Category: american fiction

#63 – Moonlight Mile

Murderous Christmas continues, and I finished Dennis Lehane’s Moonlight Mile in record time. I read about three pages last night before crashing into sleep and then, in between visits to the hospital (blood work), visits from my Aunties, and a trip to the Duff, I finished the book about three minutes ago waiting for the baby to go to sleep. The book picks up twelve years after Gone, Baby, Gone, the other other Patrick and Angie book I’ve read (which I enjoyed immensely), and a lot has happened. Patrick and Angie are back together, they have a daughter, and they’re once again hired by Bea to find Amanda McCready, who has once again disappeared.

Nothing is at it seems, of course, and Patrick finds himself stuck in this case that, like all those years ago, puts his life on the line and then changes it forever. I can totally see what Sarah Weinman was talking about in her review of the novel, but I didn’t read and/or experience a love for crime fiction in the same way, so I don’t have the same expectations. The book gripped me from the beginning, and not just because the characters are terrific, but more because the story just dove right into the action. Then, it doesn’t let you go. I appreciate a good, plot-driven novel. I mean, I am a snob, don’t get me wrong, and years ago, if someone told me I’d be reading bucketloads of mystery/crime novels after giving birth, I would have laughed and said something obnoxious.

There are flaws with Lehane’s writing, don’t get me wrong. I’m not convinced that every single character needs their hair described in such immaculate detail but, in the end, it doesn’t matter because the story itself flies off the page — and once you pick up the book, you seem to get to the end before you even realize it. I guess you have to forgive him for these petty details, for the odd over-description and the sometimes melodramatic sentences, because he writes great dialogue and has created such a hard-driving narrative. It’s immaculate commercial fiction and that’s a hard balance to strike — it satisfies literary snobs like me and more general readers in one fell swoop. That’s not something to be overlooked or under appreciated.

Many of my co-workers tell me that the entire series is just that good. Maybe I’ll go back and read more than just the two I have done, but I’m satisfied with my Lehane experience. Maybe I don’t want to ruin it. I’ll just leave it where it is for now. So, no reading challenges accomplished with this novel, but that’s okay too, right?

#56 – The Senator’s Wife

My bookshelves are lighter by another title this weekend as I finished Sue Miller’s The Senator’s Wife this morning while feeding the RRBB (well, technically he had finished and fallen asleep and I was approximating life before him by staying in bed and reading, one of my favourite Sunday pastimes). It was an interesting novel to read as one of the main characters, Meri, a woman approximately my age, gives birth to her first child and for the latter half of the novel somewhat loses herself in terms of having to redefine her life now that her son, Asa, is in the picture. The senator’s wife of the novel’s title is Meri’s next door neighbour, Delia Naughton, an older, graceful woman, whose character reminded me a little of Jackie Kennedy, whether or not that was Miller’s intention.

As the novel moves back and forth through time from the perspectives of both women until the ultimate climax, you get the sense that Miller was trying to create a very domestic kind of drama. Most of the action of the novel takes place in the semi-detached houses that the two women share (that’s not to say they don’t leave nor do they have jobs: Meri works at a radio station as a producer; Delia volunteers during the summer months at an historical house in town) and it’s a book that’s very much about the lives of these two women as they relate to their husbands, their children and each other.

From the beginning Meri’s obsessed with Delia. For years, she’s lived a very separate life from her husband, Senator Tom Naughton. A ceaseless philanderer, their marriage was ruined years ago, but they have maintained an interesting, connected relationship regardless. Meri and her husband Nathan, newly married, make the transition from lovers to that deeper bond that develops over time when you’re married. And the novel explores all of these domestic issues: how children change a relationship, what it means to sacrifice your sex life as your body, your desire, your life changes; and how Meri comes to terms with all of this after the birth of her son (can you see the parallels, can you!).

It’s interesting because while this is a women’s novel, and there is literary merit to Miller’s writing, it’s also not truly the kind of book that I would enjoy. It’s something I’d recommend to my aunt’s book club — a book that they can relate to in their personal lives, something that would generate a lot of discussion over a glass of wine about the value of monogamy, the fatal flaws in Meri’s character, and how Delia’s mistakes finally drive her to becoming a much stronger, even more independent woman finally free of the bonds she didn’t even realize were holding her back.

Yet, there’s not an ounce of chicklit in this book — and I’ve finally figured out why — there’s no melodrama. There’s no obvious heightened emotional situations meant to manipulate the reader. I was comparing this book while reading to Jennifer Weiner’s Fly Away Home. Both protagonists have politicians for husbands who cheat on them, but in Weiner’s novel, the sheer over-wrought-ness (I know that’s not a word) of the situation carries the novel away for me. Miller’s book is far more grounded. The women are more mature, if that makes any sense, more complete, because they’re more fully rounded and realized characters — they’re not situations masquerading as people, which is often what happens in chicklit, authors mistake the need for a certain kind of plot and plop in a character that fits the description of where they want the novel to go.

That doesn’t happen in The Senator’s Wife. It’s more of a meditation of home, of what it means to build a family, of what family means, of what marriage means, of what you need to sacrifice for your children, for the life that you want to lead, and how love informs it all in ways that neither women can control. The journey to self-realization for both Meri and Delia takes the better part of the book and that either women becomes the catalyst for the other to get there is not lost on the reader. The situation that finally spurns them both forward seems so innocent as it begins and then it ultimately reads as a subtle, yet brutal, form of betrayal. Yet, it’s something that they both needed to go through in order to fully realize who they are — who they needed to become. That this kind of self-realization needs to happen to women in their 60s as much as women in their 40s, their 30s, is an interesting theme that runs throughout the book.

The Senator’s Wife is a solid, readable novel, but not something I’d recommend as my “best books of the year” or anything. It’s a quiet book, with quiet implications, and in a way, that makes it perfect for the 2 AM reading slot that occupies my nights these days.

What’s up next? I started Little Bee by Chris Cleave — see, this clearing off the shelves challenge is absolutely working! I’ve gone through almost three novels this week.

#52 – Tinkers

Paul Harding’s novel, Tinkers, won the Pulitzer Prize last year, and it’s a novel more than worth its success. First published by the Bellevue Literary Press in NYC, the novel will hopefully find a wider audience now that it’s being published by HarperCollins. Anyway, the publishing history isn’t really the purpose of writing a review on the blog, is it?

In a way, Tinkers will feel familiar to Canadians, it’s premise, an old man lays dying and reflects on his life, is one that we’re quite familiar with. If it were only called Stone Tinkers, it’d probably be a bestseller. The novel intertwines the stories of son and father, George and Howard Aaron Crosby, as George lays dying, system shutting down, in his living room. Surrounded by family, sometimes George knows what’s happening, sometimes his body betrays him, but Harding has a particular talent for writing his death honestly and without pretense.

Both George and his father are good, honest people, but that doesn’t mean they always make the right decision. Without necessarily wanting to spoil anything (and it’s written in the marketing blurb), they’ve been estranged for years when Howard, who is epileptic, abandons his family on the pretense that his hard, hard wife has finally reached the end of her rope with the burden of his disease, and is about to commit him to an institution.
Howard, a tinker, who walked the cold backroads of Maine with his cart selling anything and everything, simply turns in the other direction and doesn’t go home. He begins an entirely new and fulfilling life that seems at peace with his utterly good nature — but, then again, it’s not an honourable thing to leave your family behind with no way to support itself. But the way its written, you actually feel sympathy for Howard, you feel like it’s the right thing to do, and are convinced that everything will be fine.

George, a clock repairman, has led a happy, quiet life. Precision guides him, even in death, and as his body shuts down, its elements of machinery, the very same things that guided George through life, are failing. His mind wanders, he can’t recognize the family members by his bed, but he notices that his favourite clock isn’t wound. In this simple example, it’s apparent that one of the most moving aspects of Tinkers remains Harding’s ability to describe a body deteriorating into death. Tears came to my eyes more than once throughout my reading of this novel — I was reminded of my mother, of how her body failed in the few days it took her to die. Sometimes his descriptions were so apt that I felt the pain of the loss in my chest. To me, that’s the sign of an exceptional writer. Someone who can move you to remember or feel something so personal yet so unrelated to the story by the simple power of a sentence.

Harding attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and worked with Marilynne Robinson, and you can feel her influence all over this novel. It’s quiet but intense, the characters are wholly good people with complex flaws, and the novel’s simple story betrays the power of the prose. Overall, I’d highly recommend this book — it’s a quick, emotionally satisfying read — it’s perfect for a rainy day when you have some time to spend just laying about on the couch. But have a tissue or two on hand…

#49 – The Imperfectionists

The Globe and Mail called The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, universally beloved by just about everyone and on numerous “best of” lists for 2010, “note perfect.” And there are elements of the book that I would agree with this praise, but there are also problems, especially with the female characters. They definitely could have been more well rounded and less like caricatures, but on the whole, it’s an especially readable book.

I finished the novel the first day that I landed in the hospital. It was unfortunate that I was reading the book a little under duress, maybe that’s clouded my judgement. On the whole, I agree that it is a sharp, intriguing, intelligent look at the demise of an English-language newspaper publishing out of Italy. The idea of media, in general, throughout the book provides and interesting backdrop — newspapers are failing all around the world, trying to figure out how to stay solvent, and the idea that news is no longer about a perspective, but rather ratings and sensationalism (Glenn Beck, COME ON), The Imperfectionists is a timely book. My two favourite characters, the managing editor (and forgive me, I no longer have my copy; my RRHB gave it to the resident at the hospital because she loved to read and was going to Africa to practice medicine the next week) whose love affair fell down in flames (because all of the women in this book are truly incapable of grown-up love, don’t you find?) but who knows the business, who is the business, inside and out,

My least favourite character, the female copy-editor who almost defines the word “spinster” as it was meant fifty years ago, truly disappointed me. But I’m not sure if Rachman meant for any of the characters to be completely whole. Perhaps they echo the disintegration of their paper — struggling to find the right pause to end a sentence that isn’t quite complete. Chasing a story that will never materialize in a world that cares more about how many times Lindsey Lohan can end up in jail or rehab. The social commentary and the utter inability of the latter generations to save the paper, how the corporation that owns the media simply shuts it down, and how new media essentially contributes to its demise, well, these are stories we (I) live every day having worked in both television and magazines before landing in the relatively stable (don’t believe what you read) world of book publishing.

It’s a quick read, and an engrossing one. Rachman has a talent for characters and for pulling together what are essentially short stories wrapped within the larger tale of the end of the paper. What starts off as a labour of love ends up an empty room, papers left of the floor, staff pilfering computer equipment, when I read that, it truly reminded me of the last days of Saturday Night magazine in Toronto, when the National Post took the magazine over, and I lost my truly awful job. In that moment, I was an incomplete, unhappy character, I could have easily been one of the women in this book, but luckily, I’ve got some pluck, some spunk, and maybe that’s what they were missing. I mean, truly, letting the dead beat butthead into your life just because you’re too “old” to find anyone else. I HATE that storyline. I am so sick of female characters like that…but I am rambling. Trying to get more than one sentence down before my RRBB hollers out for something.

#35 – The Cookbook Collector

I truly admire Allegra Goodman’s storytelling techniques, and while her latest novel, The Cookbook Collector, isn’t 100% successful, it did manage to convey the same deep, emotional resonance that I found so affecting in Intuition. The novel opens deep in the heart of the Silicon Alley dot com explosion of the mid-1990s where the main protagonists in The Cookbook Collector, two radically different sisters, find themselves on opposite ends of the economic spectrum.

Emily is the CEO of a tech company about to launch its first IPO — she’s driven, successful and engaged to an equally driven and successful man whose career mirrors her own. Jessamine works part-time at a bookstore where her boss, George, collects rare books and sells them to like-minded men and women who like to own things. She’s still a student, and finds herself increasingly involved in causes — whether it’s Jewish mysticism or saving the redwood trees, Jess’s life drifts along in a mist of misguided intentions.

Where her sister drives to succeed, Jess can’t seem to find her footing. And Emily’s trouble comes when she discovers that monetary/business success can’t necessarily propel you into being well-adjusted in the face of tragedy and/or disappointment. Both girls show their strengths in different ways throughout the course of the novel, and their evolution is at once both as disconcerting as it is refreshing. In a sense, they take a cue from the central metaphor in the novel — this cookbook collection that George discovers and then covets — it’s full of rich lives, rich recipes, but it’s crammed into a kitchen not used for cooking. Where there should live pots and pans, there are books upon valuable books. And when you collect things, be it rare books or stock shares, there’s an element of your life that you aren’t necessarily living.

In a way, the journey that both Emily and Jess take moves from being a collection of attributes: motherless daughters, successful/unsuccessful, preppy/hippie, to fully realized human beings. It’s not an easy process for either of them, and there’s bookended tragedies that seem to define their growth — the death of their mother on one end and then the aftershock of 9/11 (with things I won’t spoil here) as the other. I’m not saying Goodman’s novel isn’t flawed, it is, the coincidences are a little too coincidental, and I’m not sure that any novelist has really gotten to the core of 9/11 in a way that I feel comfortable with — the way Goodman used it didn’t ring 100% true to me in this case. But she’s such a great writer of characters, and I still couldn’t put this book down once I started. Not sure I agree with the blurbage on Amazon and other places that compares The Cookbook Collector to an Austen novel, but I enjoyed so much about it, from the setting to the delicious descriptions of the cookbooks themselves (they are awesome, trust me), that it made for a truly satisfying summer read.

Summer Reading: A Catch Up Edition

I have a huge list of books to get caught up on in terms of keeping track of my reading here in the blog. As I doubt I’ll find the time to create individual posts for every book I’ve read since the beginning of July, I’m going to do one big post here, and then try very hard for the rest of the summer to update here more than once a month.

#24 – Shadow Tag
This was the very first book I read for my new book club. I’d read Louise Erdrich back in university and remembered enjoying Love Medicine very much. Shadow Tag, with its semi-autobiographic overtones and extremely dark subject matter, was an unsettling novel. It’s not even that you can’t trust the protagonist, or that she’s an unreliable narrator; it’s more that both Irene and her husband Gil are truly, completely unlikeable. They lie to one another, feed off each other’s insecurities, have a terrible, damaging relationship, and ultimately aren’t the best parents to their three children. The writing is terrific but I consistently go back and forth on the age-old debate in my head — can I really enjoy a book when I hate the characters? We had an amazing discussion about the novel, about their motivation to stay together, about the destructive nature of art in the book, and about both of their selfish, selfish behavior. It’s an intense novel, be prepared for that should you decide to delve in.

#25 – Freedom
I’m not sure how much to say about Franzen’s latest novel because I read a work galley (well, I begged to borrow a work galley and it’s my ONLY copy) and the book isn’t being published for another few weeks. However, I will say this — it’s a terrifically engaging chunk of a book that follows the lives of the Berglund family. Like The Corrections, Franzen writes so convincingly about American life that it’s impossible not to get emotionally involved in the lives of these characters. It’s an excellent novel.

#26 – I’d Know You Anywhere
The same goes for the new Laura Lippman. She’s one of my favourite commercial fiction writers — her stories are always page-turners and her characters always have issues to overcome that develop into rich, realistic plot lines — you never feel like she sacrifices anything for the story, it’s relentless. Her latest novel is no exception. Eliza Benedict has worked hard to create a very particular kind of life for herself — until the man who abducted her when she was a teenager tracks her down and asks something of her she isn’t necessarily prepared to give. The novel reminded me in a way of Barbara Gowdy’s Helpless in the way it gives a bird’s eye view of not only the victim, but the criminal as well. It’s a captivating novel — perfect for summer reading.

#27 – We Have Always Lived In The Castle
Oh my goodness I adored Shirley Jackson’s macabre, Gothic novel. This was another book club book and what an awesome choice it was. Merricat (Mary Katherine) Blackwood and her sister Constance live in a run-down old manor house with their Uncle Julian. Years ago her entire family was killed by a fatal dose of arsenic-laced strawberries during dinner. Constance, the elder sister, was accused of the crime, and then tried, but found innocent. However, the townspeople have never quite forgiven her, and so Merricat (an 18 year-old who acts far more like a 12 year-old) and Constance have somewhat shut themselves up against the world. That is, until their cousin Charles arrives and throws their world in chaos. It’s a delicious, deceptively simple novel, and we all raved about it at book club. I comped it to the best of Flannery O’Connor with even more edge, if that’s possible.

#28 – Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard
Richard B. Wright remains one of those Canadian authors, like Jane Urquhart or Michael Ondaatje, that I’ll read anything they write. If they wrote a grocery list, I’d probably read and enjoy it. His latest novel, Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard, feels like a departure, and that’s not a bad thing. While I loved October, I felt like it had a definite place in the Canadian canon — it was almost as if he was actively trying to write back to Hugh MacLennan. With this new novel, I feel like he’s moved into decidedly new territory. It’s a hybrid kind of novel — one part historical fiction (the book’s protagonist is the bastard daughter of Wm Shakespeare), one part typical literary fiction, and one part juicy page turner. Aerlene Ward has lived her entire life with a secret: William Shakespeare was her father. As she gets on in age, she feels the need to tell her story and enlists the help of Charlotte, the youngest daughter in the manor house where she’s been the housekeeper for all of her adult life. It’s a rich tale — both as its told and as it was lived — and Wright has a keen ear for Elizabethan London. The biggest issue that I have with so much historical fiction is the romance-novel-ness of them all. This book isn’t that, while I can see how it would appeal to the biggest fans of Philippa Gregory, it’s so much richer in how the historical details are integrated into the fabric of the story. These are strong, interesting women, and there’s an apt feminist critique to be explored upon a more educational reading of the novel. Anyway, I’ve got high hopes for this book for the fall — I really want many, many people to love it as much as I did. We’re doing a Savvy Reader read-along post for it that should be live in the next couple weeks.

#29 – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Like the rest of the universe, I finally went back and read the first of Steig Larsson’s ridiculously addictive series. I’m glad I did, if only to fully understand how all three books fit together, and to see how Lisbeth and Blomkvist actually meet for the first time. We watched the film the other night, and I found it almost better than the book — while definitely not as detailed, it was far more streamlined, which I appreciated. As much as I find these great books, great social experiments in how a book can “tip,” sometimes the writing is clunky, the dialogue terrible, and there’s just too much detail. And I enjoyed seeing the Swedish landscape if only to give myself a visual picture to accompany the reading experience in my head. I read this book on my iPad with the Kobo application and found that there were some layout issues with the text that made transitions a little awkward but overall I think it’s the perfect way of reading commercial fiction. It’s not a book that I’m dying to keep — it’s an impulse, something I want to read right now and steam through, and knowing I don’t have to pawn off a physical copy on a friend was a relief.

#30 – The Help
Now, this novel truly surprised me. From the cover, it screams “Oprah” and “Nicholas Sparks,” but because it’s my job to know what kinds of books sell like stink, I figured it would be another good one to try on my iPad. This time, I used the Kindle application, and I found it just that teeny bit superior to the Kobo (mainly in the fact that it gives an accurate idea of where you are in a book), but there’s really little difference between the two as a reading application for the basic stuff that I need (good bookmarks, easy navigation, etc). Annywaaay, The Help. I bawled like a baby by the end of it, found myself reading until 4 AM one night at the cottage when I couldn’t sleep and realizing it’s just a really good novel. Set in Jackson, Mississippi smack-dab in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, The Help entwines the stories of the young white women who form the “society” of the area with the black women who they consider their “help.” From debate over why separate bathrooms IN ONE HOUSE for the women who feed, clothe, bathe, and raise their children to Miss Skeeter’s desperate ‘Peggy in Mad Men-esque’ quest to get out of her Southern life entirely, the novel keeps you emotionally invested from beginning to end. Stockett writes convincingly from both perspectives and the payoff at the end was impeccable.

#31 – Locavore
When the iBookstore launched at the beginning of July, I bought a few of our books so I could make sure they worked. Sarah Elton’s look at the local food movement from a Canadian perspective had been on my TBR pile forever. I did a lot of work with her when the book first came out and she’s just such a lovely author (but that’s an aside). She has a very easy-going writing style and her way into the topic (from a pink sugar cookie made in China in her daughter’s loot bag) was both personal and intriguing. There were so many things that I didn’t know and so many interesting, new perspectives about the local food issues that Elton puts forth that I learned a lot. How wrong was my assumption that once I’d read Pollan and Kingsolver that there was nothing left to know about the locavore movement. This is a book for anyone remotely interested in the issues surrounding the food we eat — and even if you aren’t, it’s a great primer to get you started. But my favourite part of Elton’s perspective isn’t a holier than thou approach, it’s more “do the best you can; it all helps in the end.” And I feel like this suits my life — we buy local where possible, support farmer’s markets, grow our own veggies, and balance out the more exotic aspects of your eating with better choices. I LOVED this book.

#32 – The Lovers
I have so much respect and admiration for Vendela Vida. Not just because she leads an obviously envious life and is bloody gorgeous, but because she’s an exquisite writer whose craft I covet every time I read a sentence of hers. Yet, this novel disappointed me. It lacked the emotional resonance that reverberated so nicely through Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, and the tragic event posited by the jacket copy to “rock” the protagonist, Yvonne, to her core, felt contrived and even stereotypical when looked at in context. It felt very Hollywood, this novel, and maybe I was just expecting too much from Vida because I pushed her earlier book on every single person I know. So, in short, Yvonne, a middle-aged widow, visits Turkey, the site of her honeymoon, to try and figure out how to move on with her life. She’s had a good life, but one with issues, and she starts to unravel the more time she spends trying to ‘find’ herself in relation to who she once was: mother, teacher, wife. The setting, at once meant to invoke her past and perhaps spurn Yvonne into a sense of self-discovery, becomes exotic and strange to her. And then, things start to go very awry when she befriends a young Turkish boy visiting his grandmother. There could have been such a rich palette to explore so much in the book but Vida doesn’t drift beyond the superficial in a way. You never truly feel like you know Yvonne, and maybe that’s on purpose, but the whole novel felt incomplete to me, especially the ending.

#33 – Secrets of Eden
And, again, here’s another of my favourite novelists with new books that fell short of my expectations. I adore Chris Bohjalian’s books — even his critical misfires work for me, unlike many, many reviewers, I really liked the trippy nature of The Double Bind and didn’t even mind his last book, Skeletons at the Feast despite its truly awful cover. But Secrets of Eden, well, it failed to impress either with the moral premise underneath the story or by its storytelling. Like in Vida’s novel, the “twist” at the end felt very much like an M. Night Shyamalan film — far, far too apparent from too early on and really quite stereotypical for my tastes. The whole book felt like a Law and Order episode but without any convincing or interesting characters. I find the complex nature of religious characters in novels interesting — but I’ll turn to Marilynne Robinson when I want to explore it in more depth — Bohjalian used it to very obviously pit “good” against apparent “evil” and in this case it didn’t work. Oh, the plot, right: a reverend loses a member of his flock, a woman who had been abused by her husband, and becomes accused of the murder when she and said partner are found dead the morning after her baptism. Enter a very famous writer who has made plenty of money writing about angels. They become involved, which, of course, casts even more suspicion on the poor Reverend Stephen Drew. Yawn. Yes, I know, I’m being sarcastic, but the book was truly tedious in places. Anyway, nothing will stop me from reading Bohjalian, because I adore his fiction, but this just wasn’t the book for me.

#34 – The Big Short
Wow, was this a dynamo of a nonfiction book. Michael Lewis examines the financial crisis in such a detailed and fascinating way that it’s impossible NOT to think of the yahoos on Wall Street as crooks by the end of it. While the book has a LOT of technical jargon as it relates to the financial markets, it’s not remotely dry. In fact, it’s just the opposite — it’s utterly riveting and totally fascinating. He breaks down the few characters who managed to short the crisis even before it began, including a hedge fund owner whose driving characteristic is his Asperger’s, along with a few “outsider” funds who actually took the time to investigate the market and pull it apart at the seams — primarily to find the ways of making huge amounts of money from what they could see coming: a total collapse of the system. It’s incredible that the US government propped up the big investment houses, essentially rewarded them for their stupidity, and then they turned around and rewarded themselves with huge bonuses, and, well, got to all keep their jobs. Billions upon billions of dollars with hidden paper trails and bad trades are lost, unknown or hidden from the general public, just so we can keep the illusion that the big investment banks actually had any idea of what was happening. I’d highly recommend this to anyone remotely interested in why the US is such a mess these days — it’s just utterly captivating and you will shake your head in amazement that not a single person stopped the madness before it all collapsed. Anyway, it’s a great, great read.

Whew. That’s about it — I’m sure there are a couple of books that I’ve probably forgotten but that’s about the extent of my summer reading so far. I’m so behind in my reading in general this year that it’s nice to just have a big stack of books out of the way before the insanity of the fall creeps up on us.

#23 – The Lacuna

While I didn’t make the Orange Prize deadline, I’m still reading the short-list nominated books over the summer. I am glad, however, that weeks ago I managed to finish Kingsolver’s magnificent (and winning!) novel before the announcement took over the world that the prize belonged to her. I’m still going to read the other short-listed books (I’ve got them all now and might take them up to the cottage with me this weekend) but I’ve already made up my mind that this novel truly deserved the win.

The book opens with a fairly typical “memoir”-type first section. A young boy, terrorized by howler monkeys on an island just off the coast of Mexico, lives with his mother in a tumble down estate with a sort of stepfather. It’s here that Harrison, born to a Mexican mother and an American father, finds his first lacuna, a hidden pool, which becomes significant later in life. The lacuna — literally and metaphorically — figures heavily in the novel, and not just because of the title. Harrison himself is a lacuna, keeping his inner life, his feelings, his sexuality, hidden except for the prime few who know the right times to dive in and avoid the tides.

The novel changes in tone after the first section, written by Harrison as memoir (he becomes a fiction writer as a career) and then we’re invited into reading about the rest of his life through private journals he left in the care of his secretary, Violet Brown. Interspersed with the journals are newspaper articles, transcripts and all kinds of other ephemera, which encourage you to scavenge, in a way, for the story. Harrison remains a mystery until the end, and the ending of this novel is magical — it’s totally worth the little bit of time it takes to get into the story, and Kingsolver’s masterly way of incorporating real characters into her fiction never suffers from what I like to call The Forrest Gump Affliction. It’s inherent and real in terms of the story, which comes from excellent research (one would imagine) and a keen sense of how a novel should work.

It’s one of my favourite books for the year, hands down.

#21 – Black Water Rising

I finished Attica Locke’s debut novel last week. It was a quick, enjoyable read, but I’m not 100% convinced that it’s the best of the best of women’s writing for the year (as judging from its Orange Prize shortlisted status). Yet, that said, there’s something about commercial fiction writing that I admire. The way the plots drive forward ceaselessly, the way the action never seems to stop, and the muddled way the somewhat damaged protagonists always seem to figure it out in the end. Locke’s narrative reminds me a little of a Dennis Lehane novel — she’s got the same strong characters, the same driving storylines, and the same gift with both prose, and I really enjoyed her main character, Jay Porter.

The gist of the book is as follows: Jay Porter’s a black lawyer in Houston. It’s 1981, and he just can’t get his practice off the ground. He’s not a bad lawyer — he’s just attracting the wrong kind of clients. Making it on your own isn’t easy and money is beyond tight. Also, Jay and his wife Bernie are about six weeks away from having a baby. The timing couldn’t be worse for him to get wrapped up in a case that he, literally, saves from drowning.

Yet, when on a romantic boat ride with his wife to celebrate her birthday, they hear shots in the distance. Then, a splash in the water, and screams for help. Soon, Jay’s jumped overboard, swimming, diving, then rescuing a white woman who looks to have obviously been attacked. When they drop her off in front of the police station, Jay and Bernie think that’s the end of it — only it’s just the beginning and this one incident will soon change his life in ways he never expected.

Jay finds himself embroiled in a case that involves a lot of crooked people. It digs up his past, makes him face certain demons, and even puts his life in danger. And here’s where the novel kind of broke down for me — there were a lot of cliched, “car on the railway tracks against a running train” moments in the novel. Locke’s a screenwriter, and so you can see why she’d fall back into certain cinematic touch points, but I didn’t find those aspects of the story believable. To me, car chases and railroad crossings are the stuff of films, not real life, and I found it hard to swallow when Jay was in these precarious situations.

Interspersed with this case that just won’t let him out of its clutches, Jay becomes involved with a situation with his father (a Reverend) and some of his constituents. There’s a labour dispute that has its heart in the desegregation of the stevedore unions, and when a young boy is violently attacked for no reason, the situation heats up. So, now, Jay has two unsolvable situations on his hands: an ever-increasing case with the almost-drowned woman; and the union dispute that could lead to a lawsuit.

How Locke wrote with the difficult parts of the story that had to do with race relations, the south, and the complex issues of labour surrounding integrating the unions that deal with the docks was incredible. Those part of the novel sang for me — the setting, the politics, the very nature of Jay’s own troubles with the law before he set himself to rights — the writing was sharp, the relationships taut, and the book felt wholly original. It’s a shame that there couldn’t have been more of that and less of the played-out gunshots and car chases.

Regardless, once I picked this novel up, I didn’t put it down — I wasn’t sidetracked by other books (read The Lacuna and the new Stieg Larsson). Locke’s a real talent and I hope she continues to publish in this vein. I’d be happy to see what Jay Porter gets himself mixed up in next. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed he stays away from the railroad tracks in any future books.

#17 – So Much For That

Amanda (my intern) and I will be co-reviewing the book over at Savvy Reader, just like we did for Cool Water, but I still wanted to write my own thoughts down about this exceptional novel. No, that’s not hyperbole — I truly think Lionel Shriver’s So Much For That is exceptional from start to finish. And when I did finish the book on my way home yesterday, I ended up bawling like a baby on the subway with all kinds of commuters looking at me oddly. Yes, it’s a good thing I had the physical book and not a gadget, or else they would have really thought me strange.

Shep Knacker has always been a self-starter. Despite his lack of a university education (his pastor father still holds the fact that he never went to college against him), he managed to build up a million-dollar handyman business before selling it to a bohunk (one that keeps him employed, more to humiliate Shep than anything else). On the eve of Shep finally taking the plunge into his ultimate dream of The Afterlife, escaping to foreign soils where he and his family would live off of the proceeds of his company’s sale, tragic news stops him in his tracks. Shep’s wife, Glynis, has never been all that supportive of The Afterlife. She resents the idea that he wants to get away from everything (modern life, her) and spend his dying days on Pemba, an island off the coast of Tanzania. So when Glynis announces that she has a very rare and very virulent form of cancer (mesothelioma) that requires immediate and expensive treatment, it’s almost a passive aggressive attack on her husband and his dreams. Upon hearing he’s about to up and leave for Pemba, has even bought the tickets, she announces almost blithely, “I do wish you wouldn’t… I’m afraid I will need your health insurance.”

The other set of main characters in the novel are Jackson, Shep’s coworker and best friend, and his family. His eldest daughter, Flicka, is a teenager who suffers from Familial Dysautonomia (FD), yet another rare and difficult disease. Carol, Jackson’s wife, is Flicka’s primary health care provider, and the family’s other daughter, Heather, often feels excluded because her sister demands so much attention. They are a typical New York family — they own a house in Brooklyn with a hefty mortgage and the couple works night and day to afford the care for their daughter, much of which isn’t covered by their combined insurance policies.

Regardless of how you might feel about the debates raging south of the border — the ridiculous “Tea Party,” the sensational news coverage by the right, the objections by the right, all of it — the idea that health care and the fundamental lack of affordable ways of getting it, form a central thesis in the novel. It’s topical and timely, but not preachy. Oh, it passes judgement but more in the sense that it allows the reader to draw her own conclusions by presenting facts and an honest, if fictional, situation.

Annnnwaaay.

In the face of their diseases, both Glynis and Flicka find comfort in one another — that’s not to say that they are “happy” by any means to be sick. The opposite, in fact, is often true, and Shriver’s uncanny ability to write characters who are at once complex and yet so unbearably human comes into sharp focus in this novel, just as it did with We Need to Talk About Kevin. The impact of the two unhealthy individuals shatters each family in different ways. The patients are angry, upset, and unflinchingly honest when they need to be about their diseases. But the road to acceptance, to leading a life where disease is always present and can never be escaped (and here’s something I know better than most), is never easy. Glynis fights to live. Sometimes, Flicka fights to die.

The moral issues Shriver explores, the sheer expense of health care in the States, the value of a human life (the millions of dollars spent on treatment), becomes so much more than a moral question — it’s the entry point for examining American society in general. From Jackson’s anti-establishment rants to Glynis’s fervent need to blame someone for her cancer (in this case, it’s the company who produced artistic supplies for her metalwork training when she was a student — they contained asbestos, the cause of her cancer). And because Shep has always paid for everything, that’s just his role in his family, he pays and pays and pays — for Glynis’s treatment, for his father’s old age home, for his sister’s heating bills (and is she ever a piece of work). No matter how hard he works, no matter how much he cares about his family, his life seems to crumble down upon him as penny by penny disappears from his Afterlife account.

At any point in this novel, there are moments when you simply don’t like the characters. You can’t believe they’re acting so selfishly, are so obtuse. And then, something happens and you see them in a different light. I’d argue that few living novelists do this as well as Shriver. She has a talent for pulling out extraordinary details in ordinary lives and writing them in a way that’s original and provocative.

As a girl who has dealt with a serious illness for all of her adult life, I couldn’t help but associate with the two characters dealing with disease. And while my Wegener’s is nowhere near as aggressive as Glynis’s cancer (because it’s moderated with medicine, unchecked it’ll kill me in terrible ways) or as impactful as Flicka’s FD (primarily because you can’t tell I’m sick by looking at me; at least I hope you can’t), the psychological warfare that disease plagues one with remains ridiculously effective throughout this entire novel. Shriver’s research reads impeccably — she writes the side effects, the symptoms, the treatments, the physical implications of each disease in such rich detail — and it’s the main reason the reader becomes so emotionally involved with this story. And the ending, well, I’m not going to spoil it — I’m only going to say it’s absolutely perfect and calls to mind the absolutely perfect ending of another exceptional novel, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.

Highly, highly recommended. This is not a novel that will disappoint even the most cynical of readers.

WHAT’S NEXT: Ian McEwan’s Solar. I’m 30 pages in and loving the Salman Rushdie “man in midlife crisis” of it all.