Like your Twitter feed, but more poignant: Dept. of Speculation

Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill

Fast Facts

• Jenny Offill's second book seems to have found its way onto all of the "10 Best Books of 2014" lists: here, and here, and here 
• (Incidentally - I get so excited for these lists, so happy that so many great things have been written, so eager to read everything on all of them, and then so sad because, of course, I can't - they make me feel all of the emotions.)
• At 192 pages (with a lot of weird spacing), you can get through it in just a couple sittings
• Very Brooklyn, featuring: 
• artsy hipsters who don't make that much art
• idealization of a ramshackle house in rural Pennsylvania
• married people
• all-consuming babies, and 
• bedbugs
• Written in short, disjointed paragraphs and fragments, it's a perfect book for the distracted social media age
• Extremely intimate, emotionally fraught - a pleasing read (but not my very favorite)

Basic Premise

Offill's unnamed narrator is a woman reflecting on her life at various points, told through postmodern, disjointed flashes of memory, favorite quotes, and shifts in point of view.  

All boiled down, the story flows simply enough: girl has love affairs, girl gets married, girl faces tragedy, girl battles depression, girl raises daughter, girl reflects on dreams averred, girl experiences infidelity, girl repairs marriage.

This premise (and all those top ten lists) might have been enough to pull me in, but what makes this book really interesting and different, and frankly, addictive, is the length and style.  These particular choices are what must have made the book so fresh, memorable and irresistible to the critics.

Keeping my attention: who needs to check Facebook when your book feels like the newsfeed?

Offill has lured the masses in with a style that is perfect for today's distracted reader.  For good measure, she throws philosophic quotes alongside all the memes, and satisfies the intellectual crowd.  

It's hard to think of Offill's work in terms of paragraphs, though they are mostly short paragraphs, or even in terms of short chapters, though there are nearly fifty of those.  

Mostly, this book feels like it's made up of unfocused word bursts, like being in someone's internet-addled brain during a therapy session. 

It's a good thing that following her stream of consciousness is part of the challenge and fun.  It's clear that most of the author's effort has gone into the presentation of the story and the reader's understanding of the narrator's experiences.  You have to just go with it - that's what makes otherwise bleak subject matter much more enjoyable.

Bottom Line

The format of Offill's narrative choices are what drive the story forward, with little enigmatic breadcrumbs scattered throughout to make you keep pressing on: who is "the philosopher" - will they ever get together?  Why the foreboding and sense of doom?  Will her baby ever stop crying?  How will they get rid of those gross bedbugs?  When the narrator starts to use the third person point of view to separate herself from pain, will "the wife" and "the husband" make it last?

I don't think I would have liked Offill's novella as much if she had just told the story "straight", without the complex novelty of her chosen form.  But all things considered, this is a beautiful book - I would definitely recommend it, even if I don't think it's necessarily worthy of all this "top ten" love.

Fascinating and sobering: Being Mortal

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gawande

Fast Facts

• Atul Gawande is a practicing surgeon, a professor at Harvard, a staff writer at the New Yorker, and in my opinion, a total rock star
• This book, his fourth New York Times bestseller, was just selected as one of NYT's 100 Notable Books of the Year (review here)
• Being Mortal runs 300 pages, or 9 hours of audiobook time
• Perfectly balanced mix of anecdotes and education on cultural approaches to caring for the elderly and dying over time
• Deeply moving and sad, but a great choice for a fiction lover looking for a foray into non-fiction
• Required reading for anyone who faces big end-of-life choices; or, everyone

Why Did I Pick this Up?

Typically, I steer clear of non-fiction in book form.  Other than trying to make it through the New Yorker every week, and clicking around newspaper sites as a respite/distraction from work, I rarely read non-fiction because fiction is typically so much more fun, enjoyable, and relaxing for me.  It's hard to view non-fiction as attractively escapist.

But lately, and the farther I get from those sweet years of formal education, I've been getting worried that my brain might turn to mush.  That's extreme, but work doesn't always give you the learning opportunities you were inundated with in school.  

So, I decided to dip my toes into the non-fiction pool, starting with an author whose long-form journalism I'd read before and loved.  Definitely check out:

• Gawande's brilliant and creative comparison of Big Medicine to the Cheesecake Factory, which is amazing
• Gawande's look at an incredible non-profit in Camden, New Jersey, which is trying to lower emergency room medical costs for low-income patients by targeting preventative care
• By the way - this article helped my incredibly inspiring friend/superhero Megan with her first job on the road to running the public hospital corporation in NYC - how cool is that?!
• For other recommendations, check out my friend Matt's blog.  He completed (almost!) a 100-books-in-a-year challenge - all non-fiction.  Maybe I'll follow in his awesome footsteps in 2015...

Summary, and Why You Should Read It

Many people who are brilliant in the sciences struggle to communicate their ideas effectively.  Gawande opens the book with this critique of doctors: just because they've made their way through tough medical schools and residencies does not mean that they are talented caretakers.  In fact, they may be ill-equipped address some of the most difficult choices that patients and their families must make.

It's a good thing this is clearly not Gawande's problem - I can't think of many writers who are more clear, compassionate, and fascinating.

He tackles the task of educating his audience on end-of-life care, both for the elderly, as well as for young people afflicted with terrible illness (a timely topic with the tragic activism of Brittany Maynard in the news).  Technological progress in medicine, and its associated high costs and social constructs, presents us with challenges that need to be considered, however sobering they may be.

Many of Gawande's topics were eye-opening for me.  As a child, I visited a grandparent suffering from dementia in a nursing home, but this book has made me consider the adult choices that must be made when considering care in Assisted Living or in nursing homes, and the history of how these methods of care evolved in America.

By way of illustration, Gawande describes how his grandfather in India experienced the end of his life, cared for by many family members at home and able to maintain his relative independence until age ~100.  This is contrasted with the story of Gawande's wife's grandmother, who lived in America: a fiercely independent woman who, after a series of falls, a car accident, and extortion by a home contractor, was put in a home that slowly sapped her will to live.

These are only two of the narratives that Gawande weaves throughout his explanation of how end-of-life care is administered.  The result is a well-paced, interesting, and personal account that manages to be informative, easy to understand, and difficult to put down.

Recommended as an Audiobook

I "read" Being Mortal as an audiobook (my first), while cruising in Maggie the Mazda around New Jersey, and commuting into the city.  I'd recommend this approach for someone like me, who usually reads fiction but likes public radio and podcasts.  What better way to start forcing longer non-fiction down my throat?  The only downside is that you might find yourself heave-crying on Sixth Avenue (to be fair, this only happened once).

To Lena Dunham, I say: I want to be JUST that kind of girl (well, almost)

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned", Lena Dunham

Fast Facts

• Dunham was reportedly paid $3.5 million to write this collection of personal essays
• At 288 pages, that's more than $12,000 a page (!!!)
• At the ripe old age of 28, Dunham has been nominated for 8 Emmy awards and won two Golden Globes
• She was the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America award for directorial achievement in comedy
• Jemima Kirke, who plays the rebellious best friend to Dunham's character in HBO's Girls, is one of Dunham's best friends - they met at St. Ann's School in Brooklyn
• And she's dating (and surely marrying, and having babies with) Jack Antonoff, the lead guitarist of the band Fun!

Background

Lena Dunham is relatively new to me, but I feel - as many people of my generation, and anyone who watches or reads her work, must - that I know her intimately.  I have spent the last several weeks binge-watching all three seasons of Girls, listening to Dunham's interview with Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, reading an essay from this book that was previewed in The New Yorker, and now, gobbling up Not That Kind of Girl on my commute.  (And, it's not enough.  I will probably buy and watch Tiny Furniture tonight, and then go cry that she hasn't created more.)

The book of essays and lists is separated into five sections: Love and Sex; Body; Friendship; Work; and Big Picture.

Despite some of the heavy subject matter, the book feels generally bright, well-paced, and easy to consume in large quantities that don't feel large at the time (much the way I enjoyed Girls).  Dunham is a very talented writer, and I am still most impressed by her New Yorker chapter "Therapy and Me", which struck me as impressive on its own.

The chapters, some admittedly more entertaining than others, but with an easy flow, are varied in format.  Some are lists, some are essays, some are dated letters written to ex-boyfriends and amusingly over-footnoted by Present Lena.

Reasons why I wish I could be Lena Dunham

To be a little more like Lena Dunham, I could write this section in quippy list form.  But really, the first place I need to turn to spark the deepest I'm-jealous-but-happy-for-her-and-society feelings is the Acknowledgments section.

Who does she acknowledge?  "David, Esther, and the whole Remnick/Fein clan" - whom she thanks for friendship, wisdom, and matzo brie.  Yes, Lena Dunham is on familiar enough terms with the editor of the New Yorker and his family that she not only writes frequently for the magazine, but she also eats meant-only-for-Passover treats with them.

Who else?  Mike Birbiglia.  Judd Apatow.  B.J. Novak AND Mindy Kaling (naturally).  David Sedaris.  Zadie Smith.  And of course, the book is dedicated to her friend and mentor, Nora Ephron.

(She's also BFFs with Taylor Swift.  See: recent interview with TaySwift in People.  Haters gonna hate, but even haters must turn a little green with envy at this revelation.)

How has this woman been alive almost as long as I have (I've only got 7 additional months of breathing-in-and-out experience on her,) and is so @#$(*&! accomplished that I can barely fathom it, and pens an acknowledgments section of a $3.5 million book filled with people that I love so much that, if I could only meet them and exchange just 7-10 words, I could die happy?  I'm inspired.  Inspired to wish I could be Lena Dunham.

But...

Reasons why I don't wish I could be Lena Dunham

There is a contingent out there on the interwebs that hates on Lena Dunham for exhibiting a "poor little rich girl" complex.  With this book, maybe Dunham was engaging in the over-sharing she is famous for, as would be natural in a memoir.  Maybe she was also trying to show her critics that her life hasn't been as easy as their simplistic Money = Happiness equation would allow.

Regardless, she does not paint herself in the most flattering light (and I'm not just talking about all of the Girls nudity.)  Her sexual escapades are far from romanticized.  Her struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and body image issues and therapy and dissociation are laid bare (pun sort-of intended). 

In a particularly difficult-to-read section, she details the rape perpetrated on her in college by the campus Republican (given Oberlin's leanings, his identity was probably pinned down 4 seconds after the book came out).  Dunham is brutally honest with herself and others, even as she sprinkles humor and wit throughout the telling of her most difficult moments.

Recounting such personal moments strikes me as a very brave act, but these moments also give me (very few) reasons that I don't wish I was her.

Bottom Line

This collection is engaging throughout, and remains true to Dunham's television style, which I also really enjoy.  Jealousy aside, it wasn't my favorite book in the world, but I would certainly recommend it to friends looking for an entertaining read.

Most of all, it seems striking that someone so relatively young could have experienced enough to write a memoir that feels comprehensive and full.  I'm looking forward to her follow-up advice in twenty years or so.  I also look forward to aging with Lena Dunham, and relating to much, but not all, of what she has to over-share.

Yom Kippur post: The Marrying of Chani Kaufman

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, Eve Harris

Fast Facts

• A recommendation from my extraordinary friend Masha
• Long-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize
• Written by half-Israeli, secular Jew who taught briefly at a religious school
• 384 pages
• Exploration of life in a London Orthodox community, from the perspective of its teenage newly weds and their clergy's wife
• Enjoyable and quick read, but not a favorite
  

Unlikely Choice


It is unlikely that I would ever have picked up this book, had it not been so highly recommended by my friend Masha, who is a human marvel.  I have some religious family and friends, but I would not personally choose (and it is hard for me to even imagine) immersion in an Orthodox belief system, community, or lifestyle.  But a window in to this environment piqued my interest, and the timing was perfect - I had a trip coming up with lots of plane time, and needed a new book.


What to Expect


The story opens with Chani Kaufman, a nineteen-year-old Orthodox girl, on her wedding day - wearing the same sweaty dress that her sisters and generations of women in her family before her have worn.  Harris spends a good amount of time describing body odors in the opening passages, and Chani contemplates (read: obsesses) about what her wedding night will be like.


The novel jumps around chronologically, detailing the weeks leading up to Chani's wedding - including 3 dates and a memorably awkward phone conversation - with her soon-to-be-betrothed, twenty-year-old Baruch.  The perspective shifts between Chani, Baruch, and Chani's mentor, a rabbi's wife or rebbetzin named Rivka, and Rivka's son Avromi, whose eye predictably wanders when he attends a secular university.


In the Chani/Baruch story line, Chani and Baruch fixate on sex; on what it means to marry someone with whom you've spent approximately an hour; and then on sex, some more.  There is some romance and even a bit of suspense in the telling of their fledgling relationship, but preoccupation with deflowering is really the focus.


Rivka's story is a little more complex.  Some 30 years before she was tasked with taking Chani to the mikvah spiritual baths and explaining basic reproduction, Rivka was a student in Jerusalem who fell in love with a student named Chaim, and together, they became religious.  Her reproductive difficulties in the present, and her struggling and evolving relationships with both her husband and her faith, are the most poignant parts of the book.


Culture Questions You Can't Get an Answer to on Airplane Mode


From the very start of the book, I wanted to know: is this author a member of an Orthodox community?  Perhaps that is a testament to Harris' level of research, or to my inability to catch her in an error due to my own lack of knowledge.  I couldn't find out for sure until I finished the book, because I started and finished it on a plane.


Now that I know that Harris is not and has never been religious, I find myself wanting to critique the novel even more.  Each character struggles with the Hasidic community that they have been born into or have chosen in different ways, and it seems too easy or simplistic to see Hasidic life as confining and full of struggle, if you're an outsider looking in.  I don't know if my devil's advocate view is somehow tinged with Jewish guilt for not being more observant, but I do wonder - how would I feel reading this if I were Orthodox? 


Would I be frustrated or upset that the novel depicts religious teenagers as far more preoccupied with sex than questions of faith?  That the strongest female voice in the novel, a rabbi's wife who became more observant after falling in love, has grown to resent and seek escape from her community?  That a prominent dramatic point in the novel focuses on the nasty antics of Baruch's mother, who threatens Chani against marrying Baruch because her family isn't wealthy enough?
Particularly pointed (and I'd imagine, offensive) is the critique of Chani's own very fertile mother, who seems to Chani "a stranger, an exhausted mountain of dilapidated flesh, endlessly suckling, soothing, patting or feeding"... "her mother had become a machine whose parts were grinding and worn".  Maybe that's an author grasping for descriptors, but that's a little cruel for my taste.


Worth Reading?


This is a well-paced and enjoyable read, and a fascinating one for anyone curious about particular rituals or cultural elements related to Orthodox Judaism.  Harris provides an interesting narrative, with just enough drama and romance to keep you baited, and a sweet ending.  With some of my misgivings and questions aside, I'd recommend this novel for a quick read - though I wasn't completely in love.

"World War II Whimsical" (a new genre?): All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

Fast Facts

• To my abject delight, Anthony Doerr was raised in none other than Cleveland, Ohio - hence, his sunny world view?
• 544 pages
• 10 years of writing
• Selected for the Fiction Long List for the National Book Award
• Not just another World War II tears-and-torture fest
• An ode to the wonders of technology, the power of family relationships, finding love and beauty in strange places, and the special terrors of the war
• My first Anthony Doerr book, but certainly not my last

(A Little Bit of the) Plot
The story focuses on two children as they become very adult adolescents during the war: Marie-Laure LeBlanc, an immensely clever young blind girl trapped in her great-uncle's house in a coastal town, and Werner Pfennig, a brilliant white-haired orphan boy from a coal mining town with a penchant for radios.

Both their journeys are heart-wrenching, as they struggle to survive in unimaginable circumstances and in the midst of excruciating separations from their most cherished loved ones.  Their bright curiosity and talents, the mystery of a diamond hunt, and the lingering question of who will survive and how their lives will collide, dissipate some of the depressing weight of their circumstances.

(Maybe that sounds a bit like a book jacket, but I would hate to spoil such a highly-recommended read by giving any more away!)

Structure Makes it a Speed Read
Doerr bounces around time periods within, and briefly before and after, the war, using short chapters and shifts in point of view.  Primarily, you follow the perspectives of Marie-Laure and Werner, but you also uncomfortably spend time in the point of view of the antagonist, a Nazi sergeant major hunting down an enormous diamond (think the Titanic stone, but offering an immortality that Jack and Rose never enjoyed).

Each chapter is a morsel so perfectly proportioned that you'll keep saying "sure, I'll have another," until your eyes are burning and the sun comes up.  With such dark subject matter, how can you take so many of these sections at one time?

Well, because it's lovely.

What Makes it Lovely

Yes, this book is deeply dark and depressing.  But it has garnered rave reviews and captured attention because it offers some human redemption - something that books in all genres, not simply World War II fiction, could use in healthy doses.

That redemption takes many forms, and I'll offer a few of my favorites.

Radio.  Sometimes, I feel so surrounded by and inundated in technology that I forget the sheer wonder in it.  This book makes you feel genuinely excited by, and in thrall and terror of, the radio.  Doerr hits you over the head with this towards the end, but I forgive him for his final lack of subtlety because of how perfectly he puts you into the time period and into Werner's passion.  In an NPR interview, Doerr summed up his inspiration (the first recorded instance of creative inspiration on a New Jersey Transit train):

"I was on a train heading into Penn Station from Princeton, N.J., and we started going underground. The man in front of me was on his cellphone call — this was in 2004 — and the call dropped. And he got kind of angry, a little embarrassingly angry, unreasonably angry.

And I just remember thinking, what he's forgetting — really what we're all forgetting all the time — is that this is a miracle. He's using this little receiver and transmitter, this little radio in his pocket, to send messages at the speed of light rebounding between towers to somebody maybe thousands of miles away. He might have been talking to someone in Madagascar for all I knew. For me, that's a miracle.

So ... originally, the real central motivation for the book was to try and conjure up a time when hearing the voice of a stranger in your home was a miracle.

 (Reminds me of Louie CK's Miracle of Flight sketch, but less funny.)

Experiencing coastal France without visual imagery.  Marie-Laure and her father leave Paris for Saint Malo, on the Brittany coast.  Marie-Laure's experiences there, discovering the salt and vastness of the ocean, are absolutely gorgeous.

Daniel LeBlanc's model towns and letters.  Marie-Laure's father builds her perfect replica model towns of the places she lives.  The way he builds them, and the games he concocts for her, are described so tenderly that they are truly memorable.

Treasure hunt.  The book has a good, old-fashioned treasure hunt, and a suspense-building game of cat and mouse (allusion to Art Spiegelman partly on purpose.)  This adds a layer of enjoyable tension to the difficult subject matter.

Compassion for a German soldier, without total forgiveness.  I loved and pitied Werner more than anyone in the book.  I often wondered how I would behave in his circumstances and alarmingly, it is nearly impossible to think that I would have acted differently.  Making a reader step into Werner's shoes so thoroughly must have been a difficult, and impressive, feat for Doerr.

Something Happier for Your Dreary Fall?

I just finished a summer of bingeing some delicious book junk food:

1) The last book in the Discovery of Witches trilogy, in which the hot-and-heavy will-they-won't-they vampire-witch power couple finally have some babies and visit their string of beautifully decorated villas around the world, and

2) All three of the Hunger Games books (Thanksgiving cannot come soon enough for that movie!  I read the third book in a 24-hour blitz that needs some Jennifer Lawrence recapping, stat.)

After all my pleasure reading, I figured it was probably time for me to pick up Proust or something.  Failing that, I kept coming across All the Light We Cannot See, and I'm very glad that I finally pulled the trigger, because despite all the accolades, this was a tough book for me to purchase.  Who can jump from Katniss, Diana the witch and her hunky Matthew the vampire, to a depressing Holocaust novel?

If you're feeling post-summer melancholy, my recommendation is to battle the evil vampires and President Snow first, and afterwards pick up Doerr's beautiful book to assuage your guilt.



Dental nightmare: Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn

Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn

 

Fast Facts

• An ever-welcome recommendation from my friends, Ali and Mary Beth (Ali's excellent running/life blog can be found here)
• Sharp Objects is Flynn's debut novel, and has likely gotten additional press and readers after her smash hit in 2012, Gone Girl (the movie trailer for which, my childhood crush on Ben Affleck aside, looks a bit meh)
• 321 pages by my Kindle count
• Features dead little girls missing teeth, and the strongest contender ever for World's Most Dysfunctional Family

Why I Haven't Slept in Days

Gillian Flynn is utterly terrifying.  I'm pretty sure that I read Gone Girl on a beach, and jumped out of my skin every time I heard an ocean wave or felt a loose strand of hair in the breeze.  Sharp Objects is also a novel very much in that vein (if you didn't already figure it out from a glance at that blunt cover art.)

The premise of Sharp Objects is that narrator Camille, a journalist at a second-tier daily paper outside of Chicago, is sent by her editor back to Wind Gap, Missouri, the small town where she grew up, to break a story on a small child who has gone missing.

Wind Gap is full of all kinds of heart-warming memories for Camille.  It's where her horrible mother and stepfather reside, with her horrible half-sister, Amma.  It's where Camille's beloved other half-sister, Marian, died as a child.  It's where Camille's family owns a pig slaughterhouse.  It's where Camille was gang raped and abused in a myriad of ways as a young teenager, and it's where she began cutting herself.

As if this jolly background were not enough, the missing girl Camille is reporting on is quickly found: she has been murdered, like another young girl less than a year prior in the same town, and both victims have had all of their teeth removed.

The Redeeming, and the Not-So-Redeeming

Readers of Gone Girl will be looking for a twist in Sharp Objects (ouch) - I certainly was, and was fairly sure I knew Flynn's game early on.  By the end, I was satisfied to have been (somewhat) tricked, having somehow, inexplicably underestimated just how sick Flynn could be.

Flynn certainly delivers a suspenseful page-turner with this debut, and Camille has some surprising complexity, in particular her brand of feminism borne of abuses, which is thought-provoking and disturbing.

Still, some of the book gave me deja vu, presenting ideas and people that felt recycled or overdone or heavy-handed.  I didn't guess the ending, but really could and should have (I don't read too many crime novels - see the light sleeping, above).  Of the two books, Gone Girl strikes me as more creative and sophisticated with regard to its plotting, character development, and suspense.

Bottom Line

Despite some of my nitpicking, and the ridiculous ending (another similarity Sharp Objects shares with Gone Girl!), I absolutely devoured Sharp Objects (ouch again).  It made me stay up too late and wake up too early, and generally ranks high on entertainment value.  It's a fast read and just what the doctor ordered for a quick, summertime scare fest.



The Donna Tartt Edition

Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and The Secret History: the literary world's well-deserved Huge Crush

The "It" Girl

My latest fan mail would read as follows:

Dear Donna Tartt,

You write a staggering work of fiction once every ten years.  Your sharp suit perfectly matches your sharp bob, and I hope you always accessorize with that pencil.  Don't listen to the bitter literary critics whose only chance at being in Vanity Fair is taking the unpopular view of panning you.  They're just jealous, and frankly, some of the pretentiousness in your books (see: all the Greek/classicism rambling in The Secret History) should have been enough to satisfy them.  You tell a @#$(*& good story, and all the references to The Goldfinch as "this generation's David Copperfield" strike me as true.  Except, I stopped a hundred pages short of finishing David Copperfield, and I could never have done that with your beautiful book.

Love,

Em

P.S. Please write faster next time.

P.P.S. Knowing that you and Ann Patchett are friends is almost too much.  It cruelly fuels my fantasy that someday I could have a glass of wine with the two of you.

The Goldfinch: my favorite of the two

Background

This novel recently won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and is seemingly everywhere - I swear the ads are (nearly) as pervasive as for a blockbuster film.  My expectations were high and I did my best to avoid reading anything about the book before I finished it - which meant that I missed seeing the titular painting on special Limited Time Only display at The Frick, 10 blocks from my apartment, by just one day.  (Good thing, I guess - the lines of book clubbers trying to see The Goldfinch and Girl with the Pearl Earring were insane!)

The book follows Theo, a troublemaking 12-year-old who lives alone with his mother in New York City, his alcoholic father having recently abandoned the burden of his family.  It is immediately a page-turner, as Theo recounts in striking detail the last day of his mother's life.  The extremely close pair visit the Metropolitan Museum before a special school meeting regarding Theo's mischief, and a terrorist bombing changes the course of his life.

What makes it so awesome

One of the most memorable traits of the book is Tartt's ability to deftly tell the story from Theo's 12-year-old perspective, without being too heavy-handed with obvious manipulation. The Met sequence, post-explosion, is dreamlike, reflecting Theo's injury and trauma, and in this haze, Theo believes a dying old man in the rubble has given him a small Dutch 17th century painting of a bird. Everything that happens in the immediate aftermath smacks of Theo's shock, grief, and piecemeal information he is given due to the protectiveness of the adults in his changed world.

Another aspect I loved was that Tartt wasn't afraid to make her narrator, otherwise very sympathetic because of everything that had happened to him, into a huge jerk.  It just feels true that Theo, growing up among relative strangers after such a horrific loss, would be bitter, angry, drug addicted, selfish and lonely, a self-absorbed kid who grows into a self-absorbed adult.

As a prime example, take Welty, an antique restorer who provides the only real stability, parenting, financial support, sense of purpose, and friendship in Theo's life.  He is a stranger who takes Theo in, ultimately raises him, teaches him a trade, and seems like the most generous and kind-hearted character ever (think furniture-maker Aidan, from "Sex and the City", but as an older, kindly uncle).  I know he isn't real, but I still want to give him a hug.  Still, Theo jeopardizes his business by committing fraud on Welty's customers, uses Welty to get to Welty's niece (Theo's unrequited love interest, Pippa,) takes innumerable banned substances in Welty's home, and speculates as to Welty's sexuality.  See?  Don't you kinda hate this guy?

I actually felt guilty being upset with the way Theo treated those who were kind to him, after what he'd been through. How interesting to bring such dislike and such guilt out of a reader. I have to recognize and respect that Tartt's narrative choices here were gutsy and added to a real uniqueness and realism in the book.

Whether you find him likable and/or pitiable or not, Theo's adventures are fascinating.  He is taken in by a wealthy family of characters, socialites and sailing buffs, in a Park Avenue town home.  He moves to Vegas with his nauseatingly horrible father and his spacey new girlfriend, Xandra, another two memorable characters you'll love to hate, from whom poor Theo gains his painkiller addiction and many of his more abominable characteristics.  He lives a life of crime, at times as a sidekick to his dark and hilarious friend Boris, and at times on his own.  Is it always realistic?  Maybe not, but it is a really, really great story.

The Bird is the Word!

At the center of it all, there is Theo's quest to keep and protect "his" painting.  Some critics have interpreted this as Theo's attempt to connect to his mother's memory, but I don't agree.  Theo's life has been shattered by random tragedy.  He is a boy becoming a man who wants to assert some kind of control over what is otherwise an uncontrollable universe. He wants to believe his life has real meaning, and how better to do that than to cast yourself as Grand Protector of a lasting and powerful art work?

Summing it up

All the hype and debates over literariness aside - I enjoyed The Goldfinch so much, more than many books I've read recently. Whether it has lasting power culturally or not, I read it six months ago and have clear and emotional recall of many parts of this novel - it will definitely have lasting power with me.

The Secret History: Tartt's 1992 debut

Background

I loved The Goldfinch so much that I had to read Tartt's probably second most-acclaimed book, her debut novel that launched her new literary legend status. When she dated Bret Easton Ellis in college, she shared some passages of what would become this book, and he was apparently adamant about getting it in front of his agent.

I didn't like The Secret History quite as much as The Goldfinch, but I still think it's a terrific story and an impressive read, particularly given that she wrote it when she was so young.

(In terms of college genius first novels, I still prefer Zadie Smith's White Teeth, but then again, Zadie Smith hasn't yet written her Goldfinch, in my opinion. Give her 20 years, I guess.)

In the opening chapter, you learn that the narrator and his group of college friends have murdered a member of their clique.  Gone is the more traditional narrative structure, a chronological buildup to a shocking twist and then a conclusion.  Here, first comes the twist, and still, somehow, everything that follows still smacks of mystery.  What caused this horrible act?  Will they be caught?  What are the consequences and aftermath?  What will happen to this group of "friends"?  This is the drama that drives the story.

Comparing the two, "Secret History" falls short

Like The Goldfinch, it's a page-turning story, vividly delving into the characters' minds and their surroundings (in this case, a very cold, haunting, and disturbing Vermont campus.) You've got an even more detestable narrator named Richard Papen who, without the benefit of a sympathetic sad backstory, is probably the hugest jerk whose brain I've been forced into.  There's an unattainable, ethereal crush - Richard's Camilla is Theo's Pippa, but with more blood in her hair.  There are acts of violence, and bad guys who you somehow are manipulated into rooting for.  There is plenty of substance abuse for all.

There were parts, though, that I didn't love nearly as much as The Goldfinch.  Tartt starts off with a whole section on Richard's Greek classicism training and snobbiness that established his academic know-it-all obnoxiousness, but was also so off-putting and dull that I nearly put the book down.

The other large problem with the book was the real lack of redemption or likeability of any of the characters.  Even Bunny, the murder victim and moral center of the book, is someone you'd never want to spend an afternoon with.  The group of friends that Richard so desperately wants to be a part of is so abhorrent that I hoped with every page that they'd all be arrested.  Julian, the classics teacher they all adore, is a spineless, arrogant twit.  By contrast, I do think I would want to spend time with Theo and company (though in the case of his father, it would just be to deliver a couple of sucker punches.)

Still worth a read!

It's unfair to pit the two against one another when I liked The Goldfinch so much, I suppose.  Don't get me wrong - Secret History is still very much worth the time, especially if you like a good murder mystery.  Tartt weaves an excellent, well-paced, different, and enjoyable narrative. I have yet to read her second book, but I can definitely say that she is only getting better.

Great Premises, Disappointing Follow-through: "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" and "Sleep Donation"

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, by Mohsin Hamid

and

Sleep Donation*, by Karen Russell

  

 

 

 

*My apologies up front for Karen Russell's freaky cover art giant eyeball, which makes me think of nothing but pinkeye and torn contact lenses.

Too much build up?

Part of my disappointment with both of these books likely stems from how excited I was to start both of them. 

I loved Karen Russell's Swamplandia, and a couple years ago I heard her in a panel conversation with Junot Diaz (so much awesome) at Symphony Space, after actors read a couple of their terrific short stories.  She was so sweetly awkward and mega-genius brilliant that I developed an instant author crush. 

And - a book about an insomnia epidemic and sleep donation vans that collect the slumber of healthy individuals like platelets in a blood drive?  That's gross, and Stephen King-esque, and fascinating.  I bought Sleep Donation as soon as it was available.

My excitement for Filthy Rich was largely because of the unconventional premise touted in book reviews.  The novel is written in the second person and is styled as sort of a self help parody.  I've read about rising Asia in Aravind Adiga's Last Man in Tower and The White Tiger, in so many Salman Rushdie books, and in Katherine Boo's gorgeous Behind the Beautiful Forevers - but none of these perspectives were at all similar to Hamid's chosen structure.

So when both of these fell flat, it was a bummer big enough for me to blog about.

The Plots: First a Sizzle, Then a Snooze

Within the confines of its self-help book premise, Filthy Rich tells the story of one nameless man, "You", from cradle to grave, as he makes and loses money in a nameless city full of hustlers and crooks.  Each chapter is a "How To" corresponding to the protagonist's life: Move to the City.  Get an Education.  Don't Fall in Love.  Be Prepared to Use Violence.  And so on.

But despite the twist of the second person convention and a few amusing quips early on about the self help genre, the plot and substance of the book feel tired and old.  The characters are a bit cartoonish, and their comings and goings and successes and tragedies feel abstract rather than engaging. 
Perhaps I don't also just don't like the Filthy Rich swindler setting, and I need to be more forgiving because of cultural reasons or because such booming growth amidst staggering poverty shouldn't be oversimplified.  Still, the initial noteworthiness of Hamid's stylistic choices wore off fast.


Sleep Donation too starts off with an intriguing plot.  You're immediately catapaulted into a Stephen King-style dystopia where, for unexplained reasons (could it be, all these electronic devices?!) a subset of the population has insomnia.  The protagonist, Trish, has joined an organization run by two rich, sleazy brothers, tasked with recruiting healthy individuals to donate their pure shuteye to the less fortunate.

Trish has lost her sister Dori to the insomnia epidemic, after Dori spent some 20-odd days without any sleep, and went into organ failure.  (I know what you're wondering.  Did Dori work for the bankruptcy department at my law firm?)  Trish uses Dori's tearful story as a recruitment device, and gets the Big Catch: a universal donor referred to as Baby A, the only individual whose unique blend of sleep is accepted by all sufferers. 

Ok, that all sounds pretty good on paper, but Trish is nowhere near as wonderful a narrator to spend time with as Swamplandia!'s thirteen-year-old alligator-wrestling Ava Bigtree.  The big plot question, mainly what she'll do about her organization's less-than-savory business tactics in relation to Baby A and her family, wasn't really enough to keep me awake.

Bottom Line

Ultimately, what Hamid really needs is for you to care about his Everyman, as he runs around trying to sell possibly contaminated bottled water and bribe politicians. He throws a wife and a son into the mix to get you to care about our hero, as well as a similarly motivated social climbing lover who appears throughout as a female foil. Somehow, though, I never began to care about the "You" in the story, or his lover, or his family, or his business.

Russell's book suffers from a similar problem.  Trish is grieving and lonely and trying to adjust her do-gooder idealism to the reality of her creepy organization and the surrounding world crisis.  Unfortunately, the vibrant human relationships that make novels great and interesting are markedly absent from the story.  A sci-fi premise and a tragic past (and present) are not enough to make the novella a worth-while read.

Next time: I'll hopefully find something I like better!

I feel like a tween again: The Ghost in the Glass House, by Carey Wallace

The Ghost in the Glass House, by Carey Wallace

 

 

 

Fast facts:

•  I've met Carey Wallace, and I love her books so much that I am sure to get sweaty-saw-a-celebrity palms when I see her next
• This is her second book - be sure to also check out The Blind Contessa's New Machine
• An editorial review on Amazon says "grades 5-8".  Hmm.  Guess I'm young at heart!
• If the target age is true, here's to hoping this thing blows up like Twilight
• 240 pages of wonderful pleasure reading

Premise

The book focuses on Clare, a precocious twelve-year-old on perpetual vacation with her opulent and dramatic mother, Cynthia, who travels the world and seems to have any of her heart's desires at her fingertips (including very creative pastries that are guaranteed to make you hungry).  They globetrot like crazy (is this child ever in school?) and land in a servant-equipped house in a beach town, surrounded by rich neighbors who also seem to globetrot with them constantly (does anyone have a job?)

The story moves at a perfect, brisk clip, filling in the delicious details of Clare's (very) enviable travels, as well as slowly introducing the theme, common with a ghost story motif, that things are not always what they seem. 

As Clare tries to avoid the impending adulthood that her group of friends seems so desperate to reach, she develops her first real crush on an invisible boy who lives in a glass house abandoned for storage on their summer home property.  Matters are complicated by Tilda, the delightful old house servant who proves a tough nut to crack even for bright, headstrong Clare, who is used to being loved or ignored by adults.

A number of romantic entanglements, without the complications of being a grown-up, prove highly entertaining (A loves B but pretends to love C who loves B, while B loves A's best friend D, who is also adored by A's brother E!)  And what's not to love about a hidden cave under a cliff in the ocean, furnished by the teenagers with all the antique furniture that the rich adults never bothered to keep track of?

How I met Carey, and a plea

I met Carey through our mutual friend, Sarah.  We met after seeing their friend Bridget play the harp like a boss-genius at Le Poisson Rouge, before I'd read The Blind Contessa's New Machine.  Sarah is notorious for being one of the best human beings on the planet, and for having a thousand creative talents and beyond impeccable taste, so her recommendation of Carey's first book (and Carey's immediately obvious coolness) made it mandatory reading for me.  The Blind Contessa's New Machine was so engrossing and wonderful that as I devoured it on the train, I wished I would miss my stop so I could continue.  (Thank you Sarah!)

So the next time I saw Carey, I totally dweebed out and fell all over myself being in love with her/the book.  Happily, I remain hopeful that she forgave my bumbling, AND she revealed that book #2 was on its way.  Thank goodness, because I was devastated at finishing Blind Contessa, and now I'm devastated that Ghost in the Glass House is over, and Carey if you're out there, would you pretty please give us book #3 as soon as possible?  Not to sound ungrateful for this book's loveliness, but the fans are desperate!!!

Easy Like Sunday Morning

The book is deliciously quick and easy to read. I certainly don't want to call it chewing gum, and I'm not sure I agree that it's "easy" as in, meant just for 10-14 year olds - it's not the kind of reading that you don't have to think about at all. Mainly, the story and beautiful descriptions just wash over you so that you don't realize that reading is any kind of effort.

Everywhere you look, amidst gorgeous descriptions of colorful furniture in the glass house, candy in the village shop, and the comforts of a wealthy ocean summer home existence, there's also some fundamental truth phrased so simply but so creatively that you have to marvel at Carey's talent. The heavier themes that she handles adroitly include being a child on the cusp of adulthood, dealing with grief and loss, misjudging people when you first meet them, notions of home, mother-daughter relationships, and young love in its many types and directions and confusions.

Recommended for an easy Sunday morning when you feel like being transported to your teenage years, if you wish those teenage years were spent traveling the world and enjoying summer houses.

Love: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Fast Facts

• One of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year
• 496 pages, hefty but still impossible to put down
• Like Ifemelu, the protagonist, Adichie grew up in Nigeria
• I will never look at getting my hair done the same way again

Premise

The novel starts in the present in Princeton, New Jersey, where the protagonist, Ifemelu, is planning to go back to Nigeria after over a decade in America.  Ifemelu gets her hair done at an African beauty parlor, and after a series of flashbacks, and hundreds of pages, we seem to keep ending up at the salon - an ode to the hours spent and pain endured by many black women to style their hair. 

(Aside - I went with my friend Mel once to get her hair braided.  Meaning, I stayed with Mel for a few minutes, then went shopping and ate multiple meals, and came back, and her beautiful braids STILL weren't done.  This was a mind-boggling lesson in patience to me, and I feel shame when I think that I can barely manage to get an up-keep 15-minute haircut every 6 months.)

Anyhow, we learn about Ifemelu's relatively rosy and privileged childhood in Nigeria - her religious mother, her government servant father who suffers a difficult layoff, her aunt's precarious affair with an army official known as The General.  And, most importantly, the beginning of her love affair with Obinze, the boy everyone in high school loved.

Ifemelu and Obinze's stories eventually split.  During college, after a series of teacher strikes that constantly closed universities in Nigeria, Ifemelu is able to obtain a student visa and moves to Brooklyn, and then Philadelphia, and then Baltimore, and finally to Princeton for her studies and (fantastically told) relationships.  (I still want to meet her red-headed boyfriend, Curt.) 

Meanwhile, Obinze, who had always been obsessed with American literature and life, was denied an American visa due to terrorist concerns, and spends some time in England.  Ifemelu and Obinze's experiences overseas show a cruel reality for immigrants in America and England, even those with huge financial and educational advantages.  This window into immigrant life was eye-opening, fascinating, and disturbing to me.

Overall, the plot is well-paced and throughout the novel, you're faced with the dangling carrot presented in the beginning: will the star-crossed lovers reunite?  Where will Ifemelu ultimately call "home"?

Love me a good love story

I can't resist a good love story, and as love stories go, Americanah is so, so great.  I don't want to short-change Adichie, who took on serious racial identity questions, problems, and experiences, and somehow taught a wide breadth of lessons on being black in America without sounding cliche, tired, preachy, or pedantic.  But the thing that kept me reading, obsessively, with the final sprint in bed on a Saturday till 3pm because I hadn't finished yet and I just had to, was finding out how Ifemelu's Obinze story would end.  You can't help but root for these characters individually, but what you really want is for them to be together at all costs, because it's hard to think of a couple as sexy and two-halves-of-a-whole as these two.

Nitpicking

Despite how much I loved the book, I have to admit that Adichie was pedantic sometimes.  One of Ifemelu's lovers, Blaine, is a Yale professor with the preachiest group of friends and family ever, and sometimes their rants on race were about as subtle as a club over the head.  This can be forgiven, given how enjoyable it was to learn about Ifemelu's experiences and to read her blog entries on race that were delivered with more aplomb.

If you could have cut out the Blaine relationship entirely, really, and in particular their insufferable dinner parties with his horrible sister, the book would have been even better, in my opinion.  Being with Blaine gives Adichie an outlet to talk about what Obama meant to her characters, and most importantly, an African-American counterpoint to Ifemelu's African-in-America views.  And having had an annoying ex-boyfriend, I suppose their irritaitng relationship made Ifemelu a fuller and more real person to me.  But good lord, I hoped with every page turn that they would break up!

Ifemelu, can I be your clueless but adoring white friend?

I have seen a lot of films and articles and media analysis delving into the subject of what it means to be African American in this country, but this novel is driven by a different, but related, topic: what it means to be an African immigrant, seeking love and stability in America and England. 

I've never been to Africa, and my knowledge of regional conflict there and the immigrant experience is limited to representing a client from Guinea, and asking my friend Dani, who is doing public health work in Liberia, a thousand questions.  Despite my narrow perspective, one of this novel's biggest achievements is that I still couldn't help but feel that its protagonist, Ifemelu, was so very relatable.

Ifemelu writes a blog called "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known As Negroes) by a Non-American Black" - by turns hilarious, scathing, educational, and like its title, a mouthful.  One of the best entries focuses on her clueless but adoring white friends, and having just finished this novel, I would love to count myself among these friends - I'm already deeply missing spending time with Ifemelu.