Life in the Snow Globe

The blurb on the back of The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham says that it is the story of Barrett, who sees a light which causes him to turn to religion, and of his brother Tyler, who uses drugs to try to enhance his creativity while he writes a song for his dying fiance.  While that it is accurate, it is such an oversimplification of The Snow Queen that it almost does the book a disservice. 

Barrett does in fact see a light, and attach significance to it.  He feels like the light is trying to tell him something, and he hopes that it is saying what he wants to hear.  Barrett lives with his brother, Tyler, and Tyler's fiance, Beth, in New York City in the early twenty-first century.  Beth owns a clothing/resale/hipster store in Brooklyn with her friend, Liz.  Barrett also works at the store.  Tyler is a bartender who is trying to break through as a music artist. The Snow Queen is the story of these four characters and their relationships, told primarily from the perspectives of Tyler and Barrett.  Beth is seriously ill, but the story somehow avoids being sentimental about her condition. Through the course of the novel, Tyler and Barrett accidentally find their best selves, while looking for something else.

There is a lot about The Snow Queen that reminded me of Cunningham's earlier novel, The Hours.  Both have New York as a setting, and feature a gay man and the women who love him.  In both stories the gay men cannot seem to part with their mother's upholstered furniture, and a character is drawn to high windows, from which he may or may not jump.  I listened to The Snow Queen on audiobook, and at the end of the story there was an interview with Michael Cunningham, in which the interviewer suggested that all of the characters from Cunningham's books seem like they could be friends with each other.  I found that observation to be dead on, and could easily see the characters from The Snow Queen popping over to visit with the characters from The Hours.

In a way, The Snow Queen is also a twenty-first century version of the musical, "Rent".  If the characters from "Rent" aged gracefully, they could have become Barrett, Tyler, and their friends.  Rent was also set in New York, and was the story of two boys in their early 20s and their friends trying to find their place.  Like Tyler, Roger from "Rent" believed that if he could just write one great song, everything would change.  Both Tyler and Roger also turn to drugs, and the woman that each loves faces death.  The stories also include meaningful gay relationships, and in both, New Year's Eve is a turning point.

The writing in The Snow Queen was incredible. I think that if I was reading the book in paper form rather than listening to it, I would have underlined tons of passages.  One thing that I really appreciated about this book is that it is the first that I can recall that was focused on the first decade of the twenty first century and set in New York, which did not mention 9/11.  It seems like 9/11 references have become compulsory and it was nice that while this story included lots of George W. bashing, Cunningham was able to resist the need to address the day itself.

The audiobook was narrated by Claire Danes, which I couldn't understand at first.  I couldn't figure out whose voice she was supposed to be.  I found myself wishing for Jeff Woodman or Wil Wheaton, as they seemed like obvious voices for hipsters like Tyler and Barrett.  I knew that they didn't choose Danes just because she was the most famous voice they could find, but then why?  I liked Danes best when she was talking for Liz, but Liz accounted for less than 10% of the speaking in the story, so they couldn't have chosen Danes for that reason.  Twice, characters referenced God as being a woman.  Could Danes have been intended to be the voice of God, or of Barrett's light, or of the Snow Queen?  By the end I knew that Danes was the right person for this role.  If Woodman or Wheaton had been reading, I wouldn't have ever been able to tell if Barrett or Tyler was speaking, since they said so much in a similar way.  Danes was simply the voice of the story.

I listened to this book at the request of Esther Bochner of Macmillan Audio.  I received a free copy of the audiobook, but other than that, no promises were made and no payments were received. 

This is another book down for the Audiobook Challenge.

Next Up on CD:  The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

Still Reading:  The Titans by John Jakes

Life Changing Summer Camp

While reading The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer I found myself constantly torn between wanting it to go on forever, and wanting to know what would happen next.  The adjective that is coming to mind is "lovely", but that sounds so unlike me.  Really though, The Interestings is a lovely, lovely book. 

It all started when my daughter's former art teacher suggested that she should go to a sleep away art camp.  I had never even considered that my daughter was qualified to attend an art camp, or that there was one for her, for that matter.  I told her teacher that I was so glad that he had recommended this, and that it could be life changing for her.  I wrote the deposit check, put a stamp on the envelope, and picked up a new book to start reading.  That book was The Interestings.

I went into The Interestings knowing that it was about a group of people who met when they were young and had high expectations, with the reader watching them grow up, and seeing the expectations adjust as plans change and sometimes fail.  I had assumed that it was going to be similar to The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud, where the people all meet in college.  Instead, the characters met at a life changing sleep away art camp.  And I was hooked.

Would my daughter's art camp be as important to her as Spirit-in-the-Woods was to these characters?  Would my daughter be more like the charmed and perfect Ash, or like the awkward and lovable but envious Jules?  Could she possibly be like Ethan, the true artistic genius who turns his creativity into a commercial success story?  And then later, please don't let her be like Ethan.  You'll see why.

In The Interestings, Ethan, Jules, Ash and her brother, Goodman, return to Spirit-in-the-Woods, the Utopian camp, each summer.  Their friends also include Jonah, who is the son of a famous folk singer, and Cathy, the talented dancer whose body lets her down.  These kids are driven, and they believe that they are special.  As they graduate from high school and outgrow art camp, they stay in touch as they try to find success in their fields.  Most of the story is set in New York City, where they all live after college.  We first meet the characters in the 1970s, then we progress through New York's aids infected 1980's, the dot com 1990s, and of course, 2001.  The story finally ends when the characters are in their 50s, and some of them are just hitting their stride.

There are some great quotes in this book, beginning with the author's dedication, "For my parents, who sent me there."   Maybe my daughter's art camp will inspire her to write a similar dedication to me someday . . . Note to self:  try to resist setting unrealistic expectations for summer camp.

In fact, although the book is primarily about this group of self obsessed friends, my favorite quotes all involve the family relationships.  The first is Ethan's haiku summary of the book that Ash thinks explains her life, "Drama of the Gifted Child":

"My parents loved me
narcissistically, alas
and now I am sad"

The next is Jules thinking about the relationship between Ash and Goodman:

"The love between a brother and a sister just over a year apart in age held fast.  It wasn't twinship, and it wasn't romance, but it was more like a passionate loyalty to a dying brand."  My kids are only 14 months apart, but they have not yet found that passionate loyalty.  Hopefully it will come with age.

Another great quote is Ash responding to a worried mom, who is concerned that her daughter won't find work as a director, and should try something safer:

". . .if she does really, really want it, and if she seems to have a talent for it, then I think you should tell her 'That's wonderful.'  Because the truth is, the world will probably whittle your daughter down.  But a mother never should."  I cried a little at that one.

Finally, Jules gives Ethan great advice about how to relate to his son who has autism:  "Love your son . . .Love him and love him."

The Interestings also fits into my "secret formula".  There are several books, like The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl that follow a formula that I seem to fall for.  The formula involves a person going to a new school, and recognizing a coed clique that she wants to join.  Once the clique finally accepts the newcomer, she realizes that the group has a secret that she would be better off not knowing.  Usually a teacher is also involved.  The Interestings doesn't fit the formula perfectly, but it comes pretty close.  In The Interestings, Jules doesn't seem to realize that the clique exists until Ash invites her to join.  The secret comes later, and instead of being a secret from outsiders, this secret exists within the clique itself.  A counselor, instead of a teacher, is in on the plan from the start. 

There was so much that I loved about this book.  Each time that I thought that it was predictable and was falling into cliches, Wolitzer threw in a perfect twist to keep the story interesting.  There are so many more topics that I could talk about, like Jules' envy, Ethan's relationship issues, Goodman's arrogance, and Dennis' just plain goodness.  These are all characters who you should really get to know.  I'm adding this one to my growing list of Favorites.  The Interestings was a NYT Notable for 2013.

Next Up:  Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks.  This is the next Typical Book Group pick.

Still Listening to:  Winter of the World by Ken Follett.  I've just reached the half way mark on this one, but the second half should go faster, now that the holidays are over and I'm back to my daily driving routines.

Boy Band Drama

Several years ago, I read Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes, and I really liked it.  The best part about it for me was that the story was set in modern day Dublin.  Until I read that book, my idea of Dublin  involved maybe one or two stop lights, narrow cobble stone streets with walls on either side, and a friendly old man who could show me the way to the pub.  Sushi burst that bubble, and made me realize that Ireland really is in the twenty-first century, complete with office buildings, mortgages, and obviously, sushi. 

When Rebecca Lang of Viking and Penguin Books asked me to review Keyes' new book, The Mystery of Mercy Close I was excited to see what Keyes had been up to since I last read her.  I was a little concerned, however, to hear that Mercy Close was "a Walsh sister novel", since I didn't think that I had read any of the earlier Walsh sister books.  But, I dove right in nevertheless. 

Mercy Close is the story of Helen Walsh, a private detective working in Dublin.  Helen is hired by her ex-boyfriend, Jay Parker, to find a member of the boy band, The Laddz, who has gone missing just before the reunion tour is set to begin.  As you might expect, The Laddz are a little one dimensional.  There is the cute one, the gay one, the wacky one, the truly talented one, and the other one.  When our story begins, several years after their popularity peaked, the cute one has become the religious one, the gay one has gone straight, the wacky one, Wayne, is the one who is missing, the truly talented one has quit the band to find solo fame, and the other one is still just the other one.  Adding this second characteristic to each band member served to make them not two dimensional, but one dimensional in a different way.

A lot of the first half of the book is spent establishing the traits of the band members, and reminding the reader of the characteristics of each of Helen's sisters.  I found the sister side story completely unnecessary, and would have liked the story just as well if Helen was an only child. Helen is a quirky character.  Many pages are spent detailing the things that bother her, and the misfortunes that she has faced as a result of the Irish recession, rather than chasing the bad guys or looking for Wayne.

In the second half of the book, the story comes together, and Keyes' talent shows through.  We find that Helen is struggling with depression.  Her battle is really well written, with depression treated as a disease, like emphysema, and not something that one can get over with a pill and a call to a shrink.  As the deadline approaches, it is unclear whether Wacky-One-Wayne is missing, or trying to be lost.  There seem to be as many people who need Wayne to participate in the reunion tour as there are people who would profit if the shows were cancelled.  The suspense builds, and Keyes has us turning pages as quickly as we can. 

As always, with these "industry requested reviews", I received the book for free, but no other payment.  I promised to review the book, but did not promise a positive review.   My next industry requested review will be The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman.  I'll have an extra copy of that one to give away, so stay tuned!

Next Up:  Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz

Still Listening To:  The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

And a Bag of Chips

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter has it all.  It starts off with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of "Cleopatra" in the 1960s.  Soon one of the extras has to leave the set, to seek quiet in the seaside village of Porto Vergogna in Italy.  There, a young man, Pasquale, is realizing that he is the only person under 40 left living in the dying town.  Fast forward 50 years, and there is Shane, a young screenwriter-want-to-be who is trying to sell a story about the Donner Party, and Pat, a former one hit wonder who is trying to find one more hit.  Then slip back to Italy during World War II, and the scars that it left on all involved.  And there you have Beautiful Ruins.

The story is told through letters, discarded memoirs, chapters of books that never got published, scenes from plays, translations, flash backs, and flash forwards.  The same characters reappear from time to time, but frequently enough that you remember who everyone is.  In this way, Beautiful Ruins is similar to A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, except that Walters actually tells the reader what year we are in. 

The Pat storyline also is similar to a story in AVFTGS.  Pat is a musician in his 40s, who found some recognition as a singer in a band 20 years earlier.  He hasn't given up, but the crowds have stopped appearing, and may even wonder if he is still alive, if they think of him at all.  His self proclaimed life theme is "There must be some mistake; I was supposed to be bigger than this."  Pat also brings to mind Nik Worth from Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta.  In all of these books, there is a person who found some degree of fame as a musician in his 20s.  Even though he found a little fame, he didn't get as much as he thought he should have.  He feels that the public never really "got" him, even though he has been brilliant all along.  He is certain that his latest works are his best, if only someone would be willing to listen.  And then it happens, or maybe it doesn't.  But the hope is there.  Can a great musician find true critical acclaim and commercial success after turning 40?  Or 50?   It's a rock and roll fairy tale.  And we love it.  AVFTGS won the Pulitzer, and all three books, AVFTGS, Stone Arabia, and Beautiful Ruins were NYT Notables.

I also liked the relationship between Pasquale and the extra who left the Cleopatra set.  They speak different languages, but they are more honest with each other than they could have been with someone who they thought understood them.  Pasquale, as the manager and owner of the Hotel Adequate View, is in awe of any American who will come to his small village, and is especially taken with this beautiful woman.  Together they explore a bunker that was used by soldiers in World War II.  The bunker could have been left behind by a character from Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War.  Helprin's Italy of World War I is not so different from Walter's Italy of World War II.

One thing that worked well in Beautiful Ruins was the final chapter, where the reader learns what happened to most, if not all, of the characters mentioned throughout the many eras of the book.  It could have been too contrived, but Walters lays out all the finales like he is reporting data, so it feels true.

The lessons in Beautiful Ruins are plentiful.  Do the right thing.  Live in the present.  Love the one you're with.  Accept faults in others.  Forgive.  Don't exploit.  For some reason, I think because I was so busy, it took me longer than it should have to get caught up in the stories.  I think that this is one that I'd like to read again.  It's a great novel that has something for everyone. 

Next up:  Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie, Jr.

Still Listening to:  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

The Story of The Fakes

As I've mentioned in the last two posts, I really loved Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta.  The story is that of a brother and a sister through the brother's attempts to achieve success in the music industry.  The sister, Denise, is clearly the brother's biggest fan.  The brother, Nik, comes closest to making it big twenty years before present day in the novel. 

Spiotta is telling the story not of the "one hit wonder", but of a no hit wonder, as Denise observes.  When Nik realizes that critics aren't going to write about him, he writes his own reviews.  When there are no longer newspaper clippings to put into a scrapbook, Nik makes his own scrapbook, featuring what could have happened, as though it really did.  Nik creates bands, puts out CDs and even invents elaborate back stories for all of the band members, who are all really Nik himself.  Denise is somewhat concerned about the degree of attention that Nik pays to his alternate universe, but is also somewhat in awe.  Nik's attention to detail is such that, as he brags, if his Chronicles were to be discovered in the future, they would be believed as truth.

In addition to being Nik's biggest (only?) fan, Denise fills her time by taking care of her mother who is drifting into dementia, and struggling to have a relationship with her boyfriend and her daughter.  When Denise's daughter, Ada, decides to make a documentary about Nik, to show the world what an amazing artist he is, Denise questions her own loyalties, and her long held convictions.  Spiotta (through Denise) defines a family as being several people who all share in the same delusion.  Whether Nik is suffering under a delusion, or is an under appreciated genius, is the key question that Denise just can't answer.

Spiotta's writing seems effortless.  Stone Arabia  is only 235 pages, and it whizzed right by.  I would have liked another 200 pages, and it seemed as if Spiotta might have had enough material to fill that many pages, but just decided that it wasn't necessary.  The story ends without tying up neatly, and really, it's better that way. 

If you liked A Visit to the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, you will love Stone Arabia.  Like Goon Squad, Stone Arabia seems to give the reader an insight into the music industry, and into the souls of the artists.  I think that I will add this one to my list of Favorites as well.  I haven't said all that I would like to say about Stone Arabia, but I'm worried that what I still want to say might spoil the story for you.  If you would like to read my Stone Arabia spoilers, click here.

One more down for the Support your Library Challenge!

Next up:  Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Still Listening to:  Following Atticus by Tom Ryan

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!