The Independent Book Review

Check it out!

2012-02-22T13:38:00.000-08:00

The website Bitch Flicks has been kind enough to publish my feminist review of the film Melancholia, which you can read here. They are presenting guest reviews of Independent Spirit Award nominees this week. If you get a chance, check it out at http://www.btchflcks.com/!

Dairy Queen, The Off Season, and Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

2012-02-04T12:56:00.000-08:00

I have absolutely no affinity for sports. I’m slow with the reflexes and also extremely uncompetitive, but more than that, I find sports insanely boring. It’s repetitive to the point of inanity. I sometimes get involved in the personal narratives of the competitors themselves, but even that is a bit more books than balls. It’s hard not to think of this on the one weekend a year where nearly everyone will be watching a sporting event. And I will be here at home, probably reading a book. I mention all of this about sports because of my surprising enjoyment of the Dairy Queen trilogy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Much of my enjoyment came from relating to this book on a deeply personal level. Though not an exceptionally gifted athlete like D.J. Schwenk, Murdock’s brilliant protagonist, I was raised on a farm, loaded hay into hot barns, and was (and often still am) terrified of speaking.

D.J. Schwenk is fifteen at the beginning of the story and has had to take on the responsibility of her family’s dairy farm while her father’s hip heals. Her older brothers are away at college playing Division I football and are not speaking to her parents. Her younger brother is far more interested in skulls than sports and speaks even more rarely than the rest of the Schwenks. Completely alone, she shoulders the heavy responsibility of the farm. A family friend sends Brian Nelson, the quarterback of D.J.’s school’s rival team, to the farm to learn some work ethic from D.J. All summer, D.J. trains him for football until she decides to join the football team herself. This decision nearly ruins Brian and D.J.’s burgeoning romantic relationship.

Dairy Queen, more than The Off Season or Front and Center, is a finely-layered, nuanced story. The divisiveness of gender, and all of its apparent stereotypes, is a battle that D.J. unwittingly fights. As a girl on a football team she has to not only face the pressure of her teammates, but also from other schools who must compete against her. And this bravery forces her into the spotlight. At the same time, her best friend Amber admits to D.J. that she is gay, a stereotype that D.J. has had to face as a female athlete – especially one that competes in a traditionally male sport. To add to the dynamics, her father, still injured from a farming accident, begins cooking for the family and finds true fulfillment from it, though he is unwilling to admit it to their greater community because it is not a man’s job. Through all this, D.J. wants nothing more than to play the sports she loves, and in doing so, unintentionally becomes a feminist icon.

Amidst all of these politics and subsequent confusion, D.J. suffers from the same crippling social anxiety I have felt all my life. Talking, or a lack thereof, is a theme throughout all three books. All the Schwenks use words as weapons. D.J. unfortunately becomes conditioned to the silence caused by either animosity or the avoidance of it. The absolute need for communication binds D.J. to Brian, who is gifted at talking and getting her to talk – maybe not such a big deal for most people, but for D.J. it is life-altering. Putting herself in the spotlight is a sacrifice for D.J. rather than a privilege. In the last book, this anxiety nearly causes her to give up a full-ride scholarship to play Division I basketball.

The charm of the story is in her wrongheadedness about most of this. As the narrator, D.J. makes several statements that are nearly offensive, as she works her head around all the problems that arise from stereotypes. But there is something so disarmingly honest in it. Growing up the Midwest, I was raised to believe that marriage was inevitable, and sex was something two people who loved each other did only once they were married. I remember the confusing thought-process in discovering the complexities of gender and sex and the subjectivity of morality – now it makes the world beautiful and infinitely intriguing, but my younger self for a time was intellectually immobilized by these discoveries. D.J., too, eventually comes to these same conclusions, painstakingly sorting through all the confusion caused by these many concepts. Murdock is wonderful at showing D.J.’s character develop. Instead of swift revelations or god-given epiphanies, D.J. works through problems bit by bit until by the end of the third book she has matured into a wonderfully self-possessed young woman. Her logic is carefully developed throughout the books. By the end of the third book, D.J. is still D.J., yet she has grown in a way that is wholly realistic. Murdock’s ability to write the process of D.J.’s growth is an impressive authorial feat – maybe the best example I’ve read.

Better yet is the love story between D.J. and Brian. After being sorely disappointed by many a love story of late, I welcomed the complexity of their relationship. It wasn’t all easy, two-dimensional, I-will-love-you-forever, we-were-made-for-each-other, you-have-changed-my-life kind of crap. It was a down-to-earth, insecure, teenage relationship. Brian ditches her for his popular friends, D.J. has trouble revealing secrets about herself, and it’s not mushy, but rather familiar and real.

If sports were this good, I’d watch them all the time.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

2012-01-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

It is one of the greatest concerns of mystery fiction (whodunits, specifically) to determine the identity of the puppeteer. Psychological crime writers (even Dostoevsky or Nabokov, or more recently the television show Dexter) seek to understand why that puppeteer must feel like a god – they strive for the fatal tampering with others’ lives to be understood rationally, to touch that universal bit of human weakness that undermines even the best of us. These books give us a character that we can simultaneously despise and understand – if the villain is held at too far a distance, the book is not nearly as satisfying.

“I have wanted-let me admit it frankly-to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! I was, or could be, an artist in crime!” So soliloquizes Agatha Christie’s puppeteer in an exquisite confession in And Then There Were None. The murderer has devised an unbelievable plan – to murder ten people during a weekend on Indian Island. These ten people have all been involved in the death of another person – a crime for which the law could not touch them. Step by step, following an absurd nursery rhyme, each victim’s life is taken.

The murderer’s confession can perhaps enlighten us to Christie’s own clever rationale in coordinating the events of the book. “A childish rhyme of my infancy came back into my mind-the rhyme of the ten little Indian boys. It had fascinated me as a child of two-the inexorable diminishment-the sense of inevitability,” writes the murderer. Thus, childhood breeds the art of crime. Teaching the book, my students seem almost unwilling at first to believe the inevitability of that title and its matching rhyme. When I casually mention halfway through that Mr. Rogers, say, is the fourth of the ten victims, they react with absolute shock, believing that I have let an important plot point slip. It is this sense of inevitability and the dread it produces that prevents them from believing the title – no matter how guilty these poor people are, we still wish a happy ending for them.

It is Christie’s ability to manufacture that type of simultaneous suspense and dread that makes the novel’s outcome so chilling. My students, and I to a degree, are always dissatisfied at how well the murderer’s plan takes effect. What if the victims were a little more clever, what if they did not let the setting induce them to certain actions, what if they hadn’t fallen for certain stunts (I’m trying to be appropriately vague for those who might not have read it)? It seems a little too neat, a little too convenient. Yet the confession never ceases to take my students’ as well as my breath away.

And indeed, the crime is a work of art. Like the minute brushstrokes that make a great painting, Christie’s carefully detailed plot and our ability to recognize only at the end, the red herrings of the tale, make for the greatest whodunit possibly ever. I’ve read the book now five or six times because I teach it every year. I’m always stunned at the depths of deception in her simple prose. The murderer is clearly the murderer from the first chapter if only you have the correct lens to see it.

I’ve read a lot of mystery novels, including many of Christie’s, yet And Then There Were None remains the single greatest stunt any author has pulled off. It’s why Christie has never been and I would guess, never will be dethroned.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

2012-01-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

In the same way that I believe that Young Adult literature can be as complex and intelligent as so-called adult literature, I also believe that it should not be impervious to critique. Many of the bestsellers of the last ten years have been written for adolescents – Twilight, Harry Potter, etc. When any literature pervades our culture to this extent, where it becomes not just a book, but rather a shared experience, it is not only important, but mandatory that we turn a critical eye towards it.

Recently, there have been a vast number of Young Adult dystopian novels on the market (in fact, to such an extent that those of my students who are the type to write in notebooks and show them shyly to their teacher, mostly write dystopian stories without even knowing the term). One of the highest rated and best-selling of these, and one of the worst I’ve read in a long time, is the novel Delirium by Lauren Oliver.

Delirium is set in an alternate present. The government has barricaded cities, forcing residents to undergo a treatment to expel extreme emotion – specifically love. Lena is an orphan who will undergo the treatment in a matter of months. She is glad for this, as it wrenched her Mother, afflicted by the disease of love, from her. But of course, Lena falls in love with Alex and everything she believes is suddenly called into question.

Oliver’s missteps began in creating a world too much like our own. There is very little enforced restriction in this world other than a fence and a treatment. Characters easily talk openly about their rebellious thoughts and Lena sneaks out every night to meet Alex in an unguarded and unfenced abandoned suburb. It made me question the continuity of the world. Why would the treated adults be so wary and watchful of this type of love that could eventually be punishable by death, yet there was as much freedom as an adolescent in our world would experience? Oliver also takes it for granted that her audience will accept the terms of the treatment without question. But she gives absolutely no political motivation for the type of cruelty inflicted upon its victims. The ultimate goal of the treatment is to eliminate the moodiness that is exemplified in adolescence, yet there is absolutely no precedence for this action. There is no examination of these principles, no explanation of its origins. The only political presence in the book is given in the position of the guards and regulators – merely a hyper-violent neighborhood watch.

If you think I’m asking too much for a novel aimed towards children, I would argue that kids are as smart as we allow them to be. The politics of books like The Giver by Lois Lowry or The Hunger Games by Suzanna Collins are incredibly complex, yet these books are for audiences younger than Delirium was written. Having been set in a world nearly exactly like our own did not allow for easy relevance, it merely reflected the inconsistent extremes of Oliver’s plotting. Oliver did create a literature for the society, possibly hoping that this would alleviate the otherwise total conformity of her novel. Many of her rhymes or quotes from The Book of Shh are quite clever, but not enough to save the pointlessness of the concept.

My dislike of the novel was only amplified by the development of an incredibly boring and predictable romance. Alex and Lena spend a great deal of the novel kissing and touching. To Oliver’s credit, I do believe she tried to find a new way of describing the magical feeling of first love each time the couple kissed. Even so, with her efforts, her love story sinks hopelessly into conformity. Like so many stories that came before it, this romance features a plain, insecure, young woman who is noticed by a more mature, worldly young man. I’ve read this story many times before.

If the market is going to be inundated by dystopian YA novels, authors are going to have to do more to up the ante. Oliver’s flaw was that she relied on decidedly cliché plotlines for both the dystopian and romantic aspect of her novel. The dystopian genre is meant to introduce scenarios extreme enough to allow us to call our own philosophy and politics into question, to allow us to reflect on what is by examining what could be. The only thing Delirium called into question was why I bothered to read it in the first place.

The Epicure's Lament by Kate Christensen

2012-01-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

The Epicure’s Lament by Kate Christensen has been on my ever-growing list of books-to-read for some time. I can’t believe I waited. I stumbled across her brand-new blog last month (called simply katechristensen), and while reading it it pushed me to this novel. Her blog is filled with wonderful autobiographical anecdotes about her life suffused with cheeky recipes. In the latest recipe she tells us, “From a Puerto Rican takeout place, order a big aluminum dish of rice and beans with chicken with extra hot sauce. From the deli next door, buy a six-pack of Bass Ale.” Hugo Whittier, our narrator, relishes this same intermingling of life spiced by cigarettes and gourmet meals, which he describes in careful detail. “Nettle soup…so simple, so bizarrely delicious,” he says in one of his many narrated recipes. “A big basket of the tender heads of nettles (not too many flowers) fathered from a clean garden with well-gloved hands, washed clean of grit and bug piss, set aside in a colander.”

Hugo is narcissistic and slightly detestable. He is suffering from Buerger’s disease – an ailment brought about by his endless smoking. If he doesn’t quit, it will cause raging pain and eventual death. He lives in his family’s home, contentedly alone until his brother Dennis, his wife and daughter, and then his uncle descend upon him. According to Hugo, he barely tolerates them, yet his actions bespeak a man not quite secure in his own despondency. Besides cigarettes and food, Hugo has a passion for sex with women that he shouldn’t have sex with, alcohol, and obscure literary or historical facts. He is both genuinely and artificially pretentious – believing both that he is the expert on everything, then quickly doubting himself, his recall, and his education (or lack thereof).

While there have been plenty of despicable narrators in literature (most notably, of course, Humbert Humbert – a character ironically referenced by Hugo as a comparison to another character), I found Hugo and his insanity charming and charismatic. His narcissism seems delusional – the other characters mostly think so as well. He always justifies his meddling as being self-serving yet there is something plaintive and outward about it. Sex with Stephanie Fox who’s in love with Dennis is selfish, yet his possible inward motivation in rejoining Dennis and his estranged wife is not. There is always a stringent self-awareness, even as he climaxes into insanity. “I burst out laughing…, but after one exhalation of laughter I realized it sounded insane, because there was obviously nothing to laugh at, so I forced myself to stop. In immediate playback, I realized that the whole thing had sounded as if I had barked like a dog out of nowhere, at nothing,” Hugo narrates. This is all speculation on my part, of course. Perhaps I’m like the less cynical of Hugo’s family and wish only to see the good in him.

This, however, is the point. I don’t think I’ve ever read a character study as good as this. Though told in his own voice, and not necessarily unreliable, everything about Hugo is left up to interpretation. At many twists and turns I expected Hugo’s insanity to manifest itself in some Fight Club type of way (was Schlomo imagined, for example). Yet Christensen’s creation is so masterfully consistent that even his ultimate change in behavior is not a change at all, but rather a continuation of a mind, hindered by anti-depressants and calmed by anti-climax, yet flavored with the same-old cynical wit.

My Top Ten of 2011

2011-12-20T10:18:00.000-08:00

Because of bad blogging habits this past year, I didn’t review most of the books on this list. Looking back, I realized how many amazing books I did read. These are some that stand out:

1. The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

I loved this book. I was skeptical at first – I don’t know if it was the author’s age, the plot summary, the perpetual hype, or perhaps the fact that I cringe every time a book is called The ________’s Wife or The _________’s Daughter, but I was completely wrong. The Tiger’s Wife is about a young doctor from a fictional country in the Balkans whose Grandfather has died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. She recounts stories he told her, the clues solving many of his death’s riddles. It was effortlessly written, entertaining, and unbelievably engrossing. I find myself thinking of the Deathless Man even months after I finished reading it.

2. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

I’ve gone through a serious David Foster Wallace phase this year. I had read several essays previously, but never in such a concentrated amount of time. I’ve read all of his non-fiction (including watching his interviews on Charlie Rose, reading his Kenyon State commencement address, and reading all of the memorials written at the time of his death), and am halfway through The Broom of the System. I think that this book of essays was my favorite, though really it is simply representative of this phase of mine. What I love about DFW is his absolute humility and his ability to admit his limitations in the face of being a literary star and, in my opinion, a genius. This blend of pretentiousness and self-effacement makes for one of the most unique voices of contemporary writing.

3. Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose by Wallace Stevens

For my birthday, my husband bought me this collection of Wallace Stevens’ poetry. It is hard to incorporate this onto my list because (as with most poetry books) I’ve been meandering through his poems for months - it remains next to my bed to be perused each evening. Today, as I watch Kansas smothered by white, I ache to read the chill of his voice. The Snowman, with its repetition, its deep disillusionment, its absolute melancholia represented by a figure of childishness, is one of my favorite poems of all time. Stevens writes, “For the listener, who listens in the snow,/And, nothing himself, beholds/ Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”

4. Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy

Many books change your thinking, but I would say that Female Chauvinist Pigs re-directed mine. Levy looks closely at the results of Second Wave feminism – specifically, its effect on female sexuality. Current trends among young women are to mimic the false sexuality of pornography. Levy argues that true sexual freedom should allow women to not be bound by the strictures of “sexiness” and instead focus on female pleasure. To her, this is true liberation. Levy sums this up better than me by writing, “Sex is one of the most interesting things we as humans have to play with, and we've reduced it to polyester underpants and implants.”

5. Look at Me by Jennifer Egan

I haven’t yet read A Visit From the Goon Squad, but this summer I picked up Look at Me. Told mostly from the perspective of an aging model named Charlotte whose face was reconstructed after a terrible car accident, Look at Me binds together other narratives as well including a teenager, a potential terrorist, and a private eye. What I love about Egan are the details she includes to emphasize her themes. My favorite part is actual a relatively minor incident – as Charlotte is finally given a career-changing job, the photographer wishes to make razor cuts on her face for the shoot. Charlotte refuses, giving her spot to another model. Details such as these are what make Egan brilliant. I look forward to reading more of her work.

6. No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie

As part of my Mormon phase (read about it here), I read this biography of Joseph Smith. Brodie’s writing is definitely biased against Smith, regarding him as a charlatan rather than a religious prophet. The brilliance of her writing is in her ability to construct convincing context for each decision, revelation, and prophesy of Joseph Smith. As Smith, for example, is burgeoning into the religious figure he will become, Brodie relates many other instances of religious upstarts in close proximity to Smith. Even in a new nation of religious freedom and endless possibility, she demonstrates that it took a gifted charmer like Smith to really hook his supporters. She gives the reader the ability to understand, if not sympathize, with Smith’s followers and even, at times, Smith himself.

7. Room by Emma Donoghue

Although there were flaws in this novel, I fell in love with the voice of Jack – its precocious five-year-old narrator. (Read the original review here.) It is a story from the tabloids – a woman raped and kidnapped and held prisoner in a shed for years. She has a son by this monster and tries to create a relatively normal existence within the confines of their room. Eventually escaping, Jack and Ma fight for well-being in a world so expansive it is suffocating for Jack. Donoghue’s ability to write convincingly, entertainingly, and endearingly in Jack’s voice is what made this novel one of my favorites.

8. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Besides The Tiger’s Wife, this is perhaps the most hyped book of the year. Set in Victorian England, Celia and Marco are pitted against each other in a battle of magic. The rules are a mystery to both of them. Within the confines of the circus, they each create unbelievable experiences for the patrons of the circus – tents with frozen worlds, magical carousels, wishing trees. As they collaborate on their creations, they fall in love. The story would have been much more engaging without the love story. When Morgenstern engulfs herself in descriptions of the circus’s stunts and tricks, the novel is tantalizing. Yet when she forces us to read about this tedious and flimsy love story (with some of the most unimpressive dialogue I’ve read in ages), the novel falls flat. That being said, I immensely enjoyed reading the novel. The love story takes up a reasonably small portion and the rest is truly delightful.

9. In the Woods by Tana French

I spent a good portion of my summer reading French’s loosely-connected trilogy of mysteries set in and around Dublin, Ireland. In the Woods is the first of the books. Rob and Cassie are detectives set to investigate a murder where, years before, Rob was found, blood-stained and shivering, his two friends missing. Rob is unable to remember what happened and as he investigates the new murder, he delves into the old. French has the ability to create a world and a scenario that seem magical without actually being magical. Just when you think she is going to direct her novel to unlikely heights, she pulls away and you are left with jarring reality. French does not wrap things up neatly or even kindly. This sense of dissatisfaction is precisely make her novels addictive and memorable.

10. The Magician King by Lev Grossman

After reading The Magicians, I wasn’t going to read its sequel, but I’m glad I did. (Read the original review here.) I thoroughly enjoyed this Harry Potter for adults. While The Magicians ended with too much narcissism and lost innocence, The Magician King was able to give a surprisingly satisfying ending to the saga. Grossman is so skilled at designing the architecture of his invented world – to the point that characters often wax philosophical on the vagaries of magic – giving it rules as strict and incomprehensible as any religion. What was magical about Grossman’s novel wasn’t the magic, but the reality it revealed around it.

Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

2011-12-10T15:02:00.000-08:00

The New York Times named Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson as one of their best books of 2011 – a recommendation that was persuasive enough for me to check it out. This is no small deal. One of the most read newspapers in America, not to mention the world, the Times only chooses five fiction books to name as its ‘Best Of.’ Perhaps it is because I spend at least 40 hours a week dealing with thirteen-year-olds, but I found Ten Thousand Saints tedious and full of itself – its teenage characters dull yet melodramatic. The adults petty and ridiculously ignorant. We are meant to take these generations in comparison of each other, but I found myself so unattached to the story not because the characters were too flawed, but because their flaws are archetypes worn superficially: Hippie, Stoned, Bad-Ass, Straight-Edge, Slut, etc.

Jude and Teddy are best friends in Vermont where they spend every waking moment looking for the next high. Usually this isn’t difficult since Jude’s parents are devotees of weed and Teddy’s mother is a raging drunk. The night of Jude’s birthday, they struggle to find chemical satisfaction, relying instead on huffing turpentine and Freon. Jude’s father’s girlfriend’s daughter Eliza takes a late train in to meet Jude and his sister and ends up having sex with Teddy and giving him cocaine. Jude and Teddy’s last huff of the night leaves Teddy dead.

Jude moves to New York to live with his Father. While there, he forges a relationship with Teddy’s older half-brother, Johnny who is nicknamed ‘Mr. Clean.’ He is straight edge – Hare Krishnas who abstain from meat, alcohol, drugs, and sex with girls (though sex with men is frequent amongst its members). Soon, Jude has left his drug-addled ways for new extremes – moshing in pits at concerts and beating up whomever he feels like. Meanwhile, Eliza is pregnant with Teddy’s baby and Johnny and Jude fight to keep it alive and ultimately just keep it. After creating a straight edge band, a road trip complete with a circle jerk, and lots of appropriately teenage sexual tension, my interest was lagging. How can an author turn these intensely serious problems into such a ridiculous tale?

Henderson ruminates on conversion and the terrible extremes that lead us from health. She wants us to question the value of our very human existence – is it where we come from or who we are? In an age of abortion and adoption – are we flawed goods because we can be more chosen? Or are we less loved because this birthing is more business than miracle? And love, or rather the quest for it, is always that terrible burden that drives us to these questions. Yet her heavy-handed prose treats the pungent and personal issues of the book like weights to be unloaded before the book can end. Drugs, sex, AIDS, religion, pregnancy, violence – plop, plop, plop.

Like an after school special, she leaves us with a safely upright ending – Jude finding his balanced morality. And then, a neat little epilogue proves his existence viable. I don’t wish to argue against happy endings – done right I will always contend that even more than tragedies that rip out our hearts, happy endings can restore them to health. This book’s ending, however, was merely a chaser –meant to wash down the bitter taste of Henderson’s weighty prose - only apropos in a book whose flaw was in its absolute immaturity.

Check it out!

2011-12-02T14:31:00.000-08:00

The feminist movie review site Bitch Flicks was kind enough to publish my critique of the Disney version of Cinderella. Check it out at www.btchflcks.com!

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

2011-12-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I forget that a strong reaction to a book does not make the book bad. Most books that I have truly disliked I haven’t bothered to think about again since I put them down. I love that Elie Weisel quote that says, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” Hating The Magicians, which I read and reviewed last year (read here), indicated Lev Grossman’s talent, not his failure. The Magicians stuck in the back of my mind like a headache – not enjoyable, but impossible to ignore. Even months later, I would find myself thinking about Quentin’s search for the nostalgia and simplicity of his childhood – an emotion that, growing up (especially right now around the holidays), has plagued me for a long time. At the end of my review of The Magicians, I vowed not to read the sequel, even though the book ended with a cliffhanger. Well, I lied. Last week, I checked out The Magician King. Grossman’s talent is in his ability to absolutely engross me while still allowing me to despise his characters.

The Magician King begins as Quentin and his Brakebills comrades continue to reign as Kings and Queen of Fillory – the magical fantasy land of Quentin’s childhood. Added to the mix is Quentin’s high school friend, Julia, who was picked up by Eliot and Janet (prior to becoming King and Queen of Fillory) while at a resort. Julia is damaged yet powerful; Quentin, Eliot, and Janet would like to know why. Quentin still has the same nagging meaninglessness from the first book (though Grossman does not beat the reader over the head with his thesis this time) as well as a penchant for sex and alcohol.

Quentin embarks on a mission whose purpose is only determined after lenghthily flailing around in apparent futility. Nevertheless, this search for meaning and structure to his adventure only augments Quentin’s suspicion that there really is something more to life than the doldrums of being King of Fillory. After getting haplessly caught in the real world, Quentin and Julia cover every avenue in an attempt to return to Fillory. Finally doing so, they discover their real adventure – to find the seven golden keys to guard humans’ access to magic – a privilege the gods are trying to eliminate.

I actually liked The Magician King more than The Magicians due largely to Julia’s narrative. Quentin’s story is interrupted to retell the missing pieces of Julia’s story from the time Quentin was accepted into Brakebills up until Eliot and Janet found her. The climax of her story nicely corresponds with Quentin’s adventure – I was pleased to find a much more satisfying, though no less complex, ending to this book. The two stories are interwoven in their interactions with the gods, but also their confrontation with the real world. In one of my favorite parts, Julia temporary leaves magic and her obsessive misery behind to return to her family. Grossman writes, “With a kindness utterly unlike anything she [Julia] recognized in herself, they [her family] took her back, even though she could not have deserved it less. They took her back without a word of reproach.” Unlike The Magicians, The Magician King has a filament of humanity running through its prose. Thank God. I didn’t have to hate this book nearly as much.

Grossman’s fantasy world is wonderfully connected to our own. Many worlds in other fantasy literature exist entirely isolated from ours. In Fillory and the many other worlds of Grossman’s multiverse (Including teletubbies! Delightful!), the rules are same as for Earth – the access to magic merely different. Grossman builds logic into magic – his heroes are brainy science nerds who need explanations for why magic exists in the first place. And without it, Quentin and his friends are doomed. As Quentin searches for the golden keys to seal magic in the world again, Grossman writes, “Quentin wondered what he would do if magic went away. He didn’t know how he would live in that world. Most people wouldn’t even notice the change, of course, but if you knew about it, knew what you’d lost, it would eat away at you. Everything would simply be what it was and nothing else.” While The Magicians sought to dispel our youthful fantasy literature via drugs and sex, The Magician King explores the more mundane, yet significant questions of adulthood: How does one dispel of boredom? How does one find structure in a chaotic world? How can one build meaning on a foundation of nothingness? And, most importantly, what meaning can death have for a life never lived? The wonderful irony of Quentin’s journey, which leads him from narcissism to humanity via the loss of absolutely everything, is what makes The Magician King so much more enchanting than The Magicians. The Magicians bears a great and wonderful adventure at the cost of humanity, The Magician King bears it at the cost of narcissism. The difference makes all the difference.

Anatomy of a Reading Obsession: Mormons

2011-11-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

Seeing as how one of the leading GOP candidates for President is a Mormon, I decided to dust off an old obsession of mine. In a year, we could have a Mormon for President and though I will be the first to advocate for true freedom of religion (and not simply tolerance of those who are not part of the current status quo), I am disconcerted by the potential ramifications of this. While at times, Romney himself seems to me the most rational and moderate of the current contenders, his belief system and its influence on its members has me confused. This is a religion that is rooted in a false history that includes serious strains of racism and misogyny. Romney does not have a track record of voting based on specifically Mormon beliefs, but the church has a serious lack of regard for the separation of church and state. It is this conviction that makes me question the political disinterest of a Mormon as President.

My obsession has led me to seriously question my own beliefs regarding religions. I’ve always thought of myself as open-minded, but how open am I truly to other beliefs and practices? At what point are other people’s beliefs tyrannical against my own? Don’t science and history also require a certain quantity of faith in man? Is it therefore fair to question a faith in Joseph Smith - a man who, by all appearances is a complete charlatan, but seemed fully committed to his baseless tablets? If I am able to separate the religion from the politician in every other candidate I’ve voted for, why can’t I for Romney (this is not to say I would necessarily vote for him in the first place!)? Furthermore, what place should religion have in voting for a candidate? And, what place should religion have in a candidate's politics?

The thing that fascinates me about Mormonism is that it is a uniquely American religion. Fawn Brodie points out in No Man Knows My History that as literature, the Book of Mormon is one of the only uniquely American texts – no European influence touches it. So perhaps it is appropriate for an American politician to carry this label.

As I try to sort through these maddening questions, I’ve been reading quite a bit about Joseph Smith and his church. Here is a list of books I’ve read that have influenced my thinking on this matter:

The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrall
There was a time when I wasn’t obsessed with Mormons. Instead, it was that time I was obsessed with reading biographies of women writers. (Check out that obsession here). So I picked up this book because it was about a forgery of an Emily Dickinson poem. Most of the book, however, had little to do with the Dickinson poem. Instead it told the story of Mark Hoffman – a former Mormon who made (and lost) a fortune forging historical documents, including many historical Mormon documents that either no longer existed, or never existed in the first place. Part of his motivation was to make money and part was to try to disprove the Mormon’s already shaky history by inserting new documents into their history. Forgery was a gateway to bigger things – like homemade bombs.

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
My interest piqued, I moved on to the only book I actually knew about that dealt with Mormons – Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. This book focused heavily on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) – a sect that practices Joseph Smith’s controversial revelation on polygamy. Current media coverage would have us believe that all Mormons are either polygamists or break into song every chance they get. It is not fair to base judgments of Mormonism only on polygamy. Television shows like Sister Wives and Big Love and national coverage of the Warren Jeffs court case indicate the controversial nature, but not necessarily the reality of polygamy in the Mormon church. Luckily, Krakauer attempts to make the distinction between the Church of Latter-day Saints and the FLDS. Krakauer has a gift for making his non-fiction absorbing and this book was no exception. On a strange note: one of the Lafferty brothers, whom a portion of the book is about, is cellmates with Mark Hoffman who is the forger of The Poet and the Murderer.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
Thus began my immersion into reading about polygamy, which made me settle next on the novel The Lonely Polygamist. (Read my review here) While fiction, the book made me re-analyze some of my preconceptions about polygamy (often leading me to the same conclusions, but still…). Even though the protagonist is completely pathetic, you begin to discern the human, non-abusive side of a practice like polygamy. I picked up The Lonely Polygamist because of hype, but I couldn’t put it down.

Daughter of the Saints by Dorothy Allred Solomon
Daughter of the Saints stems from polygamy, but seeks to analyze issues of identity and family as well. Solomon was raised in a polygamous household. The first line of her book reads, “I am the daughter of my father's fourth plural wife, twenty-eighth of forty-eight children—a middle kid, you might say.” It was refreshing to read this book, because it was a more personal account of the experience (and the identity issues associated with) growing up in a household of polygamy.

No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie
Brodie’s book is an account of the life of Joseph Smith. It is biased against the Mormons and makes the assumption that Smith is essentially a con artist. She delves deeply into his psyche to try to look at his motivations and thoughts leading to each decision and revelation. By giving vast historical context, she shows the causes of each step of the writing of the Book of Mormon and then the forming of the Church of Latter-day Saints. While forthrightly indignant against the basis of Mormonism, it is a book that is also sympathetic to the humanness of someone like Joseph Smith, recognizing the implicit human desire for respect and followers.

My next read: The American Religion by Harold Bloom
This book concerns the issues that I am most interested in at this point. Rather than polygamy or history, I am now more interested in the concept of the creation of this religion and its impact on our society as well as the literary history of these religious texts. While I haven’t yet read it and don’t know if it will help me with these questions, with its focus on the imaginative spark in religious, it sounds like it’s in the right direction and an appropriate stage in my obsession.

Any suggestions for other books about Mormons?

After a long hiatus, me and Jeffrey are back again! The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

2011-10-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

I loved The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. In fact, I loved Middlesex so much I carried it around as I moved from dorm room to dorm room stuffed with keepsakes from that period of my life (concert tickets, a picture of my friends, etc.). Published the year I graduated from high school, it was like a talisman for me. Its plot depicted shifts in identity as I sorted through my own. When I heard months ago that The Marriage Plot would be published, I immediately ordered a copy and waited impatiently for it to hit my doorstep. It’s not entirely fair to say I’m disappointed. I supposed that all-in-all it’s not that bad a novel. It’s just that it’s a terrible Eugenides novel.

The novel focuses on Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell. All three attend Brown University in the early 1980’s. Eugenides has focused the book on what the title indicates: The marriage plot in Victorian literature. This is also what Madeleine studies briefly as an English major and eventually decides to pursue as her graduate degree. It’s a standard love triangle – Mitchell loves Madeleine, Madeleine loves Leonard, etc.

Leonard is a biology major with a philosophy minor, Mitchell a religious studies major, and Madeleine an English major. As each character graduates from college, unlike most graduates I know, they become more entangled in their course of study and how this course of study is implicated in their own life decisions – for Leonard, to a self-destructive degree. (Leonard, by the way, smacks of David Foster Wallace – long hair, bandana, tobacco-chewer, depressive, etc. – so much so that I was still rooting for him even after his character became a total prick.)

Eugenides’ attempt to dissect the marriage plot, to essentially retell an Austen novel in a post-feminist America, is weak. Chock-full of tedious allusions and lengthy explanations, the novel reads like a textbook at times. “The reason we study yeast cells is because they’re fundamentally like human cells, only a lot simpler. Haploids resemble gametes, our sex cells,” Leonard waxes pretentiously in one of many such paragraphs. While The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex seemed so careful and conscientious in their language, The Marriage Plot is more like summary. It reminded me of One Day, in which one incident is an excuse for the character to think back and recap quite a bit of plot that happened beforehand. Is this a new trend?

Eugenides’ ending, reminiscent of Four Weddings and a Funeral, left me discontented. It felt like after 350 pages, he used the last 50 to wrap up a novel that was going nowhere. Thomas Hardy did it better in The Woodlanders where a wrong marriage to the wrong person in the wrong era had devastating long-term effects. Hardy’s novel stabbed where Eugenides’ only nipped. Perhaps what The Marriage Plot teaches is that the marriage plot should no longer be employed.

My Favorite Setting - Port William, Kentucky

2011-02-02T07:15:00.000-08:00

What a fun question this week at The Blue Bookcase’s literary blog hop! The book setting I would most like to visit? Port William, Kentucky. This is the setting for Wendell Berry’s many novels including A Place on Earth, Nathan Coulter, and The Memory of Old Jack. Based on his own hometown of Port Royal, Kentucky, it is a fictional community shaded with the hues of real life. An originally agrarian community, it is facing the frightening depletion of its young and thereby its future – a story that strikes a chord for people like me who come from a farm family and a rural community. Berry is an advocate of place-conscious education – the idea that as humans it is our privilege and responsibility to connect to a place on earth. He believes it is necessary for ecological conservation, but also for a human’s own health. Port William exemplifies the necessity and the fate of these rural agrarian communities that are gradually disappearing. Rather than escapism, it would be nostalgic for me to visit Port William. The characters are people from my life and my community. Reading the books is like being able to ride with my Mom during the height of summer harvest to Johnson’s elevator before it closed, gossiping with the community as together, we all waited to dump our wheat. I miss these opportunities, as our own farming community has been disappearing, even in my lifetime. For this reason, I would love to go to Port William, if for nothing else than to relive parts of my childhood.

Improbably Probable - Three YA Novels

2011-01-24T15:09:00.000-08:00

Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt – I’ve loved Cynthia Voigt since I was a pre-teen and I was glad to discover her books haven’t lost their flavor. Jackaroo – one in a series of books set in an alternate medieval universe – tells the story of Gwyn, an Innkeeper’s daughter. Gwyn has an unbelievable sense of justice and herself – leading her into the unlikely role of hero and outcast. As she fights the sexist customs of her time, she finds a way to free herself while helping others disguised as the hero Jackaroo from the old stories of her land. Even in this fairy story, Voigt manages to deliver a strong and improbably probable story. Like Dicey in her award-winning Homecoming series, Gwyn is a powerful, thoughtful young woman who should be a role model to the young women who read Voigt’s wonderful books.

Savvy by Ingrid Law – It is a terrible thing when one single aspect of a book is so distracting that a book is nearly ruined. For me, it was the miscasting of my own hometown as the destination for Mibs and her crew. After her Father is involved in a ten-car crash on Highway 81 outside of Salina, Kansas (it is highly improbable there would ever be ten cars or a difficult sight line on this flat, straight stretch of road) and taken to Salina Hope Hospital (Salina Regional in disguise? - you could google that!), Mibs, her brothers, and several acquaintances travel as stowaways in a bus to get to her father. Mibs’ family, the Beaumonts, is gifted with “savvy” – some remarkable ability or another. Mibs can hear thoughts through tattoos (the whole song in a jar thing was way cooler – I would have felt gypped if I were Mibs). Besides a personal bias, I found this magical story ridiculous and actually slightly boring. Law has a flair for language and detail, but the story is tediously slow, the bits of action only a slight rise on a path that is as empty and flat as Highway 81.

Beauty by Robin McKinley – The Blue Sword is one of my favorite books of all time. It is one that I still revisit as an adult (and recently pushed onto an unsuspecting student who needed a book report book). Probably because of this I was extremely disappointed by Beauty. It is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast that is as flimsy as it is unfeeling. Even in the Disney movie, they give sufficient cause and emotional effect that allows the audience to buy into Beauty’s love for Beast. In this version, although McKinley attempts to validate the actions of the characters, there is no justification for any emotion (Beauty’s father letting her off at the gate is an especially callous act that left me wondering why he would consent to such a thing). Luckily, McKinley by far redeemed herself with The Blue Sword.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

2011-01-18T05:29:00.000-08:00

Jack London wrote The Call of the Wild when he was my age. There is a bite and verve and confidence to the writing that bespeaks his youth, yet the wisdom of the book is far and away from my measly prattling. The Call of the Wild is not my favorite book by any stretch of the imagination, but teaching it for the first time this year, I’ve found much to take away from it and impress upon my students. What I’m having difficulty in teaching them is that a valuable book is one which makes you think, but the deliberateness this effort requires is far from many students’ reach.

London was a fiery supporter of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and survival of the fittest. The Call of the Wild is a complete illustration of this idea. Again and again, Buck, the big St. Bernard-shepherd dog mix, outlasts those weak-minded, weak-willed, weak-tempered sled dogs. He is the epitome of everything good a dog should be – he and his progeny will last and future generations of wild dogs will be altered by his exemplary genes. Relating the story in a human framework would have alienated readers, I’m sure. But to see Darwin’s laws played out by these dogs, who London makes easy to regard with the same significance as humans, is a thrill.

London’s only resistance to Darwin’s theories is typified by the law of love. After being spoiled in his early life, only to be abused again and again by men later, Buck develops a logical disrespect for humans. London seemingly wants his readers to hate them as well. He shows us time and again the cruelty and stupidity of humans – their selfishness and eco-centrism (even the good natured ones like Perrault and Francois exploit the dogs for their own gain).

At the end, London gives a warning that even now, in our current environmental collapse, is potently true: a love between humans and the natural world triumphs over any system of survival or hierarchy that exists, but eventually nature will overcome humans. John Thornton, in all his goodness, is killed by humans and Buck joins the wild – his world ultimately prevailing over a more ‘civilized’ one.

London himself was a wonderfully eccentric mix of violence, adventure, and politics. Yet my students read the book as if it were a cartoon. (“Look what that silly dog did now!” one student exclaimed.) London’s book is fascinating for its historical and philosophical context, but more so because it is a good story well told. If context is lost on them, I hope my students at least are able to absorb some of the magic that has allowed Jack London’s unceasing popularity.

The gateway drug to literature - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

2011-01-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

I enjoy the Book Blog Hop so much because it allows me to reflect on literature in general rather on one book specifically. This week asks bloggers to think about how they found themselves reading literary fiction and non-fiction.

I have always been a reader. My parents read to me as a child and I remember many nights sitting with my brother on the landing of the staircase, huddled together next to the nightlight reading The Berenstein Bears or Shel Silverstein until Mom or Dad discovered us and forced us back to bed. Later, as a bullied middle schooler, fiction was a relief and an escape and I became reliant upon it for an entirely different reason.

I discovered the difference between literature and books the summer between my seventh and eighth grade year. On a family trip to Louisiana, I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. My parents had to take it away from me during parts of the trip because I refused to pay attention to anything outside the car windows. I finished it an hour from home on our drive back and was stunned. I didn’t read another book for several weeks afterwards because I didn’t know how to find one that would deliver the same impact. (Later, I would ignorantly choose Crime and Punishment to fulfill this, which it didn’t because I was too young to understand it.)

In hindsight, although I still consider it my favorite book for nostalgic reasons (reading it is like crawling into bed on a cold night), it is certainly not the most well-written or insightful book I’ve ever read. Yet I remember that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn completely redefined how I read. Before, I read The Babysitter’s Club and Sweet Valley High; after, only books that made me think would do. Although perhaps a bad analogy, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a gateway drug for the ‘heavier stuff’ that defines my adulthood. I figure it’s the best addiction to have.

Room by Emma Donoghue (My New Year's Resolution)

2011-01-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

I’ve had Room by Emma Donoghue on hold at the library for about three months. When I put my name on the list for the book, I was sixth in line—incidentally there are eight people after me waiting for the novel. This is surprising considering that Room is a literary book and I come from a relatively small town where it is unusual to wait for any book very long. I have to wonder if its popularity is another A Child Called It phenomenon (which happens to be the most checked out book at the middle school where I teach). Why are books describing human depravity massively consumed in our culture – especially when it concerns a child? It is certainly not an issue of being incapable of averting our eyes – books such as Room have to be sought out to be absorbed.

I realize that I’ve already committed a grave injustice against Room by comparing it to books like A Child Called It. It is certainly not that – I only wonder if that is the cause of its popularity. As the first book I’ve finished in 2011, it also reaffirms my New Year’s Resolution. I have a tendency to decide to read a book based on its inner flap. In the last several years I’ve come to realize that this is ridiculous (for the best example of a cover flap’s disservice to its book, read my review of Last Night at Twisted River here).

Room, by its description, sounded horrible, it’s method of writing improbable. It sounded like the next A Child Called It, but told from a five-year-old’s perspective. Had I not been prompted by rampant recommendations, I probably wouldn’t have read it at all. And thus, my lesson. In summary, you can see its seeming absurdity:

Ma was kidnapped when she was nineteen and forced to live in an eleven-by-eleven shed for seven years. During that time, she gave birth to Jack – our narrator. At the beginning of the novel, Jack has just turned five. Room is all he’s ever known and for him it is the entire world. As Ma and Jack plan and execute the Great Escape, Jack’s happy and small world is upended and expanded – the relativity of happiness and its requirements scrutinized in Jack’s clever words.

Donoghue’s concept was hard to pull off – a story told by a five-year-old, even one without the lesions of implications of Room, seems impossible, and in fact, would be improbable to attempt. Yet Jack’s voice is the savior of the story. Told from Ma’s perspective, the novel would have been dull, written for its sensationalism, rather than its stunning themes. But Jack, precocious and unendingly consistent in his thought patterns, allowed me to understand the inherent silliness of the world and its supposed normalcy.

I get the feeling, however, that Room’s recommendations are the result of astonishment (much like mine) at how well Donoghue managed it, rather than the novel itself. The story itself is very basic, created through the many morsels of Jack’s perceptions. The moral relativity of Jack and Ma’s escape is hammered into the reader again and again, leaving little room for interpretation or analysis. It is what it is, as they say, though I’m not sure that’s good enough. Jack is a gem, Room is a rock. Is it possible to separate the two?

Either way, Room taught me a lesson about myself. I’ve always known not to judge a book by its cover, but I must also not judge on its cover flap. I must remember that in summary, all books sound stupid. After all, Moby Dick is just about chasing a whale.

The House of Stairs by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine

2010-12-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

Usually, I choose books deliberately – seeking out best-of lists or new releases or recommendations from those I trust. My husband and I have a system of putting books on hold online and quickly picking them up after work. Once in a while, I like to randomly choose something from the shelves. There is something lovely about spending an afternoon in a library browsing, reading the flaps of books and choosing something simply for its thrilling description. Last time, I randomly picked The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine (which, as it says on the cover, but has no frame of reference to me, is actually written by Ruth Rendell).

The book flap promised a gripping tale of murder – in this I was not disappointed. The murderer is revealed in the opening pages, the victim in the last. Like the house of stairs of the title –a house built around a massive staircase, rooms attached like leaves to a stem –the story is told one step at a time. Our narrator is Elizabeth, a woman plagued by the threat of Huntington’s disease, who lives much of her childhood with her Mother's cousin's wife Cosette. Cosette is a generous woman who loves to give, often compensating characters with houses when she feels she hasn’t given enough. After the death of her husband, she attempts to become once again youthful and find a man to share her life with. Elizabeth vacillates between the present and her recollections of the events leading to the murder.

We know that Bell is the murderer. In present day, she has just been released from jail and come to live with Elizabeth. As the tale unfolded, I became convinced of the victim – the obvious perpetrator of Bell’s affections. It is not until the final pages that Bell’s massive scheme, Elizabeth’s unfortunate involvement, and the victim are revealed. Needless to say, I was completely wrong in my prediction, but little does this matter. The focus of Vine’s novel is not the classic whodunit, although the style suggests this would be so. In fact, Vine writes of Bell, “Murderers only attend the funerals of their victims if their crime has yet to be detected, and there was no detection in Bell’s story.” She means, of course, to inform us that though this is a murder story, it is imperative we understand that it is not the who, but the why that should be solved in a murder. After all, isn’t it true that something like 75% of murders are committed by someone known by the victim? Murders are rarely random. For Vine, it is the complex set of circumstances that lead to murder that is far more fascinating. After reading her take on the classic crime story, I would have to agree.

It would be a disservice to the book to summarize any more – the details are either critical to the final disclosures or meant to purposefully mislead the reader. It is enough to say that I enjoyed the book immensely. It was full of a Victorian-like sensationalism – it could have been written by Wilkie Collins had he lived in the 1970’s. Vine’s ability to provoke suspense is masterful. She gives just enough to shock, but little enough that I had to continue reading to find out the implications. She is equally masterful at her symbolism – the house of stairs itself is a powerful image, but she also builds her story around a bloodstone ring – something I believed would be a clue, but is actually an effective metaphor for the surprising depth of the relationships in the books.

My Top Ten of 2010

2010-12-20T08:08:00.000-08:00

Although only some of these were published in 2010, these are my picks for the best books I read this year. Click on the picture of the book to read the original review. (As an aside, I did not include Jane Eyre on this list although it is one of my favorites of all time because I had read it before.)

1. Although it seems that many critics believe White Teeth to be Zadie Smith’s best novel (for example, it was her only novel listed on the Time 100 Best Books since 1923), I loved On Beauty much more. In fact, almost a year now since I’ve read it, I believe it might be one of my favorite books of all time. A retelling of Howard’s End, it analyzes every distinction and prejudice humans have – from socio-economic class, to race, to weight, to education.

2. As I’ve written prolifically on this blog, Tinkers by Paul Harding had a huge impact on me this year. I read it soon after the death of my Grandfather. The emotional impact of the book is so vibrant for me, at this point I am unable to distinguish whether it is truly a good book (although a prize like the Pulitzer would suggest to many it is).

3. Being a teacher, I read quite a few young adult novels. This year, I read several that will probably remain on my personal list of best young adult novels of all time. One was When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. She has an ability to tell a story that is both complex to engage an adult yet simple enough for a young reader.

4. Another wonderful young adult book I read this year was Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. This brilliant novel about a girl with Asperger’s Syndrome who has recently lost her brother in a school shooting deservedly won the National Book Award this year. It was a deep, absorbing look into the mind of a child with Asperger’s and although very relevant, a well-written book that will last.

5. Many books this year sounded suspect from their description or title. The Lonely Polygamist was a surprise from beginning to end. With characters as rich as a Dicken’s novel and a storyline as humorous as it was tragic, this novel had me hooked from beginning to end. Not for ages have we had such a comprehensive look at what it means to be married or to be family in this country.

6. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall was not perhaps the most well-written non-fiction book I read this year, but it was certainly the most fun. The plot was so implausible, had it been a novel I never would have bought it. Even for the non-runner, there is so much information about human history and anatomy that it is an unforgettable read.

7. I read several books by Sarah Waters this year. I enjoy Victorian literature (more the mood than anything) and went through a phase of reading modern authors writing in a Victorian setting. I found Affinity and Tipping the Velvet, also by Waters, somewhat mediocre, but I loved Fingersmith. In this novel, the lesbian undertones and suspense plot work together to create a refreshingly new take on Victorian sensationalism.

8. I loved Plainsong by Kent Haruf as much for its place (the Great Plains) as for its story. The story drifts like real life, moving towards a climax as hefty as it was subtle. Haruf’s writing was direct yet fluid, the characters infinitely relatable without being mired in types.

9. Great House was tedious at its beginning. Even as short as it was, it took great effort to get involved. The cover description sounded loathsome (based on my taste). Several disparate stories centered around a desk seemed a far reach to be entertaining or engaging. Yet once I finished, it was one of the most rewarding reading experiences this year. A metaphorical twist at the end jarred me, causing me to dwell on it days and weeks later.

10. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson is an autobiographical novel about Winterson’s life growing up as a lesbian in an extremely conservative household. Her prose sparks – she is drily witty, her reactions potent and memorable. Although I forgot to review it, it remains one of my best reads this year.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

2010-12-09T12:26:00.001-08:00

Jane Eyre was one of those perfect reading experiences for me. It was my last year in college and we were snowed in. It was January interterm, so there were very few students on campus. A path was ploughed between my dorm and the cafeteria, otherwise, I was completely isolated. I bumbled my way through the snow to the library one afternoon and checked out two books – Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. In the quietude of the snow and the empty dorm, I read the books back to back. There have been several reading experiences in my life that were perfect – the right book at the right time. This was one of them.

It is therefore dangerous to try to read one of those books again. The glamour of the moment is often lost. The first time I read Lord of the Flies was faultless. I read it in conjunction with my high school English class. My husband (who was only a friend at that time) sat across from me and as we reached similarly shocking moments we’d look up at each other, our mouths open, eyes glittering with our new knowledge. This shared consciousness of experience was as great as the book. The second time I read it, I was equally enamored with the skill of the book (especially its symbols), but the experience was far less fulfilling. It was sort of like Christmas after you know there’s no Santa Claus.

Last week, my husband bought me the new Penguin edition of Jane Eyre – it features cover artwork by Ruben Toledo (like his cover for Wuthering Heights, the artwork captures the dark sensationalism of the books). I anxiously delved in – this is the first time I’ve read it since my perfect experience years ago. I was not disappointed.

Unlike Lord of the Flies, I was able to experience, not just read, Jane Eyre anew. In my first reading of Jane Eyre, I perceived the book as a romance – one that created the same giddy excitement as the marriages in Jane Austen. Re-reading it, anticipating the happy ending, I was able to discount the romance and focus on the art of Bronte’s writing. The book (as I thought before) is not primarily about marriage, or finding that one true love. Instead, it is a brilliant, feminist meditation on a woman’s need for independence.

This theme is exemplified by comparison of Jane to Bertha. Bertha has been confined by her husband because of her insanity. In Jane Eyre, the reader is sympathetic to Rochester’s story (you have to be to accept Jane and Rochester’s reconciliation at the end). Edward claims to have been duped in marrying Bertha by her family, ignorant to her genetic penchant for madness and drink. Jane is similarly confined by Rochester. As Mrs. Fairfax points out to Jane, a governess must be careful when the man of the house seduces her. A mere governess cannot be sure of his true intentions.

It is only when Bertha burns Thornfield and jumps to her death that both women are freed of their patriarchal confinement by Rochester. Rochester is burned, becoming dependent and weak. It is at this point that Jane is able to return to Rochester. Upon doing so, she returns as a wealthy heiress, Edward now dependent on her sight. Jane can only hear Edward’s voice calling through the night when Edward truly needed her.

Novels such as The Awakening by Kate Chopin shocked readers because the heroine leaves her children and her home. While this is preaching essentially the same philosophy as Jane Eyre (that dependence upon a patriarchal family - and thus patriarchal society - is destructive to a woman), I believe that it does so in a clumsily blatant way. Bronte’s book has enough subtlety to garb its progressive thoughts in a veil of romance. She proves that marriage is not adverse to independence. This is what I could not understand during my first reading. The point is not that Jane married Rochester. The point is that she didn’t have to.

Book Blog Hop - My Favorite Poem - "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"

2010-12-02T05:30:00.000-08:00

I go through phases with poetry. For a while, as an undergrad, Sylvia Plath fulfilled my angst. She could, of course, only be upended by Anne Sexton whose prolific metaphors enabled my female rage. Emily Dickinson then gave me a sort of back-to-the-basics renaissance (of course, this before I realized that she was revolutionary and hardly ‘basic’). I remember the Robert Frost phase whose rural-inspired rhyme and repetition seemed the rhythm my life needed. Right now, I am going through a significantly long and intense phase with Anne Carson, whose brilliance is overwhelming (read my review of Nox).

One constant over the past six or seven years, however, has been Wendell Berry. I’ve been lucky enough to see him speak twice at The Land Institute, an institution that promotes conservation, especially through the use of revised agricultural methods such as perennial crops (I reviewed my last experience hearing him speak here). I mention this because this is the root of Berry’s life and philosophy. He farms his family’s land in Kentucky and writes prolifically – essays, novels, short stories, philosophy, and yes, poems.

Being raised on a farm, Berry’s poetry speaks to me in a way that I am certain that for a more urban reader it would not. That being said, like all good poetry, Berry’s writing is universal and though inspired by his landscape and philosophy, it speaks to our desire as humans to find our place in this world – often literally. My favorite of his poems, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” exemplifies this well. In lines like “Praise ignorance, for what man / has not encountered he has not destroyed” or “As soon as the generals and the politicos / can predict the motions of your mind, / lose it. Leave it as a sign / to mark the false trail, the way / you didn't go,” Berry becomes political with the verve and wit he loves to employ.

He is always quick to settle us down, though, to bring us back to the world and nature and what it teaches us. He ends his manifesto with encouragement, “Be like the fox / who makes more tracks than necessary, / some in the wrong direction. / Practice resurrection.” Even having read those lines for the first time years ago, they still give me chills.

Book Blog Hop - Turning Modern Into Classic

2010-11-25T07:16:00.000-08:00

When I started teaching Advanced English, one of the other English teachers, helping me with my lesson plans, gave me a list of “classic” novels that our students could choose from for a book report. The list was a strange conglomeration of novels from the last two hundred years – everything from Little Women to Tropic of Cancer. It made me think about what constitutes a classic novel. (By the way, I ended up slimming down the options on the list. I eliminated some books that I thought too mature for my thirteen-year-olds, such as Tropic of Cancer, some that were too long for them to read in a seven week period, such as War and Peace, and I also limited it to nineteenth century novels, which I felt they would never read otherwise. I did not make those decisions, however, based on what I believed to be the definition of “classic” novel.)

There is, I believe, only one way for a contemporary novel to become a classic. It must enter into the conversation of literate people – not necessarily critics, or bloggers, or academia, but others as well. Even certain people I know who do not read novels had heard of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. There was so much discussion about the novel and the author’s relationship with Oprah, not to mention his Time cover or how many times people remarked that it had not been nominated for a National Book Award, that the novel has become infamous. The implication is that many books that are classics have not necessarily been read by those that discuss them. How many people could name a Shakespeare play without having read one?

A book must be part of conversation, otherwise its energy dies when its cover is closed. Not all “classics” are good – they are merely known and discussed. If you think about your reading history, the books that are considered classics, no matter at which point in history they were “contemporary” are probably taught in high school or college classes somewhere., thereby expanding the conversation beyond people who would read them no matter what. Their Eyes Were Watching God was not considered a “classic” and in fact was out of print until 1971 – thirty-four years after its publication – when Alice Walker picked it up to teach it at Wellesley. Now, it is considered part of the canon. A more recent example is Yann Martel’s book Life of Pi. Only published in 2001, it is already being taught in high schools around the country, including the high school my middle school feeds into. Many of my former students can discuss or reference the novel years after they read it.

Of course, the most important factor is time, which makes this question difficult. I don’t believe that we can accurately predict which modern novels will become classics. Winning an award helps, being taught in schools or receiving good reviews helps, but there are so many novels published a year and many good ones by independent publishers that will unfortunately not reach a wider audience. Not all classics are good novels, and not all good novels become classics.

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross

2010-11-22T05:17:00.000-08:00

As a title, Mr. Peanut sounds like a children’s book – maybe one of those that had the large, primary-color shapes with a face scribbled on. Adam Ross’s first words (“When David Pepin first dreamed of killing his wife, he didn’t kill her himself.”) alert you that this will be a violent, psychological book. There are no misconceptions after you pass the title page. This is a Serious Book.

Mr. Peanut is concerned with the relationships between men and their wives. (Though a strange little title, at least, thank god, Ross didn’t name his book The So-and-so’s Wife – books whose titles annoy me to no end.) Specifically, this is the story of David Pepin, who has been accused of murdering his wife by feeding her peanuts. Contradictory evidence causes ambivalence about his guilt. David and Alice’s marriage was floundering – he imagined her death in many, varied ways until the day she actually did die. Unfortunately, he recorded these fantasies in a novel, whose existence could implicate him further.

Two detectives – Hastroll and Sheppard – investigate Pepin’s involvement while facing similarly dire situations with their own wives. Detective Sheppard is the Sam Sheppard – the doctor found guilty and later acquitted of killing his wife in 1954. In Ross’s reimagining, he’s shirked his death and become a detective, explicating the events surrounding his wife’s death to Pepin’s hired gun, Mobius. Detective Hastroll is under pressure to manipulate his wife out of her bed where she has been infirm for five months. He too can’t help but dream of her death.

Mr. Peanut reminds me a great deal of Atonement, the cerebral meta-fictional novel by Ian McEwan. Like Briony in Atonement, David Pepin is writing his world as well as living it as well as fictionalizing it. And like Briony, the act of writing allows David catharsis, although in an entirely different way than the atonement that give McEwan the title of his novel.

Ross’s Pepin is careful to guide us through his authorial choices – telling us far in advance that this will be an Escher painting – all dead-ends and confusion. Indeed, many places we thought we’d already been, we’re at again, upside-down or backwards this time. Ross wants to make sure we get it, that our perspective is adjusted for each staircase, so to speak, so he guides us, little by little, to make sure we right ourselves again.

Compelling and fast-moving, Mr. Peanut was an extremely enjoyable read. Although I normally resent it when an author gives me too much, Ross does a fine job of story-telling, mixed with enough obscurity to make me think about his story long after I finished it. The psychology of the characters is hauntingly in tune – even a case autopsied hundreds of ways in the media is given a fresh memorial in the novel from the context of Ross’s other fictionalized stories. I look forward to reading Mr. Ross’s second novel.

Book Blog Hop - Literary Non-Fiction?

2010-11-18T05:36:00.000-08:00

“Like one who having into truth, by telling of it, made such a sinner of his memory, to credit his own lie.” -The Tempest. Act i. Sc. 2.

There is always debate as to whether the product or intent of an author is more important in determining genre. For literary nonfiction, I believe that the intention is the decisive factor. My older brother swears my Mother made him eat a bowl of ketchup when he was three – knowing my Mother, this surely never happened. We laugh at this “memory” of his now, but still argue endlessly over its root. The memory is formative as much as any other for him. Does this make it non-fiction?

Perhaps literary or creative non-fiction should be published with the caveat that it is human perception rather than human reality. It is certainly true that our views dictate the memory. It is why there is a separate label for literary non-fiction rather than just plain old, facts-be-told non-fiction. In a recent memoir I reviewed - Lit by Mary Karr - she constantly inserts cautions into her story that her memory may not be trustworthy. At the time, I almost felt it unnecessary for her to do so (it’s memoir, so obviously it is the author’s take on events). In light of this question, however, maybe it is important to distinguish truth from memory by a self-awareness in the text itself.

LIT by Mary Karr

2010-11-15T16:27:00.000-08:00

There is such a proliferation of memoirs about substance abuse, mental disorders, writing, or religious conversion – all of which are subjects covered in Lit by Mary Karr. Memoir is such a volatile genre with authors such as James Frey apologizing for fictionalizing what may or may not actually be their life. In fact, Karr goes out of her way to acknowledge that her memory may be skewed, adding asides such as “Here, I mistrust my memory…” At one point she even admits her first memoir started as a thinly veiled work of fiction. This is important when reading the memories of someone who admittedly drank till blacking out. I’ll confess I didn’t know there were memoirs that came before this one until I was already started – I picked up Lit randomly with little knowledge of Karr or her previous work.

Lit begins as she roams California beaches at seventeen, getting high accidentally, she claims. She’s a good girl, really – plagued by a killer family and a penchant towards chemical dependency, but smart and sincere. After realizing her mistake, she escapes to Minnesota to major in philosophy at a small college. Lit spans Karr’s twenties and most of her thirties as she gets married, has a child, becomes an alcoholic and a Catholic, gets divorced, and finds a publisher. Though this sounds disjointed and as random as life is, the constant theme of God and alcohol fuels the pages into a story - it is the battery that is meant to keep this bunny going.

Marianne Moore said, “All poetry is nouns and verbs.” Karr the poet takes this to heart, often transforming nouns into adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. It gives her prose a dry syncopation. Her friend Doonie wears his wetsuit’s crotch “down so low that for him to walk, he had to cowboy swagger.” A fellow resident at her institution describes her “broke-dick husband” who has “slam-dunked her for partying with truckers.” Her sentences are so taut, I feel they could snap. “Age seventeen, stringy-haired and halter-topped, weighing in the high double digits and unhindered by a high school diploma, I showed up at the Pacific Ocean, ready to seek my fortune with a truck full of extremely stoned surfers,” she begins the memoir.

The fun in her writing, however, is undermined by a book that is largely tedious. The problem is that life is long and taken in many steps. A book that clings to this reality is lackluster. It seems blasphemous to ask the memoirist to cut and edit, but that is what Lit needed. Sentences this tight need a story to mirror it. The first sections of her memoir illustrate a completely different life than the catalyst for her alcoholism through her religious conversion. Having never read the first two memoirs, I didn’t feel the need for an update of what happens between Cherry and when this story really gets good.

Mary Karr is a wonderful writer – I’ve read some of her poetry now – and an effective storyteller. It would be exciting to see what she could do when she leaves the confines of her own life.

Book Blog Hop - The Most Difficult Book

2010-11-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

The Book Blog Hop at The Blue Bookcase asked the following question: What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

My mind went three ways when confronted with this question:

Tinkers was so hard for me. (Read my full review here.) I read it days after my Grandpa died in a very similar way as one of the characters. It’s an emotional, lyrical book anyway, but adding the book on the shoulders of my grief, I toppled from its prose. I am glad I read it during that period of time because I am sure that the book is much more vibrant for me than for many. But in its emotional context, it was exceedingly difficult.

I’m too pretentious to normally admit to boredom caused by books. Especially as a teacher, I want to make all books sound exciting. However, Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens was mud to my thighs. It was required reading in my English novel class during college. I waded through like the good student I was supposed to be, but I was sore from the tedium. I’m sure it’s a lovely book, but amidst sleep deprivation and term papers, it was much too much for me.

But the most challenging? That would have to be Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I read it when I was fifteen. I remember sitting in my vocal class during our school-wide mandatory silent reading time mesmerized by the story, feeling as if I had tapped some unknown resource not yet discovered by my peers. The problem was, I didn’t know what I had yet either. I wrestled with its philosophy for years afterward, realizing I was much too mentally immature for it. Someday, I will pick it up again, and hopefully understand it, but for now it sits on my shelf like the trophy that it is.