Book Allowance

Anita Black Goes On a Trip

2011-07-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

I continue to stick with Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series because I read the first 15 or so books in several weeks two years ago. I can't seem to ditch a series when I have read all of them so far. A new one arrives and I have to read it.

The newest installment, Hit List - the 20th in the series - is one of what I call the 'journey' books. Anita is away from St. Louis and her menagerie of lovers - weretigers, werelions, werewolves and some vampires for fun. She's on the road with other US Marshals to track down a serial killer targeting weretigers.

The weakest books for me in the series have always been the journey stories. When Anita is away from the tension of her ever-expanding family, nothing seems as interesting. There are plenty of baddies in Hit List - the slippery serial killer(s), the Harlequin who want to steal Anita for a Big Bad, Otto the crazy US Marshal cum hit man cum serial killer who is in love with Anita. But the tension was never that high for me.

Hit List was low on the page count of sexual encounters which is fine. (Sometimes the multiple chapters to detail an orgy can become a bit stale, surprisingly.) We learn some new things about Edward/Ted, another US Marshal who's a bit whack-a-doo but also revealing a beating heart. I don't know if I needed a Ted/Anita road trip to learn this though.

What kept the tension low for me was the one of the traps of first person narration - I'm constantly watching Anita think about something, consider it and then she responds. Also, the rough and tumble men she works with seem to talk a lot in the book and Anita constantly remarks about their honesty and how nice it is. It felt repetitive by the middle of the book.

And a lot of dialogue is used for exposition. Since this series is so long and contains so much, a fight will begin (there was the potential for a great one between Otto and Anita when she was trying to get him away from his next choice in torture victim) but then it peters out into a discussion. In that Otto-Anita fight, by the end Otto wasn't even part of the conversation. That fight turned into a pissing match between Otto and one of Anita's weres which turned into another Marshal explaining how Edward/Ted will kill him if he lets Otto hurt Anita and then it turned into Anita making the were feel better. The tension just went away.

There was a lot of potential for the final fight against the Big Bad - the Dark Queen who wants to possess Anita's body in order to be back in the world in a tangible way. Even that felt a little quick and certainly anti-climatic. When I'm not reading the series in quick succession, it is easy to forget that Anita has been battling the Dark Queen for sometime now. This battle should be BIG and EPIC. It felt kind of easy. Maybe if I'd reread the last couple of books in the series ahead of time I would have felt the tension of fighting the Dark Queen better. I'm not sure.

Not every book can be a gem. Hamilton has written several in the series that were really exciting and fun. My preference are for the books based in St. Louis, not the road trips.

Of course I'll read #21 when that comes out. Otto has been set up as the next Big Bad and that could be interesting. I just hope that Anita is pushed to learn new things about her self, have new experiences. Hit List tasted stale and brittle compared to others in the series.

'Tis the season!

2010-12-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

The 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award guidelines have been announced. The winner of each category will receive a publishing contract with Penguin and a $15,000 advance. Not too shabby.

So what should you do?

1. Dust off that 50,000 to 150,000 word manuscript and decide if it should be submitted under General Fiction or Young Adult Fiction.

2. Take a pretty picture for your author photo.

3. Then set a reminder on your work calendar, iphone, write a Post-it and stick it on your mirror for January 24th. That's a Monday. You might want to just stay up late Sunday night watching reruns of The Walking Dead in preparation for its return - you can submit at 12:01 am.

(Only the first 5,000 entries in each category will be accepted for review so you'll want to submit early. If you can't stop fiddling with word choices, you'll need another reminder that the window slams shut on February 6. That is, of course, if 5,000 people haven't submitted before you.)

4. Begin to bite your nails.

Good luck!

As cool as a winter wind

2010-12-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

The cover for A Reliable Wife is deceiving. It was the sole reason why I kept moving past the book every time I saw it despite the note that it was a #1 New York Times Bestseller. A couple of people must have liked it but I didn’t give the book a chance because of that sassy red dress and midnight train.

There was no male arm snaking around her waist so it wasn’t a romance – at least not a typical romance. The author’s name threw me as well – Robert Goolrick. Men don’t write romances, do they? Maybe they do but use a pseudonym.

One time I flipped the paperback over to read the description.

He placed a notice in a Chicago paper, an advertisement for a “reliable wife.” She responded, saying that she was “a simple, honest woman.” She was, of course, anything but honest, and the only simple thing about her was her single-minded determination to marry this man and then kill him, slowly and carefully, leaving herself a wealthy widow. What Catherine Land did not realize was that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own.”

The first time I read that, it did nothing. Then last week, while Christmas shopping at Target, I saw A Reliable Wife again, walked by it three times again, read the back and tossed it in my cart. I’m not sure what made my wrist flick and send the pages flapping but I am so glad I did.

If you haven’t already (one of those readers who sent it to the NYT list), go read it now. Buy yourself a Christmas present, find a blanket, and settle down. And trust me on the blanket.

In the early days of winter in 1907 Wisconsin, Ralph Truitt waits at the train station to greet the woman who answered his advertisement for a reliable wife. He married once before, even had children, but they are all gone and he has been alone and lonely for twenty years. The small spark of hope that he refuses to call love still burns in him and he tells himself he wants a companion, that’s all.

He is rich and owns the town. He inherited the business from his father after gallivanting through Europe in search of pleasure, bringing his young Italian wife with him. Ralph is reserved and still and at times very scared of what his life has become.

Catherine Land steps off the train looking nothing like the photograph she mailed with her letter. That’s because she isn’t who she says she is. Catherine has lived the only life of independence afforded to women at the time and has the emotional scars to prove it. She dreams of a life of love and money, and Ralph Truitt will serve her purposes fine.

Only there is a twist. Ralph has finally found his son Antonio and wants his new wife to go fetch him. He hopes a woman’s touch will melt his son’s heart and coax him home. In a lovely twist, instead of Catherine being surprised by the identity of his son, she happily spends the week in bed – Ralph’s son is her lover who set her on the course of murder.

Goolrick continues the surprises as Ralph, Catherine and Antonio are surprised by the choices they make, the changes that shift in their souls. The ending seems inevitable but only after it has occurred. It is difficult to keep revealing new tricks while making each one seem fresh and appropriate.

On another small craft point, I loved how Goolrick used different sentence styles for dialogue and thought. His characters speak in short sentences, rough and abrupt and not at all forthcoming. But the paragraphs describing inner thought and intent can ramble and meander to circle the main point that character is obsessing over. The contrast between inner and outer speech is just one of many counterbalances that Goolrick employs to demonstrate his central theme that there are hidden depths in us all.

Much of the foreshadowing occurs through landscape and descriptions of the town. The action occurs during the long, blinding winter when bright snow covers everything. Catherine keeps the shades drawn during the day to keep the glare at bay. Items are lost in the snow. Feelings are buried. Fires smolder under the cold.

Which leads to how A Reliable Wife isn’t a romance but is a very sexy and sensual story. Ralph is preoccupied with his carnal longings. His memories of youth are riddled with drugs and orgies and no consequences. He also remembers his mother’s strict religious mores and how they were impressed on him. He imagines the people in his town and what must happen behind closed doors and is tremendously jealous.

Catherine is restrained with Ralph once they are married – she is trying to maintain her farce of a virginal missionary’s daughter. With Antonio, she is free and revels in her love of his touch. She allows him to do whatever he wants. His pleasure means everything.

The cold of winter melting into spring is the perfect metaphor for the building desires of all three characters. And it is the onset of spring weather that achieves the tragic climax. Goolrick did a wonderful job of marrying form and function. Instead of just describing the landscape to set a scene for a reader who has never seen Wisconsin, the landscape and weather is a key player in the story and conveys mood and thought.

In the back of the book, Goolrick cites Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip as a key inspiration for his frozen Wisconsin. Goolrick writes:

Its collage of words and photographs paint a haunting, cinematic portrait of a small town in Wisconsin at the diseased end of the nineteenth century. We had imagined the cities to be teeming with moral turpitude and industrial madness, and rural America to be sleeping in a prosperous innocence, filled with honest and industrious people. Not so. Lesy unlocks the Pandora’s box of country life to show us its dark and ravaged soul.

Goolrick’s Wisconsin is terrifying with crimes committed with no apparent reason, madness and suicides a regular occurrence. The house might be freshly painted white with windows warm from light within but that doesn’t mean everything is all right. A Reliable Wife is nerve-wracking and poignant and doubly chilling for me since I read it during a week of below freezing days.

*Winter picture via Earth Water Sky.

**For more information about Wisconsin Death Trip, visit the book's Wikipedia page and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Some photos are posted below. Can I tell you how much I want that book now?

A modern sort of witch

2010-12-21T10:32:00.002-05:00

The long subtitle of Petty Magic by Camille DeAngelis lets you know what to expect: Being the Memoirs and Confessions of Miss Evelyn Harbinger, Temptress and Troublemaker.

Evelyn Harbinger is a 149 year old witch who lives in New Jersey. Apparently a large coven lives in her town, mostly women and mostly with regular jobs like running a B&B or a toy store. Since they live such long lives they age slowly and Evelyn finally looks like the old woman she is becoming. But sometimes, for fun, she casts a spell to change how she looks. She is her younger self with black hair and tight skin. She spends one night each with any man she fancies.

Until she meets Justin.

Justin looks just like Jonah, her true love who died during World War II. This is a world of reincarnation and she tries desperately to see if he remembers anything from his previous life. Because she does – desperately.

Evelyn’s love story is imperfect and cut short and she has the possibility to hope for his return. Her dead love is equivalent to a real life breakup. There is pining and frustration and unsatisfactory responses from family members who think you should just buck up and move on. She had found a man who knew her darkest secrets and loved her anyway. (Most witches just get knocked up by a regular man; their long lives and slow aging just become difficult to explain.) Don’t we all want to find that one person who accepts all the stuff you don’t like about yourself? No wonder she clings to Justin against her better judgment.

A parallel plot is an investigation by the coven in to the death of her older sister’s husband. Henry might have died sixty years earlier but Helena can still be cast out if found guilty. Evelyn is determined to prove her sister’s innocence – partially because she hates the witch to brings the charges and partially because she needs to know there is some wiggle room for spells related to love.

I love all things spies but the WWII sections didn’t stand out as much as I expected. Evelyn meets Jonah while working for British intelligence. He discovers her turning from a bird back into her usual self and learns about a new world of opportunities for her skills. They go on missions particular to her brand of magic – changing their appearances for one thing – and fall in love.

I felt more drawn to the story of Evelyn’s involvement with Justin than her actual love story. I didn’t really get a strong impression of Evelyn and Jonah’s relationship – I had to take in on Evelyn’s word that she loved him and he loved her. But Justin took her breath away every time he did something that Jonah had done and that sharp pain was palatable.

You do find out whether or not Justin is Jonah in the end. That was a bit of a surprise. So many people like to be coy about endings these days so it was nice to know. The fact that it was a happy ending despite lots of tragedy – an added bonus.

The debate continues . . .

2010-12-17T09:55:00.004-05:00

Over at The Guardian, Edward Docx throws another punch for literary fiction.

It's worth dealing with the difference again, since everyone seems to have forgotten it or become chary of the articulation. Mainly this: that even good genre (not Larsson or Brown) is by definition a constrained form of writing. There are conventions and these limit the material. That's the way writing works and lots of people who don't write novels don't seem to get this: if you need a detective, if you need your hero to shoot the badass CIA chief, if you need faux-feminist shopping jokes, then great; but the correlative of these decisions is a curtailment in other areas. If you are following conventions, then a significant percentage of the thinking and imagining has been taken out of the exercise. Lots of decisions are already made.

So it follows that genre tends to rely on a simpler reader psychology. If you have a body on the first page, then you raise a question: who killed it and how did it get there? And curiosity will power readers a surprisingly long way. As will, say, a treasure hunt (Brown) or injustice (Grisham) or the locked room mystery format (Larsson). None of this is to say that writing good thrillers is easy. It is still incredibly difficult. But it is easier.

Docx uses an excellent metaphor about a burger joint and a fancy restaurant. Patrons have different expectations of a greasy diner cook and world class chef. Failure by the anticipated 'better' packs a bigger punch than an expected so-so.

At least Docx isn't falling into typical argument against genre fiction (which he actually details in his article) - his thesis is that genre writers can't claim that the high sales of their books and resultant large paychecks indicate a high value to their work.

He uses Dan Brown and Stieg Larsson as his primary examples of wildly popular and successful genre writers. I have read books by both authors and thoroughly enjoyed them. I also think their craft sucks. But just as I can appreciate a beautiful image by Aimee Bender or a long, weaving sentence by Yates, I see the value in a go get 'um kind of book that practically turns the page for me. As I've said before, I don't always want to work when I read. Sometimes I like the story to do all the heavy lifting. And that can be very satisfying in and of itself.

To Docx's point, sure, certain authors should be aware of their limitations of craft even as they cash that million dollar check. I just don't see that happening any time soon. A high paycheck equals a high value, doesn't it?

A bit of British fun

2010-12-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, "Georgie" to her friends, is 34th in line for the throne and has many problems because of it. Her season presented no suitable suitors and her family is quite poor due to her father's gambling habits. She moves to the family home in London with no servants, learns to build a fire and begins a domestic service company to make ends meet. And that's before the Queen asks her to spy on the prince and his American amour, and a dead Frenchman shows up in her bath.

And so begins Georgie's quest to prove her brother Binky's innocence by discovering who would have killed Gaston de Mauxville. If he was blackmailing her family to get a hold of Rannoch Castle, who else might he have blackmailed and provided with a motivation for murder?

Her Royal Spyness is a fun mystery. It reads more like a drawing room comedy with a dash of intrigue to spice things up. The first person narration was an excellent choice by Bowen - Georgie's voice is wry and witty as she fends off unsuitable suitors like the rakish Darcy O'Mara, a minor royal who is both Irish and Catholic and Tristam Hautbois, a childhood friend who pronounces his r's as w's - both of whom might be trying to kill Georgie as well.

The surprises at the end were handled well. The facts that emerge to reveal the killer of the Frenchman make sense. Bowen even builds suspicion around a number of other minor characters to confuse Georgie and the reader.

An enjoyable read.

Literary Swag

2010-12-15T12:00:00.001-05:00

I stumbled across Out of Print. It's awesome.

In their words, Out of Print celebrates the world’s great stories through fashion. The shirts feature iconic and often out of print book covers. Some are classics, some are just curious enough to make great t-shirts, but all are striking works of art.

They work closely with artists, authors and publishers to license the content that ends up in their collections. Each shirt is treated to feel soft and worn like a well-read book.

In addition to spreading the joy of reading through their tees, they acknowledge that many parts of the world don't have access to books at all. They are working to change that. For each shirt they sell, one book is donated to a community in need through their partner Books For Africa.

I am coveting the Pride & Prejudice sweatshirt - love the Flashdance style - and the Nancy Drew shirt. Christmas, anyone?

A novel in stories

2010-12-14T20:15:00.006-05:00

I have mixed feelings about the concept of a novel in stories - interwoven stories that overlap characters and action. I love delving into character history, the meatier the better, and a novel in stories seems to be a way to access this. But with no overarching plot the stories land a bit lighter than intended, more like writing exercises than storytelling.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister has many elements I enjoy - teases of magical realism, sensual descriptions, moments of lovely broad back story. I finished quickly and promptly felt hungry.

The first chapter/story is about Lillian, the instructor of The School of Essential Ingredients, a class she offers on nights her restaurant is closed. We learn about her quest to use cooking to coax her mother back to the world of the living after her father abandons them. Recipes provided by Abuelita are less instructions and more ideas - they read like a magical spell.

(Side note - I really never like reading about a young child left to wander around and make friends of strangers, like the kindly grandmother figure who owns a strange cookery store and teaches the girl to cook. Maybe it's when the child is wandering around in a more 'real' world that it bothers me. Plunk an eleven-year old in a dark forest filled with unicorns and it's a quest. It doesn't feel like a quest when she rides the bus. That feels like neglect. I'll have to work that element of fiction out, I suppose.)

So, spoiler - Lillian succeeds with Abuelita's help and her mother once again pays attention to her. Then we're thrust into another chapter following Claire, a student of The School. That chapter ended with Claire eating the crab she had clobbered herself (Victory!) and then "Slowly, Claire opened her eyes."

I think I sighed here but I pushed on, 56 pages in was enough to commit to a couple more. I read about Carl and Helen - she cheated, he forgave her. Antonia, an Italian transplant, is beautiful and lonely. Chloe is young and obsessed with her boyfriend, a bad boy. I'll spare you.

Tom's chapter could have been an entire book. This should have been the book. (Him or Lillian, or both, knowing how Bauermeister sets things up.) His grief compels him toward the kitchen where his dead wife reigned. He works through his sadness as he works on a recipe. There are some more heavy lines handed from present to flashback. Lillian tells Tom to stir the eggs with a fork and make sure there are no lumps. After some blank space, we learn Tom found the lump in his wife's breast.

I will be the first to say writing isn't easy. I know it's not. It should look easy thought - that is good writing. Bauermeister reads obvious, which is a different point all together. She is drawing lovely lines between cooking and many aspects of life but lumpy eggs to a lump in a breast is just obvious. The ideas are lovely; the execution is not subtle enough.

No overarching plot - except that the same group of people keep returning to the restaurant one night a month - so the main point becomes the bringing together of people. How food brings people together. Nothing new here. Although one coupling in the story surprised me, in a good way - young Chloe leaves her jerk boyfriend and, needing a place to stay, moves in with Isabelle, the confused old lady who shows up on the wrong day sometimes. Assuming Chloe really is a sweet girl and won't rob Isabelle blind, that connection alone felt novel.

The School of Essential Ingredients was fine. It reads fast and includes many vivid descriptions of food. There is a nugget of goodness buried in this idea. I wish it had been brought to fruition.

The book Club - The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

2010-08-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

by Rebeca Barroso

Dearest Princesse,

I agree absolutely with the fact that there has to be some conflict to establish plot and actually write a book. Take my arm and walk with me to the lovely greenhouse for some tea… but I tend to have a problem with general stupidity as the source and origin of conflict, as it irks me so… especially one born out of someone the author keeps reminding us is THE sharpest wit in Europe more often than she points out to us of the Olympic timing of the events she narrates down to the photo-finish millisecond.

I would like to playfully reach out to you and tap you with my own ivory fan, (tsk tsk) whilst I disagree about supporting Marguerite in her quest to save her husband. Odd’s fish! You already proved to us all (and yourself, dear Margot) that you’re a twat. And now your twatness pretendeth to be smarter than Sir Percy, who has proved all around to be above and beyond resourceful, elusive, and bright? La! Have a little faith in the Pimpernel, m’dear!

But, sit, sit… Tea is ready. I kept wondering how exactly she pretended to be of any use to anyone walking without shoes in the mud alongside the cart towards the cliff. Do you take milk or honey with your tea, m’dear? As I read the long and tortuous meandering towards the cabin to entrap the Pimpernel and the refugees, I couldn’t remember what was going to happen next, but it was clear to me that the only danger the Pimpernel would face in this scenario (having found out Chauvelin in priest’s clothes back at the inn already) would be when he had to come over and retrieve the sharpest wit in Europe from entrenching herself deeper and deeper in a hopeless situation thanks to her own folly and lack of judgement… which seems to me lasted exactly 38 hours, 24 minutes, 30 seconds and a demmed good pair of shoes worn to the soles. Pity that. They were such modern shoes. Sugar?

I hadn’t thought about it, but, as I take a modest sip from my delicate porcelain cup of tea and bite a bit of my crumpet, I do believe you’re right when you say rom-coms possibly can be traced to writing such as this. Though I think I’d place it even farther back with Austen, who I think really perfected the romantic comedies. I love Austen better because she’s adept at intertwining several plots at once (Orczy only has a half-developed parallel romance with Sir Andrew and the young girl, what’s-her-name going on at the same time) which entertain me to no end. And then there is class conflict, which is much more interesting to overcome because it’s seemingly much more insurmountable than stupidity conflict. Though… now that I think about it, whilst I fan myself and glance at my lush garden and the fountains… there is something to be said about the lack of evolution in some of the women we’ve read so far and the permanence and insurmountability of their stupidity… but I digress. Austen can possibly be the beginning of chick lit, though hers is quite above the quality of chick lit today. I think we both read Chasing Harry Winston and rolled our eyes more or less in harmony… did we not?

Having said that, let’s see how a modern woman writer deals with mystery in this day and age. Can’t wait to get started on Her Fearful Symmetry!

À tout à l'heure!

Duchesse de Midwest

the book Club - The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

2010-08-05T09:15:00.001-04:00

by Jillian Taylor

Bonjour, Duchesse!

I, too, enjoyed Chapter XXV but that might have been more for the note that Sir Percy sang “lustily” as he entered The Eagle and The Fox. I would love for him to sing lustily to me, maybe peer at me from under his heavily-hooded eyes . . . but I digress.

As I cool myself off with my feathered fan, I would like to expand on my earlier note about feeling sympathy for Marguerite. Lud! but she is a dense woman and quite proud. If she was so gaga over Percy when they first met and a misunderstanding occurred to piss him off, why not just explain what happened instead of being pissed off that he doubted her for a hot minute? Granted he was a bit dense on that matter, jumping to conclusions and all that. But every good romance needs a central conflict and a misunderstanding regarding Marguerite’s role in a man’s death will do it.

So yes, she is a bit annoying at times because it takes her such a long time to figure everything out and actually do something about it. (Probably something like fifty-two hours, forty-six minutes and thirty seconds according to the Baroness. I really like the image of the Baroness writing with a stopwatch.) But once she knows the truth and throws herself into saving Percy, I’m behind Marguerite.

Chapter XXV is pivotal for so many reasons now that I think of it. Aside from introducing us to Percy’s lusty singing voice (where’s my fan?) and displaying Chauvelin’s manipulative spirit to its best, we get to sit behind a curtain with Marguerite, impotent and frustrated and completely in love with Percy.

Chauvelin is an excellent villain. He maintains such a fine balance between creepy and utterly polite and appropriate. He maneuvers through London’s society, secure in his backing by the French government. Nobody dares snub him. Not even Marguerite.

We first meet him outside The Fisherman’s Rest. He has a fox-like expression and deep, sunken yellow eyes. That’s not good. Through Orczy’s omniscient narration at times, we know he has a sarcastic little smile as she greets him happily, even if Marguerite does not. His downfall in Chapter XXV is also introduced.

“Chauvelin took another pinch of snuff: he seemed very much addicted to that pernicious habit, so prevalent in those days; perhaps, too, he found the taking of snuff a convenient veil for disguising the quick shrewd glances with which he strove to read the very souls of those with whom he came in contact.”

A master plan by Chauvelin becomes his folly!

Chauvelin is weasely; he finds a way to blackmail Marguerite into discovering the Scarlet Pimpernel for him. He keeps showing up, pressuring her, sniffing that snuff. Makes me shudder just thinking about him. Well done, Orczy!

I really do think the Baroness’ writing has had a very long reach. Modern rom-coms are based on her storytelling. Modern villains are like Chauvelin. (I’m thinking of the villain from the Daniel Craig Casino Royale; that creepy scar and asthma and general fox-ishness.) Mark of a great writer, even for a girl. Ha!

Be wary of snuff!
-Citoyenne Jillian

August CUPPA Book Club

2010-08-05T09:00:00.001-04:00

Just a reminder that the next CUPPA book club will be meeting on Saturday, August 15 at 10:15am to discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

Here's my write-up for the flyer:

Flavia de Luce, an eleven-year old aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is delighted to find a man in the cucumber patch and even more excited when he says his final word and breathes his final breath. What follows is a mystery that zips along at a raucous clip through the English countryside, much like Flavia’s beloved bicycle, Gladys. Flavia is the only one with the intelligence and wit to piece together the puzzle of the man’s death and exonerate her father.

Join us as the CUPPA Book Club discovers this debut novel by Alan Bradley. A cuppa and a slice of something sweet will complement our discussion of a precocious heroine determined to save her family.

CUPPA is a charming coffee and sandwich shop in Devon, PA. I hope you join us.

Saturday, August 14th at 10:15am
40 Berkley Road
Devon, PA 19333

The Book Club - The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

2010-08-04T09:00:00.001-04:00

by Rebeca Barroso

Dearest Princesse de Taylor,

I, too, gotteth the Dover Thrift Edition for this read and was equally tickled by the connection to Jack the Ripper (that was kinda cool), not to mention that a noblewoman (Zooks! A woman! Writing on a lark!) would excel at detective and mystery stories the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in that era...

I do have to confess to having watched the film and the Broadway musical many years ago, so, even though I had forgotten a few details by now I did know the gist of the story beforehand. I wanted to read the book not so much for the plot, but out of curiosity for the Baroness’ style in her narrative (Odd's fish, m'dear! A woman writing in men’s territory!) and I wondered what that would be like. La, I definitely got a taste of it.

As much as I enjoyed the colloquial language and the character of Sir Percy (especially at his most “boring and dim-witted” which I found poignant, adorable and hilarious), I couldn’t help but despise Marguerite. How could “the sharpest wit in Europe” be so demmed stupid? It’s one after another gargantuan lack of judgement with this woman!

A pleasure to behold was the character of Chauvelin, the deliciously evil fox-like villain, whose encounter with Sir Percy in France I enjoyed like rich ice cream. The Eagle and the Fox (chapter XXV) was probably my favorite chapter of all. Also noteworthy was the social tension in the terse exchanges between Marguerite and the Comtesse du Tournay when they have the misfortune to come face to face in public, so, kudos, Baroness, for excellent dialogue.

There’s much to be said about how vivid the locations felt, from the inns in Dover to the English Palaces or Calais beaches, I felt absolutely transported. Having said that, the one thing that kept pulling me out of the story was the Baroness’ knack for telling us how much time passed between one event and the next. She narrates an event for about an entire page, and then she gives us the accurate time lapse, like we can’t realize this ourselves in our own head: “All this, from the moment that Marguerite had caught sight of Sir Andrew leaning against the doorway, until she followed him into the little boudoir beyond, had occurred in less than a minute.” Uhm… okay, did you have an exquisite turn-of-the-century stopwatch in hand Madame? Does it matter if I imagined it at one minute and thirty seconds instead? Sacre Aristo!

Lud, I must go! Until the next time…

Duchesse de Midwest

word of the day - lucre

2010-08-04T08:45:00.001-04:00

lucre (n.) monetary reward or gain

"The four big Ls of motive: lust, lucre, loathing and love."

from The Likeness by Tana French

image via Fairfield.edu

The Book Club - The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

2010-08-03T09:00:00.002-04:00

Welcome back to the virtual book club at Book Allowance! My partner in crime, Rebeca Barroso, is back and we’re going old-school. This time we’ll be discussing “The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Orzcy. Just remember there will be spoilers.

The Baroness Was Ahead of Her Time
By Jillian Taylor

Hello, again!

I need to get a title so I can publish under that. Princesse de Taylor. Duchess Taylor. Maybe just plain, old Queen Taylor. Although the Baroness’s first name was pretty awesome on its own – Emmuska. Good stuff.

I don’t know what version you read but I have the Dover Thrift Edition. I am one who reads Notes and Acknowledgements in the order they appear in a book. The biographical Note is charming. Orzcy loved British theatre so ‘decided to try her hand at writing.’ Apparently she was inspired to write crime stories because a real-life crime happened outside her home. One of Jack the Ripper’s female victims was found there just before she moved in with her husband. Then, after the success of her detective stories. Orczy wanted ‘to do something more than that. Something big.’ So she wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel.

I love that her ‘something big’ is the type of novel easily dismissed these days as fluff, romance, nothing to be taken seriously. I recently reread The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig who was inspired by The Scarlet Pimpernel, even using some Pimpernel details to pepper her story. Willig’s novels are considered historical romances which can be seen as a lower tier than so-called literary novels. Orzcy went big and wrote a romance that has nobility and honor as central elements. These days honor and nobility are considered throw-backs to a different time.

But enough of my chatter.

It takes a couple of chapters before our leads enter the stage. Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney, an elegant and charming couple, the toast of the London ton. She is called the cleverest woman in Europe. Percy is dull and stupid. They arrive at The Fisherman’s Rest, a small inn on the coast, and encounter an aristocratic family recently smuggled out of revolutionary France. That doesn’t go so well. Lady Blakeney and the Comtesse have a lovely fight. Marguerite rolls her eyes at her ridiculous husband. Percy takes it.

At this point, I knew the general arc of this romance. Despite already being married, clearly there was a gap to be crossed. Do you think the modern rom-com formula came from Orzcy? Meet cute. Then the audience learns about both of their secrets. A major misunderstanding based on these secrets. Someone has to be the one to make the effort, cross the divide. Kiss, happy ending. Curtains down. I could name a hundred romantic comedies off the top of my head that follow this model. I wonder if Orzcy was really the first. Probably not. Jane Austen might have beat her to the punch. (We’ll figure that out in a couple of weeks.)

Despite all the hundred year-old slang (Zounds! La! Nay!), the book read as very modern and contemporary to me. I can’t tell how much of that is because I have read many books that are derivatives of this particular novel or just the timelessness of Orzcy’s narrative. I know I keep going back to the history of this novel, the history of twentieth-century romance novels. It’s difficult for me not to do that.

So instead I will end this missive on a more upbeat note. Can I tell you what a crush I have on Sir Percy? “Tall, broad-shouldered, massively built.” Um, yes, please.

Oh, and one other quick question. This is Marguerite’s story so it’s easy to feel sympathy as her opinion of her husband changes. How did Percy fare in your eyes since he stays mum on his secret ‘til the very end? (Clearly I like him fine.)

La! man,
Jillian

Word of the day - lugubrious

2010-08-03T07:31:00.004-04:00

lugubrious (adj.) mournful, dismal, or gloomy, esp. in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner

"'I miss my flat,' said Justin lugubriously, from a safe distance."

(regarding the rundown house he just moved into)

from The Likeness by Tana French

Word of the day - deracinate

2010-07-29T09:00:00.002-04:00

deracinate (v.) to pull up by the roots; uproot; eradicate

"I could remember what it had been like to remember these scenes, once upon a time, but now they had a remote, secondhand quality of old films I had watched or stories I had been told, I saw them as if from a vast distance - three brown-skinned kids in battered shorts, spitting on Willy Little's head from the branches and scrambling away, giggling - and I knew with cold certainty that over time even these deracinated images would shrivel up to nothing and blow away."

from In the Woods by Tana French

August CUPPA Book Club

2010-07-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

Just a reminder that the next CUPPA book club will be meeting on Saturday, August 15 at 10:15am to discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

Here's my write-up for the flyer:

Join us as the CUPPA Book Club discovers this debut novel by Alan Bradley. A cuppa and a slice of something sweet will complement our discussion of a precocious heroine determined to save her family.

CUPPA is a charming coffee and sandwich shop in Devon, PA. I hope you join us.

Saturday, August 14th at 10:15am
40 Berkley Road
Devon, PA 19333

Where's my shovel?

2010-07-28T09:00:00.002-04:00

It’s a bit frustrating to read a book like The Curious Gardener’s Almanac during this heat wave we’re calling summer. Unless I want to dig a hole at four in the morning, there’s a good chance I’ll pass out before I’ve hit clay. Books like the Almanac inspire me; not with any particular project but with taming the little bit of wild in my yard in general.

Niall Edworthy moved to West Sussex, England after living most of his adult life in cities like London and Edinburgh. Suddenly he had a real, large house and a larger yard with the remains of a vegetable garden. His efforts to tame the wild jungle that grew from his laziness turned into this book.

The Almanac is divided into broad categories: Vegetables, Flowers, Trees and Shrubs. My favorite category is Children. Edworthy devotes the final chapter to all the wonderful adventures a child can have in a garden. It also includes necessary facts about worms and caterpillars.

The words meander along, quotes followed by recipes then a practical tip tossed in for good measure. It is an excellent book to dip into, just for a page or two – although I have found myself on many occasions sitting down for twenty or so pages at a stretch before I catch myself.

The index is comprehensive, which is a good thing, since you’ll never remember where you found that bit about mint repelling insects. (Page 108, by the way.)

Some of my favorite quotes:

Gardens should be like lovely, well-shaped girls: all curves, secret corners, unexpected deviations, seductive surprises and then still more curves.
H.E. Bates (1905-74)
"A Love of Flowers"

What a man needs in gardening is a cast iron back with a hinge on it.
Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1901)

The soil is the gift of God to the living.
Thomas Jefferson, 1813

What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place.
Donald Culross Peattie
(1896-1964)

The more one gardens, the more one learns; and the more one learns, the more one realizes how little one knows. I suppose the whole of life is like that.
Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962)

word of the day - alacrity

2010-07-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

alacrity (n.) cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness

"Hunt have us permission to search the site, with an alacrity that moved him further down the suspect list (Mark demanded to see our warrant, but backed off fast when I told him I'd be happy to get one if he didn't mind waiting around for a few hours), and Sophie and her team headed for the finds shed and started taping brown paper over the windows."

from In the Woods by Tana French

A bit of advice

2010-07-27T09:00:00.003-04:00

Christian Dior’s compendium of fashion advice, The Little Dictionary of Fashion, is chock full of practical advice as well judgmental comments about overweight and inelegant people. It’s amusing nonetheless.

Some of the practical bits include:

Elegance
This is a word that would need a book to give it its right definition! I will only say now that elegance must be the right combination of distinction, naturalness, care, and simplicity. Outside this, believe me, there is no elegance. Only pretension.

Elegance is not dependent on money. Of the four things I have mentioned above, the most important of all is care. Care in choosing your clothes. Care in wearing them. Care in keeping them.

Fit
A good dress is, first of all, a well-fitted dress. I hate women who look as if they are dressed in a sack.

It is the fitting that helps to emphasize the loveliness of yourself and to hide the little faults you may have.

Individuality
Until the time we are converted into robots – and I hope this time will never come – individuality will be always one of the conditions of real elegance.

No elegant woman follows fashion slavishly. If a particular new line does not suit you, then ignore it.

Scarves
In many cases a scarf gives a final touch to a dress. But you have to experiment and try many different ways of wearing a scarf before you find the way that suits you best. It is a very personal matter; and what suits one woman will not necessarily suit another.

A scarf is to a woman what a necktie is to a man, and the way you tie it is part of your personality.

My favorite entry that demonstrates Dior’s disdain for anything inelegant is the one on Nonsense.

In fashion, nonsense is to wear a big straw hat with a raincoat. A raincoat with an evening dress. Brogues with a cocktail dress. High heels with slacks. Velvet after March. Lace with tweed. I could write a book about nonsense in fashion! Too many women forget that even the most extreme fashion must be sensible in a way. Good fashion is always natural evolution and based on common sense.

I dislike trick fashions – designed only for publicity’s sake. They may be eye-catching but they are never elegant.

I don’t suppose he’d enjoy Betsey Johnson that much then.

Dior fashion image via My Vintage Vogue

Betsey Johnson image via nj.com

For some great photos of vintage Dior, visit Life Magazine

Word of the day - vestal

2010-07-27T09:00:00.001-04:00

vestal (n.) a chaste, unmarried woman; a vestal virgin

"O'Kelly slammed the door behind him, slicing off the noise instantaneously. 'Right, lads,' he said, into the silence. 'Welcome to Operation Vestal. What's a vestal when it's at home?'"

from In the Woods by Tana French

image from Roma Image Archive

Word of the day - gyroscopic

2010-07-26T09:00:00.001-04:00

gyroscopic (adj.) related to an apparatus consisting of a rotating wheel so mounted that its axis can turn freely in certain or all directions, and capable of maintaining the same absolute direction in space in spite of movements of the mountings and surrounding parts: used to maintain equilibrium, determine direction, etc.

"Mark eyed Cassie for another moment, then gave her a nod; she had apparently passed some private test. He moved on to me. He was somewhere in his mid-twenties, with a long fair ponytail and a narrow, foxy face with very green, very intense eyes. Men like him - men who are obviously interested purely in what they think of other people, not in what other people think of them - have always made me violently insecure. They have a kind of gyroscopic certainty that makes me feel bumbling, affected, spineless, in the wrong place in the wrong clothes."

from In the Woods by Tana French

image via Wikipedia

A Story as Mysterious as a Forest

2010-07-26T08:00:00.003-04:00

I read books for many different reasons. I was contentedly paging through the anthology edited by Gaiman on my rides to and from work until the workday grew longer and a short story wasn’t enough to disappear in. I needed something that would absorb me, invigorate me with the lives and feelings of characters new to me. A short story is over so fast and brevity would not help me escape from constant stream of numbers in my head.

I had seen positive reviews for Tana French’s newest novel and those often extolled the virtues of her debut, In the Woods. Thriller, mystery, whodunit, expertly plotted – all these compliments were cues that I could disappear in the forest of Ireland.

On a particularly rough day at work, I slipped out for a quick stop to pick up In the Woods. I started reading on the elevator ride back up to the 21st floor and was hooked. That fast. I knew I had found the book that would get me through a weeklong audit.

Detective Rob Ryan has a secret that only five people know, including his partner on the Murder Squad, Cassie Maddox. He was one of three children who disappeared in the woods near Knocknaree. He was the only one who returned.

They are brought back to Knocknaree to investigate the murder of a young local girl, a ballerina the town fundraised to send to an elite school. Connections between the recent murder and Ryan’s past come to light and the duo work hard to keep the lid on his relation to the town.

The case is no slam-dunk. The girl is found on the site of an archeological dig, which is occurring against the clock – a motorway will be built over the site in just one month. A local coalition headed by the victim’s father vocally fights the construction. To handle the political aspect of the investigation, a third detective is brought in.

Detective Sam O’Neill’s uncle is a career politician so he can wade through treacherous waters without rocking the boat too strongly. Sam is also an excellent foil to the established rapport between Ryan and Maddox. He begins to join their nightly dinners to discuss the case and wonders, silently, what their relationship is truly about. The whole squad swings between assuming the two partners have slept together to believing Ryan when he says they never had.

This story is Ryan’s and presents every meticulous detail of the case until he begins to break down. This is French’s greatest strength in the novel – never mind the superb plotting and excellent character development, I most appreciated the journey of Ryan’s descent as he attempts to remember what happened in the woods when he was a child. He never could and the effort is maddening. Without ever stooping to crazy, run-on sentences, French is able to capture Ryan’s unease and fear.

I found myself finding ways to sneak extra pages. A couple more when I reached my desk. A full chapter during a lunch eaten in front of the computer. A hefty 400-plus pages, despite my best efforts, it lasted the week. I was sorry to reach the end, as satisfying and unresolved as it was. I will definitely be buying The Likeness, Detective Maddox’s story, and her newest as well.

Word of the day - tensile

2010-07-23T09:00:00.001-04:00

tensile (adj.) of or pertaining to tension; capable of being stretched or drawn out; ductile.

"I had pictured a tensile, heightened mode of existence, everything small and petty bush-fired away by a readiness so charged it snapped sparks, and the reality had left me bewildered and left down, like a child opening a glittering Christmas present and finding woolly socks instead. If it hadn't been for Cassie, I think I might have ended up turning into that detective on Law & Order, the one who has ulcers and thinks everything is a government conspiracy."

from In the Woods by Tana French

image via Wikipedia

Word of the day - fugue

2010-07-22T09:00:00.003-04:00

fugue (n.) A pathological amnesiac condition during which one is apparently conscious of one's actions but has no recollection of them after returning to a normal state. This condition, usually resulting from severe mental stress, may persist for as long as several months.

"I can remember some of the things we talked about, a few piercingly clear images, but I could give you almost none of the actual words. This strikes me as odd and, in certain moods, as very magical, linking the evening to those fugue states that over the centuries have been blamed on fairies or witches or aliens, and from which no one returns unchanged."

from In the Woods by Tana French

image via squidoo

August CUPPA Book Club

2010-07-22T09:00:00.001-04:00

Just a reminder that the next CUPPA book club will be meeting on Saturday, August 15 at 10:15am to discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

Here's my write-up for the flyer:

Join us as the CUPPA Book Club discovers this debut novel by Alan Bradley. A cuppa and a slice of something sweet will complement our discussion of a precocious heroine determined to save her family.

CUPPA is a charming coffee and sandwich shop in Devon, PA. I hope you join us.

Saturday, August 14th at 10:15am
40 Berkley Road
Devon, PA 19333

Word of the day - superciliousness

2010-07-21T09:00:00.001-04:00

superciliousness (n.) haughty disdain or contempt, as a person or a facial expression

"I made no friends; to me my detachment from the whole process felt involuntary and inevitable, like the side effect of a sedative drug, but the other cops read it as deliberate superciliousness, a studied sneer at their solid rural backgrounds and solid rural ambitions. Possibly it was."

from In the Woods by Tana French

image via MurderMysteryTheater.com

Word of the day - tumescent

2010-07-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

tumescent (adj.) swelling; exhibiting or affected with many ideas or emotions; teeming

"One morning he found himself in Preservation Hall - which was, despite its name, little more than a shack, hotter than the mouth of hell - listening to a jazz sextet playing 'St. Louis Blues' and realized he'd been up for almost forty-eight hours straight. The air of the room was as tumescent as a greenhouse; everyone was dancing and shuffling and clapping along, a crowd of people of all ages and colors."

from The Passage by Justin Cronin

image via Cheddar Bay

Word of the day - bandicoot

2010-07-19T09:00:00.001-04:00

bandicoot (n.) any of several large East Indian rats of the genus Nesokia

"Once, when I remarked that she looked like a disoriented bandicoot, she leapt up from the piano bench and beat me within an inch of my life with a rolled-up piano sonata by Schubert. Ophelia has no sense of humor."

from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

image via AustralianFauna.com

A Gothic Fire

2010-07-16T09:00:00.005-04:00

When is a ghost story not a ghost story? When is it Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

There are no floating white sheets or boos echoing down the hall but the ghost of Rebecca haunts Manderlay and her newest mistress, the second Mrs. de Winter. Rebecca permeates the huge house on the hill. Manderlay is run by Mrs. Danvers who raised Rebecca and despises the new Mrs. de Winters for even trying. The staff still praise Rebecca and the locals reminisce about her beauty and personality and parties.

A bit of a raw deal for the new Mrs. de Winters.

You might have noticed that I have used Rebecca's name several times in this post but never once mentioned the first name of the second Mrs. de Winter. That is because I don't know her name.

Du Maurier used a wonderful technique that now I can never use because I will so obviously be copying her. Rebecca is told in first person by the second wife and we never hear anyone say her name, not even her husband Maxim. The effect is an overwhelming abundance of Rebecca and a receding narrator. Rebecca is everywhere and the woman telling the story doesn't even have a name. Fantastic stuff!

The second wife is young, naive, simple in tastes - the exact opposite of Rebecca. The more she learns of her husband's first marriage, the more she believes he doesn't love her. He married her because a man needs a wife, a companion. It is Rebecca who still claims his heart.

Rebecca drowned one year earlier while out in the bay by herself. Her body was found months later and Maxim was forced to endure identifying her body. Suddenly, Rebecca's small boat is discovered at the bottom of the bay with a body inside the cabin. An inquiry is opened, a member of Rebecca's family comes forward with treacherous accusations, and the second wife must handle the resurrection of Rebecca in her failing marriage.

For as long as the book is not much seems to happen. Plot points are few and far between. Du Maurier indulges in dialogue-heavy scenes over meals or on a terrace. These scenes display the second wife's unease in the world at Manderlay and all the ways in which Rebecca can be mentioned and interpreted. The dialogue also allows tidbits of information about the first marriage to be revealed that the second wife can obsess over at length. Her view of Maxim and Rebecca is described in detail and her fragile emotional state flaunted in her tragic and harassing interactions with Mrs. Danvers.

Grief and guilt are the themes that haunt this novel. How does one move into a space still occupied by a dead woman? What will people do for those they love? What will they do to those they love?

Rebecca holds up seventy years later because it tackles such timeless issues. The darkest sides of humanity have not disappeared and neither has love.

Word of the day - hasp

2010-07-16T09:00:00.003-04:00

hasp (n.) a clasp for a door, lid, etc., esp. one passing over a staple and fastened by a pin or a padlock

"I tried the hasp, and to my surprise, it popped open. It was unlocked! The two halves, hinged in the middle, swung easily apart, and I found myself face-to-face with Mr. Sander's wardrobe: a blue serge suit, two shirts, a pair of brown Oxfords (with blue serge? Even I knew better than that!), and a floppy, theatrical hat that reminded me of photographs I'd seen of G.K. Chesterton in the Radio Times."

from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

image via answers.com

August CUPPA Book Club

2010-07-15T09:00:00.005-04:00

Just a reminder that the next CUPPA book club will be meeting on Saturday, August 15 at 10:15am to discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

Here's my write-up for the flyer:

Join us as the CUPPA Book Club discovers this debut novel by Alan Bradley. A cuppa and a slice of something sweet will complement our discussion of a precocious heroine determined to save her family.

CUPPA is a charming coffee and sandwich shop in Devon, PA. I hope you join us.

Saturday, August 14th at 10:15am
40 Berkley Road
Devon, PA 19333

Word of the day - factotum

2010-07-15T09:00:00.002-04:00

factotum (n.) a person, as a handyman or servant, employed to do all kinds of work around the house

"Dogger was Father's man: his factotum. And he was alone in the garden."

from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

image via The Shame List

All stories are journeys

2010-07-14T09:00:00.003-04:00

(Please note, super duper SPOILERS ahead.)

I have said it before and I'll say it again: I love big books! And I cannot lie! (I'll stop there, don't worry.)

The Passage is a doorstop at 759 pages. I started balking at the dwindling remaining pages somewhere around 600. And at the last page, I became annoyed that I have to wait who know how long until the second installment is finished and released.

This is a sign of a good read.

I had heard some reviews that thought Justin Cronin's storytelling fared better in the first half and faltered in the second. I almost avoided the book when I learned Cronin incorporated 'documents' into his story - emails, newspaper articles, political documents. I rarely enjoy books that do that. (I still haven't finished Dracula; diary entries are boring.)

I'm so glad I disregarded all of that and took the plunge. I loved the second half (which will propel the action of the future installments) and Cronin's use of documents was restrained, so effective.

The Passage begins sometime around 2020. America has been at war for over fifteen years. Jenna Bush is the governor of Texas. And FBI Agent Brad Wolgast is collecting death row inmates from around the country for a military experiment.

Dr. Lear had encountered something in the Amazon that was both frightening and exciting. A virus that will cure disease. But it is out of control and needs to be harnessed properly - everyone infected early on because super healthy for a hot minute then dies a messy, messy death.

Enter Wolgast and his inmates.

Wolgast doesn't question his job until a last minute job brings him to six-year old Amy Harper Bellafonte, later to be known as Amy NLN. Wolgast lost his daughter years earlier and the grief destroyed his marriage. He cannot surrender Amy to the same fate as the inmates.

My favorite scene in The Passage is when Wolgast takes Amy to a carnival. He has convinced his partner to let them give the give this one last happy experience before handing her over. Wolgast finally gets to taste what it's like to be a father and it is overwhelming.

At the entrance he paid for their admission and moved down the line to a second booth to buy tickets for the rides. He thought she might want to eat, but decided, to wait; it might, he reasoned, make her feel sick on the rides. He realized he liked thinking this way, imagining her experience, the things that would make her happy . . . She took his hand again as they walked; the feel of her palm against his own was almost electrical, the source of a warm current that seemed to spread through his body as they walked. When she saw the carousel with its glowing deck of painted horses, he felt her pleasure actually pass from her body into his.

The adventure at the carnival is so lovingly written that you know Cronin is a father and using his own experience to describe Wolgast's. It was the most emotionally vibrant passage in the novel.

Cut to the military base and all hell breaks loose. The Virals are on the loose and although there are only twelve of them, the massacre is swift and the subsequent destruction of the United States inevitable.

The next sections begin with documents: an evacuation notice to remove children from Philadelphia; a first-person account of the evacuation and bombing of Philadelphia; a map of the First Colony Site; and the Document of One Law that establishes the government of the First Colony.

It is a world that fears the night. Tall walls, armed guards and floodlights protect the First Colony from an invasion by the Virals. It has been one hundred years and problems begin to crack the colonists' existence. Where is the military? Will the lights go out? Why are the Virals now traveling in groups of three?

A small contingent of colonists is compelled to go on a quest to help Amy. They venture past the walls and see firsthand the treacherous world revealed to them on their eighth birthday. A world of fear and death and independence and survival. They must return Amy to where she came from and find a way to live in this world that Virals built.

Part of the reason The Passage is such a long story (especially for being one-third of the planned narrative) is that Cronin languishes in his characters' lives. He takes the time to describe them, fill in between the lines, take pages and pages for back story. The only offhand references seem to be for a bit of humor (like Jenna Bush as governor) or to pique interest in a forthcoming event. I enjoyed the rambling descriptions of scenes and memories because I always felt closer to that particular character by the end of it. I was invested in each person that Cronin presented - everyone was complicated and interesting and heroic and riddled with faults.

He allows the tags of the documents to hint at the future and provide hope for these characters that have become very real and very sympathetic. They are all part of a presentation of a global conference on the Quarantine Period in New South Wales in 1003 A.V. There is a future which is a relief. But what happens before that future conference? How does the world become a place safe for historic reflection and a conference of all things?

The ending was good for two reasons. First, the group on an odyssey have a plan, a goal. I want to see that journey. Second, the final document consists of pages from one of the colonist's diary. She has made it safely to Roswell and mentions she is daring to feel hope. The document is marked as ending there and is described as recovered from the Roswell Site, "Roswell Massacre." What happens to her?!?!?

I love that kind of cliffhanger!

Yes, The Passage will put a kink in your shoulder from sitting heavy in your bag but it is so worth you. You will be entertained and challenged and a bit choked up at some moments. You will be pleased. I was.

Word of the day - semaphore

2010-07-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

semaphore (n.) an apparatus for conveying information by means of visual signals, as a light whose position may be changed

"I looked up slowly from my work so that the round lenses of my spectacles would flash blank white semaphores of light at her. I knew that whenever I did this, Ophelia had the horrid impression that she was in the presence of some mad black-and-white German scientist in a film of the Gaumont."

from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

image via Royce Bair

Word of the day - dirigible

2010-07-13T09:00:00.001-04:00

dirigible (n.) an airship

"I shot him a broad smile, a smile wide enough to present him with a good view of the wire braces that caged my teeth. Although they gave me the look of a dirigible with the skin off, Father always liked being reminded that he was getting his money's worth."

from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

image via phsc:canada

Word of the day - philatelist

2010-07-12T09:00:00.004-04:00

philatelist (n.) one who studies postage stamps, revenue stamps, stamped envelopes, postmarks, postal cards, covers and similar material relating to postal or fiscal history

"Father still insisted on dinner being served as the clock struck the hour and eaten at the massive oak refectory table, just as it have been when Mother was alive.

"'Ophelia and Daphne are no down yet, Flavia?' he asked peevishly, looking up from the latest issue of "The British Philatelist", which lay open beside his meat and potatoes."

from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

image via Images of the World

A little bit of mystery

2010-07-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

I picked up Death by Darjeeling because the entire mystery series centers on a tea shop in Charleston. I do love tea and tea shops and those little tea spoons. I had to give it a chance.

The book was fine. The best parts were the descriptions of Charleston - the historic neighborhood, the estuaries and coastal regions, the many plants that flourish in the South. I suddenly have the urge to visit Charleston and separate the truth from the fiction.

Theodosia Browning gave up the rat race to open the Indigo Tea Shop. She employs a baker/waitress, Haley, and a tea extraordinaire named Drayton. The newest waitress, Bethany, is a suspect in the murder of a local real estate developer, Hughes Barron, who died at an event with tea provided by Theodosia's shop.

After it is revealed that the developer did indeed die from poison, Theodosia takes it upon herself to investigate. Since her business is at stake, she needs to determine who poisoned Hughes Barron.

In typical Christie fashion, many suspects are presented. Meet Timothy Neville, the director of the Heritage Society who had gotten into loud arguments with Barron. Or could it be Tanner Joseph, the environmentalist who failed to stop Barron's development of condos along the coast? Maybe it is Lleveret Dante, Barron's smarmy business associate who inherited the business upon Barron's death. All excellent possibilities.

Also in typical Christie fashion, the killer is the most unlikely person in the story. That part always frustrates me a bit. Even after reading the story and going back, there are never any signs pointing toward the ultimately guilty party. A bit out of left field if you ask me.

It's an amusing story although I don't think I'll be pursuing this series. Not my cup of tea.

Ha!

Let Them Eat Cake!

2010-07-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

I have read many stories in which emotions are incorporated into baked goods. Those who eat that food are influenced by the emotion against their will. And the story is often that of the baker.

Aimee Bender found a new way of using this device by changing some details. In The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake only Rose Edelstein can taste emotion in food. The emotion is easily identifiable although confusing at first. What nine year old understands regret or desire?

For her ninth birthday, her mother bakes Rose a lemon cake. Rose eats two slices to be certain - it is emptiness she tastes underneath the chocolate and lemon. The PB&J sandwich for lunch the next day is hollow. Rose begins to loathe eating home-cooked meals. She prefers the anonymity and distance of mass-produced foods.

Rose doesn't think to share this new development with anyone other than her brother Joseph's best friend, George. A future scientist, George takes her claims seriously and wants to test them. They visit a local bakery and Rose tastes rage in a cookie. George finds out that the baker is very angry and hates the job. Another pastry is filled with speed, velocity - that baker is always running late.

Over time Rose learns that some emotions are bearable. The sadness one particular lunch lady bakes into her pizza is real and understandable. It is the confusing truths too close to home that wreak havoc on Rose.

What would it be like to know the deepest, most secret emotions of the people you love?

Rose learns many things she probably wishes she didn't know. But with knowledge comes understanding. She makes peace with her mother's life outside the home. Her father's fear of hospitals points to a lineage that clarifies Rose's ability. Her brother Joseph has his own ability, intricately tied to his inner pain.

Bender uses a magical language throughout that caused me to come to full stop at times to savor the choice. The small domestic scenes are utterly realistic but seem to shimmer around the edges. Consider:

She'd been working as an office administrator, but she didn't like copy machines, or work shoes, or computers, and when my father paid off the last of his law school debt, she asked him if she could take some time off and learn to do more with her hands. My hands, she told him, in the hallway, leaning her hips against his; my hands have had no lessons in anything.

Anything? he'd asked, holding tight to those hands. She laughed, low. Anything 'practical', she said.

They were right in the way, in the middle of the hall, as I was leaping from room to room with a plastic leopard. Excuse me, I said.

He breathed in her hair, the sweet-smelling thickness of it. My father usually agreed with her requests, because stamped in his two-footed stance and jaw was the word Provider, and he loved her the way a bird-watcher's heart leaps when he hears the call of the roseate spoonbill, a fluffy pink wader, calling its lilting coo-coo from the mangroves. Check, says the bird-watcher. Sure, said my father, tapping a handful of mail against her back.

Rah, said the leopard, heading back to its lair.

Rah, indeed.

Journalist's Delight

2010-07-08T09:00:00.004-04:00

The Monster of Florence is a tale of obsession.

Obsession by the serial killer who struck over several decades. Obsession by the Italian journalist who was lucky enough to be working that fateful Sunday when the first case opened. Obsession by the American writer who couldn't leave well enough alone.

The first section is Mario Spezi's story. He is the Italian journalist whose career would eventually circle solely around the Monster of Florence. A 1981 murder of a couple having sex in a parked car - apparently a common occurrence around Florence since young adults continue to live with their parents until marriage. The young man was shot and the woman was dragged out of the car and stabbed to death. Her vagina was also violated but not by the murderer.

A connection is made to a similar murder in 1968. A suspect is tossed in jail and Florence waits to see if the summer will pass without another murder.

It does not.

The story gets complicated, which is the fun part. The police is fractured into several departments that must work together but continue to work separate investigations. Some investigators are able to turn small gains in the case into promotions which allows new personalities to take one detail and run in an entirely new direction.

Many theories are promoted at various times. The Sardinian Trail. The Order of the Red Rose. Rich aristocrats who needs the mutilated vaginas to eat in their demonic rituals. (Not kidding with that one.) Some of the theories turn into witch hunts - a man even commits suicide because he is accused of being the Monster.

Then Douglas Preston arrives in Florence and while conducting research for a novel, he meets Spezi and learns about the Monster. It is a compelling story and I understand why he became obsessed. Preston and Spezi decided to solve the case on their own and even confront the man they believe is the Monster.

All that poking around rustles some feathers and Spezi and Preston are interrogated by the police. Spezi is suspected of being the Monster since he knows so much about the murders. As of publication, Preston is not allowed back in Italy.

More than the serial murders, the police investigation is the primary focus of this story. The prosecutors who refuse to change their minds. The obstinate judges. The Squadra Anti-Mostro created just to catch the killer. The terrible secret witnesses revealed to be a mentally retarded man, an alcoholic prostitute, and a serial witness who would miraculously remember something from decades earlier and change his tune when needed.

Ineptitude is the word bouncing around your brain by the last page.

The investigation took on a life of its own and because of all the perks and promotions that came with involvement, it's easy to think the decades-long case was sustained purely for career advancement.

The Monster of Florence is a fascinating journalistic account of the long journey of an Italian investigation. It would be a great beach read this summer.

A celebration of the crone

2010-07-07T09:00:00.002-04:00

Wise Women contains photographs by Joyce Tenneson of older women, some known, some unknown. The sepia tone throughout democratizes the images so that the individual features of the women come to the forefront. The main themes that weave through the accompanying quotes are resilience, joy and gratitude. Beautiful thoughts for any age.

Here are some of my favorites.

Elva Azzara, 93 - "I can still remember what it feels like to love with all my heart."

Dame Judi Dench, 67 - "For me success is having the respect and love of people who truly know you."

Mimi Weddell, 85 - "I couldn't live without heroes."

Mona Miwako Lutz, 78 with granddaughter China Chow - "I don't think of myself as being old."

Garden books

2010-07-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

I visited Terrain at Styer's this weekend. There is a beautiful garden store and a cafe where we had lunch. It was a lovely afternoon whiling away time among flowers and charming kitchen and garden items. And, of course, many big photography books and cookbooks that begged to be cracked open.

Among other things, I picked up Wise Women by Joyce Tenneson, a book of photographs and quotes, and The Curious Gardener's Almanac by Niall Edworthy.

Cookbooks and design books and photography books . . . books!!!

Romantic bottles hanging from a tree.

The honey table.

A wall of antique wrought iron chairs. I would love a garden full of them.

Hydrangea. The shop smelled wonderful.

Piles and piles of planting pots.

And the award goes to

2010-06-30T10:00:00.001-04:00

The AIGA has announced the top 50 books and 50 book covers for 2009. A public exhibition will be traveling the country before becoming part of the AIGA Design Archives at the Denver Art Museum.

Here are some of my favorite covers.

The Hospital for Bad Poets: Stories by J.C. Hallman

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn

Check out the entire list here.

2010-06-30T09:00:00.001-04:00

Just a reminder that the next CUPPA book club will be meeting on Saturday, July 10 at 10:15am to discuss Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

Here's my write-up for the flyer:

The second Mrs. de Winter has much to contend with when she moves with her new husband into Manderley, his isolated stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast. A housekeeper remains loyal to her predecessor. An untouched suite is laid out with clothes. Secrets behind the death of beautiful Rebecca fill the rooms. Will she be able to uncloak the truth?

The CUPPA Book Club returns again to discover the work of du Maurier, a thrilling writer who inspired Alfred Hitchcock to film Rebecca and The Birds (based on a short story). You’ll want a warm cuppa to stave off the shivers this masterpiece requires.

CUPPA is a charming coffee and sandwich shop in Devon, PA. I hope you join us. And if you ever get a chance to swing by, say hi to Jen!

Saturday, July 10th at 10:15am
40 Berkley Road
Devon, PA 19333

CSI: Medieval England

2010-06-29T09:00:00.001-04:00

12th-century England is like an episode of CSI.

At least according to Ariana Franklin in her first installment of her new eponymous series, Mistress of the Art of Death. Franklin uses modern language to write her tale which allows the intricate plot to reveal itself without being hampered by minutes spent deciphering medieval slang. For starters, if she had been properly contemporary, the setting would have been in Grentebridge instead of the modern town name of Cambridge. I appreciate this choice. I was not in the mood for the Canterbury Tales.

A child has been killed in Cambridge and the local Jewish population has been accused. For their safety, the local sheriff has all the Jews live within his walls. When more children show up dead, despite their alibi, the Christians still point their fingers at the Jews. King Henry II needs this matter settled because the revenue the Jewish businesses bring to his coffers has diminished now that they can't work. Henry II contacts the King of Sicily to send the best Master of the Art of Death - a sort of detective-coroner in the likes of Temperance Bones.

What he gets is very different.

Adelia Aguilar is not happy to be traveling so far from Salerno. She needs to hide her knowledge and abilities for fear of being strung up as a witch. For protection she travels with a Saracen named Mansur and Simon of Naples, a Jewish investigator. After helping an important prior, Cambridge welcomes the trio and they set up shop with Mansur as the doctor and Adelia as his assistant. They begin to investigate.

The regular characters show up and all are mysterious enough to be considered as the serial killer. Knights recently back from a Crusade. The prioress of the nunnery who prefers to ride and hunt to more spiritual matters. Sir Rowley Picot, one of the king's tax collectors who keeps showing up where Adelia is. Any number of men and women in the town who might be deranged or hate Jews.

Clues were found and pursued like in all good procedural tales. Similar wounds on the children indicate a weapon. Dust in hair and on clothes indicates a location. A jujube found in one of the victim's hair is what lured the children.

Aside from the language, the investigation felt the most anachronistic. I know that historically people are always farther along than I expect. Like how modern chemical photography came into existence in the 1820s but the camera obscura was used over 800 years prior. So maybe the logical investigation of clues to rule out bad information until the truth is revealed was used for thousands of years. Not just recently by Gary Sinise in NYC.

Franklin did find a interesting way to get over the mid-novel slump that slows down so many good books. I won't ruin it for you but someone unexpected dies and Adelia has a revelation that propels her forward, all within a couple of pages.

A History of Romance

2010-06-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

In the grand tradition of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Lauren Willig's The Secret History of the Pink Carnation introduces two heroines: Eloise, an American in London, is completing her dissertation on British spies during the French Revolution, and Amy Balcourt, a French girl in England who dreams of joining the League of the Purple Gentian and saving more aristocratic lives. Although they are two hundred years apart, Amy actively pursues adventure and Eloise lives vicariously through the pages of Amy's letters.

Willig's homage to The Scarlet Pimpernel is cleverly woven through Amy's story. Percy Blakeney has been unmasked as the Scarlet Pimpernel and passed to torch onto the new spy in town, the Purple Gentian. When Amy's practical friend Jane asks how they are supposed to go about finding the Purple Gentian, Amy calmly answers, "The Fisherman's Rest." This was the Dover inn across the Channel from Calais where the Scarlet Pimpernel traveled through. These little details are gems when they appear throughout the novel.

Amy Balcourt is our traditional female lead: spunky, daring, brave, a little loony at times, determined, and hopelessly, helplessly romantic. She wants more than a life of dances and suitors and embroidery. She needs an adventure! Her pursuit and demasking of the Purple Gentian is continually waylaid by Richard Selwick. Richard is handsome and intriguing and frustrated by the new development of his attraction for Amy.

A match made in heaven.

I have read every book in the series and as amusing as the contemporary American scholar's storyline is, I have always preferred the historical stories. Since Eloise lives vicariously through her heroines, the ups and downs in her life are more typical - a crush who seems to dislike her, confusion over the crush's current relationship status, confusion over the crush's change of heart.

Eloise's much more staid life, at least in comparison to Amy's, seems to highlight the reason we read historical romances. The adventure and romance, the strong men and passionate kisses, the bustles and corsets and top hats - time long since past always shines brighter than it was and seems brighter than the now. Curling up with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation makes me yearn for some adventure with a man who will catch me when I fall.

I suppose I would settle for that even if the adventure was tamer than smuggling aristocrats out of revolutionary Paris. Who doesn't want a Richard Selwick? Give the book a go and I'm sure you'll agree.

The Book Club - Little Bee by Chris Cleave

2010-06-23T09:00:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the first virtual book club at Book Allowance. The book is “Little Bee” by Chris Cleave. I’m happy to introduce Rebeca Barroso, my partner in crime. The plan is to alternate entries like old-school mail. You remember mail, right? Anyway, we’ll go back and forth until we’ve exhausted the raised topics. There may be spoilers so you’ll just have to deal with that.

The Final Word
by Rebeca Barroso

Hi!

I do think she’s all about waving the missing finger, especially with those that know what it’s about (Lawrence and Andrew) in order to get her way about whatever she’s demanding, but, you know, whatever makes her feel better about herself and her own moral trespasses. And though I can see how it comes across as a rant, I don’t hate Sarah. Even as I read the book or wrote the book club discussions, I don’t dislike her. She’s okay. I just enjoy dissecting her. As grey as she may be, there’s a few layers worth discussing.

Yeah, the beach scene is stressful, more than anything because we know we can’t trust the men with the guns and the machetes, nor any deals offered. Whatever anyone would choose to do or abstain from doing, ultimately the final decision on whether the girls live or die lies within this armed gang who has no moral compass whatsoever, nothing to lose, and no sense of honor.

If they had killed Little Bee anyway though, then Sarah’s finger offering and Andrew’s inaction would be viewed diametrically opposite to how they’re regarded now. Sarah would be forever the naïve Surrey girl who thinks a chopped finger can save a life (and proven wrong) and Andrew would have remained the pragmatic I-told-you-so-and-what-the-hell-were-you-thinking smartass he had been up to that point.

So, their actions in and of themselves are not what makes them a better or worse person, it’s the result, the random result, the arbitrary decision the men took about allowing one of the girls to live. Out of… fun? Torture? Honor? Flippancy? Ambivalency? Laziness?

And as tortured as Andrew is and as much as a coward they want to paint him, I think he had a deeper evolution than Sarah. I wonder what happens with Sarah and Charlie after Little Bee dies in Nigeria, though. Good book, I enjoyed it very much.

On to the Scarlet Pimpernel then!

Rebeca

Word of the day - compagni di merende

2010-06-22T10:00:00.003-04:00

compagni de merende (n.) an Italian phrase used by Mario Vanni, translated as 'picnicking friends'

"We were picnicking friends. With those words, the unfortunate postman invented a phrase that would enter the very lexicon of the Italian language. Compagni de merende, 'picnicking friends' is now a colloquial expression in Italian referring to friends who pretend to be doing something innocent when in fact they are bent on dark, murderous misdeeds. The phrase became so popular that it even has its own Italian Wikipedia entry."

from The Monster of Florence by Doulgas Preston with Mario Spezi

image via Examiner.com

The Book Club - Little Bee by Chris Cleave

2010-06-22T09:00:00.005-04:00

Hello, again!

Let me first say that the replacement of lemon juice for a real slice of lemon in Sarah’s gin and tonic cleared something up for me. I went to London two years ago and ordered a G&T every restaurant and pub I visited. (Once I like something, I’m pretty loyal.) The first G&T I ordered came with a wedge of lemon. Weird since I’ve only had them with lime wedges. The second G&T at a different pub came with lemon as well. So I began to ask for a lime garnish and the response was mixed. Some bartenders just said no. Others gave me strange looks – silly American – but did it anyway. The bartender-in-training at the pub near my hostel panicked because he didn’t have limes on hand and offered to use lime juice. I grabbed my glass before he could squeeze that in. That little detail in Little Bee confirmed another difference between the sides of the pond.

While I am conflicted about how to feel about Sarah’s act on the beach, I disagree that she proudly displays her missing digit. Sarah explains that she concocted a benign lie to tell people how she lost the finger on her freebie vacation. So she’s not waving around her missing finger for people to acknowledge and praise her.

However, that scene on the beach is stressful and I see both sides – Andrew’s inaction and Sarah’s ability to act. The men arrive and they want a sacrifice for a life. Andrew is unable to cut off his own finger, convinced the act won’t matter. The men will kill Little Bee and her sister no matter what. I was kind of with him at that point. Then Sarah surprised me by lifting the knife and cutting off her finger. I think she was a bit surprised too. The men arbitrarily said Little Bee could live and that was that.

So much is between the lines. Sarah never calls him a coward but using that descriptor sob sure sounds weak. And the contrast of his failure to her success at saving a girl’s life is pretty convincing. I almost wonder how much the entire event affected Sarah’s life. She’s not writing the book on the atrocities in Nigeria. She went back to work and continued her affair. Her life went on. Did she even think about it again?

Maybe someone in her position wouldn’t think about that day as much as the one who failed to act. No one wants to believe they are cowardly and if there is a moment in your life when you know you did the wrong thing or failed to do the right thing, it is a moment you will never forget. My heart went out to Andrew because I understood why he couldn’t do it and I understood why it haunted him.

I don’t think Sarah has learned much by the end of the novel and that upsets me. Unless, of course, that is the point. Hell is paved with good intentions. Flying to Nigeria to save a girl’s life comes from a good place. But look how that ended. Not so good. Cleave could be telling a parable about good intentions and how without true understanding they often fail.

One thing I definitely feel sure about is how the story repeatedly demonstrates the moment of choice and how ambiguous that moment can be. When Lawrence told Little Bee she could go to jail for allowing Andrew to commit suicide, I remember thinking, really? I have mixed feelings regarding the whole accessory to a crime for not getting involved and stopping a suicide. I honestly don’t see why attempted suicide is technically a crime either, but that is a debate for another day. I was with Little Bee when she revealed that and maybe because we don’t know this until after the halfway mark. I’m with her for the long haul by that point and knowing she watched Andrew hang himself didn’t make me dislike her.

The suicide, the beach, the fight between Lawrence and Little Bee, calling the police when Charlie goes missing in London – these are all moments when someone needs to be saved, someone has a choice to make and some of those choices are honorable and others are merely survival. Aside from my general dislike of Sarah and her abhorrent maternal instincts, I wouldn’t say she was a bad person. I wouldn’t say anyone in the novel was a bad person. And I’m sure that given the right perspective, there is a chance that the men who come would evoke sympathy as well. That’s the point, I think.

Could this mixed bag be what made so many people love this book? I’m sure Little Bee’s narrative voice was part of the draw. Well, at least for the first half of the book. But Cleave finds an inventive way to discuss the moral ambiguities of the Western world meddling in another country’s affairs. When is this allowable? When it becomes personal?

This is the beauty of fiction. While a true story about a girl like Little Bee might make you cry, you wouldn’t come away from an article with moral questions on your mind. Cleave is able to delve into both sides of the debate by creating two opposite characters and allowing us in their minds.

Good book. Good debates. Good stuff.

Any final thoughts? And very shortly we’ll be discussing The Scarlet Pimpernel!!

-Jillian

Click here to see all installments.

Word of the day - caravansary

2010-06-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

caravansary (n.) (in the Near East) an inn, usually with a large courtyard, for the overnight accommodation of caravans

"The trial of Pietro Pacciani began on April 14, 1994. The courtroom bunker was overflowing with a public divided between those who thought him guilty and those who maintained his innocence. Girls paraded around in T-shirts that read in English, 'I [heart] Pacciani.' There was a veritable caravansary of photographers, filmmakers, and journalists, in the middle of which, protected and led by Chief Inspector Ruggero Perugini, was the writer Thomas Harris."

from The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi

image via Kilburn Hall's Weblog.

The Book Club - Little Bee by Chris Cleave

2010-06-21T09:00:00.004-04:00

by Rebeca Barroso

Hi, Jilly!

Yes, even grey, which to me is an absolute absence of color (more than white or black), was beautifully expressed for all things bleak. As for the refugee bra-flag… best. idea. ever!

I still can’t make up my mind whether Little Bee’s English gets better as proof of her own evolution and time spent in England, or due to a more relaxed state of mind of the author towards the end of his novel as he paid less attention to the narrative voice while concentrating more on the resolution of the plot.

Same goes for Sarah’s character. Was she that grey in purpose, or due to a lack of color poured more enthusiastically into Little Bee? I want to think she needs to be this naïve because otherwise we wouldn’t have conflict. If someone else would have been married to Andrew we wouldn’t be reading about his wife having an affair, and then it being so blatantly discovered, which then needed to be patched up with a trip to… a war-torn African country (seriously? Freebies from Nigeria to a glossy magazine??) and they wouldn’t have been arguing about their right to wander freely against an armed guard, etc etc. But, let’s put all that behind us.

I’m interested in discussing how much of a coward Sarah wants us to believe Andrew was (Then –and it was louder than the surf- there was the sound of my husband sobbing.) because he didn’t do anything in the beach, because he wouldn’t cut his finger, because he got depressed and because he committed suicide, while she is the brave one because she did in fact cut her own finger without having been asked and then proudly displays it like some badge of merit to people who don’t even notice it (the policemen who come to tell her Andrew is dead, for instance) or when throwing a tantrum with Lawrence (She banged her damaged hand down on the table, fingers splayed out. “I cut off my finger for that girl. Will you tell me when is the logical point to stop something that started like that? Do you really want me to make a choice like that? I cut off my own bloody finger. Do you think I wouldn’t cut you off too?” – If this isn’t unnecessarily over-the-top, I don’t know what is), or how she uses it as a constant reminder that rubs itself in Andrew’s face whenever he’s having his own internal struggles.

When, in the end… we find out Andrew is quietly working towards publishing something that might help more than a severed finger can, and was so tormented by his own helplessness that it drove him to despair, when Sarah tends to be the one to drown in a glass of water when she can’t quite decide which tights to wear with which shoes or when the real lemons were gone and she had to squirt artificial juice in her gin and tonic. The horror!

But even more infuriating is the false sense of confidence she genuinely has – assuring Little Bee that she can protect her because she “works in a magazine and knows people” or because she’s a white reporter with money in Nigeria – even after having had the finger-cutting experience in that beach two years ago. Did you learn nothing, woman?? Where is your evolution??

As for Charlie/Batman, yeah, we never find out why he started wearing the bat costume but it was definitely before Andrew died. In fact, that morning he was made to take off his costume and he feels responsible. The day Batman took a day off, his daddy died. And the scene at the funeral… when Charlie realizes Andrew is in the coffin and will be buried… oh my god. I haven’t read anything that heartbreakingly painful in a long time. The tears just kept streaming down, I couldn’t read through the tears but I couldn’t stop either reading or crying, I was absolutely gripped.

You know, I really think Charlie delivered Little Bee to her fate. It’s his disappearance that brings the police, which is what makes her illegal status be known and gets her processed and deported. And it’s his running towards her, at the beach, putting himself in mortal danger, that ultimately makes her sacrifice herself for him.

I know you got what the author was trying to convey, but I fail to see what unmasking him has anything to do with saving him as a final act of grace. In fact, she goes on about how happy he looks with the other kids and what joy, etc, but all I could think was, that’s gonna be some fucked up kid when he grows up. Depressed, suicidal dad, deranged, imbalanced mom, selfish quasi-step-dad, murdered babysitter… this guy is gonna need medication before grade school.

And definitely blame Sarah, the whole trip pisses me off too. I totally agree, what the hell is she thinking taking Charlie there? Again, did you learn nothing woman? And didn’t you just promise him in the bridge when he got lost that you’d take good care of him now? “I’ll never be so silly again.” Is this really the best not-so-silly idea you can come up with?

You said it perfectly: “When she was on the beach two years earlier, Sarah had been pleased her son was back in England and with her parents. She recognized that her parents would take care of him and raise him well and this brought her relief in a moment when she faced with death. And she just brings him on the plane to a country that wants to kill Little Bee for seeing too much? And now Sarah is a hard-core journalist, dragging her son and Little Bee around to get more stories from other Nigerians who saw too much? I have no problem with Sarah waving the banner but don’t drag your five year-old son around a dangerous country so you can complete your dead husband’s work and feel better about yourself.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

At least I can understand Little Bee’s need to visit the beach. As silly or as dangerous as it may be, she owes her sister that goodbye (especially after being beckoned in a dream), she needs to come full-circle. There’s something to be said about closure in every traumatic event and I think, if she could have avoided it completely she would have, but given that she’s back in Nigeria and she could die any moment anyway, the trip to the beach for the sake of Nkiruka makes some sense to me.

Hey, I meant to ask you… were you at all taken aback at the confrontational side of Little Bee displayed towards Lawrence? The way she threatens to expose him if he tries to separate her from Sarah… was that completely out of left field or what?

And another thing I wanted to comment on, this idea that Little Bee could have saved Andrew but decided to save herself instead… did that color your feelings towards her in any way?

There’s several opportunities throughout the book for one human being to save another at the expense of themselves, be it Nkiruka protecting Little Bee, or Andrew and Sarah with both girls, or Little Bee being in a position to save Andrew at one time, Charlie at another, or having that face-off with Lawrence… do you think the author steers us to feel better about some of these decisions by elevating some characters and morally flawing the others?

Rebeca

Click here to see all installments.

Word of the day - antediluvian

2010-06-18T08:04:00.003-04:00

Antediluvian (adj.) of or belonging to the period before the Flood; very old, old-fashioned, or out of date; antiquated

"No, what Adelia objected to was the Church's interpretation of God as a petty, stupid, moneygrubbing, retrograde, antediluvian tyrant who, having created a stupendously varied world, had forbidden inquiry into its complexity, leaving His people flailing in ignorance."

from Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

The Book Club - Little Bee by Chris Cleave

2010-06-18T07:00:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the third installment of the first virtual book club at Book Allowance. The book is “Little Bee” by Chris Cleave. I’m happy to introduce Rebeca Barroso, my partner in crime. The plan is to alternate entries like old-school mail. You remember mail, right? Anyway, we’ll go back and forth until we’ve exhausted the raised topics. There may be spoilers so you’ll just have to deal with that.

Coffee and a rant
By Jillian Taylor

Good morning, Beq!

I have a warm cup of joe next to me as I read your response and I refuse to wait until later today to write back. Work will have to wait.

Your comments on color (or colour in this instance) are fascinating. You’re right – there is a lyricism to Little Bee’s narrative voice and she is very visual and tactile. Even the clothes she wears leaving the detention center – a garish Hawaiian shirt, for instance – are significantly brighter than the gray Kingston sky. And Sarah has her wrap up in a black trench when Little Bee escorts her to Andrew’s funeral. No bright colors allowed. (I’ve never liked that tradition, by the way. Many colors display grief, not just black.)

Speaking of which, did you enjoy Little Bee’s comments on gray – the color of refugees? I loved it. One of my favorite sections. I also loved her idea of the refugee flag being any article of clothing that could be spared such as a bra stained gray with use and washings. That would be a fun flag to post outside the U.N.

Little Bee’s voice does change throughout the story. Could this be on purpose? Leaving the detention center, immersing herself in Sarah’s life, actually going out in the world to London – this exposure might test her lingual abilities and push her to be more British, less Nigerian. Or did Cleave just forget to maintain her distinctive voice? Despite all the editors who touch a novel, things get missed.

My brother told me something a directing professor once told him. A director can take credit for every good thing his actors do on stage – even if they go against what the director actually wanted them to do. If it works, good for him. A director must also accept the inverse: that every failing of his actors is his fault as well.

All this to say I can’t tell if the tonal change is on purpose. I want to say yes because I like to think all writers are aware of what they do and very purposeful. But I know things just happen sometimes.

Regarding bland little Sarah, yeah, I got the same impression: bland, a bit clueless, restless in her perfectly fine life, clinging to a cause that wasn’t even originally her flag to bear. I didn’t dislike her but I found it hard to like her. Sarah isn’t as sympathetic a character as Little Bee. Granted, Little Bee is running from a terrible past full of violence and loss, and she’s a nice girl so it’s easy to be sympathetic. But Sarah gets all those chapters to herself, her voice. She needed to evoke more for me to earn that space in the story.

Naïve is a great word for Sarah. I don’t want to sound cynical but her character and parts of Little Bee were a bit stock for me. A white well-to-do woman is confronted with atrocity in the world when a black child comes into her life (Blind Side, anyone?) and she wants to save the child and the world as well, if she has the time. When I read that again it does sound pretty cynical, doesn’t it?

I understand that many people (I’ll include myself in this group) go through life with a mild set of blinders on until/if something jumps in front of them and they have to deal with it. Maybe some people push past the issue and refuse to partake in addressing it. Others decide to act. And I know we need people in the world who act, who want to make things better. It all just sounds a little familiar. What saves the story for me was Little Bee’s voice so it was a loss for me as well when I realized I hadn’t pondered the meaning of weh in many pages.

I do think Sarah’s naïveté and Little Bee’s Anglicization are necessary for the plot. Sarah is morally ambiguous, what with her long-standing affair and single act of selflessness that saved Little Bee’s life. She is modern and relatable and has her head in the ground a bit. Which totally allows Little Bee to drag her out into the sun and creates the space for Sarah to grow and change. Little Bee’s change – her elevated language, her ability to be self-sufficient and navigate through England – makes her return to Nigeria feel even more backward. She is forced back into the past she is desperately running from. The novel contains one binary of opposites after the other.

And Charlie/Batman is the obvious metaphor for the main point of all the opposites – one must claim their identity to the fullest and not shy away. A little heavy for a five year-old boy but there you have it. I was charmed by Charlie’s insistence on wearing his Batman costume every day, all day. Batman doesn’t get to take a day off. His world is defined by goodies and baddies, not the worst guiding philosophy if you ask me. Children are used in storytelling as vehicles of innocent truth. They state the obvious. They say what they mean. Asking Lawrence if he is a goodie or a baddie with Lawrence sputtering for an answer demonstrates the moral ambiguities adults flounder in. To Charlie it’s simple – good or bad.

The only question I had is about the impetus that got Charlie’s superhero identity started. That wasn’t ever addressed. Maybe it didn’t need to be but I was curious since it began before Andrew committed suicide.

Is Charlie that which delivers Little Bee to her fate or is unmasking him and saving him her final act of grace? Part of me blames Sarah for the ending, even though Little Bee became a willing participant and was the one who wanted to go back to the beach that started this chain of events. Yes, Charlie runs to Little Bee which brings the attention to her. But Little Bee only thinks of saving him and gets him to remove his entire costume before plunging into the ocean with a crowd of other children, safe in numbers. I know I’m dancing around this and that’s because I don’t know the answer yet. I have mixed feelings about the final chapter.

On a related note, can I tell you how much the entire trip back to Nigeria pisses me off? (We are totally going full steam ahead. Don’t worry about spoilers.) Why would she take her young son to Nigeria when she knows what is going on there? When she was on the beach two years earlier, Sarah had been pleased her son was back in England and with her parents. She recognized that her parents would take care of him and raise him well and this brought her relief in a moment when she faced with death.

So she just brings him on the plane to a country that wants to kill Little Bee for seeing too much? And now Sarah is a hard-core journalist, dragging her son and Little Bee around to get more stories from other Nigerians who saw too much? I have no problem with Sarah waving the banner but don’t drag your five year-old son around a dangerous country so you can complete your dead husband’s work and feel better about yourself.

Maybe they should have been childless. Then Sarah wouldn’t be able to drag her child around a war-torn country.

I’m not bitter. I promise. I’ll stop here before this rant goes any further but will say that the presence of Charlie heightens the stakes for Sarah and Little Bee while allowing the author to have a voice of truth. A literary device but put to good use in the story, at least until the end.

Shall we discuss the beach?

Here’s hoping the men came and only brought you more coffee.

Jillian

Click here to see all installments.

The Book Club - Little Bee by Chris Cleave

2010-06-17T09:00:00.011-04:00

Welcome to the second installment of the first virtual book club at Book Allowance. The book is “Little Bee” by Chris Cleave. I’m happy to introduce Rebeca Barroso, my partner in crime. The plan is to alternate entries like old-school mail. You remember mail, right? Anyway, we’ll go back and forth until we’ve exhausted the raised topics. There may be spoilers.

When the italics stop . . .
By Rebeca Barroso

Hi, Jilly!

Indeed, a couple of thousand miles sadly do separate us, but discussing a novel over coffee is, though literally impossible, thankfully, virtually quite possible. At least, I’m having coffee, aren’t you?

I hadn’t heard the hype over Little Bee, but when I saw it was the same author as Incendiary, I thought I should give it a chance. I didn’t read it, but the film was rather good. In fact, knowing this book will be made into a film soon, too, colored the way I saw the characters, but that’s not relevant.

Structure and narrative voice. You are right Jilly, the author did a great job of establishing many questions for whose answers I, as a reader, kept turning the pages. And with every new page I found the plot thickened even further and even more questions were unanswered and complications arose for which I needed resolutions, and I kept reading on.

However, more than that –and my curiosity really is the driving force behind most of the things I pursue – what kept me turning page after page wasn’t chasing after the answers. In fact, I even wondered if he’d be successful in meeting the impossibly high expectations of the atrocious events that my imagination was already concocting about what happened in the beach. I once saw a documentary on the making of Jaws and they said its true success was to have the plastic shark break down and be useless for the shots because in horror, true terror comes from never showing you what happens, but to give you a whiff of it and then let you imagine the rest. I was very apprehensive about the chapter where I would no longer wonder but be presented with what actually happened at that beach. (He did, though, absolutely portray with amazing efficacy the truly horrific events at the beach without falling short of expectations, but we can discuss that in another installment.)

Anyway, the true force behind my turning the pages… I was quietly enveloped by the lyrical rhythm of Little Bee’s voice and her amazing awareness of color. I was mesmerized. I was feeling the temperatures, touching the textures, smelling the scents, immersed in the dream-like hues, the tone of every single sentence… the visuals are very powerful and the language so melodic…

Sarah’s voice wasn’t quite as hypnotic but that’s not a flaw in the book, it’s what makes Sarah the classic white-bread Englishwoman from the suburbs. In my opinion the author did a great job of speaking from a female POV in both women, with the color of the Nigerian girl’s culture and language and the blandness of the Surrey girl’s sheltered life.

I felt the alternating from the melodic and colorful narrative of Little Bee to the more antiseptic narrative of Sarah was like coming in and out of reality, from flashback to present, from Nigeria to England, from another world to this one, from dreaming to waking.

Little Bee’s speech was believable to me. I don’t know anyone from Nigeria, but her use of English resembles very closely the speech, usage and cadence I’ve experienced with friends from Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Somalia. The Jamaican was dead-on, too. And as much as accents can be misused and really pull you out of a narrative when they don’t work, these actually helped my experience and involvement, not unlike Alexander McCall Smith’s in his novels (another white guy successfully writing from the POV of an African woman). Though I too had a bit of an issue with the word weh. Couldn’t quite find out how to express it.

As a matter of fact, I was relying on the accents so much to switch from one narrator to another, that at some point, Little Bee’s Queen’s English is so devoid of Nigerian italics that I didn’t notice I was reading her, until several paragraphs in. When I realized I had been reading in Sarah’s voice a chapter belonging to Little Bee, I had to start over. I felt a little bit cheated.

Yes, I loved the novel. I enjoy non-linear storylines, so the structure of the flashbacks intersected with the present were very welcome. I also particularly enjoy watching (again, I have a movie-oriented brain) how the first and second acts give way to the third act (i.e., how facts are established, then conflict introduced to upset the natural order of things, before arriving to a resolution).

I like the way you put it: “What you do when the past catches up with you, confronts you, grabs your shoulders and shakes you until you pay attention.” You can only run so far. Eventually you’re gonna have to stop running, turn around, face it, stand up to whatever it is, solve it and put an end to it. Most people think there are no consequences to “not doing anything about it” but there are as many sins of omission and enough damage done out of neglect as there is harm in action. I like that message in this book.

Yes, it’s all about the collision of these people in that beach, all those years ago, but more than that, I particularly found one place poignant, when both stories intertwine in a way I hadn’t expected. Little Bee says all the stories start out with the-men-came-and-they… and we’re told a string of horror stories of third world tragedy and young girls and abusive soldiers… but… then you realize even Sarah’s story, in the present day, for a mature woman in the first world, is starting with Lawrence showing up at her door. Very literally, the man came and he… it sent shivers down my spine to realize at that moment how very present and real Little Bee’s constant terror was, how silently and gently and innocently “he” can come (not always setting fire to a town or ravaging and destructing) and why she was always (in the best dark humor possible, which I appreciated) looking for ways to kill herself, even while having tea with the Queen in Buckingham Palace, in case the men came and they... But this is where we can pick up about Sarah and her naïveté, which was an issue for me, as well. Was this innocence/stupidity necessary to drive the plot, or are British middle-class suburban housewives generally this thick?

I was also curious why you didn’t even mention Batman. Charlie is in every chapter except the first, has a distinct language usage all of his own, there’s the duality of his identity and the safety of the costume, plus he’s the only element that finally delivers Little Bee to her fate (I had to choose these past few words very carefully in case we are not giving away endings or spoilers). Any thoughts on why Batman/Charlie is at all a character (with so many particular details) necessary to the narrative, when Sarah and Andrew could have been childless?

Rebeca

Click here to see all installments.

The Book Club - Little Bee by Chris Cleave

2010-06-16T09:00:00.006-04:00

Welcome to the first virtual book club at Book Allowance. I’m happy to introduce Rebeca Barroso, my partner in crime. We'll be discussing "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave. The plan is to alternate entries like old-school mail. You remember mail, right? Anyway, we’ll go back and forth until we’ve exhausted the raised topics. There will be spoilers so you’ll just have to deal with that. Here we go!

In Which My Own Point of View Comes Into Question
By Jillian Taylor

Hi, Rebeca!

I’m so pleased you agreed to participate in this virtual book club. A couple of thousand miles separate us so discussing a novel over coffee is virtually impossible. (I should note I hate puns and yet I use them.) We decided on Little Bee based on ease of acquisition, which is not the worst reason to read a book. I actually had passed over the book many, many times in bookstores, choosing instead a different novel I wanted to read. Little Bee sounded interesting; it received high praise – but I moved on. I can get that way sometimes. When a book or a movie is overly hyped, I shy away from getting on board. I still haven’t seen 'Slumdog Millionaire' despite the Oscar.

Needless to say, I’m glad we settled on Little Bee. It was worth it and I get the piles of praise heaped on the book and the author. Instead of listing all the awesome things about the book, I want to first bring up structure and narrative voice, and how they both combine to successfully lure the reader into finishing the story.

(In my opinion, a book is successful if I turned every page. Granted, I am willing to abandon ship if a book sucks. Some people find great satisfaction in completing a novel they hated. Not me.)

From the first couple of pages, several curious questions were raised. Who is this narrator, Little Bee, and how did she come to be in a British immigration detention center? What is her real name? Where is her sister Nkiruka? If all the girls’ stories begin with “The men came and they-” then what is Little Bee’s ending? Who does she know in Kingston-upon-Thames and what happened on the beach?

Then, with chapter two, the first person narration changes to Sarah. We learn her husband Andrew is the man Little Bee called from the detention center and he is dead. We learn that Andrew’s depression began two years prior when they met Little Bee on a Nigerian beach. We learn Sarah lost her middle finger that same meeting.

It was at this point that I started to get excited. So many questions and such interesting ones at that. How did Sarah lose her finger? What happened that sent Andrew spiraling down into depression? What the hell happened on that beach?

This technique made me wonder if Little Bee was secretly a mystery. Not in the traditional sense of murder on page one ending with clever reveal at the end. But a mystery like an unfolding. I kept turning the pages because I didn’t know when I was going to learn everything I so desperately wanted to learn.

I was surprised at how quickly the story of what happened on the beach was revealed. I thought that would be a longer tease to maintain interest. Once Little Bee told Sarah her side and the narrative slid into Sarah’s memory, I realized the structure of the novel influenced the decision to explain that significant moment in both of their lives so early.

Because the first half of the novel is about the past; the present action is woven with memories and explanations about everything that lead up to the intersection of their lives. The second half of the book is the future: what you do when the past catches up with you, confronts you, grabs your shoulders and shakes you until you pay attention. The plot becomes more linear, more chronological, as Sarah and Little Bee must deal with the consequences of that fateful day.

The questions raised in early chapters got me to the middle so that when the plot changed to more present action, I was always invested in the characters and ready to see it to the end. Very clever, Cleave.

The chapters toggle between the two female narrators. I am always a little wary of authors attempting to write in first person of the opposite gender. I think of Donna Tartt’s male narrator in The Secret History who I constantly forgot was a young man. Then I force myself to remember that one of my favorite female characters was created by Wally Lamb; her adolescent voice could have been mine.

The first chapter especially threw me. Not only is the narrator female, but the narrator is a Nigerian girl who has learned the Queen’s English. Sad to say but I have no way of knowing if the forays into hypothetical conversations with girls back in Nigeria or the actual dialogue with Yvette of Jamaica is portrayed accurately. My personal concern over the accuracy was really my discomfort with having no touch point to relate to Little Bee in a cultural way. The more I read, the more I understood her as a woman and as an outsider but I’m still not truly confident I understand the word weh.

As a writer myself, I find accents a daunting task. I know how I talk. I know how the people around me talk. But writing phonetic dialogue to capture the essence of an accent? Scary. To be honest, I was relieved to learn that Cleave used dictionaries to get a handle on Nigerian and Jamaican dialect. I want to trust what writers write but I also understand that the point of fiction is to make things up and that we can’t always “write what we know.”

So, Rebeca, how did you feel about the accents and the first person narrators? Did the binary structure of past and future come up in your reading? Did you even like the novel? (The most basic question of all.)

I’ll wrap up this letter here. I could go into my faith in fiction as a way to impart truth and difficult topics in a way a newspaper article never could. Or how I kind of have some problems with the trip back to Africa – well, maybe those problems are actually with Sarah and her naïveté. But we’ll get to that later.

Weh!
Jillian

Word of the day - Borgesian

2010-06-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

Borgesian (adj.) in the style of Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinian writer particularly known for his short stories which have a metaphysical, fantastic quality

'In all my years talking to publicists for Paul Reiser and Bruce Willis and the like, I had never heard the adjective "Borgesian." Tom used it.'

- on Tom Panelas, the Encyclopaedia Britannica publicist, from The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

Happy Friday!

2010-06-11T15:30:00.001-04:00

Dreaming of Paris this afternoon and wishing I could spend a day browsing through Shakespeare & Co.

Someday...

Have a great weekend!

And the Orange Prize goes to . . .

2010-06-11T10:07:00.005-04:00

Barbara Kingsolver for her newest novel The Lacuna!

The Guardian has a lovely interview with Kingsolver.

I hadn't realized all the flack she received almost a decade ago.

Dead in the Water?

2010-06-11T09:00:00.010-04:00

Well, Charlaine Harris just launched right into it. The beginning of Dead in the Family is no surprise - don't worry.

Amelia, the witch, is moving out of Sookie's house, back to New Orleans. A couple of references to Sookie's injury ties back to the Fae War that ended the previous installment. Remember Eric, the vampire? Yup, thanks to a perfectly placed question by Amelia we know they're still dating and the blood bond is as creepy and strong as ever. The most helpful paragraph was the one that listed everyone who had been killed: Claudine, the fairy cousin; her were brother's friend Mel; her sister-in-law Crystal, too.

That might seem like a succinct, successful summation of what happened prior to page one but it was a smidge too vague. It's been a bit of time between books and I have to admit I forgot a bit.

I kept going though. I'd always been satisfied before.

Sookie visits a lot of people. Her fairy cousin Claude shows up. She has dinner with her brother. She talks to Sam at work. She even visits Vampire Bill, her neighbor and ex-boyfriend, who isn't feeling so well after getting hurt in the Fae War. A pack of weres shows up to use her property to run free during the full moon.

Not much is happening. And then a couple of things happen - Sookie and Pam kill assassins out to get them. Claude moves in. A were smells a dead body buried on her property so that means she needs to attend a pack meeting.

When I list these actions (plot points?), it kind of feels like something should be building up. Right? Everything felt so not tense or important.

Eric's maker shows up with another vampire he turned. Some antics ensue but that action seemed removed from Sookie's life. She bitches a lot about not hearing from him and when this threesome comes back to bite her in the ass toward the end, eh, okay, sure. I guess it all plays out logically.

Nothing felt new. Of course, the style and tone of the first person narrator was the same, as it should be. But Sookie wasn't pushed far enough in Dead in the Family. There was one new mindset, one thought Sookie kept playing with that was heresy for her and it should have been exploited more.

She is starting to consider that killing someone is a viable option to handle a problem. Sookie has never thought this way before. There are a handful of sentences that demonstrate this. She seems worried about it at times, what does mean, etc. It gets lost in the shaman/pack meeting/magic juice plot line. When it appears again at the end, it wasn't big enough. She made a choice and it just should have been a bigger decision. Sookie has been through so much and struggles with depression and anger. If she was ever going to toe that line of murder so close she almost loses herself, this story should have been it.

I still wonder about the magic of consuming one book after another in a series. I didn't have the time to go back and reread the previous book and I felt that time lag as I read Dead in the Family. Would I have been more invested if I'd read it just after Dead and Gone? I don't know. But I did feel that way with Bullet.

Now that I think about it, Harris and Hamilton consider their books as stand-alone novels. I'm beginning to disagree. They work better within the construct of a series. Like a soap opera, dropping out for a while and then coming back in can be very confusing and turn you off to the story. But watching everyday only makes you anticipate tomorrow. (Or Monday, in today's case.)

Word of the day - milquetoast

2010-06-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

milquetoast (n.) a very timid, unassertive, spineless person, esp. one who is easily dominated or intimidated

'As we talk, I'm confronted by a Trebek I never expected. No prissy milquetoast, he goes out of his way to swear like Uncle Junior on The Sopranos ("bullshit" and "asshole" are two favorites).'

- from The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

sexy photo, no?

Word of the day - dilettante

2010-06-10T09:00:00.002-04:00

dilettante (n.) a person who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, esp. in a desultory or superficial way; dabbler

'I hate Flaubert, that superior bastard. Why should the pursuit of knowledge be a monopoly of so-called experts? Hooray for dilettantes.'

- from The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

(That's Flaubert to the side.)

Wet your whistle

2010-06-09T09:00:00.006-04:00

Charlaine Harris posted the first chapter of Dead in the Family, the tenth installment in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Check it out.

More Sookie et al. links:

HBO series True Blood website. Different plot arcs and some character shuffling but very satisfying in its own right.

True Blood wiki.

Sookie Stackhouse fan site.

Word of the day - onanistic

2010-06-09T09:00:00.002-04:00

onanistic (adj.) masturbatory

'But right now, I've arrived at the most onanistic moment of all - the encyclopedia essay on encyclopedias.'

- from The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

No. 19

2010-06-08T09:00:00.011-04:00

Nineteen of anything is a lot, especially in a fiction series. Although I suppose one of the benefits of writing the same character for twenty years is a longevity of fans and, if you're lucky, a moment in time when you become relevant and you finally get published in first run hardcover.

There are some drawbacks to Hamilton's writing style. Descriptions of all the gorgeous men in Anita Blake's life are long-winded. Men are poured into their very tight pants - often leather - and the older vampires wear silk ruffled shirts that expose chiseled chests. That kind of thing.

There is a lot of sex in the romance novel fashion. Plenty of time is spent on the logistics of all the paranormal sex due to Anita's short stature and some of the men turning into animals. I actually find myself skimming the descriptions and moving ahead to when a plot point is happening. A bit surprising since all the sex and violence is one of the reasons to read the Anita Blake series.

Hamilton has said in interviews that she writes each book as a stand alone story with a central mystery to be solved. I'm starting to find the mysteries more flimsy with each installment and the repetition of interpersonal dramas a little boring.

Richard is the werewolf king and one-third of the triumvirate of power with Anita and Jean-Claude, the vampire master of St. Louis. He appears in Bullet willing to solidify their power base which, of course, means sex. This has been an ongoing issue due to Richard's unwillingness to fully claim his werewolf identity and a tinge of homophobia.

On the same night - duh - the triumvirate is visited psychically by the soul of a bat-shit crazy vampire who has taken over the bodies of other power vampires. Bat-shit vampire wants to break the triumvirate and potentially take over Anita's body to rule the world. Or something like that.

At least she gave the ardeur a bit of a break in this one.

Well, not really. Anita needs to gain control of the various weretigers (there are many colors, blue even) and in the midst of attempting to do this (through sex, surprise!) bat-shit appears again and the ardeur protects them all. Protects them from being taken over by the old soul but maybe not from unprotected sex; no one remembers what happened. They just wake up in one naked heap.

Then Anita gets pissed. And she helps the police. She gets more pissed and runs a couple of laps. Some more tigers show up. You get my drift.

The ending is quickly wrapped up in a final short chapter, like always. I'm not exactly sure what the mystery was in Bullet. Maybe how Anita was going to gain the loyalty of the tigers. The next installment has certainly been set up. Bat-shit vampire is still out there, awaiting defeat.

I wonder if I prefer to read series back to back. That is how I first read Anita Blake - something like the first fifteen or so within a couple of months. The slow character development didn't feel so slow with thousands of pages all together. Reading number nineteen several months after the previous novel doesn't feel quite as satisfying.

Although, as always, it's nice to visit with characters I've gotten to know very well.

Word of the day - byzantine

2010-06-08T09:00:00.001-04:00

Byzantine (adj.) (sometimes lowercase) complex or intricate; characterized by elaborate scheming and intrigue

'And then, at the far end, are those lies that are so byzantine, so full of twists and nuances, that I can never remember how they go, even though I've heard them recounted a dozen times.'

- regarding his father's inclination toward premeditated jokes from The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

Knowing it all isn't the same as remembering it all

2010-06-07T09:00:00.006-04:00

In A.J. Jacobs' journey through the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, the same question is raised: will he actually know more for having read every volume and will he actually be smarter?

Some of the experts he asks say no but Jacobs finds gems of wisdom from the tome. At least one very smart person he knows calls his quest very American, very noble. That's a nice sheen to put on a year of obsessive reading of very heavy books.

The Know-It-All follows the year Jacobs spent reading the micro and macro volumes of Britannica. A chapter for almost every letter, the memoir is structured like an encyclopedia - many little installments listed alphabetically with several longer sections that relate to Jacobs' life around that time.

One benefit is that his insults become more impressive. In talking with a writer he states Wednesday is the deadline, otherwise he'll be so angry he'll have to rip the guy more assholes than an abalone. After meeting with silence, he explains that abalones are a type of snails with five assholes, actually a row of holes on the shells of which five of them serve as outlets for waste. At least he is self-aware.

I thought it was an amusing little tidbit, a nice twist on the cliche, a clever way to make it clear that I really needed the article. Instead, I came off looking like a colossal outlet for waste.

Jacobs has a very amusing way to turning a phrase, as seen above. I think it his distinctive point of view that made the pages turn so easily. He and his wife are trying to get pregnant and often turn to the various fertility gods and goddesses Jacobs learns about to help their cause. He also tries various mating rituals that he reads about, such as dance of the blue-footed booby.

As much as I enjoyed learning how his life was affected and influenced by this onerous task, I really enjoyed the more informative sections in which he describes a particularly interesting bit of information. For example:

giraffe

"The voice has so rarely been heard, that the animal is supposed to be voiceless; but it is capable of low call notes and moans." Good to know next time I'm playing with kids: "A cow says moo, a cat says meow, the giraffe says [imitate nonsexual moan here]."

Or,

elf

Not the cute creatures we've been spoon-fed by the media. Elves in traditional folklore sat on people's chests while they slept to give them bad dreams. They also stole human children and substituted deformed fairy children. Wonder if Santa is really a crack dealer.

I appreciate the Jacobs wanted to best his father at something. His dad had begun reading Britannica and made it to the mid-Bs before giving up due to his busy schedule. I remember having a complete Britannica at some point in my childhood. It was dipped into when needed - this was pre-internet obviously. Most times, nearby articles would catch my eye and a hour or two disappeared.

But reading this book and being titillated by all these facts makes me want to have a shelf full of reference books to peruse. Clicking through links on the web can be entertaining but I do prefer the tactile aspects to handling books.

Of course, if I had a choice, I would get the eleventh edition from 1911.

Word of the day - propinquity

2010-06-07T09:00:00.003-04:00

propinquity (n.) nearness in place, proximity; nearness of relation, kinship; nearness in time.

"I do okay on the vocabulary section - I know what "propinquity" means - but the math quizzes send my score scurrying south."

- on taking the Mensa test from The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

Q&A with Laurell K. Hamilton

2010-06-04T09:00:00.007-04:00

Entertainment Weekly's Q&A, not mine. Boo.

The 19th installment of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series has dropped. Bullet will be bringing the whole gang back together in St. Louis - as opposed to the traveling roadshow and practically novella books.

Hamilton says:

For me the Anita series is built like a mystery series, which means that as much as possible each book stands alone, so you have a mystery to solve from the beginning to the end of the book. You give the reader a sense of a full meal. But there's always more crime out there. One of the things about having a character who is now a U.S. marshal, there are always bad gusy out there doing bad things. I never run out of ideas. Every book spawns new ideas for me. I love and enjoy writing Anita and the gang, and I learned something new with every book.

I learned some new things from this interview:

1. When Hamilton plays Christmas music while she writes, that's bad news.

2. Anita Blake is such a badass character she helps women leave abusive relationships.

3. Anita Blake is such a badass character she helps men leave abusive relationships.

4. Hamilton talks a lot about licking her wounds. Maybe she is a shapeshifter...

Things I learned from her website:

1. Hamilton has dyed her hair.

2. Hamilton has dresses like Anita wears for BDSM scenes.

3. Hamilton enjoys the Renaissance Faire.

4. So does her husband.

Word of the day - philistine

2010-06-04T09:00:00.003-04:00

Philistine (n.) a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.

"Maybe I'm a philistine, but I don't see the brilliance of this."

- about Joseph Beuys' performance in which he walked around an art gallery explaining art to a dead hare he carried from The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs.

Bonus fun definition: Philistines were a people of coastal Palestine who made war on the Israelites. German slang evolved the definition to be a contemptuous term for 'townies' and by extension an 'uncultured person.'

word of the day - spandrel

2010-06-03T09:00:00.003-04:00

Spandrel (n.) an area between the extradoses of two adjoining arches, or between the extrados of an arch and a perpendicular through the extrados at the springing line

"That's what you might call an evolutionary spandrel, spandrels being the supports when a domes was built that later were used as decorative elements, unrelated to their original use. You create something for one purpose and it gets used for another."

from Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

Bonus fun fact: This quote is from a character who is terribly misstating Gould's paradigm of spandrels. His explanation is better used for adaptation by accident.

Big, fat themes = big, fat book

2010-06-02T09:15:00.009-04:00

It's no news that I love a big, fat book. I appreciate novels that have a lot to say, a lot of story tell. Normally that means big, fat themes as well.

The soap opera of the characters overwhelmed the theme by the time I turned the final page. There were so many players: the narrator Bibi Chen, the twelve tourists, the myriad of characters in China and Burma, the Lord's Army tribe. Bibi's omniscient narration bounces around between characters, story lines, plots and subplots. It is all very interesting but in one fell swoop the Big Idea weaving them all together is a little lost.

So let's break it down.

The title is from a story told within the novel. While I am terrible at choosing titles for my stories (see my sidebar of published short stories), I trust that other authors are much more particular and purposeful with their titles.

A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes.

Elements of this parable are repeated throughout the story. The tourists want to help the oppressed Burmese people they encounter. They give away bunches of money at times. It begs the question over deed versus intent. I think the tourists even have a debate about it.

Just because I think I know the 'right' way to do something doesn't mean it is the right way for the person I introduce my idea to. The American spread of democracy was one of the examples in the novel. We have a history of imposing our ideals on other nations, not always to planned results.

An Australian reality show and a dog trainer with a TV series also come into play. I think Tan used these details to comment that the grass is always greener on the other side. Using media bites the TV dog trainer in the butt even as it helps his cause of finding his friends. The reality show concept is wanted by the Lord's Army but that doesn't end well at all.

People think they know what is best. And maybe they do - for them. But tourism and international travel certainly throws into relief that one's beliefs do not always translate as easily as the verb to be.

What ties these two ideas together - faith in one's personal beliefs and the faux reality of media and television and life - is the concept of fiction.

Tan writes:

The truth is, I've always preferred the old fictions about any ancient land. I read to escape to a more interesting world . . . I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left . . . That's what we visitors love, a rustic romanticism and antiquated prettiness, no electric power lines, telephone poles, or satellite television dishes to mar the view. Seek and you shall find your illusions through the magic of tourism.

We choose the illusions that sustain us. Reality can be too difficult at times and escapism is necessarily available twenty-four hours a day. So beyond books with made-up ideas, we find the truths that make us happy and safe. And everybody wants to feel that way.

Word of the day - peccadillo

2010-06-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

Peccadillo (n.) a very minor or slight sin or offense; a trifling fault

"Humans had this extraordinary fondness for their own peccadilloes."

from Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

A most interesting case for omniscient narration

2010-06-01T09:15:00.005-04:00

The narrator of Saving Fish from Drowning is a ghost. So it makes sense that Bibi Chen (said ghost) could go anywhere and see anything. But wait! There's more. Bibi can know things about people, a bit like clairvoyance.

At her funeral, after hearing her friends discuss the touring trip to Burma she was supposed to lead them on, hearing the concerns they expressed out loud as well as knowing the true reasons why they said these things, Bibi says:

How I knew all this, I had no notion at first, didn't even wonder how I knew. But I sensed others as clearly as I sensed myself; their feelings became mine. I was privy to their secret thoughts: their motives and desires, guilt feelings and regrets, joys and fears, as well as shades of truth within what they said, and what they refrained from saying. The thoughts swam about me like schools of colorful fish, and as people spoke, their true feelings dove through me in a flash. It was that shocking and effortless. The Mind of Others - that's what the Buddha would have called it.

Well, that works. Certainly makes the case for how Bibi will be able to relate so much more than just observations as the group continues on the tour without her. It allows the narration to move effortlessly between characters, jumping from mind to mind at whim.

Until we come across Heinrich Glick, a shifty, shady con man who bounced around Asia working for resorts and hotels.

As I said, he was a slippery man. Wait another minute and he would have changed his position another one hundred and eighty degrees, then another, until you had gone in a circle, and all by his reporting differing, vague innuendoes. Even now, I felt I did not understand some essential aspects of this man. I couldn't. He had thrown a barrier up. Or had I? In Buddhism it is said you must have complete compassion to have complete understanding. I, on the other hand, wished that the slick Mr. Glick would fall face-first into the water. I don't suppose that would qualify me as compassionate. Suffice it to say, I did not know at the time all there was to know about Heinrick Glick.

I think we all know that this is going to matter in the mystery of the tourists' upcoming disappearance. (This isn't a spoiler; the newspaper clipping included in the beginning of the novel sets up this mystery.)

It feels a little cheap, a little easy to have a narrator who has this magical ability to read minds and even know people's histories and motivations all of a sudden encounter someone she can't read. Possibly the Buddhism elements to this ability are appropriate in establishing the rules and exceptions.

And then there are the times Bibi is able to influence people through manipulating their dreams. She convinces her Burmese contact Walter to change reservations for the group through a dream about a conversation that never happens. He wakes up believing it actually happened and quickly makes the changes.

After the group goes missing, Bibi has one missing tourist and her kinda boyfriend (who had stayed behind on the fateful trip due to a hangover) have the same dream. The woman is a monkey and he is a tree, they weirdly have monkey-tree sex, they both wake up desperate for the other. The dream feels superfluous because by the end of the novel it hasn't directly influenced any events. Not like, say, the dreams Bibi gives to Burmese government officials to start a search and rescue.

But for having a narrator who talks to me directly and talks about her abilities, mum's the word on dream weaving. How did she pick up that skill? Or even discover that she had it? We are never told. The closest we get is this:

I visited a few people in the Land of Sleep. I had discovered that I could enter dreams quite easily with those who were predisposed to magic.

That's it.

Such are the corners we writers force ourselves - and our characters - into.

Word of the day - schadenfreude

2010-06-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

Schadenfreude (n.) satisfaction or pleasure at someone else's misfortune

"I admit that whenever I heard that certain offspring of friends had turned into misfits or ingrates, I received the news with schadenfreude, and also was relieved to have missed the entire spectrum of parental frustration and despair."

from Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

(to hear pronunciation)

Happy Memorial Day!!

2010-05-31T09:00:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure if wishing you a Happy Memorial Day is the proper phrasing but there you have it.

While most people see Memorial Day as a Monday off from work to spend outside with the barbecue (a noble pursuit), the day is intended to commemorate the U.S. men and women who died while in military service.

A national moment of silence takes place at 3pm local time. If you're outside Philly, head over to Valley Forge park. That's where I'll be with my mom. We'll be remembering her father, my Poppy.

Whatever you end up doing, have a great holiday!

Word of the Day - cupidity

2010-05-28T12:33:00.005-04:00

Cupidity (n.) eager or excessive desire, esp. to to possess something; greed; avarice

"It was a Monday morning, when the museum was usually closed, but a number of out-of-towners on Tea Garden Drive saw the funeral as a fine opportunity to sneak into the current exhibit, Silk Road Treasures from the Aurel Stein Expeditions, a testimony, in my opinion, to British Imperial plundering at the height of cupidity."

from Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

The Art of Being Creative

2010-05-28T12:15:00.003-04:00

Over at Zen Habits, Leo Babauta interviewed some artists he admires to compile a list of their creative habits. Turns out, two main themes kept appearing: find solitude and participate.

There are also some extra quotes from famous writers.

Without great solitude no serious work is possible. - Pablo Picasso

Good stuff. Check it all out here.

Pin-it-Forward!

2010-05-27T09:00:00.002-04:00

Today I am taking part in Pin-it-Forward, a blogger mashup organized by sfgirlbybay and pinterest.

Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board - it allows you to bookmark images from the web to your own curated gallery. You can follow other people's board and even re-pin their images to your own boards. The program allows you to link back to the original source so you and others can follow that inspirational trail back to the beginning.

Personally, I always forget the beginning of an idea since the end result is usually the more powerful element but I love knowing and remembering beginnings.

The Pin-it-Forward event has a theme: what home means to me. Below is a sneak peak of some of the items on my pin board.

And make sure to check out EV Photo Chic, the blog of Elizabeth (crafter, photographer and designer) who posted her inspiration board yesterday. And bookmark Radical Flower to return to tomorrow to see what home means to Serena (love the photographs on this blog).

As you may have figured out, I love love love books. While I would like a library like the one up top, I'd settle for a wall of shelves, preferably an Old Pickup Blue wall. A girl can never have too many books. (via thegentlemanscholar & cloudinthesky & elledecor)

I love old movies and keep old VHS copies around. Best for rainy days with popcorn. Rear Window, Naughty Marietta and Phantom of the Opera. You might guess I adore Nelson Eddy. You'd be correct. (posters via cyber-cinema & moviegoods & wikipedia of all places)

A bit of charm where I can get it. (via marielito's photostream) Flowers, flowers everywhere. (via apartmenttherapy) A desk near a window, perfect for early morning writing. (via theclosetentrepreneur) Touches of tartan. (via Levan Mindiashvili) A home with seasons - especially autumn. (via cambridgeincolour)

Word of the Day - aspersion

2010-05-26T11:00:00.001-04:00

Aspersion (n.) a damaging or derogatory remark or criticism; slander; the act of slandering

Mairtin: A wussy oul pussy you called me. And if people start doing that then I'll have to be pegging something back at them, and it isn't a smatter of poteen it'll be, it'll be aspersions. And if the aspersions are true or not I don't know, and I don't care. I only threw them out because it was you who started the who shebang in the first place.

Mick: What are the aspersions anyways?

Mairtin: Just general ones.

Mick: The only aspersions that could be cast are the ones I've already admitted to, and the ones I've already served me time over. That I had had a drink taken, and a good drink, and that she had no seat-belt on her, and that was the end of it. No other aspersions could there be.

- Martin McDonagh, A Skull in Connemara

Based on a true story?

2010-05-26T09:00:00.005-04:00

I get confused by memoirs that are fictionalized or fiction that claims to be heavy on fact. So Amy Tan's note to her reader at the beginning of Saving Fish from Drowning really confused me.

The idea for this book began with a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder. I was walking on the Upper West Side in Manhattan when I was caught without an umbrella in a fierce summer downpour. I spotted a possible shelter: a handsome brownstone building with gleaming black double doors. A brass plaque read: "American Society for Psychical Research." Lured by the possibilities within, I rang the bell, and spent the rest of the day perusing the Society's archives.

...

There was another case in the archives that fascinated me even more. The writings were recorded by a medium named Karen Lundegaard, who lived in Berkeley, California. She had received in fifty-four sessions a rambling story that was part rant, part memoir, delivered by a spirit named Bibi Chen.

...

However these writings came to be, I decided the material was irresistible. In a city known for its characters, Bibi Chen was the genuine article, a true San Franciscan. Without giving away her story, I will mention only that she talked about eleven tourists missing in Burma, who were the subject of new headlines for weeks, a story readers may well recognize. While Karen Lundegaard may have constructed from what she had already read in the news, her writings contained details that were not reported, according to people I later interviewed.

Whether one believes in communication with the dead or not, readers are willing to suspend disbelief when immersed in fiction. We want to believe that the world we have entered through the portals of another's imagination indeed exists, that the narrator is or has been among us. And so I have written this story as that, fiction inspired by Karen Lundegaard's automatic writings.

See, the problem is, for me, that this note to me the reader came before the story began. I always read forewords, acknowledgments, notes to readers in the order they are presented. Silly me but I think that a book should be read in the order it is bound because that order was chosen for a reason. (Like certain albums back in the time when you bought a collection of songs in its entirety on purpose.)

So I have to wonder why Tan wanted me to doubt the fiction of this novel before I even reached page one. Because I have no idea if I believe in automatic writing and ghosts who feel inclined to pester sensitive people about their stories. Am I supposed to believe that Tan believes in that? If so, does it matter to the story?

I would have preferred this acknowledgment of inspiration be at the back of the book. Let me read the book (first person from Bibi's POV, so far), enjoy it, and then tell me where the kernel of the idea began. I do enjoy finding out what random fact or event begets a fat novel.

Just not ahead of time.

And not if the topic is metaphysical and freaky-deaky, as fun as those topics can be.

Because, now, I need to research Bibi Chen a bit. And other stuff, too.

* * *

Crap - looks like one long con. Why, why, why? I know fiction is kind of already a con but when you lie about it being true I just get confused about who I can trust. Apparently, it's not Amy Tan.

An interview with Tan on NPR. Can I blame the "manuscript in the attic" deceit on Lyme disease?

My new favorite website is . . .

2010-05-25T13:11:00.003-04:00

Hot Guys Reading Books!

The title says it all. Here's a lovely example:

(He's reading Harry Potter!)

Thanks to the Entertainment Weekly book blog Shelf Life for putting this out there.

Word of the day - poteen

2010-05-25T11:00:00.002-04:00

Poteen (n.) unlawfully distilled Irish whiskey

"He pours a small amount of poteen out onto his fingers and tosses it at Mairtin as if it's holy water. It hits Mairtin in the eyes."

-Martin McDonagh, A Skull in Connemara

Sweet as Sugar

2010-05-25T09:00:00.005-04:00

I picked up a hardcover copy of The Sugar Queen from the bargain section of Borders. Remainders are sad for authors but great for me; books I had meant to read pop into my vision and I can snatch it up for a fraction of the price.

(I will attempt to be happy if/when I have a remaindered book. That means it was published in the first place.)

Sarah Addison Allen's first novel, Garden Spells, was a charming novel. It was a quick read but whenever I review my bookshelves and see her novel, all I remember is that I enjoyed it. And sometimes that is enough.

All of her stories incorporate elements of magical realism without tiptoeing into the realm of the surreal. Once a promise is made some men are bound to them by a force beyond themselves. Books appear to a woman when she needs one, even if she doesn't want one. Scents envelope certain characters and influence others. Emotion can be baked into a pie.

My favorite was the tree from Garden Spells that threw apples; though, of course, you wouldn't want to eat those apples - do that and you will see your death. Not good.

The Sugar Queen opens with a local waitress Della Lee Baker camping out in Josey Cirrini's closet. Josey is confused by this but quickly dismisses alerting the authorities when Della Lee threatens to reveal Josey's secret - a cache of sugary treats, romance novels and travel magazines. A bit flimsy yes, but Josey sees the threat as real and the story moves forward.

Everyone has secrets: Della Lee's mysterious trip north; Josey loves the mailman and dreams of running away; the mailman is scared of something; Chloe is hounded by those books (a fate I would gladly take); and Josey's mother has a photograph she looks at every night just to see his hand.

While some secrets were a bit obvious with connections easily drawn, the way the characters circled each other was enjoyable. The Sugar Queen was more about the individual moments that made up these characters' lives than the linear structure of the plot.

One moment I loved was when Josey went to Della Lee's house to get some of her things and found a man asleep on the couch.

He was, very clearly, not the kind of man you wanted to wake.

He didn't have a shirt on and his jeans were unzipped, one hand tucked halfway inside his fly. He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.

His muscles indicated he spent a lot of time in a gym. His cheekbones were high and his hair was long and straight and dark. He smelled of alcohol and of something else, like if you took a match to a rosebush. It smelled good, but dark and smoky, and it made Josey feel heady, like she was losing herself in it somehow.

All at once she understood

This was the reason Della Lee left.

Something about that scent of a burning rosebush got me. Metaphors can be tough because they are so easily inappropriate but this one really worked.

It's a fast read, perfect for a night under a blanket with rain pounding on the window. Especially if you need to believe in something wonderful happening.

Love him or hate him - you'll still read him

2010-05-24T11:26:00.003-04:00

Another ambiguous review of the third installment in Larsson's Millenium Trilogy, courtesy of Slate.

Still - bad writing is hardly a barrier to success in this genre. A good plot can run right over pages and page of bad writing. And if there is a bad plot, or an incomprehensible one, great writing can always go around it. By these standards, 'The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest' is a failure.

Read the entire article here. I recommend following the embedded links.

Distilling the best parts

2010-05-24T09:00:00.006-04:00

Having seen the movie first, I began The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo more curious about what the differences would be between the two narrative forms.

I can think of two instances in which the translation from novel to movie was as good as the novel, if not better - Practical Magic and Fight Club.

The novel Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman is beautiful. I remember reading the beginning and wanting to read it aloud to someone; the language set the tone in such a lyrical way. No one was around so I read random sentences out loud to myself.

Night and Day, the aunts called them, and although neither girl laughed at this little joke or found it amusing in the least, they recognized the truth in it, and were able to understand, earlier than most sisters, that the moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.

Gillian broke hearts the way other people broke kindling for firewood.

It is a beautiful story about the power of love and fate and magic. And I love an omniscient narrator who clearly likes poetry.

The movie was great. I can watch it over and over.

The screenplay was distilled down to the main conflict that the sisters (Gillian and Sally) have to deal with - the evil ghost of an ex-lover who is haunting Gillian. Instead of having Sally run away from the old, rambling, magical home they were raised in, the movie is set firmly in that location. The movie becomes a charming story about two sisters finding their way back to each other and about Sally trusting in love. Good stuff.

Fight Club the movie was waaaaay better than Fight Club the book. You know the voice-overs that Edward Norton narrates? That's the entire book. I couldn't get into the first person narrator on the page. He's annoying. Maybe I just find unreliable narrator's frustrating. The movie is able to exploit the humor in the story, especially supposed love triangle.

And Brad Pitt strutted around without his shirt on - a lot.

For The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I think I'll call it a tie. I enjoyed the film so much and will tell everyone and their mother to go see it. Now that I've read the book, everyone and their mother should go read the book, too.

Obviously, there is so much that can be explained in detail in the novel form that just can't be accomplished is film. More Vagner relatives in the book. A longer timeline in the book. A way longer time from start to when Mikael and Lisbeth meet in the book.

It's worth it. All the extra back story and history and intrigue are fascinating.

Interestingly enough, I didn't miss anything in the movie. You know how sometimes when you watch a movie that you know came from a book, even if you didn't read the book, there are moments you know something was just chopped out with no solution? That's the worst.

Such a good job was done with the screenplay that the changes were seamless. Lisbeth and Mikael meet cute quickly in the movie, so that timeline was just collapsed on itself. The steps they take to connect the dots are logical with lots of montages to indicate time and effort. (The book obviously can show us much more of the scenes that truly make up the montage.)

Enough background information is included about the two protagonists to justify the film's story. Mikael was sentenced to serve time for fabricating a story about a prominent CEO. He could use some money so he takes a job investigating a forty year old crime. Lisbeth has some issues.

His ex-wife and daughter and sexual prowess are unnecessary for the film. Same with her attempts at normalcy with her boss and mother and previous guardian. I'm glad I got the detail in the book - Larsson had some great ideas. In order for a movie to keep pushing the plot forward, some elements need to fall by the wayside.

I don't want to give anything away about the plot which kind of means I can't talk about the book. There are so many moving parts that tie together by the end. Just know it is totally worth reading the novel or seeing the Swedish film or both. Larsson's style is straightforward at times, a bit journalistic without being completely spare like Hemingway. He moves chronologically through the investigation, dropping in background information as necessary.

I have wondered if the matter-of-fact style of the prose is Larsson's work or the translator, Reg Keeland. The word 'anon' is used at least three times by my count. Laura Miller attributes this to Larsson.

I do wish the original title would have been used for the translation. The Swedish title translates to Men Who Hate Women which has much more to do with the point of the story than a tattoo. Lisbeth Salandar has a more integral tattoo in the book. Also, in the book the dragon tattoo seems pretty small - on her shoulder, I think - but the movie shows it as taking up her entire back.

At the end of the day I loved it.

One of the best books I've read this year.

Word of the Day - pithy

2010-05-24T08:34:00.004-04:00

Pithy (adj.) having substance and point; tersely cogent syn see concise

"She'd thought of things she would say to him on the drive over here, elegant things about fear and love and pithy things about running to him and running away."

- Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

CUPPA book club

2010-05-21T15:00:00.004-04:00

Just a reminder that the next CUPPA book club will be meeting on Saturday, June 12 at 9:15am to discuss The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig.

(You may recall that I wrote about the most recent installment in the series.)

Here's my write-up for the flyer:

Eloise is in London to research British spies in the time of Napoleon. You may have heard of the Scarlet Pimpernel but did you hear about the Pink Carnation – a far more elusive spy? Through a mixture of Eloise’s discoveries and the historical adventure of the Pink Carnation, Willig presents romance in all its forms: frustrating, exhilarating, and of course, dashing!

The CUPPA Book Club returns again to revel in men who wear masks and capes and rescue damsels in distress – and the women who love them and fancy stomping their insole at times. Bring your best dramatic sigh as we discuss the rascal who is sets hearts aflame, Lord Richard Selwick.

CUPPA is a charming coffee and sandwich shop in Devon, PA. I hope you join us. And if you ever get a chance to swing by, say hi to Jen!

Saturday, June 12th at 9:15am

40 Berkley Road

Devon, PA 19333

P.S. When I typed 'CUPPA devon, PA' in Google to confirm the address and my original blog post about the book club showed up as the third link. Pretty cool.

Missed me?

2010-05-21T06:26:00.005-04:00

Sorry for the delay in posting something. I've been heavy into revising my novel and have finally found a moment to breath - and to post an intro to Stieg Larsson and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

If you visit Larsson's official website, you'll see a tagline "where Stieg Larsson's spirit lives." While I hope that his spirit is not chained to the internet forevermore, the site is one-stop shopping for all things Larsson.

He passed away shortly after submitting the first 3 novels in a planned series of 10. That I knew. What I didn't know was that he was an activist for most of his life, fighting against racism and right-wing extremism, i.e. neo-Nazis.

There is a posthumous controversy regarding his estate - Larsson left no will and his lifelong partner Eva Gabrielsson is fighting with his father and brother for control and access to the estate. A smallish snag in the whole deal (for the father and brother, at least) is that Gabrielsson controls the rights to the fourth novel in the series that Larsson had started before he died.

Random piece of advice: Write a will. Get married.

I actually saw the movie before I started reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. A couple of weekends ago, I was getting over a bad head cold and it was crazy hot out. So I dragged my mom to a small movie theater for over two hours of blissful air-conditioning. I was willing to see whatever they had that day and this was it.

The movie is awesome! Noomi Rapace is awesome! And Micke got kinda cute by the end, too.

(I don't want a Hollywood version of this Swedish film. Boo!)

I had heard great things about the book and the film (randomly, at a play I was seeing in Philly before the show started) but hadn't gotten around to picking it up. The day after the movie, I ran to the bookstore.

Random weird thing: On the official Larsson website, somebody thinks Lisbeth Salandar would listen to Lady Gaga. Um, not so sure about that tie-in.

A little late to the party

2010-05-13T10:39:00.005-04:00

Ha! I wrote about The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers before the New York Times! Take that!

I really don't know why I'm so jazzed about it. It's not like the book was a secret. But I have to say, I'm surprised the Sunday Book Review didn't write up the novel sooner. Mullen's first novel was quite the success and seemed a logical choice to have his sophomore attempt closely scrutinzed.

While I don't necessarily disagree with Daniel Wallace's point that Mullen's prose can be a little heavyhanded at times. For example, "A surge of guilt belted Whit in the chest." Yeah, that one is a bit much even though I see what Mullen is trying to do.

Wallace does the exact same thing in his assessment (ironically? blindly?) - "[t]oo often the prose rides shotgun to the plot."

Hopefully, Mullen won't be upset by Wallace's article. For the most part, it's a positive review. And besides, Mullen can always rejoice in his other 'rollicking' reviews.

Writers do love lists

2010-05-12T09:00:00.004-04:00

Aside from the fact that I am one who loves lists (and can't wait to go here), it seems like other writers and readers enjoy lists as well.

Remember back when I posted about the Guardian's series of authors providing 10 rules for fiction? Well, through random click throughs today, I found another link to another article in the same vein.

Laura Miller of Salon.com wrote 5 recommendations for writers from a reader's POV. Here's the list in brief.

1. Make your main character want something.

2. Make your main character do something.

3. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, atmosphere/setting. (I'm looking at you, Irving.)

4. Remember that nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is and most readers either can't recognize 'good writing' or don't value it that much.

5. A sense of humor couldn't hurt.

Miller expands on each point and I think they all hold water. Writers love to play with words, with ideas, with scenes. I'll admit, I can amuse myself for hours reading my favorite thesaurus or tweaking a word choice in a short story.

But as a reader, please please please please make something happen. Anything.

And sometimes a character just walks across a room. No superfluous detail or inner monologue or intriguing ring of smoke around his head that indicates the guilt still felt for a deed long done is necessary.

Miller published a more recent article about a follow-up item to that list - 'Beware of Mary Sue.' I had never heard of the term 'Mary Sue' before, but I also don't follow fan fiction.

Mary Sue is a character that is an idealized version of the author and is a vehicle for the author's fantasies instead of being a character central to the story.

He may resemble his creator in most respects, but he drivers a hotter car, lives in a posher part of town and has a cooler job.

(I'm looking at you, too.)

I like that Miller calls for a literary fiction litmus test to determine if a character is a Mary Sue. I'm sure an examination of the Roth oeuvre would be a good start.

CUPPA book club

2010-05-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

Someone showed up to the second meeting of the CUPPA book club. A resounding success in my book!

We discussed Agatha Christie's Black Coffee which was originally written as a stage play. It wasn't until many years later that Charles Osborne adapted it into a novel.

It felt like a novel that had originally been a play. We both felt that the dialogue was the best part of the book. And I read just about every sentence of scene and detail as an enhanced stage direction.

Osborne basically stuck to the single room that would have been the static set on stage. Only in the beginning did he take us to Hercule Poirot's rooms and the dining room in the Armory home. Osborne was lazy. We could have moved to many different locations but he stayed with the play's action.

We discussed whether or not either of us identified the killer early on. (Don't worry. No spoilers in this post.) Neither of us knew ahead of time who the killer was. But I think that's part of Christie's game. The killer is typically the person least mentioned. Which means that the already scanty back-stories for the characters is supremely limited for the ultimate killer and when the identity is revealed, you sit there going "Oh, alright. I guess that works."

Mind you, this is based on having seen a Christie play and read two novels and several of her short stories.

But this is why I find her brand of mystery writing frustrating. Red herrings swim throughout her stories. I understand that to a certain degree, it is a necessary device in mystery novels. Christie used so many in Black Coffee that I merely shrugged when the killer was revealed. It was a bit out of nowhere and I had to accept the reason given.

Maybe I prefer more modern mysteries that rely on modern detective work. Or maybe I actually like thrillers which have a much different tone to solving a mystery.

It also didn't help that I don't enjoy the deductive detective who is smug, a bit arrogant, and in this instance has an egg-shaped head. Hercule Poirot just happened to know all the information pertinent to solving the mystery. Not a bit of research involved. It makes his detective work seem farcical.

I suppose a police procedural is more up my alley then.

Despite any misgivings about the novel, the CUPPA book club was fantastic and will meet again in one month.

On Saturday, June 12th at 9:15am we will meet at CUPPA to discuss The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig. This novel is great fun - of the dashing and swashbuckling kind.

Have all the stories been told before?

2010-05-10T09:00:00.001-04:00

Apparently there are anywhere from one to thirty-six basic plots in literature. I happen to like with the succinct list that totals 7 but 36 has some fun ones like 'murderous adultery' and 'an enemy loved.' (That last one could be a romance title.)

While I first told my brother about the Sword of Truth series, I mentioned Richard's knowledge of his Han, the inner source of his magic.

"Oh, the Force" was all he said.

Yeah, basically.

The Force gives the Jedi his power. Han is Richard's source of magic/power. The Force has a light side and a dark side; so too does the magic that comes from one's Han. Both stories incorporate a sense of morality and man's use of the Force/Han. Han is the power of life given by the Creator to mankind. The Living Force aspect of the Force implies that it is the energy of living things.

Destiny is a theme common to the Sword of Truth series and Star Wars. And a bajillion other stories as well - Oedipus being one of the oldest.

So the basic ideas Goodkind incorporates into his novels are nothing new. And idea I may come up with for a story most likely won't be new.

I think all one can strive for is a fresh story. A story that has a riveting combination of details, maybe never seen before. A story with a narrative style that takes your breath away. A story with characters that seem so real or ridiculous or unbelievable or quirky.

What takes me back to the Sword of Truth series is the growing familiarity with the characters and the long-term goals and concerns they deal with. Nothing is ultimately solved in one installment. A short-term battle may be won but the longer war still continues.

Richard and Kahlan are repeatedly separated due to outside forces (like in Faith of the Fallen, Richard is kidnapped) or due to their noble roles in the world - he as the Seeker and she as the Mother Confessor. I want them to be reunited and I keep reading to see how it will be done.

And the series is a fantasy series so I am interested to see how an author will create a new world. What is the mythology of the world? What new beasts might live there? And good old-fashioned magic is always fun.

Goodkind isn't reinventing the wheel here but let's be honest - I'm not asking him to. I want a fat book to lose myself in and he succeeds with each installment.

I heart the Seeker

2010-05-07T15:26:00.027-04:00

It is no secret that once I fall for a series - book, television, or movie - I fall hard and become devoted. A current TV devotion of mine (second only to Days of Our Lives) is Legend of the Seeker.

The show is based on a series by Terry Goodkind - The Sword of Truth novels. I hadn't even heard of the books when I started watching last season but between seasons 1 and 2 (watch here), I read several of the novels. The books are quite different from the television show and comparatively better written, but that will come up in a later post.

An introduction to the series is in order.

Meet Richard Cypher - a woods guide until he is name the Seeker by the Mother Confessor and a Wizard of the First Order. He is destined to wield the Sword of Truth and defeat the tyrant Darken Rahl. (His brother!) Richard screwed up killing his brother/evil tyrant and causes a dangerous rift between the world of the living and the Underworld. He's been trying to find the Stone of Tears to zip that rift right up but - as Cara often complains - many episodic miniature adventures crop up and Richard is constantly helping every farmer and distressed woman he passes by.

The first episode set up the tone of the show. I give you Exhibit A. Hello, Craig Horner.

Then he got scruffy in season 2, which is fine.

Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander - and yes, they say his full name often - is the Wizard of the First Order who names Richard as the Seeker. Richard grew up thinking Zed was just some nice old man who lived in his village. Nope, he's a wizard! And his grandfather! These secrets just keep coming.

Zed, played by Bruce Spence, is ridiculously tall. He's also well-cast. His face, a series of hills and valleys, is very expressive which enhances for the once-per-episode moment of pleasure/amusement, normally at the end when the danger has been averted.

Kahlan Amnell (Bridget Regan) is the Mother Confessor and Richard's love only they can never be together because her power to confess people (basically turning them into her slaves who will always tell her the truth) would be set lose if they did it. Then he'd only love her because her power made him love her. Bummer.

In Season 1, Kahlan was working the Mother Confessor angle a lot - not a lot of make-up, long white dress.

In Season 2, apparently she needed to be sexed up. She rarely dons the ever-important white dress. Her hair is darker and her eye make-up is darker. Darker is sexier in the Midlands, I suppose. Her new camo outfit is corseted, leather and slit up to there.

Love the thigh-high boots though. I guess the introduction of Cara wasn't enough.

Cara (Tabrett Bethell) is a Mord-Sith, terrifying order of women Darken Rahl used to punish/torture/what-have-you his victims.

Cara ends up helping Richard defeat Rahl - not her choice - but comes to see Richard's beliefs are true and swears her loyalty to him.

We get plenty of sexiness from Cara.

Maybe it's because I read the books but Kahlan is a more noble character to me. Her warrior side is played up in the books as opposed to her boobs. Probably doesn't matter much because any intended effect clearly didn't work. (See end of post.)

And last but not least, Darken Rahl (you may recognize him from The Lord of the Rings) is the ever-present tyrant and all-around baddie that Richard fights. Since being killed by his own brother, Rahl works for the Keeper, ruler of the Underworld who wants to destroy the world of the living. He loves rocking the sleeveless tunic.

And he futzes with his hands a lot.

Part of my amusement with this show is how earnest it is. The marketing references everything as "epic." The special effects like a blast of wizard fire are terrible but I'm not sure they truly know that. And the music swells with each horse cresting over the New Zealand hills. (Well, they got something right with the music - those horns!.)

ABC created the series specifically for syndication. They film in New Zealand for that everywhere and every time location that can only be found down under. The mostly Aussie and Kiwi actors play down their accents.

It's not like Xena or Hercules, both of which were very tongue in cheek. There are no references to modernity and I doubt a very special musical episode will ever occur.

This is a STORY! about the SEEKER! and he must WIN! You know, or bad things will happen.

Apparently a bad thing that most likely will happen is the show's cancellation. Boo. Unless, of course, $10,000 will really cut it.

*sigh*

Oh, well. At least there is the hope for Kahlan as Wonder Woman. I actually don't think that would be the worst idea in the world.

P.S. Sam Raimi clearly loves his brother. Proof #1, #2, #3.

A novel in dramatic form

2010-05-05T09:00:00.003-04:00

Yup, that's what McCarthy 'subtitles' The Sunset Limited - a novel in dramatic form.

What does this mean?!

(Please note the exclamation point meant to indicate this is not merely a question that I plan to answer for you below. It is an answer I supremely want to answer to.)

A novel is a long narrative in literary prose. Additional merits may be plot, constuction of narrative, character study, and use of language. Good stuff.

According to Freytag, the five parts to dramatic structure are: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouemont/resolution.

But is this the dramatic form McCarthy is referencing?

I wonder if he is referencing the major forms of literature - novel, poem, short story, novella and drama. Then the dramatic form is merely the script of a play.

So why squeeze a potential novel into a much abbreviated form - only dialogue and specific stage directions?

On the one hand, it makes sense why The Sunset Limited is a play and not a traditional novel. The benefits of staging the dialogue outweigh any pros to novelization. I honestly couldn't care less what color the pots on the stove are when the two characters are debating the existence in God.

And the act of listening to the debate, watching the debate, incites all the extra layers of messiness that belong with the story. (See yesterday.)

I was bouncing around more on the internet and Wikipedia had a sentence that caught my eye.

The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.

The collective reception sounds like the important element here. McCarthy wanted an immediate audience to this debate, a collective audience of many people, not just the single reader alone in a room.

I wonder if he wanted to write this as a novel but realized the dramatic form would better serve the work.

Oh, Cormac McCarthy, if Oprah ever gets you out of the house again this is the question I will ask!

Liberal tendencies

2010-05-04T09:00:00.003-04:00

Maybe it's because I'm white. Maybe it's being raised in the 90s during an overdrive time of in your face acceptance and the belief that anyone can do anything and don't judge a book by its cover. Maybe it's just my fear of pissing people off for using the wrong word.

But it was rough to crack open The Sunset Limited, a Cormac McCarthy play with two unnamed characters labeled only as White and Black.

(Quick synopsis: They are in Black's tenement apartment after Black stopped White from jumping in front of the eponymous train. Black believes in God. White doesn't.)

One particular stage direction hammered home my discomfort.

The black gets up.

Well, okay. McCarthy has been referencing their lines with merely White and Black. It's kinda okay, right? Because I'm sure the white guy will be referenced in the same way.

The professor stands with his head lowered.

Oh. Well.

It's hard to differentiate between my natural inclination to want to not whittle people down to just any one label and what McCarthy is clearly trying to make me feel.

Dude, it worked. I'm uncomfortable.

Which I presume is the point. McCarty specifically chose to omit character names for a reason. The two men quickly become caricatures. The white liberal professor with nothing to live for. The black criminal who heard the voice of God and is a true believer.

Or maybe more. A guardian angel sent down to protect the man contemplating suicide? A purgatory of some sort?

I think the caricature theory might hold the most water. Stereotypes are uncomfortable, yes. But by choosing to dance with stereotypes and go to the extremes, McCarthy is upping the ante. The audience/reader (more on that later) is forced to live in the extremes as well, no matter how difficult. The ultimate conversation - is there a God? - is difficult. Everything is difficult, according to much of McCarthy's work, including merely being alive. Why mince words?

Magical realism: A Primer

2010-05-03T09:00:00.001-04:00

Trusty Wikipedia defines Magical Realism as an aesthetic style or narrative mode in literature in which magical elements are blended into a realistic atmosphere in order to access a deeper understanding of reality. These magical elements are explained like normal occurrences that are presented in a straightforward manner which allows the "real" and the "fantastic" to be accepted in the same stream of thought.

That sums it up pretty nicely. (But here is a bit more.)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is considered one of the most well-known magical realists, specifically for One Hundred Years of Solitude. (Great book, by the way.) For whatever reason, when I first started hearing term 'magical realism' it was always in the context of Latin American writers. And then when more North American writers started adopting the style, I read lots of debates about who 'owns' this style, as if only one group ever has the sole right to utilize a particular art form.

All cultures have incorporated magical realism into their storytelling tradition at some point in its evolution. Even European ones. All the religious fables and stories could be considered a form of magical realism - the fantastic and the real blended together into a seamless reality.

At this point in the game, the style has been around long enough that it can be encompassed and used by any writer from anywhere on earth. To me, that is significant development in the evolution of magical realism. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Alice Hoffman imbues most of her works with magical realism. Some are more obvious. Others, like Skylight Confessions, have subtle moments of magical realism that support the main story. There is a ghost easily accepted by the main characters and signs of the ghost that other characters see but don't understand - soot appearing, the presence of birds, broken glass and china.

My favorite detail in this vein is the strand of pearls Arlyn receives that change color and texture. When she is happy and in love, the pearls blush. During her chemotherapy, they darkened into black stones. They have the ability to define Arlyn's life and mood in that moment without overtaking the plot.

This subtly reveals the power of magical realism. Hoffman can expand the reader's understanding of the characters in Skylight Confessions without flat-out telling the reader all the facts. Dark pearls are foreboding. Soot on the windows is sad. All without having to use those words at all.

No confessions, please!

2010-04-28T09:00:00.005-04:00

Alice Hoffman is an author that I'll take a chance on, even if the book jacket kind of wants to dissuade me.

Let's take the book I inhaled over the weekend, Skylight Confessions. Another library sale find, the title was a little . . . meh.

Maybe it's the inclusion of the word 'confession' - in my fiction, I prefer secrets to confessions. Confessions are bared souls, emotional fights, selfish, vulnerable and sometimes embarassing to behold. (Could by why I'm having trouble with a particular chapter in my book that contains a big reveal. Eek! Messy.)

Or it could have been the combination of a skylight with a confession. Clearly the skylight itself is not going to confess anything. (Or will it? This is Alice Hoffman we're talking about.) I feared a lot of looking up through a skylight, mopey contemplation of the stars in the sky, etcetera, ad nauseum.

But Hoffman wrote it so I plunked down 50 cents and took it home.

The inner jacket description didn't help.

Here is a family so real, so tragic, so devoted, it is as if they have written then own riveting history - a quest for love and truth. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. No one who reads this book will ever forget it or look at their own family in quite the same way.

Really?

Logically, I understand that Hoffman did not pen this lovely paragraph. Needless to say, the novel was shelved for over six months. I really wanted something new to read, something that wouldn't make me get all existential or whatever and I found it. Took a chance.

Thank god the book is way better than the silly dust jacket make it sound.

More on that later. Links time!

An interview with Alice Hoffman about Skylight Confessions.

An excerpt from chapter one.

P.S. This is a ghost story.

Too many books to stress

2010-04-27T09:00:00.002-04:00

I'm going to be honest with you here - I'll be putting Don Quixote on my shelf for future reading, perusing, what have you.

I was excited when I initially started reading the novel. A lot of my excitement was generated by Kundera's reverence for the book - first modern novel, yada yada yada. But I got into it.

You know he's a madman up front. Cervantes presents what Don Quixote sees and then tells you what is really there. I loved the scene when his supposed friends burn all the books they think influenced his mania. (Books are dangerous!)

The windmill scene was a little anti-climatic though. It was only two pages long. I guess I had heard so much about that metaphor that I expected his battle with the windmill/giants to be more substantial.

And then I lost steam. On the past few train rides home I've been exhausted and not at all interested in reading something antiquated sounding. It takes a certain mood to really sink your teeth into old styles of speech and writing.

I have done this with books before. I refuse to put them properly back on the bookshelf - that makes me think I've finished reading it. Instead, I set them sideways on a shelf in front of the read books. Then, when I'm in the mood to read something different, it's there to be paged through.

So Don Quixote has been sidelined but never forgotten. There are just too many books and too many moods to feel badly about this.

Me + satires = Ugh

2010-04-22T18:26:00.007-04:00

I don't think I'm a complete dummy but I'm starting to think me and satires don't mix. Even when I start to read a book knowing it's a satire, I seem to just take it as it is.

The House of Mirth is Edith Wharton's supposedly scathing satire on upper crust society before the turn of the century (1900, that is). The descriptions seemed apt and I could completely envision the world Wharton described. By the end, it felt like a great novel that encapsulates that world and society.

And I'm starting to think that's the point of the whole satire thing. Trusty Wikipedia expanded the definition for me and I now see how The House of Mirth is a satire.

I have relied too much on my history background as a way to define satire but historic political satire was usually portrayed through scathing cartoons or essays. You always feel hit over the heat by the point of the thing. (That's what she said.)

Wharton used derision more than anything to get her point across. Lily Bart's situation is dire. At 29 (God help me), she is beautiful, poor, and in desperate need of a rich husband to protect her and support her expensive habits. Lily requires both love and money in order to marry, a detail that will result in her (spoiler alert!) demise.

It seems to be an age old question, to marry for love or money - at least in fiction and for the wealthy. Lily Bart meets a poor woman at the end of the novel that she had once helped through her charity work. The woman is happy in her tiny apartment with her husband and baby and basically no money. Lily envies her. But isn't the grass always greener? If the book was about that woman, wouldn't it just become Vanity Fair - the movie, not the book? (Another satirical novel, by the way, with flawed characters and technically no hero.)

This debate reminds me of something a mentor taught me about business - time and money are intertwined, two values in their own right that make you wealthy beyond belief if you have both. If you have time to invest in a project, then you don't need a lot of money or you are able to save a lot of money. If you have money to spend, you can buy time (for example, receiving something faster in the mail due to expensive shipping). Be giddy if you have both. And it is difficult if you have neither.

Is it possible to have both love and money in a marriage? Is it even worth focusing on? Luckily, women have come a far way since Lily Bart's world and we don't necessarily rely on men and favors to get us through the world. We can have good paying jobs now and support ourselves. This may take money out of the equation and allow the quest for love to play out.

Lily's perennial flaw - money - was frustrating at times. I wanted to shake her and tell her to just marry Selden already, despite his silly name. He basically proposed and she turned him down for a chance to flirt with a wealthy, antisocial man. She keeps circling back to him and the descriptions of how he makes her feel are moving.

She might hate him, but she had never been able to wish him out of the room. She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes - she was conscious that even these trivial things were interwoven with her deepest life. In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her, and the turmoil of her spirit ceased. (page 243-244)

But Lily lives in a world in which a young woman without the protection of a family or a man must blunder about, attempting not to turn off her friends as she curries favor with her friends' husbands. I'm so glad to be in a more modern age.

Writing advice from 1605

2010-04-22T18:15:00.005-04:00

Now, as your sole aim in writing, is to invalidate the authority, and ridicule the absurdity of those books of chivalry, which have, as it were, fascinated the eyes and judgment of the world, and in particular of the vulgar, you have no occasion to go a begging maxims from philosophers, exhortations from holy writ, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles from saints;

your business is, with plain, significant, well chosen and elegant words, to render your periods sonorous, and your stile entertaining; to give spirit and expression to all your descriptions, and communicate your ideas without obscurity and confusion.

You must endeavour to write in such a manner as to convert melancholy into mirth, increase good humour, entertain the ignorant, excite the admiration of the learned, escape the contempt of gravity, and attract applause from persons of ingenuity and taste. Finally, let your aim be levelled against that ill-founded bulwark of idle books of chivalry, abhorred by many, but applauded by more, which if you can batter down, you will have atchieved no inconsiderable exploit.

-from the 'Preface to the Reader' in Don Quixote by Cervantes

[paragraph spacing is mine for emphasis and clarity]

Milan Kundera might fight me on this but I think the final section about increasing good humor and making people happy makes the case for all sorts of books that merely 'entertain.' Although the following sentence does present an opportunity for a Kundera counter-attack: are the books of chivalry Cervantes references equivalent to the useless books Kundera thinks are beneath an artist's time and ability? Hmm...

I really like the advice about description and communicating ideas. I always vote for clarity over extreme subtlety.