trh books – Page 14 – my tragic right hip

#13 – Revolutionary Road

Richard Yates’s novel, Revolutionary Road, has been sitting beside my bed for over a week. I’m finished reading it but I didn’t want to put the book away. In a way, I sort of felt as though I wasn’t quite done with the novel. It’s honestly one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, a definite modern classic, a story with the cold, almost clipped air of Capote with a desperate current of sadness running throughout. I have yet to see the movie and, in a way, even though it’s the only reason I’ve read the book, I don’t want to now. I’m too afraid it’ll ruin it. Even still, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were running through my head as the two main characters: Frank and April Wheeler. I guess that’s not to be helped.

As two young people, Frank’s just about to turn 30, and April’s a few years younger, playing hard at adulthood during the early 1960s, the Wheelers have everything. Two kids, a lovely home on Revolutionary Road, and should, for all intents and purposes, be happy. Yet, they’re not, they fight, sometimes for days at a time, and both cling to a sense of unease that bubbles up and surfaces in their actions not only toward one another but to other people in the world. The clinical nature of Yates’s prose, his exacting way with words, cuts them down piece by piece, pulling out the human bits within the detrious of their suburban lives. The novel is Mad Men only Frank’s not as interesting as Don Draper, which makes it even more tragic, I think. People smell bad in Revolutionary Road; they appear in ways that betray their perfect stone paths and upkept lawns. Life is never what it seems on the surface, not for a single character, and no one survives unscathed.

So, one day, when April hatches a plan, to escape to Paris and start over so that Frank can really find himself, there’s a spark of interest and ingenuity to both of their lives. Suddenly, they’re better than their neighbours, different, not the same sheep on the commuter train. Only change is hard to make, it doesn’t come easily and it never turns out the way you’d expect, especially in this novel. I haven’t even seen the picture and I’m going to recommend reading the book first. I simply don’t see how it could possibly be any better.

#12 – Ignorance

The last Milan Kundera book that I read was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. At the time I was living in Banff, Alberta with about six other women in a townhouse that had no furniture barring a really old, uncomfortable couch. We all slept on the floor in sleeping bags, worked awful jobs, drank too much and climbed many mountains (literally). I loved that book. But more I loved the experience of reading that book in that particular time and that particular place. In a way, it’s like Melanie pointed out in the comments here a few weeks ago, sometimes the books just choose us.

Kundera’s Ignorance takes these themes, or maybe ideas would be a better word, of time and place and how experience is tied explicitly to both, and explores them through two characters returning to their homeland after an extended absence. Irena and Josef run into one another in an airport, both having emigrated from their homeland (Prague) years ago, by chance. They make plans to have lunch the next day to catch up. For both, the return home is bittersweet, political regimes have changed, they’ve both moved on with their lives, had families, spouses, entire existences outside of the people they’ve left behind.

Is this right, if I say, “to coin a phrase”? — “You can never go home again.” The saying feels true for so many reasons. The time and the place will never be just the same again, it’ll always be tempered by our particular experiences, and the philosophical implications of such, and that’s what happens to both Irena and Josef. They feel the need to explain themselves: why they left, why it took them so long to come home, and what their lives turned out to be in their adopted countries. It can’t be an easy thing, coming home after years away when everything is different, older, changed, and you somewhat expect it to be the same. Not because of a conscious realization that change didn’t or couldn’t happen while they were away but more so because it’s impossible to imagine how much could be different.

Lives move so slowly in a way. Age catches up with people. Time turns hair gray and adds infinite bits and pieces to memories. But if you go ten, twenty years without seeing a member of your family or your friends, the awkwardness of the reunion will always remind you of how ignorant you are of the day-to-day occurences in their lives. There’s no judgment in Kundera’s novel about the impact of change for these two characters, in a sense, the narrator’s merely observing the moments where they realize the implication of their emigration. For a girl who’s always thinking of what it might be like to live somewhere different, it was an interesting book to read, a little bittersweet, and more than a little sad, but wholly fascinating.

READING CHALLENGES: One of the books from the 1001 Books list so I’ll cross it off from there. Kundera was born in Brno, Czechslovakia, which is now the Czech Republic, so I’ll add him to the Around the World in 52 Books challenge too. It’s interesting, to read a book that’s about returning to a place that has utterly changed since the collapse of communism. The book honestly made me want to go to Prague and isn’t that just the point of my armchair travelling reading?

#11 – Got You Back

Jane Fallon‘s latest novel, Got You Back, retreads familiar territory — the novel starts off, like Getting Rid of Matthew, with a cheating spouse (him) and the two women who are left to deal with his emotional wreckage. But even if the situation feels similar, the new novel is wholly different than her first book, the characters are fresh and new, and she never lets her writing fall down or stumble into the well-trodden clichés of the Sophie Kinsellas of the chick lit world.

Stephanie’s husband of the last ten years, James, is leading a double life. He spends half his time in rural England tending to his veterinary practice — and living with his mistress, Katie. He’s got the best of both worlds: savvy, stylish Steph at home and comfy, cozy Katie while he’s away. The trouble for James begins when Steph and Katie discover one another (and the fact that he’s been lying to both of them) and they vow to get revenge. And let me just say: poor James. But also let me say that the book doesn’t go or end up the way you’d think that it would. All of the characters grow and change and none in expected ways. Fallon’s prose is light and frothy but she has such a knack for keeping the reader engaged. Also, her dialogue sparkles right off the page — I know, it’s a little cheesy, but it’s true. Got You Back is a like a vacation — warm, sunny, and always entertaining, and I’d highly recommend it for that one weekend you really wish you could just get away.

READING CHALLENGES: Fallon’s British and the novel takes place in London and even though it’s not the kind of book that I’d usually pick for Around the World in 52 Books, I’m counting it for now. Don’t judge me.

#10 – Confession

Perhaps it’s apt to start off reviewing Lee Gowan’s latest novel, Confession, with two of my own: 1) I’ve taken more than one creative writing class with the author and therefore admire him greatly both as a writer and as a teacher; and 2) I enjoyed the last book of his that I read, The Last Cowboy, very much so when I saw that he had a new book, I was excited.

But now, almost a week after finishing the book, I still have some mixed feelings — not about the quality of the prose (which is excellent) or the fact that I enjoyed the book (which I did, immensely) — about how to write the review. How much do I reveal about the plot without spoiling it? How do I characterize the interesting way the author has created the story? What kind of comps would I suggest?

Confession‘s unreliable and slightly off-kilter narrator, Dwight Froese, has changed his name, found himself a new job, and desperately wants to stay close to his daughter. Trapped by both circumstance and landscape in a life that truly presents him with little options for happiness, Dwight tells and retells the story of how he ended up in Toronto. Raised in Broken Head, Saskatchewan by a young mother and a much older father (a very complex situation if my instincts [and reading ability] are correct), Dwight has always had a particular relationship with God. Whether it was his father seeing Him one day profess his death by the hand of his son, or simply just the comfort he finds in his spirituality, Dwight’s morals are dictated by a higher power. And because he sits outside of conventional society, in a way, Dwight can see, understand and imagine a world that’s not necessarily the norm.

The tragedy in his story comes from the fall, as one might imagine, not necessarily from grace but maybe from reality or, rather, the clash of his own perspective with that of the rest of society. The novel is heady and spends a lot of time exploring Dwight’s thoughts, actions and relationships. As it’s told from his point of view, the book remains intense from start to finish. The voice feels wholly original but also harkens back to familiar characters — pop culture icons like Travis Bickle — in the sense that he’s an outsider. Overall, both the strength and success of the novel lies in the author’s ability to create a character that’s at once as unlikeable as he is compelling. It’s a delicate balance, a difficult one, but one worth the investment by the time the end of the book rolls around.

If I had to think of comparative titles, I’d say there’s a touch of the fierceness from Theft, a little bit of the structure found within The Double Bind, and a fair bit of 1970s-early 80s New York cinema, think Scorsese and Badlands. Keep in mind, the novel opens with a quote from Dostoevsky, and there are existential themes of crime and punishment within as well. But I sure would love to know what anyone else thinks…as you can probably tell, I’m still making up my mind about it all.

#9 – Once

I think I tweeted last week about being so caught up in one of Rebecca Rosenblum’s stories from Once that I completely missed the fact that our VP was standing right next to me on the subway. He laughed and said, “Good book?” when I finally realized he’d been there for almost my entire ride. And they are just that addictive, drawing you in from almost the first sentence, creating a world that sits slightly askew of the one you live in everyday, and then finishing completely.

I’m consistently amazed by the innovative ways young writers have when looking at the world. Rosenblum’s characters — people waiting for the bus heading to awful jobs, young immigrants, a family struggling to make sense of their situation — are atypical. And yet, how often do you sit on the bus completely oblivious to the girl wearing three inch heels who carries on up Landsdowne after we all pile off and into the subway? But those people, sometimes lonely, sometimes burdened, always intriguing, make up the core of her characters. There’s always something to explore in Rosenblum’s world, and her keen writer’s eye leaves little untold.

In the end, I suppose picking out one or two favourite stories might be the way to go, but it’s hard when they’re all so different and so, well, good. If I had to choose, I’d say my absolutely favourite would been “Linh Lai.” A young immigrant girl who lives with her relatives tries to navigate her new world, holding tight to some very special talents, she gets a part-time job at a restaurant that is frequented by more than a few characters in the book. Charming, whimsical and full of great sneakers, the story stood out for me. But I honestly enjoyed every single story, their sad undertones, their slightly awkward protagonists, and the thorough ache of lives bursting with the kind of promise that never seems to quite bubble to the surface as it should.

READING CHALLENGES: Rebecca Rosenblum lives and writes in Toronto, so I’m counting Once as a part of this year’s The Canadian Book Challenge. I’m way off in terms of books I picked at the outset but I don’t think it matters as long as I’m still within my “for the ladies” theme.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Blogging Lee Gowan’s Confession, which I might leave until tomorrow so I can think about the book a little more… For now, I think I might start my Harlequin assignment for this week and then watch a movie. Foggy-cold-head makes for very poor book reviewing.

#7 – The Given Day

Since finishing The Given Day, I’ve written a number of opening sentences in my mind. “Dennis Lehane’s epic novel is a true departure from his earlier work.” “The Given Day marks the expansion of Lehane’s already considerable talents.” You all know that kind of sentence. We’ve all written them. They don’t really do justice to the massive undertaking this novel must have been, regardless of whether or not it ultimately ends up being successful.

In short, The Given Day tells a story centered around the 1919 Boston police strike; its history told through the eyes of two main characters: Aiden (“Danny”) Coughlin, a second-generation cop, second-generation Irish immigrant, and all around stand-up (albeit troubled) guy; and Luther, a black factory worker whose forced out of his life by two separate incidents (a “shotgun” wedding and a bad decision that leads to capital “b” big trouble). There are far too many secondary characters to list, crooked cops, Bolsheviks, union leaders, rabble-rousers, gangsters, thieves, cops, lovers, and baseball players (Babe Ruth, in particular). The novel creates a vast world that culminates in the violent events on September 9, 1919. Its story is mammoth and it can’t help but sprawl. Even so, Lehane remains in control at every moment — showing skills a lesser novelist who didn’t come up writing hard plot-driving fiction couldn’t maintain.

Lehane does two things exceptionally well: 1) he writes great dialogue and 2) he creates credible action. Because of these two things, it’s easy for me to forgive both the cliches that pop up and the extensive (and sometimes clumsy) forced historical detail. Ultimately, once I started reading this novel, I simply couldn’t put it down. Plus, the themes and issues Lehane explores are endlessly interesting — the idea that socialism, even the mere hint of “red,” pulled at the seams of American society in such a way as to cause massive riots and fear mongering is fascinating. That the essence of terrorism remains a rich theme to be mined, not just because it’s ever-present in the ethos of our neighbours, but because it’s obvious (at least to me, maybe I’m wrong) that Lehane belongs firmly in the camp of those who believe that without history we’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

It’s a big book, and while it’s not perfect, I’d say that The Given Day might just be the one before the really, really great one, which is impressive any way you look at it. I know I hate to use this word because it’s just so industry, so back-cover-jacket, but The Given Day truly is unputdownable.

#6 – The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Like so many of the classics on the 1001 Books list, it’s easy to know the premise and/or general story of the books, but be utterly ignorant of the details. I’ve never read an Oscar Wilde play, but seen quite a few, enjoyed the films (both Wilde and The Importance of Being Earnest), and had only heard of Dorian Gray because my RRHB dragged me to the truly horrible The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. What a surprise it was to read The Picture of Dorian Gray. It’s different from what I expected, full of Wilde’s infamous wit even if the writing is a little melodramatic, but it’s also wonderfully spooky and even a little surprising in places.

A young, beautiful man becomes the subject of a painter, Basil Hallward. The blush and brilliance of his youth inspires the artist as nothing ever has before and the resulting piece contains a bit of magic he’ll never achieve again. Dorian Gray, the subject, learns of his own beauty, through the painting and makes a vain wish to never suffer the indignities of losing his youth. The painting, once it hangs in Dorian’s own house, starts to degrade each time he acts wickedly. It shoulders the burden of age. It withers, wrinkles and bleeds. Buoyed on by the psychology and philosophy of his best friend, Lord Henry Wotten, Dorian leads a life of purely hedonistic endeavors. He ruins women. He collects icons without any thought to their religious values. Society adores him, but he has enemies, women swoon, and men wish they were him. Sound familiar? Yet throughout it all, the painting haunts him, and makes it impossible for Dorian to completely forget his actions. The lives he ruined haunt Gray and by the end of the novel he questioning whether or not redemption is even possible.

The novel has gothic overtones, which I enjoyed immensely, as well as a character who’s driven to act in ways he may not have had he not been celebrated for his external qualities. In a way, the novel reminded me of Woody Allen’s film Match Point. There were so many quotable pages that I wished I had a physical copy of the book (instead of an ebook) so that I could earmark all the pages. And I was intensely curious about Wilde’s decision to imbue the book with luscious and sometimes over the top descriptions of the natural world in which they live. Flowers, the smell of winter, the pine trees, lovely blossoms, everything compliments the glorious state of utter hedonism throughout. The malcontent Dorian feels towards the picture gets locked up in a dusty old schoolroom, closed off from his everyday life. The violence in the novel is contained and away from good society, as Lord Henry says, crime is beneath them. The moral of the story utterly apparent by the time the novel ends and, in a world where Hollywood images of ageless people rule the magazine stands, I’m surprised more references aren’t made to the book in pop culture. A whole generation of Dorian Grays inhabit our modern world, raised up by millions wishing they too were young, beautiful and apparently indestructible.

READING CHALLENGES: The Picture of Dorian Gray is on the 1001 Books list, and is one of the 66 titles that I’ve highlighted for the year. Really I’m just trying to clean some space off my Sony Reader so that I can put some more classics on it. Truly, it’s the best gadget I’ve ever owned. It’s replaced my blackberry forever in my heart.

OSCAR WILDE SIGHTINGS: Left some lipstick behind and visited the statue in Dublin with Tina. Now I don’t feel so much like a tourist.

#5 – Little Brother

Sometimes, even before I begin, I’ve got to digress. We’ve been watching The Wire, and after I finished reading and blogging on Tuesday I had no idea what to read. Pulled down a few books from the shelf, looked at them, and was not inspired. I gave up, put a novel beside my bed, and then started to watch “Dead Soldiers.” The teleplay was written by Dennis Lehane. The literary lightbulb went off and, when we paused for a moment, I grabbed The Given Day down and read before bed.

The next morning was snowy, cold, miserable and full of bad news. I read the book waiting (an hour plus, weather delays and general mayhem) for the Super-Fancy Disease Doctor, and then went in to hear my fate. When he was asking me about the dose of one of my meds, I had to pull the book out of my bag. He picked it up, started going on about how a “buddy” had been raving about it, and that it’s the best book he’d read in a long time. I said, “You can have that copy.”

SFDD said, “Really?”

I said, “I have another one in my office, it’s our book, we publish him.”

He looked a little shocked for a moment, thanked me, laughed, said that he never takes gifts from patients and winked, “But I will take this though.” Heh.

So, there goes my copy of The Given Day. On the way into the office via the TTC, I started reading The Picture of Dorian Gray on my Sony Reader until I got into the office. I had to run into a meeting the moment I got into work; afterwards, Liza (the key person for kids books in sales) pulled me into a little meeting and said, “You have to read this book.” She handed me a copy of Cory Doctorow‘s Little Brother. So suddenly, in the span of 12 hours, I’ve been through three different books and not finished a single one.

And I loved it, Little Brother. In some ways it reminded me a little of War Games, but for this century. Marcus and his friends are out and about in San Francisco, bunking off school to play in a large-scale game organized online and played in the real world. And then a giant bomb goes off in San Francisco — a terrorist attack upon the city. Marcus and his friends, Darryl, Van and Jolu, are scooped up and taken to a form of Guantanamo Bay. Eventually they let Marcus go, but after five days inside, the entire world has changed and DHS (Homeland Security) has taken over everything, tracking people by their public transit cards, their internet access and all kinds of other complex and unseemly stuff. While three of his friends get out, Darryl’s left behind, and this spurns Marcus on to buck the system. To force his freedom as far out as humanly possible to make the point that living in a police state means the terrorist win.

There’s a lot of complex material in the book, loads of interesting tidbits of information, and Doctorow dispels them in ways that pull you further into the story without making you feel like a dolt because you’ve never heard of arphids or Kerouac. There’s a sweet love story, a kid with a great relationship with his parents, and a brain big enough to have DHS running around in circles until it all comes crashing to a head. Writing intelligent, engaging fiction for young adults isn’t easy, the tone has to be just right, the subject matter can’t alienate the audience, and if it has cross-over appeal to the adult market, all the better. Little Brother hits all of these points and then some. But mainly, I had fun reading it, completely unexpected, totally giddy fun.

And because Kerouac’s one of my favourites too, I couldn’t help but mark this lovely passage:

There was a rhythm to the words, it was luscious, I could hear it being read aloud in my head. It made me want to lie down in the bed of a pickup truck and wake up in a dusty little town somewhere in the central valley on the way to LA, one of those places with a gas station and a diner, and just walk out into the fields and meet people and see stuff and do stuff.

Me too.

READING CHALLENGES: Doesn’t count toward a single one. In fact, knocked me off course completely in terms of my reading but when someone at work says, “you’ve got to read this,” really, you don’t have a choice.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Finishing The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Given Day.

#4.5 – "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Oh Sony Reader, I do love you. Before the holidays, I dumped a bunch of ebooks onto my reader, classics from 1001 Books that I could always have on hand in transit. Stuff that I could read when I finished whatever novel I was carting around at the time. One of the stories I put on was “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and I’m not going to tell a fib, primarily because it was short and I’m all about the numbers these days.

I love how 1001 Books states, “It seems to be stretching the definition of the word to its very limits to describe The Fall of the House of Usher as a “novel.” Note they use italics and I am sticking to quotes because you can’t tell me this isn’t a short story. I’m not complaining, I’m just clarifying for my own edification.

Annnywaay, this story scared the living crap of out me. It’s creepy, chilling and totally gothic in that yummy way that only Edgar Allen Poe can accomplish. A young man returns to the house of Usher where the only two remaining family members, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, live in a decrepit and decaying house. They’re both sick, Madeline from an illness that confounds the doctors, and Roderick from something that reads a whole lot like depression to my modern eye. The narrative creeps up to the last fateful night, and what Poe achieves in 61 electronic pages is really astounding. Stories within stories, pages devoted to mad poetry (as in its being written by a madman, not “mad” in the means “awesome” way), and a narrator who spends more time describing in intricate detail the abysmal surroundings than he does talking to his childhood friend.

One line in particular that I bookmarked: “Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady…” Maybe I need to make that into a t-shirt it’s so fitting to my life. Now, one question: why is it that in ghost stories, things always happen in threes? It was the same in A Christmas Carol. And why does it take someone three utterly terrifying occurrences before they wake up and, um, get the fark out? I read a lot of Poe in grad school, but because my mind is terrible with titles, and well, let’s face it, entire plots, I haven’t counted off any of the stories in 1001 Books. I am going to go back to Project Gutenberg, though, and download some more. They’re just perfect for a stormy night barreling through the city in the red rocket.

READING CHALLENGES: 1001 Books, natch.

#4 – Babylon Rolling

Shall I be honest? I mean utterly, unflinchingly honest? I almost put this book down after the first page after the prologue. Amanda Boyden’s second novel, Babylon Rolling starts off with a love letter of sorts to New Orleans, beleaguered already prior to Katrina and devastated afterwards, and it’s touching if a bit affected, the use of the pronoun “we” and all that, and then the book itself carries on like a thunderclap before a storm. She’s a powerful writer — there’s no denying it. When I finished the novel on the way home, there were tears in my eyes.

Now I’m going to digress. I know I’m sick of how much I’ve been talking about The Wire lately so I can only imagine how sick the rest of the world must be (listen me, the world, pshaw). For someone who doesn’t live in the middle of a raging gang war or a city almost overrun by crime, I always feel there’s an authenticity to The Wire that could be horribly misplaced. It’s an ivory tower appreciation for something I have never experienced; the “realness” of it makes me feel like I’m involved in some way in the defeat of human society, if we’re being honest. ‘It’s not a war,’ The Wire keeps reminding us, ‘because no one wins.’ And this theme, the decay of civilization, in a way, pervades much of Babylon Rolling: people cheat on their spouses, horrible and traumatic accidents happen, dope slingers and their gangster counterparts reign in some corners, and tragedy seems to define a place that hasn’t even seen the worst of it, the hurricane hasn’t even hit yet.

But I felt like Fearius, the self-given nickname of a young boy christened Daniel, whose voice is written much like the dialogue in The Wire, wasn’t as authentic as I would have imagined he could and/or should have been. So I found him and his bad grammar and his lack of punctuation and his misapprehension of vocabulary a little off-putting in ways that I would have never criticized had I watched him in the television show. Yet, the other characters, some mentally challenged, others simply lost, were so completely whole that it kind of made up for Fearius’s terribly annoying everythingness.

I loved Cerise, a 70-year-old grandmother who loves her husband so fiercely she endangers her own life to save him, and her voice broke my heart all over the place. The simplicity and wisdom from which she lives her life is inspiring. The troubled marriage of Ed and Ariel reminded me a little of Tom Perrotta, and their actions not only underscored the main themes of the book, but they heightened the whole sense of troubled America in microcosm. But like Fearius, I felt Philomenia was a little over the top at times. The idea that all of these people live on the same street and that so much happens to them felt contrived, a little too Crash for me. But I can’t say I didn’t get caught up in the story and I can’t deny that there’s a powerful strength of voice to the book. I’m glad, too, that I didn’t put the book down after the first few pages. It certainly showed me, didn’t it?

READING CHALLENGES: Babylon Rolling is one of my Cleaning Out the Closet challenge books. That’s one down and 19 more to go, and since Boyden was born in Minnesota, I’m counting this book as the United States for Around the World in 52 Books too. I’m sure as sh*t not going to get stuck reading so few countries this year. It’s not exactly cheating to knock off all the easy ones first, is it?

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Blogging “The Fall of the House of Usher” for 1001 Books, I finished it too this evening. And reading? Who knows. I’ll wait until something calls for me.