What Happened in October, 2014

Reviews

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Ever since Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer, there has been an awful lot of Goldfinch bashing going on.  The prime complaints seem to fall into one of two categories, the first being that Tartt needed a more cutting editor, and the second being that Tartt's characters spent too much time talking about drugs.  I, on the other hand, am in the camp of The Goldfinch defenders, which I sort of didn't expect. 

The Goldfinch is a long book, at 771 pages, but that alone does not mean that Tartt needed a better editor.  I can't say that not a single word could be cut, but neither I could cite many examples of areas where I was bored.  For the most part, the parts where one could think that an editor was needed were times were Tartt was deliberately prolonging the story to show how time was dragging on for the main character, such as at the engagement cocktail party, or while he was alone in Amsterdam.  I loved every page, and wish for another hundred or two.  As for the drugs, if this was too much for you, please don't read Edward St. Aubyn. 

Lest you think that I entered into this book with rose colored glasses, I have never been Donna Tartt's biggest fan.  Time and time again, I tell people that if they liked Tartt's Secret History, they will love Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl, which is similar, but in my opinion, better.  I rarely even talk about Tartt's The Little Friend, as it was really not that great of a book, but for some reason, it is one of those books that sticks in my mind with images reappearing constantly.  In The Goldfinch, Tartt hits the mark, and earns her reputation.

The Goldfinch starts with Theo and his mother visiting a NYC museum exhibit of Dutch artists, where a girl with red hair catches Theo's eye.  Theo is drawn to the girl, who is at the museum with a man who appears to be her grandfather.  He follows them, when suddenly a bomb explodes, and Theo's life is forever changed.  Theo becomes an unwitting art thief, and spends the next 20 years  hiding his treasure.  Theo's mom is killed in the explosion, and as a result, he moves in with his wealthy friend, Andy, and his family.  As might be expected, Theo's deadbeat father reappears, and whisks him off to Las Vegas.  In Vegas, Theo meets a new friend, Boris, whose life is at least as dysfunctional as his own.

Theo is charmed in that he has amazing people in his life.  Boris, flawed as he may be, is just what Theo needs, right when he needs him, time and time again.  Hobie, who Theo meets while trying to figure out what certain things that happened at the museum meant, shapes Theo's life, and gives him all of the stability that he was missing. Andy and his family, the Barbours, give Theo the illusion of normalcy, while also giving him a place to belong, if he wants it.

I listened to The Goldfinch on audiobook.  It was read by David Pittu, who won two Audies for his performance.  He should have won even more - as many as were available.  There had to have been at least 30 characters, all of whom had distinctive voices and accents.  The voices for Hobie and Boris were my favorite.  Pittu made Hobie seem old, dignified, and somehow more affluent than the customers who shopped in his store.  He made Boris sound impulsive, risky, shady, and yet still trustworthy and loyal, all with a Russian/Austrailian/Ukranian accent. 

I loved The Goldfinch, and will happily read it again, hopefully in the near future.  I am adding it to my list of Favorites.  The Goldfinch was a NYT Notable book for 2013.

Challenges:  Audiobook Challenge

Tags:  Big Fat Books, Favorites, Pulitzer Winner, NYT Notables, Awesome Audio,

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey is the story of an ex-pat experience, as told by a husband who felt that it was a complete success, and a wife who felt miserably out of place.  George and Sabine Harwood moved to Trinidad in 1956, just as the colonial rulers are losing power.  The new Prime Minister, Eric Williams, promised to change the country and free its true citizens from the control of outsiders.  George loves Trinidad, and loves the ex pat lifestyle, so much that he never wants to leave.  Sabine sees Trinidad with more weary eyes, and is hopeful that the people will find the leader who they are hoping for in Williams, even if he scares her with his anti-establishment promises.

There are a couple of stories that are going on in White Woman.  The first is that of a revolution, as seen through the eyes of an outsider.  Sabine, the only white person at the rallies supporting Williams, is hopeful for him and his followers, and would be more than happy to leave Trinidad to them.  When he gains power, and fails to make the changes that were promised, she sees him falling into the ways of the former rulers, and is disappointed that he is letting his people down, even if she was never an intended beneficiary.  While reading this, I couldn't help thinking about Kwame Kilpatrick.  As a person who lives near but not in Detroit, I was excited for Kilpatrick to be elected.  He was young and Detroit and whole metro area was ready for someone fresh to make a change.  Instead, the Detroiters who elected him were rewarded with scandal, corruption, and outright theft.  Like Sabine, I was on the outside, looking in, but hoping that the new leader would make a difference, even if the changes wouldn't directly help me.  Also like Sabine, I was disappointed and disillusioned with the results, even if a part of me knew that I was foolish to hope for more.

Another story that unfolds through out White Woman is that of people who catch each other's eye in a crowd, and never quite let go.  One day, while she is riding her bike, Sabine and Eric Williams lock eyes.  While they don't know each other, they feel a connection.  Over the next several years, they run into each other from time to time, and fall into conversations as if they have been speaking daily, saying things to each other that no one else would say.  While it could never happen in America, Roffey makes it seem completely reasonable that the Prime Minister of Trinidad would speak freely with a woman who he has only briefly met, but who looked really cute while riding her bike.

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  British Stories

Yankee Broadcast Network by John F. Buckley and Martin Ott

Although I haven't done any Industry Requested Reviews in a couple of months, I still get requests every day.  One request that caught my attention was that of John Buckley and Martin Ott, who wanted me to review their book of poetry about television.  While they were really straight forward about what their book was, I guess that I was a little surprised that literally every poem related to television.  My fault - not theirs.  What disappointed me though was that while they think about television enough to want to write a book of poetry inspired by it, they seem to really hate it.

For most of us, television is a guilty pleasure, but for Buckley and Ott, the pleasure is all gone, leaving nothing but guilt, and a dash of disgust.  One of the things that caught my attention when deciding to accept the review request was their poem called "The Real Housewives of Wayne County."  Wayne County, in case you don't know, is the county where Detroit is located.  However, it's also the county where Grosse Pointe (remember "Grosse Pointe Blank" starring John Cusack?) is, which makes Wayne County an area where extreme wealth abuts complete poverty.  The poem that Buckley and Ott wrote relied only on the Detroit brand names and stereotypes, and missed the opportunity for a study in contrasts.  In fact, they could have renamed it with the name of any county, and inserted the names of products made in that county, instead of "Better Made" and paczki.

My favorite poem was "Burn'ded" which was obviously a satire of Ashton Kucher's show, "Punk'd".  In the Buckley and Ott version, there are many people playing ever escalating "pranks" ending with a home grown terrorist who eventually sees the episode in which he stars with his fellow inmates.

Yes, Yankee Broadcast Network was exactly what it promised it would be.  I just didn't like it as much as I hoped I would.

Tags:  Industry Requested Reviews

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group met to discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.  There were 8 of us who met, and only 4 had finished the book.  2 more were not quite finished, and the other two of us (I was in this group) never picked the book up.  At the beginning of the meeting, I would have said that of the people who read it, half liked it, and half didn't.  Unfortunately, after discussing various unlikely twists and coincidences, the people who had started off saying that they liked it changed sides.  I think I won't bother trying to pick this one up. 

We chose to discuss Sweetness because we are trying to read something from various genres, and this one was chosen as a mystery.  In December we will meet again to discuss The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which we have classified as science fiction.

The Typical Book Group met this month to discuss . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  We picked this book as our summer Big Fat Book (BFB) in June, and delayed meeting until October to discuss it.  Even with this delay, of the 9 people at book group, only 2 had finished the book.  There were 3 more of us who had started it and were in various stages of progress, but the rest didn't even give it a try.

I talked about . . .And Ladies in my August and September wrap ups.  Basically it is an 1100+ page book about a book group that formed in the late 1800s, and the course of the lives of the original members.  As I've mentioned, I frequently fall asleep after reading only a few pages.  The two groupers who finished the book said that somewhere around page 500, the story picked up so that they could easily read 50 pages at a time, and that they thought about the book all of the time when they weren't reading it.  I'm somewhere around page 700 now, and I am not experiencing that at all, but then again, I've been putting it down for 2 or 3 weeks at a time and coming back to it, instead of immersing myself in the story.  Maybe this month I'll stick with it until I'm done.

All told, the people who finished the book liked it, and thought that it was worth reading.  I did notice though that one of them only gave the book 3 GoodReads stars.  So, while I'm now expecting something worth finishing, maybe I won't expect it to be life changing.

Next month we'll read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.

In Other News

The Man Booker Prize was announced on October 14.  This year's winner was The Narrow Road to the Deep North  by Richard Flannigan.  Based on the Amazon reviews, this sounds like a really good book.  The main character is an Australian surgeon in a Japanese POW camp during World War II.  I'll be keeping my eyes open for more on this one.

November Preview

People, I am burnt out on blogging, and almost even dreading it.  So, I'm not making any promises about even doing a monthly summary for November.  But in case you are interested in what I am planning to read and listen to, here you go:

In Paper Form:
. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  Yes, I promise to finish this book in November.
Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett, if I can get it, or Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen, if I can't.
Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

On Audio Book:
1Q84 by Haruki Murikami
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

AUDIOBOOK GIVEAWAY

I have big news!  June is Audiobook Month.  You know that book that everyone is talking about this year?  The one that won the Pulitzer for fiction?  And that also won Audies for the best Literary Fiction Audiobook and Best Solo Narration?  YES!  The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which has been on my TBR list for months.  I get to give it away! 

The Audio Publisher's Association, the voice of the audiobook industry, has picked my campy little blog to give away The Goldfinch, as read by David Pittu.  I recently enjoyed listening to Pittu read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eudenides, and I am certain that you will love hearing him read this one.

A blogger was chosen to give away an Audie winner every day in June.  You can follow the giveaways on Facebook and Twitter, #audiomonth or #Audies2014.  Some blogs that my readers might want to check out are Geeky Blogger's Blog Book, which is giving away Dr. Sleep by Stephen King on June 9, Oddiophile, which is giving away the Audio Book of the Year, Still Foolin' Em by Billy Crystal on June 11, Wholly Books, which is giving away another copy of The Goldfinch on June 15, and Bookgooine, which is giving away another Pulitzer winner, Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King on June 17.

So, here are the rules:  One entry per person per day, between now and June 12 at 6:00 p.m..  A winner will be randomly chosen by Rafflecopter on June 12, and will be posted here.  I will also try to contact the winner via the email you give with your Rafflecopter entry.  If the winner does not respond within 5 days, another winner will be chosen.  The winner must have a US shipping address.  Have fun, and check out the other giveaways!  I'd also love to know what audiobooks you have loved, so please leave a comment, and tell me what books make for great listening.

Thanks to Hachette Audio for making this audiobook available to us! 


a Rafflecopter giveaway
Still Listening to:  The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

Still Reading:  Great House by Nicole Krauss

The Forgotten Terrorist

In 2004, the following books were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction:  Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins; The Known World by Edward P. Jones; and American Woman by Susan Choi.  Pop quiz:  Which book won?  Answer:  The Known World by Edward P. Jones.  But have you ever heard of it?  2004 must have been a strange year in fiction.  I have read the winners from 1999 through 2003, and then again for five of the years after 2004, but I don't recall anyone I know even talking about any of the 2004 finalists.  I had never heard of any of them myself, until I read My Education by Susan Choi last year, and was impressed to read that she had been nominated for the prize for her earlier novel.

American Woman is a fictionalized version of Patty Hearst's time in hiding with the members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.  In case you were born after 1974,  Hearst was kidnapped by the SLA.  The group made certain strange demands from Hearst's very wealthy family, but was never satisfied with their responses.  After some time, the group robbed a bank, and Patty appeared to be an active participant in he heist, rather than a hostage.  A shootout with the SLA followed, with only two members and Hearst surviving.  This is where the story in American Woman begins.

While the name "Patty Hearst" was familiar to me, I was young enough when the true story unfolded that I didn't remember all of the details.  Choi stayed very close to the truth in her telling, but changed the names and invented dialogue.  Patty, who wanted to be called "Tania" in real life is called "Pauline" in the book.  A fact that I never knew was one of the people in hiding with Patty was a Japanese American woman named Wendy Yoshimura.  In the book, Wendy is named Jenny Shimada, and the story is told from her perspective.  If  you don't already know about Wendy, and if you even might read American Woman, don't click on the link above until after reading the book, so the ending won't be spoiled for you.

Wendy/Jenny was completely overlooked by the press at the time.  She was born during World War II, while her Japanese parents were living in an internment camp within the US.  Growing up, Jenny's father faced hard times, not feeling like he had a place in either the US or Japan.  As a teenager, Jenny lived in California, and found friends who were discontent with the government and wanted to make a statement.  Jenny joined their protests, and soon found herself in over her head.  As Jenny's time with Pauline came to a close, Asian Americans came to her aid in a way that Jenny neither expected nor felt that she deserved.  Those Asian Americans, and not just Japanese Americans, did everything within their power to help Wendy in real life.  Choi, who Wikipedia says is half Korean, is another Asian American keeping us from forgetting Wendy Yoshimura's name.

The story in American Woman is a little slow.  This only makes sense, as Jenny and Pauline are supposed to be in hiding and keeping a low profile.  Choi explores the question that the American public struggled with during the Patty Hearst trial:  Was Patty/Pauline a hostage or a willing participant?  If she was a willing participant, why was that, and does she deserve to be punished for her role?  Choi doesn't pick sides in Patty's story, but she is clearly a strong supporter of Wendy.

American Woman was a NYT Notable in 2003.  It is also another book toward the I Love Library Books Challenge.  In case I got you thinking about the Pulitzer Prize, this year's winner in fiction was announced earlier this month.  It is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which I can't wait to read.

Next Up:  The Titans by John Jakes

Still Listening To:  The Cuckoo's Calling by "Robert Galbraith"

Just Amazing

It is time for you to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, and in fact, I might ask, what has taken you so long?  Amazing was published in 2000, was a NYT Notable Book for that year, and won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2001.  And still you haven't read it?  Neither had I, despite the fact that it had been sitting in my nightstand for 3 or 4 or 5 years, just waiting for me.

Amazing is the story of Josef Kavalier, who starts off as a teenage boy living in Prague as Hitler rises to power.  Josef is interested in magic, and worships Houdini.  His mentor, Bernard Kornblum, teaches him illusions and the tricks of escape artists.  Joe's training is tested when he escapes from Prague and manages to find his way to the United States.  Joe's cousin, Sammy Klayman, is living in New York, where one day Joe appears.  Joe and Sammy are about the same age, and form a quick bond.  Sammy wants to find Joe a job at the Empire Novelty Company, where he works.  Joe has an artistic talent that gives Sammy a great idea.  What if he and Joe could create a comic book that Empire could publish to compete with the new Superman comics?

Joe has never even heard of a comic book before, but he trusts Sammy, and will do what Sammy says to help him get a job.  As Sammy tries to persuade his boss to start a comic book, Joe draws up a few quick sketches of a Golem.  A Golem is a character from Jewish folklore which is formed from inanimate materials, such as sand, but becomes alive and powerful.  The Golem is all wrong as a superhero for America in the 1940s, but with Sammy's boss' tentative approval, they try to come up with something else that the American public will embrace.  And so, the Escapist is born.  The Escapist fights Nazis and other evil forces, and becomes an immediate hit. 

Sammy and Joe's boss becomes incredibly wealthy from the success of the Escapist, and even Sammy and Joe are making more money than they need.  Joe saves every penny to try to help the rest of his family escape from Prague before it is too late.  The juxtaposition of the golden age of comics in the US versus the oppression of Jews in Prague is stark, and leaves Joe feeling lost and conflicted. The years go by, and the cousins grow up and grow apart, while always remaining connected by one woman, Rosa.  Rosa is the inspiration for their most successful female character, Luna Moth.  The love triangle between Joe, Sammy and Rosa is entirely unconventional, but it works. 

There are a couple great quotes in Amazing.  The first that I loved is when Joe is explaining that he's not satisfied to write the Escapist in more commercially viable terms.  He says "I'm tired of fighting, maybe, for a little while.  I fight, and I am fighting some more, and it just makes me have less hope, not more.  I need to do something . . . something that will be great, you know, instead of trying always to be Good."

Another is explaining why Joe loved comic books, even years after he had quit working for Empire:  ". . .he loved them for the pictures and stories they contained, the inspirations and lubrications of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could dream for fifteen years, transfiguring their insecurities and delusions, their wishes and their doubts, their public educations and their sexual perversions, into something that only the most purblind of societies would have denied the status of art."

A few years back, when I was reading McSweeney's 36, which included Fountain City:  A Novel Wrecked by Michael Chabon, I mentioned how he had given us such intimate details of his writing process and personal life, that I knew that he slept in the nude, which was maybe a little more than I wanted to know.  In Fountain City, Chabon comments about how although he hadn't realized it, other people had told him that in his novels he seems to have a thing about sleepwear.  I laughed the first time that I noticed a detailed description of pajamas on page 471 of Amazing, but by the end of the book I had turned down the corners on 4 more pages of PJ descriptions.  A thing indeed.

I have often wondered, and complained to anyone who would listen, about why Carter Beats the Devil by Glenn David Gold has gotten so little attention, when it is a truly great book.  I have attributed its lack of acclaim to the fact that it was published less than a month before The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen which was ridiculously (but deservedly) hyped, and also less than a month before 9/11.  It seems obvious now, that while Gold and Chabon likely took years to write their respective books,  it was really unlucky for Gold that Chabon was able to publish a great book also focused on magicians just before Gold's book hit the stores.  While the stories are entirely different, there may have been a little bit of magic burn out in 2001.  But, if you do read and like Amazing, I recommend that you also give Carter a try.

I am adding The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay to my Favorites list.  At 636 pages, it is also a BFB.  Amazing is the last book that I need to complete my revised goal for The Off the Shelf Challenge.  This is THE book that has made doing the OTS Challenge for the last 2 years worthwhile for me.  I never would have gotten around to it if I hadn't had a goal of trying to get through the books that had been crowding my nightstand.  In its honor, and since it's only September, I think I'll extend my goal by another 5 books, to 25.

Next Up:  Who Asked You by Terry McMillan

Still Listening to:  Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Rock Star on Campus

Once or twice a year, I get an email from the English Department of my Alma Mater.  These emails generally announce an alumni short story writing contest, or a change in the department, or something of that sort.  This past fall, however, I got an email that was so desperate that I could almost hear the begging.  Of course, it was well worded, and politically correct, but if I applied my "College Professor to Student Translator App" (which Apple has not yet offered to license from me) it would have said something like this:

"Are you f*cking kidding me?  We score Philip Levine to do a poetry reading, and you can't even postpone bar night to come see him?  Philip Levine is the biggest rock star to ever set foot on our campus, and if you want to pass your English classes this term, you had better get your *sses to Wilson Hall tonight at 7:00."

Hmmm.  From this I surmised that the English Department had gone to a lot of trouble to convince a world renowned poet to do a reading at the school, and that no one was going to attend.  At first, I was only happy that I already had my diploma and no longer had to worry about making appearances to please professors, but then I got a little embarrassed that I had never before heard of Philip Levine.

As it turns out, Philip Levine is quite a rock star.  He has won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer, both for poetry.  He was also the Poet Laureate for the United States from 2011-2012.   This means that he was likely still the reigning Poet Laureate at the time of the reading that no one planned to attend.  Despite the pleading email and my new found knowledge that Levine probably really was worth seeing, I skipped the reading, but put his Pulitzer winner, The Simple Truth on my TBR list.

The Simple Truth is just that.  It is straightforward, I suspect that it is highly autobiographical, and it is a really good book.  Most of the poems seem to be set in the 1960s, although the collection was published in 1994.  Many of the poems describe Levine's hometown, Detroit.

As long as I have been alive, optimists have been asserting that Detroit is set for a comeback, while the pessimists/realists have left the city and look back at it only from the other side of Eight Mile.  It was interesting to see the cracks in Detroit's surface that Levine saw forming in the early 1960s.  In "The Escape", Levine writes:

"To come to life in Detroit is to be manufactured
without the power of speech.  You clasp hands,
as I did, with a brother and step by step
begin the descent into hell or Hamtramck
and arrive, designed, numbered and tagged. . . "

My favorite line was in his poem, "My Mother with Purse the Summer They Murdered the Spanish Poet", where he is describing his mother looking into her purse instead of looking out the window:

"Had she looked up she would have seen the world she crossed
the world to find. . . . "

The Spanish poet he refers to in the title is Garcia Lorca, who was also referenced in Great House by Nicole Kraus, and The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano.  I'd love to read a good piece of historical fiction about Lorca, so if you know of one, please tell me where I can find it.

My favorite poem is Listen Carefully, where the speaker, who I assume is male, and may be Levine, describes his relationship with his sister, and scolds the reader for misinterpreting his meaning.

The Simple Truth deserved to win the Pulitzer.  It is the kind of book that could convince anyone that they like poetry.  It is understandable and easy to relate to.  I know that is not always the key to great poetry, but after reading more modern poets like Lisa Robertson, to me it was refreshing.  If you get a chance to see Philip Levine read, skip the bar night and go.  I have probably missed my last chance.  Levine is now 85 years old, and from what I can tell, he is living in California.  Maybe Detroit will still hold some allure, and call him home. 

By the way, I have also developed a "Father-in-law Translator App", which I use when my F-I-L comes to my house for Thanksgiving dinner and tells me how tired I look.  Using my app, I know that what he really means is  "The house looks great!  Wow!  You made a ton of food!  This was a lot of work!  You deserve to relax."  Or something like that.

Next Up:  Bad News by Edward St. Aubyn

Still Listening to:  The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Typical Book Group Report - 12

Last night, 9 members of The Typical Book Group got together to talk about What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty.  All but one of us finished it.  The one who hadn't still didn't know who Gina was, which was really the biggest question for the reader. 

We talked a lot (predictably, I suppose) about what we were doing 10 years ago, and what it would be like to forget these last 10 years, as Alice did.  We agreed that it seemed more like Alice forgot 15 or maybe even 20 years, rather than just 10.  Her oldest daughter, who was only 9 or 10 in the story, acted more like our teenage daughters, and it was a little unrealistic that their economic status would change so much so quickly without a lottery ticket or an inheritance.

One thing that we didn't discuss was Alice's muscle memory.  I really liked how even though Alice didn't recognize her purse, her hands knew where to look for her makeup and how to apply it.  Her body also reminded Alice that she had learned to depend upon coffee, even though she hadn't been a coffee drinker before she had kids.  Obviously, this is fiction, but it seems realistic that one's body would just automatically go through the morning's routines, even if one's mind didn't remember what to do first.

We agreed that we liked What Alice Forgot, but that it slowed down after the first 100 pages. 

A few months ago, we discussed The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.  The Pulitzer people just announced the 2013 winners, and I was surprised to hear that The Snow Child was a finalist.  I guess we are more discerning readers than we realized!

Next month we'll read Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.

Still Reading:  The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes

Almost Done Listening to:  Ines of my Soul by Isabel Allende

The Wheel of Fortuna

As Ignatius Reilly, an enormous 30 year old man, prepares to move out of his mother's house, his girlfriend who is helping him asks "Don't you want to pack anything?"  To this, Ignatius responds "Oh, of course.  There are all of my notes and jottings.  We must never let them fall into the hands of my mother.  She may make a fortune from them.  It would be too ironic." 

That line so embodies the publishing of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, that I question whether Toole actually wrote it, or if it was added when it went to publication.  You see, Confederacy was published in 1980, and Toole committed suicide in 1969.  As we are told in the prologue, Confederacy only got published after Toole's mom badgered a professor at Loyola to read it.  The professor reluctantly agreed, if only to stop the pestering calls from Mrs. Toole, thinking that he could give it a try, hate it, and give it back.  Instead, he found that Confederacy was really good.  So good, in fact, that it not only got published, it also won the Pulitzer, most likely making Mrs. Toole a very nice fortune.

The story begins with Ignatius waiting for his mother, Irene, outside of a store.  A police officer, Angelo Mancuso, tries to arrest Ignatius for doing just that.  When Ignatius explains that he is only waiting for his mother, the crowd around him erupts in protest, leading to the arrest of an old man, Claude Robichaux.  At the police station, Mr. Robichaux meets a black man who had also been arrested on shaky grounds, Burma Jones.  To recover from their shock, Ignatius and his mother stop at a local bar, The Night of Joy, for a drink, not realizing that it is a strip club.  The rest of the novel follows the characters that we meet in that one incident, and their crazy struggles to find happiness in New Orleans.

Ignatius is an over educated man who is still living with his mother because it would be much too stressful for him to get a job.  He also needs time to write a manifesto about his world view.  Ignatius is the sort who would never use a one syllable word if a 3 or 4 syllable word would work instead.  His mother, Irene, on the other hand, is a very simple woman who hasn't even managed to master English, which is her only language.  Ignatius is constantly demanding that Irene make changes to improve his life, including things like doing a better job with his laundry.  You do remember that he is 30, right?  He actually demands that everyone who comes into contact with him work to make the world a better place.  However, his idealism is entirely self centered and misdirected.  Ignatius constantly prays to and curses the goddess, Fortuna.  He is titillated by sexuality in the way of old Republican men - "That's disgusting!  Let me see that!"-  and feels a need to investigate further.

Throughout the book, I had to wonder how much Toole had in common with Ignatius, and how much Mrs. Toole had in common with Irene.  When he killed himself, Toole was a 31 year old man, who was living with his parents.  He was even more educated than Ignatius, but he was drafted, and started working on the novel while in the military.  I would guess that Toole in the military felt a little like Ignatius as a hot dog vendor.  I hope that the relationship between Toole and his mom was nothing like that between Ignatius and his. Given the suicide, I have to wonder if even though he wasn't actually very similar to Ignatius, Toole saw himself as being exactly that, and kept drawing Ignatius as a caricature of his own worst self.

Much has been written about why this book won the Pulitzer.  I won't pretend that the Pulitzer people consult me for my opinions, as we have disagreed in the past.  However, this time, I think I get it.  The characters in Confederacy are so crazy, yet still multi-dimensional and well written.  Each has a distinct way of talking that tells you who they are and what their world view might be.  The story is ridiculous, but it all works so well.  The characters grow throughout the novel, and by the end, they are each a little closer to finding the life that they have been hoping to live.

In Other News:  Remember just a few days ago, when I was complaining that none of the books in my son's 9th grade curriculum were written more recently than 1960?  Well guess what?  As a ridiculously over-involved parent, I am on my district's Education Council, which is a group of parents, teachers and administrators who meet monthly to review and vote on curriculum related issues.  This week, we were asked to approve a new book for students in a program for 9th-12th graders called Ines of my Soul by Isabel Allende.  It is a work of historical fiction, set primarily in Chile in the 1500s, and it was published in 2006!  We unanimously approved the purchase.  Unfortunately, the book will be used at the other high school in our district, and not my son's, but who knows - it's a foot in the door, right?  Now I need to add it to my TBR list.  I just hope I don't hate it after reading it, and regret my vote.  That seems unlikely. 

A Confederacy of Dunces is the second book down for the Off the Shelf Challenge!

Next up on CD:  The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott.

Still Reading:  LARP:  The Battle for Verona by Justin Calderone

Historical Fact

I started listening to Cleopatra:  a Life by Stacy Schiff with some trepidation.  I knew I liked the subject, but I wasn't sure I could handle listening to a biography on audio book.  The first time I heard a footnote, I almost ejected the disc.  So that you understand where I am coming from, this is what a footnote sounds like in audio form:  "Footnote:  This is an example.  End of Footnote"

Part of me thought "It's Christmas time and I am crazy busy.  I should listen to something light and fluffy".  The rational part of me thought "It won't kill me to get some historical facts, since my brain is growing mushy with all this historical fiction."  The first part of me argued that I didn't need any more real history after 21 years of public school education.  The rational part of me laughed out loud at that one.  And so, I kept listening.

My previous knowledge of Cleopatra came from Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George, which is, of course, historical fiction.  When I read Memoirs, I felt really stupid, because I had no idea that Cleopatra had a child with Julius Caesar.  However, since all of my Caesar knowledge comes from Shakespeare instead of from history classes, and since Shakespeare kept his Caesar and his Cleopatra in separate stories, I would guess that I am not the only one who never made the connection.

I learned more about Cleopatra in Schiff's book, as should be expected.  One thing that surprised me was that in Cleopatra's time, the Sphinx had already been buried in sand for a thousand years.  Another was that Cleopatra lived just one generation before Jesus was born.  Cleopatra died in 30 BC, and Jesus was born sometime around 4 BC.  In fact, one of Cleopatra's most reliable biographers, Plutarch, was writing about Cleopatra at the same time that some of the New Testament gospels were being written.

Cleopatra: a Life is a very good biography.  It was a NYT Notable Book in 2010.   My library has picked it as a book group book for February.  It seems like an odd choice at first, but I could see how this particular biography would appeal to people who normally prefer fiction.  Schiff researched her subject thoroughly, and throughout the book, she tells the reader whose story she is relying on for certain facts, and why she determined that one author might be more reliable than another for specific issues.  I liked how Schiff said things like "Cleopatra probably did this" or "It is likely that this happened in this way"  without being stubbornly definitive.  History is, of course, written by the victors, and Cleopatra was ultimately a loser.  She should have been relegated to being a footnote herself, but her reputation was so intriguing that even her contemporary conquerors couldn't keep from writing about her. 

I, personally, preferred George's telling.  But then, why wouldn't I?  Since she was writing fiction, George could invent juicy dialogue, and be creative with any "facts" that true historians now question, such as the method of Cleopatra's death.  Schiff is a Pulitzer winning biographer (for her biography of Nabokov's wife, Vera), and she manages to tell a story full of historical facts and details in a way that is interesting, and almost conversational.  Given her unbiased treatment of Cleopatra, I would like to propose another subject for her - Jesus.  If anyone could take apart the propaganda and the edits that were made after the fact to get to something as close as is possible to what really happened, that person would be Schiff.  I for one would read it, footnotes and all.

One thing that the "light and fluffy" part of me found really funny about the audio book, was that the reader pronounced Caesar and Cleopatra's son's name, Caesarion, as "Cesarean".  I am sure that she pronounced his name correctly, but if I had been reading it, I would have contorted it in some way to sound less like the medical procedure.  With the reader's pronunciation, every time I heard his name, I wondered if he was still hanging out with his friends, Epidural and Episiotomy.  Yep.  I'm that easily distracted this time of the year.

Next up on CD:  Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison

Still Reading:  Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Good Things Come in Small Packages

The Night in Question by Tobias Wolff has made me reconsider my idea of what a short story is.  Up until now, I have always thought of a short story as a starter novel, or if the author is really lucky, the first chapter of a novel.  The idea being that a person couldn't possibly write a novel until she has worn herself out writing short stories, and is ready to move on to a bigger project.  I've read lots of collections of short stories, many of them meaningful enough that I think back to them years later.  One such book is The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel (obviously), from which I retained the "fact" that one doesn't save gas by driving with the windows down instead of using air conditioning.  Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is another great collection of stories, which actually won the Pulitzer Prize.  I sometimes think of one of Lahiri's stories where a couple on the verge of a breakup get to know each other again during a series of power outages.

None of these books, however, changed my perception of a short story being just a beginning.  Then came Wolff, and his collection.  The Night in Question includes several stories that are so powerful, that I've now realized that a short story can't be stretched into a novel.  A short story is, or at least should be, a story of such intensity that the tension could not possibly be maintained for longer than 20 or 30 pages.  The most intense of Wolff's is the namesake of the collection, The Night in Question, in which one of the characters begs the other to stop telling the story that he is telling, because she can guess where it is going, and doesn't want to hear the tragedy.  The reader is right there with her.  My favorite, however, and the one that I think I am most likely to remember is Flyboys. 

Flyboys, on its surface, is the story of a boy who is probably in his early teens, and his choice to hang out with a boy who he considers lucky, instead of one who seems to be cursed.  The "lucky" friend, Clark, is wealthier, and bad things don't seem to happen to him.  However when the main character (who I'll call "Tobias" since he isn't named) returns to the unlucky friend's house, he falls into old habits, and the warmth of a loving, if unfortunate family.  The unlucky boy, Freddy, has a banter with "Tobias", where they trade old sayings like "growing like a weed", "by leaps and bounds", etc.  I think that whenever I hear the phrase "home is where the heart is" I will think back to that story, and know where Tobias' heart should be.  While "Tobias" and the outside world may see Clark as being the lucky one, the reader gets a hint that Clark may be missing some of the things that Freddy has.  If it was possible to turn this short story into a full length novel, it would be Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. 

My favorite quote from Wolff's book besides "home is where the heart is" is this, from the story called Powder:  "My father in his forty-eighth year, rumpled, kind, bankrupt of honor, flushed with certainty."  I'd like to think of the perfect adjectives for my father in his sixty-eighth year, but am sure that I'll never come up with anything as accurate as this character's description of his father driving along a closed road in order to make it home in time for Christmas dinner.

The Night in Question was a NYT Notable Book for 1996.  I got it at the 2010 Typical Book Group book exchange.  Thanks Michele!

Another book finished for the Off the Shelf Challenge!  9 more to go.

Next up:  The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes  This book won the Man Booker Prize for 2011.  Today the Man Booker Prize Longlist was announced for 2012.  You can find out who was nominated by clicking here.  The only book that I have even heard of is Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, which is on my list of Books Waiting for Me to Read Them, to your right.

Still Listening to:  Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart

Seriously?

So the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today, and guess what?  No Fiction Winner.  What does that even mean?  The writing right now is so bad that no one is worthy?  The last time that there was no Fiction prize awarded was 1977.  I questioned the quality of popular fiction in the 1970s when I reviewed The Furies by John Jakes, but I really don't think that we've fallen back to that level!

The Finalists were Swamplandia by Karen Russell, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, and Train Dreams by Denis Johnson.  Of those, I have only read Swamplandia,  but I have to say that it was better than Olive Kitteridge and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won in 2009 and 2008, respectively. 

In the past I have asked whether authors should brag about being "short listed" for an award, and decided that they should.  But in this case, where there were finalists, but  the judges apparently concluded that none were good enough, will Karen Russell even want to include that on her resume?  I do concede that Swamplandia  was not life changing, but Russell's writing is certainly worthy of the $10,000.00 prize.

Still Reading:  Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn

Still Listening to:  Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

Starting at the End

March by Geraldine Brooks was sitting in my nightstand for over a year before I decided to read it.  The reason that it climbed to the top of my pile is that my library has been doing a series on Civil War books, and it included March as  a discussion book.  I had picked March up only because I had read People of the Book by Brooks and loved it, and hadn't realized that March was a Civil War book.  So I dove right in, knowing only that.

And I was confused.  March is a civil war book, in the same sense that a book about the Holocaust could be considered a World War II book.  It is focused on abolitionism, and not so much on war.  March reminded me a lot of Beloved by Toni Morrison, in telling the story of the mistreatment of the slaves.  I thought that it was strange that  a book that won the Pulitzer in 2006 would be so cutesy as to give the main character the last name "March", and then have him have four girls, named for the four March girls in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  Then it seemed a little too coincidental that the main character was friends with Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The whole book just felt a little too contrived for me, and certainly too hokey for an award winning novel.  Why was the main character a vegetarian?  Were there even Civil War era vegetarians? 

Then I got to the end, and read the section titled  "Afterward".  There Brooks explains that the character in March did not name his daughters after the girls in Little Women, but that his girls were the girls in Little Women.  March  is intended to be the story of the father in Little Women, who is not fully developed in the original novel.  The dad is off to war, and then said to be close to death in a Washington hospital, but that's really it.  In March, in order to make the character of Mr. March more complete, Brooks models him after Alcott's true father, Amos Bronson Alcott.

In real life, Bronson Alcott was a vegetarian.  He was also an abolitionist, who was friends with Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne.  Amazingly, they all lived in Concord, Massachusetts, at the same time, making Concord in Civil War times the literary equivalent of Brooklyn today.  Alcott was a person who didn't believe in hurting people or animals, which explains some of March's more strange decisions in the novel.

Looking back on March with the realization that it is intended to be an expansion on Little Women, but with true semi-biographical information added, makes it much more interesting to me, and I wish that I had known it from the beginning.  So a word to the wise:  Read the Afterward first.  Or, at least read the back cover of the book, which I also somehow failed to do.  It's been years since I read Little Women, and actually I'm not even sure that I ever finished it.  For now, I think I'll add it to the pile of books that I want to read to my daughter.  After reading March, I am sure that I will have a new perspective on the story.

One more done for the Off the Shelf Challenge!  16 to go.

Next up:  Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn

Still Listening to:  Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

Oscar Wao, Whatever That Means

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is probably most obviously described as the story of a family, the de Leons, and their struggle to defy a fucu or curse, that was put on the family during the Truijllo reign in the Dominican Republic.  Oscar is an awkward character, who is more comfortable with his science fiction books and action figures than with real life, but is constantly looking for a woman who will love him.

Oscar Wao won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.  So, it is a book that has received a great deal of critical acclaim, but it's really not a favorite of mine.  The story is told from the perspective of an all knowing narrator, who is not identified until about half way through the book.  I won't tell you who the narrator is, because that would spoil a little of the story.    Like the narrator(s) in The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, the narrator in Oscar Wao references research and old photos as the basis of his (or her) knowledge.  The narrator is a very likable character, despite obvious flaws, who speaks with a truly distinctive voice.  Part of my problem with relating to Oscar Wao, however, is that the narrator slips in words in Spanish throughout his speech, to the extent that it limits the English reader's ability to understand the story.

I have helped my son with his Spanish vocabulary words for the past 6 years, but even with that (limited) Spanish knowledge, I was often feeling like there was an inside joke, and I was on the outside.  My hunch is, that even if I knew Spanish, I would be left wanting to know Dominican slang in order to truly understand the novel.  For instance, I was able to figure out based on context that the word "toto" referred to a woman's genitalia, and my guess is that it would translate closely to "pussy". However there were several times when the context did not give any clues to the Dominican meaning, such as when the character Jenni is introduced, and we are told that her friends call her "La Jablesse," with no indication as to what that means, or why they call her that.  Likewise, Oscar's last name is not really "Wao", it's de Leon.  The sentence where it is explained why Oscar's friends start calling him "Oscar Wao" offers few clues to the English reader as to why they would call him that.  In my perfect world, Oscar Wao would include a glossary in the back, so that when the reader thinks it's worth their effort, they can look up the word in question.

In the end, it is clear that the story in Oscar Wao is about more than defeating the fuku.  The narrator is ultimately more affected by his relationship with Oscar than he (or she) ever expected.  Looking for the lesson here, it seems that the moral is that sometimes being a friend to someone who is "different" is of greater value than a thousand easy relationships.

As for the challenges, this one is a double countsie.  It has been in my nightstand waiting for me to read it, so it counts for the Off the Shelf Challenge, but I listened to it on CDs which I checked out of my library.  So that's 3 down for the Support your Library Challenge, and 2 down for the Off the Shelf Challenge.  Lots more to go.

Next Up on CD:  The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain by Brock Eide.  Now speaking of different learners . . .

Still Reading:  London Train  by Tessa Hadley

Falling Empires

Empire Falls is the fictional town in Maine which Richard Russo creates in his novel by the same name.  It is a small town with too many big fish, who keep swimming into each other.  Empire Falls focuses on two families living very different but equally unhappy lives, the Robys and the Whitings.  Miles Roby is the protagonist.  He is a man who grew up in Empire Falls, and whose mother wanted nothing more than for him to leave.  He returns home to watch his mother die, and finds himself trapped in the Falls, like its other inhabitants.   Mrs. Whiting is a woman who believes in power and control, and wields each in ways that seem both domineering and somehow benevolent.

A feature of small town life is that it is hard to get away from someone who wants to keep tabs on you. The relationship of one who wants nothing more than to be ignored by another and the one who refuses to ignore is played out again and again in the novel.  Take, for instance, the small town cop and the man he insists was his friend in high school.  Or the high school loser and the cop's son.  And even the millionaire and the woman who seduced her husband.  These are only a sampling of the complicated, one-sided relationships that Russo explores.

Empire Falls won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize.  The Corrections by Jonathan Frazen was a finalist that year.  Like The Corrections, Empire Falls  explores the dynamics of dysfunctional families.  In The Corrections, the siblings are more interesting because their choices and situations are outrageous, while still remotely believable.  In Empire Falls the relationships within the families are more predictable and possibly more realistic, and the added characters from the town give the story a wider focus.  Overall, I preferred The Corrections, but Russo's story is also very good, and probably worthy of The Prize.

In Breaking News. . . Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the movie, opened today.  I'm not sure if I will see it tonight or tomorrow, but by the end of this weekend you'll have a full report.

Next up on CD:  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.  This is another Pulitzer Prize winner.  I'm looking forward to getting started on it!

Still Reading:  This Beautiful Life  by Helen Schulman

Grosse Pointe Lock Down

Many years ago, I saw the movie "The Virgin Suicides", and I have thought back to it from time to time.  Completely unrelated, I read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.  Middlesex is the novel of a hermaphrodite living in an affluent Detroit suburb immediately after the race riots of 1967.  Middlesex was an interesting novel which appealed to a wide enough audience to warrant its receiving a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.  As a metro-Detroiter it had a special appeal, because although my parents had told me about the riots, I knew only their stories, which didn't include tanks patrolling streets which are now familiar to me, or other episodes which Eugenides related. 

More recently, when I was looking for a book for my son, Amazon recommended The Virgin Suicides.  This was the first that I realized that TVS was written by Eugenides.  In reading the review I learned that the story was set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, an area that is only about a half of an hour's drive from my house.  This piqued my interest, and I added TVS to my TBR list, in part to see if it would be suitable for my son to read.

TVS is a great story, and a very quick read.  It is the story of the five Lisbon sisters, who are teenage girls trying their best to be normal.  The Lisbon parents are very sheltering, and control what the girls wear and what they do.  The girls, in part because of the number of them, are something of a mystery to their peers. They don't seem to have many girlfriends, but the boys are all enthralled.  Very early into the story, one of the girls commits suicide.  This, along with some minor infractions on the part of the most popular sister, Lux, causes the parents to pull the sisters out of school, and lock them down within their house. 

The story is told from the point of view of neighborhood boys who are infatuated with the girls.  At times the boys are the same age as the girls, and at times the boys are older, and are reporting what happened in a documentary style, with details from interviews and exhibits.  Like Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, TVS is narrated in first person plural (ex: "we spied on the girls through binoculars"), and it is never clear exactly which boy is speaking.  This is a very welcoming form of narration, making the reader feel as though friends are filling him in on what happened while he was away, and what they have discovered in their research. In fact, it is clear from internet searches that many readers, like me, thought that the story must have been based on true events, which it was not.  This is a credit to Eugenides' writing and creativity.

Now that I have read the book, I would like to see the Virgin Suicides movie again.  The first time through, I didn't know that the story was supposed to have been set in my area.  Now I know to look for familiar settings and listen for street names.  Although I'm not in any rush to encourage my 8th grade son to read TVS, I think that it is probably a book that would be appropriate for a high school student.

TVS was also the first book that I read on my kindle.  For the last year or so I have been annoyed countless times when I've asked my friends what page they are on, and they answer that they don't know the page, but they are 68% (or some other random percentage) done.  I thought that I would stay loyal to page numbers, even when reading electronically.  However, I have to say that the percentages are addictive.  I don't want to be 28% done - 28% is failing!  I kept on reading to increase my GPA by a few extra percentage points.  I don't have that issue with page numbers.  The kindle was convenient, and I didn't miss turning pages.  I could get used to this.

One down for my Off the Shelf Challenge!  23 to go . . .

Next up:  State of Wonder by Ann Patchett.

Still Listening to:  Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Don't Avoid The Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan is unusual.  It is a fun, timely, quick read, that is also an award winner.  AVFTGS won both the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2010, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011.  With credentials like that, one would expect an amazing, but maybe a difficult book.  Instead, AVFTGS is a page turner and a perfect summer novel.  In short, it is everything that it's cracked up to be.

AVFTGS is the first book that has made me wish for a Kindle.  Each chapter is a part of a complete story, including some, but not all of the characters in the book, from a random time.  The story flashes back and forth, without obvious clues such as dates indicating where we are in time or in narrative.  Each chapter contains subtle and obvious hints as to what will happen in later chapters. One of the characters introduced in the first chapter, for instance, doesn't become important to the story again until the last chapter.  A Kindle would come in handy here, because I spent a ton of time flipping back when a new character was introduced to see if that character had been mentioned before.  As I understand Kindle, no flipping would be necessary, and I would just be able to search for "Lizzie" or "Noreen" to see if they had been mentioned earlier and I missed them. 

Most simply, AVFTGS is the story of an aging producer, his protege, his girlfriend, and a groupie/klepto turned producer's assistant turned mom.  Other story lines involve a failed publicist, a failed writer, a failed actress, a failed dictator, a failed rock star (or two?), a failed presidential hopeful, and the children of all involved.  Some of the failures find success, and some of the successful fall to invisibility.

This is a great book.  I am adding it to my favorites list, and buying it for my daughter to put away until she is old enough to read it.  One short chapter details a groupie/girlfriend's regrets in a way that is poignant and memorable.  Another great chapter is written entirely in powerpoint style slides from the point of view of a teenager trying to understand her parents.  I might let my daughter read that chapter now.  The final chapter predicts the near future in which rock stars cater to babies, known as "pointers" for their ability to point to interesting things on an ipad-like touch screen, with the parents following the children's choices.  Somehow, this doesn't seem too unlikely.

I've said it before, and I hope to say it lots more:  Go. Get. It. And. Read.

Interested in rock and roll stories?  I've read more biographies in this area than fiction, although this seems like a topic ripe for fiction.  A really good biography that you may have missed is Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be by Jennifer Trynin.  Unlike other rock and roll biographies, this is the story of an "almost was" instead of a "has been", and is really interesting in that regard.

By the way, today it's been a year since I started blogging regularly.  What got me started was being really upset with one of my kids' teachers, and wanting to send a vicious email to him that I knew I would regret.  Instead, I broadcasted my rant onto the world wide web, and no one was harmed in the production of this blog.

Next Up:  Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe.  My husband just finished reading this one, and he was pestering me to read it before he even got to the end.  I have a hunch that the characters in this book will be easier to keep track of, because I know them all from People Magazine.

Still Listening to:  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  Talk about a great book with characters who are mentioned and then show up in more important roles later . . .apparently this style has been around for a while!

It's Olive's Fault

I am so not excited about posting for the third time in a row about a book that I didn't really like.  What a downer.  This time though, it's not my fault.  It's Olive's.  And Elizabeth Strout's. 

The last book that I read by Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle, was not one of my favorites.  Amy and Isabelle is the story of a woman who became a mom as a teenager, and her struggles to raise her daughter, and keep her from also becoming a teenage mother.  The mom, Isabelle, is hard to like, but I would have liked her a lot more if Strout had done a better job of reminding me that Isabelle was only 33 or 34 while she was trying to deal with her 16 year old daughter.  So that one is Strout's fault.

Olive Kitteridge, also by Strout, came out to great fanfare, and even won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.  I liked the idea of several short stories all set in Maine, and all tied together by one person, Olive Kitteridge, who plays lead, supporting, or cameo roles in each story.  So, I decided to give Strout another try. 

Like Isabelle, Olive is a very hard person to like.  She is abrasive and hostile to those closest to her, but reveals a tender side to virtual strangers.  As her husband, Henry, says, she does not ever apologize.  This seems to be because she feels deep within her being that she is always right.  She is also quick to lay the blame on others for her problems, always saying that what is wrong is someone else's fault. 

So, if you are in the mood for a cheerful tale, this is not it.  But if you are preparing to go home for the holidays, and dreading dealing with your mother or mother in law, Olive Kitteridge might be the book for you.  After reading about Olive, your family members will look kind and thoughtful.

As for me, I'm done with Elizabeth Strout.  I think she'll muddle along without me.

Post Script:  After sleeping on this post, I have to concede that Olive Kitteridge is not a bad book.  It is interesting how you learn about each character through the eyes of the others, and the differences in character that each shows when with their own family versus when they are with acquaintances.  Additionally, there is light at the end of the tunnel, in that the book ends optimistically, with the hope for change and growth.  Olive's son, Christopher, is a more resilient character than he first appears, and while she only admits it grudgingly, Olive does learn from him.  I appreciate that Christopher does not allow himself to be damaged by his past, but instead works toward a better future.  But I still think I'm done with Elizabeth Strout.


Next Up on CD:  The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Still Reading:  A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin