Category: trh books

#61 – American Pastoral

Sometimes I really resent the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. Like when you slog through umpteen pages of books like Philip Roth’s bloated and self-indulgent masterpiece American Pastoral. I’m honestly shocked that a book that so clearly needed an editor won the Pulitzer Prize. I liken Roth’s writing in ways to Canadian David Adams Richards, who remains highly regarded by many people in the literary world (and is ever-acclaimed and never-endingly nominated). It’s just not the book for me. Honestly, I’m barely surprised that I finished.

In theory, and at the beginning of my reading experience, I couldn’t put the book down. I was fascinated by Seymour “The Swede” Levov, the golden-blond, all-American, football-playing, Riggins-reminding main character. The novel does an excellent job of exploring how his Jewish roots somewhat sit in opposition to his golden boy lifestyle thus setting up this ideal of the American pastoral. In a world where a man, who has worked incredibly hard (he took over his father’s glove business) and married a woman he adores (and is a beautiful Irish-American beauty queen), can’t even succeed, what hope is there for the rest of us? The Swede’s more than a character: he’s an archetype, one that Roth’s narrator, the bachelor-slash-writer Nathan “Skip” Zuckerman explores in tireless detail.

After a chance meeting at a baseball game when they’re both well advanced into middle age, The Swede approaches Skip and asks if he’d like to write a book about his father, Lou Levov. This becomes the premise behind telling the Swede’s story. And then retelling it. And then retelling it a little more. And then a little more. Like a record that skips, the book plods along in ceaseless and sometimes utterly unnecessary detail about every aspect of the Swede’s life, his relationship with his first wife, Dawn, and their troublesome daughter, Merry.

When Merry’s (as described on the jacket) “savage act of political terrorism” destroys the family, much of the novel is dedicated to trying to understand the reasons behind why she did it. The breakdown of the family is never explored in detail, only hinted at, as we discover at the beginning of the book that the Swede has remarried and has three teenage sons. For the majority of the novel, he tries to keep his life on course despite it’s consistent derailing. As the nature of tragedy in and of itself is cyclical, I can see why Roth spent so much time writing around and around the events; but it took a sheer force of will for me to finish this book.

I am not, however, giving up. Anyone who can write sentences like Roth deserves a second chance:

Marcia was all talk — always had been: senseless, ostentatious talk, words with the sole purpose of scandalously exhibiting themselves, uncompromising, quarrelsome words expressing little more than Marcia’s intellectual vanity and her odd belief that all her posturing added up to an independent mind.

I started The Plot Against America this morning and am already enjoying it. Also, let’s make note that I read the majority of this book during my own tedious and utterly frustrating moments: waiting for the doctor; waiting for the ferry; riding on the ferry; sitting in the car and waiting for the ferry…and so on. Maybe that had something to do with my frustration?

READING CHALLENGES: Yes! A title in my woefully underrepresented 1001 Books Challenge and if I were actually still doing the Around the World in 52 Books I might have counted this title for the United States.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The book. My lap. The ferry. Boredom.

#60 – Whetstone

As life returns to its normal cadence and rhythm of work and sleep and TV and work and sleep and TV, I managed to finish Lorna Crozier’s lovely book of poetry, Whetstone. I had taken the volume with me to read in Tofino but was still struggling through American Pastoral (more tk on that). So I went back to my poetry in transit and started the book on the Friday I returned to work.

Crozier’s poems have their roots in the natural world and are almost conversations over the course of a life. Some of them are meditations on a life in the process of being lived (like “Autobiography: Birth” that opens the book). And some are lovely pieces of almost Romantic-like poetry that express an almost whimsical yet utterly grounded adoration for the natural world (“Winter Birches”). Overall, my favourite poems in the collection were the three all with the same title, “Drought” sprinkled throughout the book. The first begins, “Water is suddenly old. / It feels stiffness, / a lessoning deep down.”

I found this idea, this image, of water growing old with whiskers and wrinkles and weathered utterly fascinating. I couldn’t help but think about our whale. About how my RRHB said that it’s no wonder he/she came up to see us at the side of the boat because they must swim to some of the loneliest places on earth. Some of the places where even the water, the ocean itself, must feel old and aching. As each takes the idea of drought in a different direction, the opposing wetness of it, the ache for that same wet, and the dusty, dirt-hemmed skirtness of it, the poems are nice compliments to one another.

Even if Crozier’s language remains simple and straightforward throughout, her thoughts, her comparisons and her poet’s eye is complex, and more often than not, I went back to re-read many of the pieces, underlining phrases that caught my breath and left me alone with my own thoughts.

READING CHALLENGES: Listed as #10 in my “For the Ladies” 2008 Canadian Book Challenge, finishing Whetstone brings me up to #5!

#59 – One Fifth Avenue

“Pleasantly surprised.”

I know. Two words I never thought I’d use when it came to a book by Candace Bushnell. But, um, One Fifth Avenue is good. It’s entertaining, well written and quite a departure from her earlier books. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that in a way it’s kind of a modern comedy of manners. There are hints of bawdy Restoration literature and even a dash of Edith Wharton thrown in for good measure sprinkled in between the Vanity Fair-like plot that revolves around the very wealthy (and quite silly) people that live at One Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

When actress Schiffer Diamond returns to One Fifth after a substantial absence, quite a few things have changed. Most importantly, the ridiculously wealthy woman (and I can’t remember her name and left my book in Tofino) who occupied the top two floors of the building has died and her apartment is up for grabs. The infighting begins between the remaining residents: Enid Merle, an aging gossip columnist, Philip Oakland, her screenwriter nephew, and Mindy and James Gooch, an online director and an author, respectively. The rivalry continues even as the new tenants, the newly rich Annalisa and Paul Rice, move into the building and cause problems of their own. Completing the cast of characters is Billy Litchfield and Lola Fabrikant, outsiders who both want in for different reasons.

In the kind of New York world where address means everything, the people who live in One Fifth exemplify the idiocy of a certain kind of lifestyle. Bushnell’s ability to be cutting comes out freely in this book — the characters are all double-sided. Of course, they do have amazing lives, but they aren’t without their own flaws, making them at least human in this novel (unlike, say, the women of Lipstick Jungle). Strange, and maybe it was the wicked cold I’ve now caught after just finishing (barely) with the stupid bronchitis, that I enjoyed this book for reasons well beyond the usual insipid happiness I feel after reading chicklit. Kudos to Candace.

#58 – Ritual

Oh, Mo Hayder, I should not read your books when I am at home alone with only two cats for protection. But once I picked up Ritual, I could not put it down and if that’s not the sign of a great, plot-driven book, I don’t know what is.

When a hand washes up unannounced and with no body attached, Sgt. Flea Marley, a member of the police dive unit in Bath, and her CID (I think?) Caffrey unravel a complex and shocking case founded in the immigrant experience in England. Their investigation uncovers an underground market for muti that soon becomes focus of their policework. Muti, African rituals brought from the continent to England that broker in human body parts and fear (among the believers), forms the basis for Hayder to bring race, class and colonialism into her work, and the book is all the better for it.

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with Ms. Hayder for an interview that’ll appear on The Savvy Reader later this week. A self-described autodidact, Hayder researches carefully but not without really great instincts, and in Ritual she’s written a daring and addictive thriller that has echoes of Henning Mankell. When I walked into the room, I said, “Your book scared the pants off of me!” She laughed and replied, “Good!” And it’s true, there’s an element of fear that pervades the entire novel: people (even the police) are being watched, stalked even, and no one seems untouched by tragedy. Both main characters are broken in some way from major life events that alter their perspectives; Flea’s parents are dead and Caffery lost a brother at a very young age. Yet, as ‘outsiders’ in a way (they’re also lonely and have little true human contact with other people), the tragedies are exactly what make Flea and Caffery good at their jobs.

Subtitled “A Walking Man novel,” Ritual introduces a character who will appear in upcoming books. He’s a man who lives outside, cooks his own food, follows his own path, and is kind of a sooth-sayer for Caffery. Yet, the Walking Man also has a past. He committed one of the most heinous crimes the district has ever seen and now that he’s paid his debt to society, he’s determined to stay at its edges. Captivating, creepy, smart and ridiculously readable, I loved Ritual. Although I have to say that the fellow standing next to me on the subway yesterday must have thought I was reading something utterly disturbing. Every time I’d look up from my book he’d give me a sweet little smile trying to make me feel a bit better because I was honestly scared out of my wits and it must have shown on my face.

#57 – American Wife

I stayed in bed far too late this morning finishing Curtis Sittenfeld‘s American Wife. As it’s no secret, the novel fictionalizes the life of an American First Lady, and is loosely based on the life of Laura Bush. Alice Lindgren grows up in a small town in Wisconsin, goes to high school, college, and then settles down for a quiet life as a librarian of a primary school. She meets Charlie Blackwell, a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow at a party, and he pursues her somewhat recklessly. As boisterous as she is quiet, Charlie and Alice make an unlikely couple, but they fall into a traditional kind of love, marry, and have a daughter, Ella. Coming from a political family, Charlie (as one can guess) becomes president and Alice’s life takes a turn she never asked for nor expected.

Yet, the politics are not even the point of Curtis Sittenfeld’s utterly captivating novel. At it’s heart, I think American Wife is the story of a life. The novel creates a rich, deeply felt, deeply thought examination of the human experience as it grows from childhood into adulthood as told from the point of view of one remarkable woman. Throughout the novel, the irony of her position is never lost on Alice, and it’s as if Sittenfeld imagines a woman holding her tongue for decades just waiting for the right moment to let everything out. Alice has always been a reader; it’s the quality that most defines her, as does her dignity, her intelligence and her (sometimes) naiveté. The book is epic in its scope of Alice’s story; it leaves no part unexplored, and the subject is at once freeing as it is limiting.

When Alice is a teenager, experiencing if not the first blush of true love than something definitely close to it, a tragedy happens that takes hold and defines her life, as many unexpected events tend to do. The events around the tragedy snowball and dig further into her psyche. She makes mistakes. And then she makes more mistakes. But they are the events that lead her to Charlie in the first place and it’s a happy life, overall. That’s not to say that there isn’t a questioning that runs through the course of the events. Alice questions everything: her good fortune, her own politics (she’s a Democrat; Charlie’s a Republican), her marriage, and her own values. That’s not to say that she ever stops loving her husband. There’s simply a recognition that after decades of marriage the nature of a relationship changes, evolves, and then sometimes reverts to its previous incarnations.

I can’t pretend to dislike anything about the book. The structure works (each major section follows Alice’s addresses, from her childhood home to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) and the character is so fully realized that it’s almost refreshing to read. If I had to make one comment (because no reviewer can fail to make one critical note), it’s that the dialogue at times felt stilted and forced, but when you’re attacking an idea that’s so honest and, well, original, one can fault the author for falling down ever-so-slightly when it comes to the banality of everyday conversations. Regardless, the book is its strongest at the beginning and at the end, and there’s a particularly poignant section about the impact of fame upon someone who has never once in their life craved to be famous.

American Wife is a fascinating book, one that cements Sittenfeld’s already firm place as one of the most refreshing talents working today. I had the pleasure of having lunch with her a few years ago while I was working at Random House, and it doesn’t mean that I know her nor even pretend to do so, but the one piece of writing advice she gave that day has stuck with me for the last three years: “If one sentence can be that good, all of the sentences can be that good.” Sittenfeld admits that it’s not even her advice to give, that it came from a professor she had while she was in Iowa, but in the end it doesn’t matter because it’s glaringly apparent that she’s mastered many, many sentences, and I’m more than willing to read every single one.

US Writers Too "Insular" For Nobel Prize

While skimming stuff for The Savvy Reader this morning, this article came up through Publisher’s Lunch. I know the Nobel Prize pretty much defines big “L” literature, but don’t you think that it’s small minded to cut out a major driving force in big “C” culture for being too insular is kind of insular of them? I’m the first person to defend the need a broad reading base from all cultures and to be honoured with a Nobel Prize for Literature is pretty much the icing on the cake in terms of one’s career. But I feel kind of bad for the wonderful writers being (for lack of a better word) discriminated against by the sheer fact of their geography and/or subject matter.

Dennis Lehane – On Characters

I’m a little in love with Dennis Lehane after watching this video where he talks about his new book, The Given Day. It’s always interesting to hear writers talk about their work but it’s my favourite when they talk about their characters as just showing up in their imagination and walking onto the pages of whatever book they’re working on at that particular moment.

It only happened to me once in the draft of the novel that I finished this past spring, but the character who did show up made quite the impression on my friend Randy in my writer’s group. I think he had a little crush on her. And I hope he’s not mad at me for saying so.

#56 – Skeletons At The Feast

More often than not, the novels of Chris Bohjalian have some sort of moral core at the basis of the narrative. I think that’s why I enjoy his books so much; they’re a little like morality tales slipped inside really good storytelling. As a result, I read a lot of Bohjalian and count The Buffalo Soldier among one of my favourite books by a living American writer. I didn’t damn Oprah for introducing me to Bohjalian; instead, I let her pull me into him like a tight hug. He’s one of the authors where I used to go to the “B” section in the bookstores looking for new titles (before I knew my way around the internets and browsed in a non-virtual environment).

Therefore, I was happy to see a new title of his this spring, Skeletons at the Feast, and sat down eagerly to read it (after letting it sit on my shelf, I’ll admit, for a couple of months because I’m busy dammit!). Bohjalian’s a “purely for pleasure” kind of a read. The novel doesn’t satisfy any challenges. The books are afternooners, and I’m always happily surprised by their twist endings.

Skeletons at the Feast, though, is unlike any other Bohjalian book I’ve read. It’s as emotionally impactful as The Buffalo Soldier and as epic as, say, Snow Falling on Cedars. As the Emmerich family prepares to leave the only home they’ve ever known, the end of the Second World War approaches. A wealthy Prussian family that runs a huge farm, they are luckier than most in that they’ve remained somewhat on the outskirts of the war. They’ve made sacrifices (the eldest brother is off fighting for the majority of the book; a ghost within the narrative itself, his story told through memory and referral) but in the months that follow, their lives will change beyond belief.

Displaced by the crumbling German empire and about to be overrun by Russians, legions of people set out on foot, walking west toward the Allied lines in order to escape the unspeakable horrors of what happens when they meet “Ivan.” Mutti, Anna, Theo, and Callum, their POW (a Scottish paratrooper assigned to the farm where they lived to help with the labour) set off on foot with their father and Anna’s twin brother, Helmut. Toward the beginning of the novel, Anna’s father and brother separate from the group, as the two men are called into action. They leave the trio with Callum hidden underneath the horses’ oats and head to the front. For everyone in the book, this journey is long, hard and not without its losses.

The powerful stories of two other main characters are intertwined with the Emmerich’s: there’s Uri, a young Jewish man who made a desperate escape and has been hiding among his enemies for much of the war, begins to travel with the family after meeting them on the road; and Cecile, a young Jewish girl who is forced to walk west with the rest of the starving, poorly dressed, and desperate members of her concentration camp as the Germans try to outrun defeat and shield their atrocities from the eyes of the world. The moment in the novel when all three stories come together as one, and the characters all cross each other’s paths if you will, leads the book (obviously) to its conclusion.

Bohjalian writes effectively of the horrors of war, but you get the sense that some of his characters maybe aren’t as fully formed as one might hope. Callum, the Scottish fellow, suffers the most from this, and his dialogue is often stilted, stereotypical and a little unbelievable (who says “chap” except in the movies?). The heart of the novel is the love story between Callum and Anna, the Emmerich’s daughter, and it’s fine, really just what you’d expect. But I adored the character of Uri, his moral centre, his ability to shapeshift, his utter sense of survival. I guess I look forward to Bohjalian’s novels to bring a different sense of events to his novels and Skeletons at the Feast, while by no means a bad book, maybe just didn’t live up to my own expectations of his work. That’s not the writer’s fault — he’s delivered a powerful, riveting, emotionally intense novel about a horrifying experience. It’s war from the point of view of those who are surrounded by it, of those who are destroyed by it, those who must survive after the guns are down and treaties are signed.

To end, I would recommend the book, and it would be great for book clubs, but it hasn’t claimed the prize as my all-time favourite of his books, The Buffalo Soldier still reigns supreme. And I have but one other bone to pick: what on earth is up with the cover of a young girl with short brown hair on a summer’s day looking out over a field? What about that spells “victims of war driven to desperate lengths to save their lives as their world collapses about them”? Boo, I say, boo!

WHAT’S UP NEXT: I started Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife yesterday on the ride home. I’m already loving it. Can you tell right now I’m reading only for pure pleasure? But I guess under the circumstances, it’s a wonder I’m reading at all, right?

#55 – The Flying Troutmans

At first, I wasn’t so sure. Not sure about the story, not sure about the characters, not sure about anything. And then I was. Sure about it all. About how much I loved Hattie and Thebes and Logan and all the crazy characters they meet on the way. About Min and her tenuous grip on reality. About the road trip and the broken down van and the desperate journey Hattie takes before truly finding out who she is and why she’s doing what she’s doing.

Miriam Toews writes in an almost Beat-like fashion in this novel while obviously putting her own touches on it and ending up with a truly original road book in The Flying Troutmans. To say anymore would be to give something away. I don’t even want to link to the cover copy because I think it’s better not to know anything other than the fact that Miriam Toews is one hell of a writer before cracking the spine. Trust me.

But I will say this: the whole book reads like a road trip. Strange and kind of uncomfortable at first then after so many kilometres it finds its own rhythm. Places whiz by and your mind goes off on a trip of its own. And it’s all good. Things always happen on the road. Things you don’t expect. People you don’t think you’re going to meet. Places you have no expectations about seeing. And despite the circumstances behind Hattie’s road trip (she takes off with Logan, her 15-year-old nephew, and Thebes, her 11-year-old niece, after her sister’s admission to the psych ward), it’s a good experience. That doesn’t mean it’s not hard or bittersweet or painful or funny or difficult or gut-wrenching or sad or blissful or any number of adjectives. It means that the end result is satisfying.

And the ending. Well, the ending truly rocks. And right now I wish there was a Thebes in my life making me a huge novelty cheque.

READING CHALLENGES: The Flying Troutmans is part of my “For the Ladies” version of this year’s Canadian Book Challenge. I’m pretty sure I’m at #4 now. Only 8 more books to go!

#54 – This Charming Man

No other chicklit writer even comes close to achieving what Keyes can: strong, morally based stories about real women that grab your attention from the very first page and hold on to it tight like a hand on a roller coaster. Her latest, This Charming Man, is no exception. To be honest, my wrist is strained from holding the book up until all hours on Monday night (I wasn’t sleeping anyway). I mean, it’s 676 pages!

The story follows four very different women all connected by one man: Paddy de Courcy. As Ireland’s most eligible bachelor, de Courcy has been courting women for years. Now that he’s ready to settle down with Alicia, how will all of the other women cope with his absence from their lives? For Nola, it means she leaves her life, her job, and her entire world behind to escape the grief that her politician boyfriend is marrying someone else. For sisters Grace (a journalist) and Marnie (a troubled office manager), it means ending a life-long obsession they each had with Paddy. And, lastly, for Alicia, his intended, it means finally recognizing the love she’s carried for Paddy since adolescence.

The lives of the four women intersect and the narrative changes between their four perspectives. If I had a favourite storyline, it would have to be Nola, whose breakdown is tempered by her delightful adventures living in her friend’s uncle’s summer house. But as with all of Marian Keyes’s books, there’s a hidden story behind the sweet writing that slowly reveals itself as each of the women confess their own problems when it comes to Paddy de Courcy. Being in the public eye, as a member of an up and coming Irish political party, does little to save face as the novel unravels his less than charming persona.

I won’t give anything more away except to say that while I’ve been ill this week with that damned bronchitis, this has kept very good company indeed.

READING CHALLENGES: Chicklit, chicklit and more chicklit, but at least Keyes is Irish so that counts as a country other than the one my arse currently occupies.