America as bastions of community and helpfulness, but I've never really shared that feeling, particularly after living in several big cities.  When you're from a small town, something awful happens where some of the people you know and love are also racists and misogynists and homophobics - it's hard to square.  Anyway, I've just never agreed with this pastoral nonsense about the good people of small towns - small towns are full of assholes and criminals, just like any other place, but due to poverty and lower education levels - maybe more.

Cara Hoffman sets her mystery, So Much Pretty, in a small town in upstate New York.  It's a low-income area, where people are perceived to be farmers, but in fact the largest employer is a big box store.  The local dairy is polluting the land.  A girl is found dead on the side of the road.

The story unfolds very slowly.  Wendy is found dead, and, piecemeal, you find out about her history.  It's told from the perspective of various characters.  Another family, the Pipers, mixes with Wendy's.  They moved from NYC to find that peaceful sanctuary of the small town and raise their daughter, Alice. Early in the book, you discover that something is going to happen to Alice, or that maybe she's done something awful - it's hard to believe she might have something to do with Wendy's death, because the more you get to know her, the more charming and brilliant she seems.

A journalist, Stacy Flynn, has been trying to find Wendy since she went missing.  She's a great character that reminded me a lot of Claire deWitt in the other book I just finished, Claire deWitt and the City of the Dead.  She reads like a dude - I love that Hoffman didn't bind her by gender roles.  

I couldn't put this book down - I read it in two sittings.  It haunted by thoughts for about 4 days and a week or so later, it's still heavy on my mind.  I'm about to drop some major spoilers now, so, stop now if you're intrigued enough to read it, or don't mind spoilers...




Major spoilers.  Everything...




OK, then.




When you find out what happened to Wendy, it's terrible.  It's worse when you find out out the book is loosely based on an actual case of an 11-year old girl who was gang-raped by adult members of her "community" in Texas.  (Here's the original story in the NYT, which later required an apology for lacking balance.)  The chapter where Alice unravels what happened mirrors the reader's experience.  She's shocked, horrified, scared, and she wants to do something.  "It would hardly be rational to accept that I live inside a thing made of flesh that people capture, hide, and then wait in line to rape."  Alice, being a supremely rational, thoughtful person, decides that the only way to resolve not just this crime, but to make a stand against further crimes against women, is to kill the men that she knew were involved and let their deaths stand as a warning to others: this is what happens.  So, Alice becomes a school shooter (I think she's a junior in HS) and a murderer.  It was shocking reading it, especially in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting - and came as such a surprise. Girls don't commit school shootings.

I read some of Hoffman's blog and other work after I finished the book. (Here's a good interview.)  She's obviously like, a genius, and has some extremely well-reasoned things to say about violence toward women in our culture.  She's angry, understandably, and doesn't back away from that - I think a lot of people don't appreciate art or thought that comes from a place of anger, particularly from a woman.  I appreciate that she stands behind her anger and her feelings because it's a natural reaction, and women are entitled to be angry, and, aside from that, fury seems to be a pretty good impetus for making art.  There's a scene in her book that shook me as much as some of the more outwardly violent ones - the journalist's predecessor at the newspaper is upset about something she's done and comes to do some mansplaining to her, but she won't hear it.  "And he knew then that people were right about her being ethnic of some kind. He sat down because he wanted to hit her or grab her, and he felt that if he remained standing, he might do it, and then he would be charged with assault."  The idea that this person was so upset with her that he had to sit down to keep himself from hitting her is a perfect example of how quick some men are to jump to violence that they have to fight to "keep themselves" from a physical response.  And I can't tell you how many times I've felt men look like that at me over some small argument, clenching their fists and sputtering and stalking, talking themselves down from... what? Punching me?

I don't advocate violence, in any way, in fact, I'm so anti-gun I don't even think hunters should have guns. They can shoot with bows and arrows.  I really don't like the idea of vigilante justice.  So, I don't accept Alice's actions as a rational choice, but she makes a fairly convincing argument - that horrifies me.  I guess that's what's been on my mind since I read this book - that violence toward women is so pervasive that nothing less than an armed revolution will solve it.  But, today, Martin Luther King Day, I choose to believe that peaceful resistance is the only protest that works.  It works unbearable slowly, but, eventually, it works.   

Lavinia

Lavinia is a minor character in the Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem, although you might argue that a war was fought for her.  The great Ursula K Le Guin wrote an inspired feminist retelling of the story in her 2008 Lavinia.  Le Guin imagines the Virgil's story of the Trojan  Aeneas, who travels to Italy and is prophesied to marry Lavinia after a war.

In Le Guin's story, Lavinia is a dutiful princess, pious, and faithful to the Gods of her family.  It's time for her to get married, and her greatest desire is to make her father happy.  I was most interested in how Le Guin focused on the familial aspect of the tale - what their home life was like, the relationship of the royal family to the rest of the town.  In an engaging afterward, Le Guin writes about how people at this time (I think it takes place between 12-8 BCE) lived quite primitively, and that she was drawn to "... early Rome; the  dark, plain Republic, a forum not of marble but of wood and brick, and austerer people with a strong sense of duty, order and justice... extended families who worship was of the fire in their hearth, the food in their granary, the local spring, the spirits of the place and earth."  So, Lavinia's life is very much about her role in society - keeping the Vesta fire going in the hearth (her job as the unmarried young woman in the house), visiting her families oracle and performing rites for her family and community.

So, when she  visits the oracle and is told that she must marry a stranger and that a war will be fought, neither she nor her father question it.  That's probably the hardest part for any contemporary reader to swallow, because without laying eyes on this guy, when a ship rolls up the Tiber river, they already know it's got Lavinia's future husband on it.  But, what's interesting is that Le Guin tips the idea of what it is to win or conquer in war - there aren't really any "bad guys", and there aren't especially "good guys" either, although one naturally has an affinity for the narrator.

Le Guin faces the brutality of this hand-combat war straight on.  In an agonizing page-and-a-half, she outlines the series of deaths like ingredients in a dish, "Ilioneus kill Lucetius, Liger kills Emathion, Asilas kills Corynaeus, Caeneus kills Ortygius. Turnus kill Caeneus..." and so on.  A wise, older Lavinia looks back and says,

I had not learned how peace galls men, how they gather impatient rage against it as it continues, how even while they pray the powers for peace, they work against it and make certain it will be broken and give way to battle, slaughter, rape and waste.

Another amazing twist of story-telling Le Guin includes (here gently I'll remind you that she wrote this book at 79 years of age!) is the character of Virgil - he visits Lavinia and tells her the poem, so not only is her life predetermined, but she herself admits her own creationism in the story.  "It has not been difficult for me the believe in my fictionality, because it is, after all, so slight."  So slight!  I'm still mulling that one over.

We went to Rome recently, and two of my favorite things were the wonderful she-wolf sculpture and the Temple of the Vestal Virgins.  I like lady-stuff, and in that male-dominated period, those are two powerful examples of female empowerment.  There were quite a few references to the she-wolf as mother and protector, and, although the Temple of the Vestal Virgins wasn't specifically mentioned, the practice of worshipping Vespa became much more clear to me as related to the hearth fire (and all that that entails).  

You know how sometimes, when you're really into something, it all starts falling into your lap?  I also chanced across a bit of scholarship by a hairdresser/archeologist. She created this video on the hairstyle of the Vestal Virgins (which Le Guin also mentions when Lavinia gets married).

I highly recommend the personal afterward that was, at least, in my edition (First Mariner Books ed. 2009).  I would recommend this book to anyone interested in feminist reclamation of history, Early Roman or Italian history or Ursula Le Guin in general - it's not a casual read but continually challenging, and, at least for me, involved a fair amount of research!

The Uninvited

My review of The Uninvited on New City lit.

Erk! What a creepy cover!

2012 Stats

I read a total of 54 books in 2012
48 fiction and 6 non-fiction
36 were by women
18 were written by men

I wrote 16 reviews for Newcity.

Books I'm most looking forward to in 2013 are:

A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki (March)

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris (April)

Life After Life, Kate Atkinson (April)

Night Film: A Novel, Marisha Pessl (August)

If you're looking for ideas or interested in what other lady writers and editors liked best in 2012, check this out.

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (2012)

There's a blogger I  follow whose recommendations haven't led me astray yet... I put Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead on my wishlist after I spied it on her site.  And my sister gave it to me for Christmas (thank you!)  It's written by Sara Gran.  All the blurbs are like...

"...as if David Lynch directed a Raymond Chandler novel..."

"...like Kinsey Millhone channeled by Hunter S. Thompson..."

"... a cool blend of Nancy Drew and Sid Vicious..."

Settle down, people!  It's like Lizbeth Sander fucked Sherlock Holmes and Claire DeWitt was their illegitimate chid that was raised by gypsy circus bears.   

But, seriously, it IS kind of like all those things.  I've never read Sara Gran before, but her voice is really fresh and compelling.  Claire DeWitt felt like something really original, even though the story followed a fairly normal arc (thank God.  I was a bit worried, as I was reading, that the mystery was going to have a non-traditional ending and I was dreading it.)    Apparently it's the first of a series (oh, snap!  It looks like the next one comes out in June).  I reminded me of two other slim mysteries that are really worth checking out if you haven't already:  Michael Chabon's The Final Solution (which also has a parrot on the cover) and Boy Detective Fails, by Joe Meno.

Claire DeWitt is a detective - and the city of the dead is New Orleans, post-Katrina.  DeWitt is trying to solve a murder and interacts with all these wackadoo New Orleans characters, particularly some semi-homeless teens.  Claire studied this method based on a French writer named Silette and his thin book, Détection.  She frequently refers to his advice in her quest to find the truth.  Silette's method is circuitous and introspective - for example:

"The detective thinks he is investigating a murder or a missing girl," Silette writes. "But truly he is investigating something else altogether, something he cannot grasp hold of directly. Satisfaction will be rare. Uncertainty will be your natural state. Sureness will always elude you. The detective will always circle around what he wants, never seeing it whole."

Claire utilizes some strange techniques to solve mysteries, like getting drunk and stoned with suspects.  In one hilarious scene, she talks about how disguise, and then comes up with this complicated backstory for a character disguise, and then everyone recognizes her right away.  Even though that scene is pretty silly, however, you're meant to understand that she really is this amazing detective - one of the best in the world.  

Gran's prose is really clean - here's a passage chosen almost at random - look how beautiful:

Terrell came out from inside the house. The windows were boarded up with plywood. Terrell held his pants up around his slim waist with his right hand. The boys who hung out on street corners in New Orleans were so achingly thin, I wondered if it was a fashion trend or they were trying not to exist, even less than they already did in the eyes of the world.

It was a fantastic mystery (I'm becoming a real mystery lover) and I eagerly await the next in the series.

Top 5 Books of 2012

These are what I published in Newcity... I have some other top 5s there that *I* think are amusing.

Top 5 Books (published in 2012)
“NW” by Zadie Smith
“A Hologram for the King” by Dave Eggers
“The Age of Miracles” by Karen Thompson Walker
“HHhH” by Laurent Binet
“Treasure Island!!!” by Sara Levine


I read Junot Diaz's This is how you Lose Her after I wrote that.... I really it belongs on the list.  I suppose I might bump Treasure Island!!! to get it on there.

But, my Top 5 Books I Read (Not necessarily published in 2012) were:
The Colony, Jillian Weise
Swamplandia, Karen Russell
A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers
The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker
The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides


Top 5 YAs I Read (Not necessarily published in 2012):
Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler
Beauty Queens, Libba Bray
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow

The Fault in Our Stars

I've read nothing but great things about The Fault in Our Stars all year long, so I finally read it!  Hazel is a teenager that has had thyroid cancer for most of her life.  Her lungs don't work well and she always has an oxygen tank with her. She meets Augustus Waters at a young person's cancer support group and they fall in love.  Well, they fall in love carefully, because Hazel doesn't want to break the heart of Gus if she dies.  Mortality is a constant companion in this book - Hazel will not likely live very long.  Gus is also a cancer survivor - he had cancer in his leg, which was amputated.

One of the most influential books I read this year was The Colony, so I've been extra-attentive to narratives that feature people with disabilities, and when authors choose to include these narratives in their books.  I think it must be a difficult decision to make, because, obviously they would want to avoid any mere tokenism - I think books like The Fault in Our Stars and Beauty Queens did a great job of including differently abled characters who are much much more than their disabilities.  

Hazel loves a novel called An Imperial Affliction, which ends in the middle of a sentence.  She loves the novel, but really wonders what happened to the characters - Gus helps her in an adventure to meet the author.  Probably shouldn't say much else with out dropping some major spoilers.  Although... I did spend a lot of time dreading the idea that the novel would end in the middle of a sentence and I would tear out my hair and catch something on fire.  I'll spare you the agony and tell you (spoiler): it doesn't.  

Like the other Green novel I read, these characters are idealized - they're smarter, wittier, more thoughtful teenagers than you or I were (even though you and I like to think we were that smart and witty).  Hazel says, without irony, that her parents are her best friends, and spends a fair amount of time worrying what will happen to them if she dies.  She says something like, "The only thing worse than being a kid with cancer is having a kid with cancer."  Lines like that kind of take me out of the story a little bit, maybe because I'm a cynical a-hole, but I just can't see many 16 years olds with that type of actualization.  I mean... I just don't think kids can or should be best friends with their parents.

If you read any reviews of The Fault in Our Stars, what you'll find is a breakdown of how many tears were shed throughout the book.  I did, I'll admit, shed one or two tears.  Here, for your reading enjoyment, are some quotes:

This book made my eyes insanely puffy for days because THE CRYING. SO. MUCH. CRYING. via 

The Fault in Our Stars had me laughing and crying, then laughing more and crying more. via 

The ending. Oh, wow, that got me going. DANG IT, I WILL NOT CRY AGAIN. via 

This has, hands-down been my favorite book of the year and was three and half hours of crying, laughing and coming to grips with the ubiquitous fact of life: we all face oblivion all the time and one of these days, we will have to embrace it.  (via That one's from a dude.)

Of course, I need the obligatory cried-my-eyes-out line.  Because I totally did.  It got really messy, and I snotted a little on my sweater sleeves because I couldn’t bring myself to get up and get a tissue.  I couldn’t pull myself away. via

Aside from making you cry like a little girl, you'll probably laugh a little too.  Green is legitimately funny, and it's hard to write funny.  Gus and Hazel poke fun at stereotypes of kids with cancer, like this:

"Like, are you familiar with the trope of the stoic and determined cancer victim who heroically fights
cancer her with inhuman strength and never complains or stops smiling even at the very end, et cetera?" 

"Indeed," I said "They are kindhearted and generous souls whose every breath is an Inspiration to Us All.  They're so strong! We admire them so!"

That's funny. And, he writes from a GIRL'S point of view and didn't make me want to GAG????  Unprecedented.  

via

Well, I guess I've done my part to perpetuate the idea that this book ends in tears, tear, tears!  But, seriously, you probably will cry.

Beauty Queens

Beauty Queens (2011) by Libba Bray is a hilarious novel about a bunch of beauty queens on their way to a pageant, whose plane crashes on a desert island.  I liked it so much that I don't really want to say that much about it.... it's a fun, feminist, romp, wherein the beauty queens transform from stereotypes of themselves to independent survivors thriving on an island against all odds.  I'll tell ya, I love nothing more than a survival story, it really captures my imagination to picture people (me?!?) getting by in the wild.  

Each surviving queen has a bit of a backstory - if I remember correctly, none of them was independently interested in becoming a beauty queen, most of them were doing it to satisfy a parent.  Not surprisingly, Bray includes a reality tv element (something tells me this woman is well schooled in ANTM and Honey Boo Boo and also I would like to meet her and become best friends) in the form of these guys who... I don't want to drop any spoilers because it really IS a fun read ... let's just say that some male characters are introduced, and the beauty queens are in danger, but one of the things I loved (tiny spoiler) is that the beauty queens never sit back and wait for a dude to get them out of a jam.

I guess this book is officially YA... I suppose it would be a fine book for YA readers, but categorizing it never entered my mind as I was reading.

Bray's cast of characters includes a couple of gay beauty queens, a beauty queen who used to be a boy, a deaf beauty queen and several beauty queens of color.  I loved that her book incorporated such a wide cast, putting all these women on equal footing and as equal contributors to the community they create on the island.  There's also a very strong anti-capitalism line, with repeated gags about commercialization and how the sale of so many products hinges on making women feel bad about their bodies or selves.

In school, they would tell you that life wouldn't come to you; you had to go out and make it your own.  But when it came to love, the message for girls seemed to be this: Don't. Don't go after what you want. Wait. Wait to be chosen, as if only in the eye of another could one truly find value. The message was confusing and infuriating. It was a shell game with no actual pea under the rapidly moving cups.

At book club, one of my friends picked up my copy of Beauty Queens, and thrust it in my face, saying, "Throw this out, immediately," (*gasp*) "and get the audio version, it's hilarious."  So, I have it on good authority that the audio copy is great, and read by Libba Bray herself.

Paper Towns

John Green has been getting crazy buzz this year - every YA blog that I read gushes about The Fault in Our Stars (the TEARS!  Oh, the sobbing that was recounted...)  So... I've been missing the boat on this Green fellow.

I snatched up a copy of Paper Towns (2008) at my local library to see what all the fuss was about.

In Paper Towns, Quentin (Q), is woken up in the middle of the night by his beautiful, slightly older neighbor, Margo, who he has naturally had a crush on his entire life.  Margo needs his help on this all-night adventure trip to exact revenge on her popular friends that have sort of double-crossed her.  Margo is a meticulous planner and has a great imagination, so the reader might get a little crush on her as well.  She gives Q a list that includes catfish, VEET, Vaseline, & Mountain Dew - and the mystery of their night unfolds for the reader just as it does for Q - what are they going to do with this bizarre list?  This all-night adventure, which is about the first 1/3 of the book, is really fun to read, and clips along at basically an "unputdownable" rate.

The next morning, Margo's gone - run away.  But, she's left a handful of clues that Q and his friends unravel and attempt to find this poor, lost girl.

I quite enjoyed reading Paper Towns.  Green crafts a good story, and includes some sophisticated themes that appeal to older readers like me, and, I'd imagine, gives younger readers access to some larger ideas to ponder.  "Paper Towns", for example, refers to non-existant towns that are put on maps as a kind of copyright test - if the false town shows up on another map, there's proof that someone just  plagiarized a map.  Margo sees people living paper lives - inconsequential and unimportant. She and Q live in Florida, not far from Disney World - in the created environment of that strange land, you can understand how a bright, existential kid could get the itch for something "real".  And Q learns some big-boy lessons about the impossibility of knowing someone - that his idealized girl-next-door is mere mortal with the breadth of human tragedy and triumph wound up in her teenage form:

The fundamental mistake I had always made-was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.

Despite Q's little lesson about not idealizing his neighbor, Green's teens are hyper-idealized.  (I did finally read The Fault in our Stars, more on that later...) Green writes teenagers that have great relationships with the parents, are smart and witty, thoughtful and kind.  Q and his best boy pals are considerate, brilliant and helpful (do you know a lot of 17 year olds boys like that?)   I've heard tell that it's not that unusual for today's teenager to claim, with utter sincerity, that their parents ARE their best friends... I concede that the modern teenager might be a bit more sensitive than I and my friends were when I was a kid... but  I did find Green's teenagers eye-rollingly mature and witty.  His characters remind me of Daniel Handler's.  (Not surprisingly, Handler told me he liked Green's work when I interviewed him earlier this year.)  The alternative to my cynical criticism is that Green's teenager serves as a Guide to Good Teenaging to actual teenagers, as well as a romanticized image that teenagers and adults can "relate to".  In other words, I think his charming young people allow the reader to see their best selves as they inevitably relate to the characters.  I think if I had read this book when I was 16, I would have thought, "Yeah, I'm a lot like this kid..."  (even though I probably wasn't.)  So, in the end, I love that how his books have the power to inspire the reader to be a better person.

   "I just want to find her," I say, because I do. I want her to be safe, alive, found. The string played out. The rest is secondary.    

"Yeah, but--I don't know," Ben says. I can feel him looking over at me, being Serious Ben. "Just--Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are. Like, I always thought Lacey was so hot and so awesome and so cool, but now when it comes to being with her it's not the exact same. People are different when you can smell them and see them up close, you know?" 

"I know that," I say. I know how long, and how badly, I wrongly imagined her.  

"I'm just saying that is was easy for me to like Lacey before. It's easy to like someone from a distance. But when she stopped being this amazing unattainable thing or whatever, and started being, like, just a regular girl with a weird relationship with food and frequent crankiness who's kinda bossy - then I had to basically start liking a whole different person."

Supplemento al dizionario italiano

When we were in Rome, I bought a very useful little book called Supplemento al dizionario italiano by Bruno Munari.  It's a dictionary all about hand signals, and what they mean in Italian.  There's a picture of a hand making the symbol, and then translations in Italian, Englis, French and German.

For example, they do OK just like we do - by making a circle with their thumb and forefinger tips together.  Then there's a short description and info.  Like, "This gesture is a recent import from America, and is not yet very widely used in Italy. The forward movement is sharp and short, then the hand is held motionless."

We went through the entire book with our Italian friends, who taught us some of the finer points of some of the signals.  It was fun, because we were able to communicate with each other on this whole different level!  Sometimes I would challenge M with a long sentence and ask him to say the whole thing in hand signals.  He was really good at it.

Here are some of my favorites... This one means "Rage" you pretend like you're biting your finger.

and this one is like, "Who's with me?"  You put your hand out, and everyone who's "In" puts their finger in your palm.  Cute, right?

The Age of Miracles

I read this FANTASTIC book called The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker - it was so good, and I just want the whole world to read it.  It's about... the end of the world, sort of.  This girl and her family live in California, and pretty soon they and the rest of the planet discover that the earth is spinning more slowly.  By about a minute slower a day, if I remember correctly.  At first everyone freaks out, and they cancel school and work for a week or so.  And some people move out to Utah and start end of the world colonies and whatnot... but what's really interesting is how, after the initial shock, people sort of return to life as usual.  Aside from the planet's actual orbit changing, the life of the teenage character, Julia, continues in the somewhat standard manner.

Partly this is a rather brilliant commentary on how all events are like the end of the world to teenagers, but what really struck me, and maybe this is just me... but what I felt was this larger metaphor of how we react to global catastrophes.  For example, right now global warming is this really serious situation, and I feel pretty strongly that we're all pretty much going to die from it in the relative near future.  But, the average person doesn't really spend much or any of the day fretting or doing much about it, they just carry on with life, even though this major, global, disaster is literally getting worse every minute.  But, also, it's like, what are we going to do?  Just, freak out for like, the next 20 years or whatever?  Just ... constantly freak out?  That doesn't make sense.

Thompson Walker really thought through the implications of the earth spinning slower.  So, after a while, the day gets really, really long - I love how she dealt with the reality of time in her story (You know I'm nutso about Time and Space, y'all.)  Because the Earth spins slower, gravity changes slightly - how does that effect people.  How does it effect crops, and so on?

Most of all I loved the pacing of the book.  It frequently reminded me of Eugenides' Virgin Suicides, which has a beautiful, yearning, slow pace.  Both books are simply exemplary for their treatment of the contemporary suburban American teenager.

We were Californians and thus accustomed to the motions of the earth. We understood that the ground could shift and shudder. We kept batteries in our flashlights and gallons of water in our closet. We accepted that fissures might appear in our sidewalks. Swimming pools sometimes sloshed like bowls of water. We were well practiced at crawling beneath tabletops, and we knew to beware of flying glass. At the start of every school year, we each packed a large ziplock bag full of non-perishables in case The Big One stranded us at school. But we Californians were no more prepared for the particular calamity than those who had built their homes on more stable ground.

The Ninth Life of Louis Drax

Liz Jensen has a new book coming out that I'm going to review for Newcity.  I had read The Ninth Life of Louis Drax (2004) before, but I didn't write about it on my blog, so therefore I basically had no memory of it.  In case any of my handful of readers thought this blog was for you, ha ha - well, no.  I have a terrible memory, and don't remember a thing I don't write down.

Louis Drax, much to my surprise, despite having read it before (everyone is like that, right?) is about a precocious young boy in a coma.  It's kind of a mystery, because it's not quite clear how he became comatose.  The book is partly from the perspective of Louis, who has a unique voice, and partly from his doctor.  The whole thing takes place in France.  Jensen is British, but I guess she used to live in France.

Anyway, without giving too much away... there's this kid in a coma, and there's a little mystery, and there's also a little mysticism (or something) - for example, Louis's mother tells the doctor that she thinks her child is an angel.  Louis also narrates, and seems to have a fair amount of insight into what's happening around him.  Louis's voice is interesting to read because he's very aggressive for such a little kid.  Jensen is not at all precious with this story:

Every Wednesday after school, when all the others are doing ateliers or catéchisme or watching TV, I'm visiting Fat Perez who's a mind-reader who isn't any good at mind-reading and to punish him you could post some hamster droppings to him in an envelope, except maybe he'd think they were papaya seeds and plant them in a pot because he's so dumb and he'll wait and wait and wait for them to grow but they never will. And sometimes I count aloud just to drive him mad, un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit neuf dix onze douze, or in English, one two three four five except then I have to stop because I don't know what comes after five. 

Clan of the Cave Bear

Somehow I managed NOT to read Clan of the Cave Bear between the ages of 15-23, like every other girl in America, but it's always been on my kitschy-to-read list because I've long heard that it's "good" and also that there are "bonkers sex scenes."

Then we went to France a few years ago and I got really interested in caves and cavepeople and cave drawings, so, I finally picked up a copy at my local thrift store (trust me, there's always a copy at your local thrift store).



So, it's about this girl, who's a Cro-Magnon, I guess, named Ayla, whose family gets killed in an earthquake.  She nearly dies, but is saved by this Neanderthal lady named Iza.  Iza raises her as her daughter, but the whole thing's fraught with a lot of suspicion and anxiety because the girl is from "the Others".  Their culture is extremely patriarchal and all the women have to literally bow and avert their eyes until the men allow them to talk.  I just cannot bear to read shit like that, unless there's a pretty quick subversion and triumph by the lady folks. Unfortunately for poor Ayla, it's just one damn tribulation after another, mostly because of the men in the tribe.  Eventually the tribe elder announces that she is "dead" (temporarily) because she illegally learned how to hunt, and even though she saved someone's life, she has to go to the "spirit world" for a month.  It's actually pretty easy for her to survive the spirit world, which, it turns out, is just the regular world, because she knows how to hunt and she's pretty smart, having a larger frontal lobe and whatnot.  Anyway, she survives that and returns to the clan and then, she starts getting raped by this rotten caveman all the time.  Eventually she gets pregnant and has a baby, but everyone thinks there's something wrong with the baby because it has a skinny neck and can't hold it's head up.  So, she runs off with the baby so they won't kill it, but when she comes back, they're like, Now you have to be "dead" again.

And all this happens when she's, like, EIGHT.

There were a couple parts I liked, like, how Jean Auel describes Ayla as tall, blonde and lithe but all the Neanderthals think she's really ugly.  Also, I liked how she described Ayla setting up her own cave and surviving all by herself.  I like to think I could do that, even though I would most surely die of hypothermia almost immediately.  PS, I saw these great photographs by Megan Cump that reminded me of the book.

But, the gross patriarchal overtones, the child-rape and complete absence of cave paintings means I'm done with those books FOREVER!  Although, will someone please tell me what happens in the rest of the series?  Just for fun?

A Hologram for the King

As you may know, I think Dave Eggers is an absolute genius, and I love everything he writes and does - especially the 826 organizations around the country.  By the way, my old friend Amanda is an Executive Director at 826 Michigan and recently spoke at TED Detroit. (So! Cool!)

So, I really don't know why, but his latest book seemed to really fly under the radar this year.  But, let me assure you that it is amazing in every way, and really worth anyone's time to read.  I'm even think my dad, who, as far as I know, hasn't read a full book since... I don't know when, would really love this book.

It's called a Hologram for the King - and, first, I would like to wax nostalgic about the cover art.  For one thing, I've noticed that Eggers usually doesn't have a book jacket, and, I have to think that he's like me and thinks, book jackets are stupid, why does my book need a jacket, it's just extra paper that gets in the way and requires production... so, no book jacket, but the hardback has been kind of pressed to resemble and old, fancy, embossed leather book.  It even has a sort of surprise detail in the cover, but I'll leave that for you to figure out.  Just gorgeous, and it's going to put all the other books on my shelves to shame.

It's about this man, Alan Clay, who's in Saudia Arabia to present a technology to the King in order, he hopes, to secure the IT contract for this new city that's being built in the desert.  Clay is almost broke, having experienced a lot of success but now stuck in the downward spiral of the economy.  Clay and his colleagues soon realize that the king's schedule changes constantly, and the few days they thought they would be overseas stretch to several weeks.  Meanwhile, in a jet-lagged fog, compounded by some illegal hootch given to him by an ex-pat, he awkwardly tries to negotiate this new culture and turn his life around.

Cleverly included in this funny, slightly surreal story about a the hubris involved in building a city in a desert (while firmly remembering that that very hubris is what lead to unprecedented growth in America) are reflections on American industry, outsourcing, a cautionary cautionary tale about putting our eggs in the basket that is the middle east, and representations of masculinity.  

He wanted to believe that this kind of thing, a city rising from dust, could happen. The architectural renderings he'd seen were magnificent. Gleaming towers, tree-lined public spaces and promenades, a series of canals allowing commuters to get almost anywhere by boat. The city of futuristic and romantic, but also practical. It could be made with extant technology and a lot of money, but money Abdullah certainly had. Why hadn't he just put the money up himself, without Emaar, was a mystery. The man had enough money to raise the city overnight - so why didn't he? Sometimes a king had to be a king.

Once again, Eggers has really captured the spirit of our times and I just wish this book were getting more press!  I feel like it's not getting the praise it deserves.

Here are my glowing reviews of What is the What and Zeitoun.  I must have read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius pre-Bookish because I don't have an entry for it, but I love that book too.

Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

My review on Newcity Lit!

Wolf Hall

This Hilary Mantel has been getting a lot of good press for her Bringing Up the Bodies, so I wanted to read the first book in the series: Wolf Hall.  It's the first of a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, who was kind of like Henry VIII's right-hand man.  This book is about Henry's divorce from his first wife and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn.

To tell the truth, I didn't know a lot about Thomas Cromwell, he is portrayed as a thuggish, desperate child and a enterprising businessman - he comes off as thoughtful and caring, at least for his own people.  His dialogue is very funny - he and other members of the court are portrayed as quite witty.  Henry VIII manages to maintain a image that sort of belies the ever rising death toll around him - instead of coming off as a monster, like I expected, he's jovial and friendly.

I remember learning (in school!) that Anne Boleyn had 6 fingers on one hand, but apparently that's pretty much debunked as a myth.  One of the things I really liked about this book is that it sent me straight to wikipedia over and over again to research the course of events, to find out if various parts of the book were historically accurate.   I'm a little torn because well... historical spoiler alert: Cromwell is executed at the end of his life, so it's kind of weird to read a trilogy where you know straight up what's going to happen in the end.  In a few interviews, Mantel has been quite clear about how she intends to end the books, even.  Also, I don't like reading/watching/thinking about the death penalty, it just really upsets me.  So... I don't know if I'm going to carry on.

Probably I will...

Mantel is a great writer.  She is able to walk that fine line of elegant prose without falling into the trap of cheesy, overwrought language (so typical in a lot of historical fiction).  Another thing I loved about Wolf Hall was the reference to Cromwell's memory technique, based on the Memory Palace idea - my obsession of 2011!  Here she write about Henry going to visit the king of France:

He is taking his own cooks and his own bed, his ministers whom Europe calls his concubine. He is taking the possible claimants to the throne, including the Yorkist Lord Montague, and the Lancastrian Nevilles, to show how tame they are and how secure are the Tudors. He is taking his gold plate, his linen, his pastry chefs and poultry-pickers and poison-taster, and he is even taking his own wine: which you might think is superfluous, but what do you know?

Snap! That last bit of the paragraph slays me!  She does something like that a few times in the book which brings in a very modern sensibility that I love so much!

The title is also really clever - Wolf Hall is where Jane Seymour (#3) grew up - there was some scandal there and it had this reputation as a debauched sort of place (I'm not sure if that's historically accurate or not...).  Anyway, I don't believe any of the book actually takes place in Wolf Hall, but the title continuously reminds you that, despite the sort of glamour and apparent civility of the court of the King of England, the events are dark and frankly, barbaric.

After Henry

We read After Henry for book club - I've never read Joan Didion before and it was a fairly nice introduction to her work.  She writes beautifully, and that book of essays (written after her editor, Henry, died) focus mainly on Reagan politics, and the politics and cultures of place: New York, California, and Hawaii.  I really liked everything she wrote about California - she really has a knack for capturing the zeitgeist of place.

The only downside to After Henry is that it's LITERALLY like reading a 30-year old New Yorker.  Like, really good, but a little out of my frame of reference.  I didn't start paying attention to politics until the 2nd Clinton administration.

On earthquakes in southern Cal, she writes:

At odd moments during the next few days people would suddenly clutch at tables, or walls.  "Is it going," they would say, or "I think it's moving" They almost always said "it", and what they meant by "it" was not just the ground but the world as they knew it.  I have lived all my life with the promise of the Big One, but when it starts going now even I get the jitters.

I really want to read one of her novels, preferably about California, but not sure where to start - any suggestions?

Speak

I read this fantastic book called Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson!  I'd been reading about how influential it was on a handful of blogs I read, including Paperback Treasures, a YA book blog that I read, where the 17 year-old author put it #1 on her list of Books that Made Me Think and then immediately said it was not creative because it was such an obvious choice.  Because everyone's already read it.  Except me.  

Also it's come under attack by people who would like to censor it.  I like going out of my way to read banned books just because some jerk out there said not to.

It starts with Melinda going to school for the first day of the term - she feels like an outcast, and all of her friends have turned on her.  Something happened over the summer, but it's not quite clear at the beginning.  This isn't sugar-coated Sweet Valley High, Melinda's been through some trauma, and she's suffering.  For example, on cheerleaders:

  In one universe, they are georgeous, straight-teethed, long-legged, wrapped in designer fashions, and given sports cars on their sixteenth birthdays.  Teachers smile at them and grade them on the curve. They know the first names of the staff. They are the Pride of the Trojans. Oops - I mean Pride of the Blue Devils.
  In Universe #2, they throw parties wild enough to attract college students. They worship the stink of Eau de Jocque. They rent beach houses in Cancún during Spring Break and get group-rate abortions before the prom.

Eventually the reader learns that Melinda was raped by a classmate at a party over the summer, and was  too terrified to say anything to anyone.  Her parents are absorbed with their own issues and most of her teachers treat students as aggressors or delinquents.  When Melinda's grades start to sink, and she speaks less and less, she easily starts to disappear in the cracks of the school.  Still terrorized by the student who raped her (she calls him "IT" because she can't even think his name), Melinda is this brilliant, witty young woman that's just trying to keep her head down - so it's really amazing when she starts to turn the corner and become more assertive.  She doesn't tell anyone what happened, but she wants to stop it from happening again, to another girl.

The final pages of Speak are really amazing - I nearly shouted and certainly did a fair amount of crying - it was inspiring and empowering to read - a great book for women of any age, I highly recommend it.