this is the story of a jealous man and a jealous God fighting for the soul of a woman who desperately wants to believe in one of them.
oh, and it's a c...more this is the story of a jealous man and a jealous God fighting for the soul of a woman who desperately wants to believe in one of them.
oh, and it's a complicated thing, belief.
the relationshippy parts of this book are divine. a woman in an unfulfilling marriage takes a lover, maurice, and puts all of herself into the relationship. maurice, for his part, should perhaps have been called "marcel," because his involvement in the relationship is pure proust. overanalyzing, obsessing, becoming jealous of every past and possible future lover sarah has had or could have, anticipating the end of the relationship so frequently that he is rarely committed to the moment, loving the idea of sarah without understanding her as a woman until everything is over and unobtainable. it is great stuff; a man mourning a relationship he was never even fully involved in. the fool.
"i'd rather be dead or see you dead," i said, "than with another man. i'm not eccentric. that's ordinary human love. ask anybody. they'd all say the same-if they loved at all." i jibed at her. "anyone who loves is jealous."
which is almost intense enough to cover up the fact that he loves her without knowing what she is all about - it is an artist's rendition of love - all movement, no depth.
and poor cuckold henry, loving sarah in his own way, but never giving her the passionate relationship her spirit requires. maurice/marcel sums it up:
and yet he was happier in his unused room simply because it was his: his possession. i thought with bitterness and envy: if one possesses a thing securely, one need never use it.
aagghh.his is a quiet, plodding, consistent love. a loyalty that loves without getting close enough to make a ripple. (and by "ripple," i mean "orgasm," naturally.)
enter God.
who has no business being in a love triangle which eventually becomes a love-octagon, at least. but after promises made in the heat of the moment, and some magical thinking and coincidence He is there and there is no shaking Him, and it gets very complicated.
i am spoiler-tagging this, but it is a quote from the introduction that kills me, and may or may not be a true spoiler: (view spoiler)[ for all the trouble of their relations, the pain of surrendering maurice proves very nearly unendurable: it is as though sarah has punched a hole through her heart, a hole that is both defined by and then filled by god. without the pain she would not need to believe at all, but faith is in greene a form of suffering and sarah has caught it, a disease that somehow gives her the strength she needs not to break her vow. (hide spoiler)]
i feel like i have said too much while saying nothing at all. full disclosure: i wrote a verylong and deeply personal reaction to the book, and then plunked the delete button on purpose for once. and it felt good.
all you need to know is that this book surprised me by being so much better that heart of the matter, and even though i didn't like all the oddly magical bits at the end, i loved the audacity of this book, and the observations he was able to make even hobbled as he was by the unlikeability of his narrator. this book is worth reading for sarah's diary alone.
this is hardy's most perfectly-constructed novel. there are others that are more appealing, to me, (am i allowed to say that?), but this one is such a...more this is hardy's most perfectly-constructed novel. there are others that are more appealing, to me, (am i allowed to say that?), but this one is such a perfect cause-and-effect, every-action-has-a-reaction kind of book, that it should really be his most popular and successful, instead of tess, which by comparison, is pure melodrama.
mayor is full of the trappings of melodrama - convenient and inexplicable deaths, characters long out of the picture returning at the least opportune times, overheard conversations and love triangles and deathbed confessions, and yet it is so much more than that - it is the long, drawn-out punishment of a man who makes an impulsive mistake, tries to redeem himself, and finds that when thomas hardy is writing your life, it just isn't going to work out for you, sorry.
this book has more psychological insight than tess, and henchard is a much more complex and nuanced character than any found in tess' world. tess' punishments result from her gender, her innocence, the hypocrisy of society, and a mismanaged letter. henchard is no ingenue.
nor is this like jude, where a basically good but misguided man falls victim to circumstances - michael henchard is an unlikeable character through and through. but the fact that he tries to be a better man, and even pulls it off for a while, should be enough, right? even though he is arrogant and hot-tempered, even though he sold his wife and baby in a drunken impulse? is he not even a candidate for redemption? he regrets his mistakes, and even though he continues to make more, his awareness of his character flaws should be enough to avoid his fate, right?
nope. this is hardyland. hardy doesn't take kindly to people trying to rise above their circumstances, nor does he take kindly to people getting off scot-free from their mistakes, good intentions or not. tess and angel pay, jude and sue pay, and michael henchard will pay.
along with the very hardy-esque theme of "stay put and be good," this book is another shining example of hardy's facility with descriptive prose involving pastoral settings, and the idea of progress, and its effect on the working man.
coincidences abound, but always acting as an agent of fate, which was hardy's god. fate is capricious, but determined, and there is no escaping it.
i give a resounding five stars to the first part of this book, and three to the end.
overall, it is a perfect encapsulation of a love experience, from...morei give a resounding five stars to the first part of this book, and three to the end.
overall, it is a perfect encapsulation of a love experience, from its initial obsessive beginnings to the eventual resentment and tender suffering for the sake of another's feelings. and then - silly silly melodrama.
it is unfair of me to judge the ending of this book. it is a product of its time and i can't hate on it for giving its audience what they wanted; what they expected. and i can't be a hypocrite and love wuthering heights and be unmoved by this. (although w.h. earned its ending, and this, being so short, has less character-imprinting to assist it)
but as far as a perfect rendition of the arc of a love affair, i have to applaud this. it manages to slow down the hyper-emotive feelings of personal experiences into universal and relatable ones in a way that is breathtaking...at first.
then it gets a little batshit, into overcalculating proust-territory. but for a while, i was alongside of him yelling "yes! yes! yes!"
and no one believes your preface, constant... everyone knows exactly what and whom this is about. nice backpedal, though.
i read this because it tied in with The Late Lord Byron, and knowing the full story, this is kind of an interesting piece of literary history, and madame de stael comes across way better than byron ever did in Glenarvon (Everyman's Library, which was his ex's take on their relationship, but if any of my former lovers decides to write a book about me, i am stopping that bitch at the press. (less)
janet flanner, in the new yorker claims that her writing has a "shine like crystal." and that's probably true, i...morenope. i do not like marguerite duras.
janet flanner, in the new yorker claims that her writing has a "shine like crystal." and that's probably true, if one is observing that it is as pointy and depthless as crystal, as chill and remote, as something that refracts emptily. ooooh duras BURN!!
if this is a literary bodice ripper, i gotta say i prefer the crappy contemporary ones. this one isn't even intense with the taut tingling of repression, which also has its place and is something i can appreciate - it doesn't all have to be desperate passions and rending of garments, but this zombie vacuity does nothing for me - nothing nothing nothing. there is nothing at stake here, just people blinking emptily at each other, speaking words with no momentum behind them, frequently non sequiturs so it seems as though they are involved in separate conversations. lack of quotation marks so that when one character will reluctantly, languidly plop out a sentence, you sometimes don't even know which one is speaking, unless there is a back-and-forth, and then you can use context or whatever. but the one isolated word or phrase in a scene when two people are just sitting around existing, who knows who is speaking? who cares?
and i am not just pouting because no one but me wanted to read zola for the literary smut portion of our rippings, i swear. i did not like The Lover when i read it, but i had hope nonetheless. this one sounded like it could be interesting. but the french have this habit of creating highly stylized works of art that leave me cold. why do they do that? very infuriating, frenchies...
i know all the other rippers will have informed and intelligent things to say about this, and my frazzled and sweaty frustration will be coolly counteracted by more reasonable ladies (and a dude or two) with elegant and refined responses examining the psychology of characters such as these, and what duras is trying to accomplish be portraying them in this way, but i am a monster and i bust down the door and say "boring boring boring boring!!!"
so i don't know much about finland, apart from tove jansson and arto paasilinna. it seems nice - plenty of hills and snow and salmon. long healthy liv...moreso i don't know much about finland, apart from tove jansson and arto paasilinna. it seems nice - plenty of hills and snow and salmon. long healthy lives and peaceful calm people. nice brisk weather.
but then i read this book. and it's not all
and
it turns out, finland is also like this:
that last one may not actually be from finland, but it made me laugh, so into the review it goes!! i am not a purist.
this is a collection of shortie short stories mostly about lonely people committing acts of violence. frequently unexplained, often unprovoked, violence. and in a two-and-a-half page story, i suppose the explanation would be clutter, but still, it is chilling to have that absence of psychological motivation. these are like o. henry stories, except instead of a "twist" it usually ends in bloodspill or reader discomfort, or as the back cover fancily states: "...an emotional intimacy that draws the reader into uncomfortable empathy with the extremity of their deeds"
so what i said, only better.
they aren't all violent - i don't want to give the wrong idea. maybe 3/4?? the rest are simply bleak, or at their mildest, nostalgic.
so, more like this:
are there more pictures than words in my review? yup. and you know you love it like cotton candy, as insubstantial as it is.(less)
this is my second dip in the zweig pool, and i'm pretty much sold. i do wish someone would publish a volume of his collected works so i don't...moreZWEIG!!!
this is my second dip in the zweig pool, and i'm pretty much sold. i do wish someone would publish a volume of his collected works so i don't have to keep buying these tiny, albeit beautiful, pushkin press editions. they can be read in the time it takes to eat a box of crackers.and then you are left with no crackers and no more book. and that is a heavy-souled feeling.
ya know what is also a heavy-souled feeling?? the guilt of infidelity. a seamless transition into the book by ms. brissette (2 points). bored by a "perfect" life into an equally boring affair, and then blackmailed by the ex-lover of her current lover, irene experiences fear. seamless name-drop of title (4 points). what follows is 100 pages of slow psychological breakdown as she pays off her blackmailer and fears exposure. overcome by angst (mention of the german title: 5 points), she contemplates suicide (naturally; it is zweig, after all) and homicide as she tries to find a way out of the hole she has dug herself into.
there is the usual poking at the bourgeoisie, and an ending that i half-expected, but it was completely satisfying. zweig does character so well - all the false starts and crazy notions and deliberations of this woman are crystallized into impressive and taut prose that makes the story more of a thriller than you would expect considering that it is mostly hand-wringing consciousness of her burning secret (name drop of another zweig book: 5 points), and not the big explosions of a more modern thriller.
i have earned many points here tonight. my work is done.
tomato red is an earlier book by daniel woodrell, and occasionally this becomes apparent. there are moments where it gets a little overwritten even fo...moretomato red is an earlier book by daniel woodrell, and occasionally this becomes apparent. there are moments where it gets a little overwritten even for me, the lover of melodrama and the densely-packed sentence.
is it as good as winter's bone??
no.
but it's like saying "is megan fox as hot as angelina jolie, or is she some kind of cheaper, off-brand, less genuinely badass version??" does it matter?? is anyone kicking either of these ladies out of bed?? nope.
woodrell is never gonna get kicked out of my bookshelf. i want to read him sparingly, because his books tend to be short and there aren't that many of them, but i now know that when i read one, i am guaranteed to enjoy it.
this one is much more of an appalachia noir than winter's bone, but it still employs the same themes of frustration and impotence and futility in that "this is where you were born and this is what you get" kind of steinbeckian inevitability that i have always been drawn to. cleverness won't get you out, beauty won't get you out, sexual proficiency won't get you out, and there's no such thing as justice, even of the poetic kind. and that is as bleak as it sounds, but the struggle is a beautiful thing.
you can't help but love the narrator; the most hapless character to ever attempt a life of crime. for a girl. a series of girls. and the rest of it? it's funny and sad and beautiful. woodrell has a real knack for bringing the reader to the brink of hope and then kicking the characters' legs out from under them. for a short book, there are a lot of emotional turns.
i push woodrell on you. i don't think he can be resisted.(less)
all i did while reading this book is cry. in the middle of penn station for hours. in the receiving room at work. in the subway. at...moreutterly destroyed.
all i did while reading this book is cry. in the middle of penn station for hours. in the receiving room at work. in the subway. at home. tears. everywhere. i am going to have to buy the copy i borrowed from work because my tears got on a couple of pages.
it is unprecedented.
and it doesn't hurt that i have been blue for a couple of months now, but it also doesn't help that this woman knows how punch you in the heart in a variety of ways with stealth and precision.
because it's not that bad things happen to the characters. please - as a thomas hardy veteran, you can't get me that way. and it's not a nicholas sparks teenagers kissing in the rain kind of awwwww crying. i am not that way inclined.
and again marchetta is exploding the scope of the YA novel. when one of the two main characters is a woman in her forties experiencing her first pregnancy with a painful baby-daddy situation and giant bloody handfuls of family drama swirling all over, i just wonder what the teens are going to make of it. these aren't relatable high-school relationships; there are layers of betrayal and heartbreak and years of built-up hopes and letdowns crudding up the lives of these characters. and it's not that teens can't understand the emotions, it just strange to me to keep writing these books that have such a broad market and audience and publishing them as teen fiction, thus cutting the audience in half.
the other central character is nineteen; the nephew of the pregnant woman, with his own woes, and the family woes the two of them share. his concerns are more universal than a potentially single-mom late-in-fertility pregnancy situation, but they are still very complicated and more than your run of the mill teen angst.
it is gutting.
and it didn't start out that way. i had to reread the first three pages a few times because it is a confusing mass of characters' relationships to each other, like in the bible. eventually i gave up and said, "i'm sure this will make more sense as the story progresses, Ã la jellicoe road." and it did. it does. but for awhile, i was floundering and wondering "who are these people?? i thought reading saving francesca first would be all i needed to understand this one!!"
but pssst - i liked this one a lot more than saving francesca. i really liked s.f., it had a million moments where i felt touched or saddened or more human somehow, but this one lives up to the skill and promise of jellicoe road which is jaw-droppingly good stuff. this one has some teensy things that i didn't love (all of the original song lyrics, for example, really made my skin crawl) but there is such a strength and a confidence to her writing, and the balls on her to talk politics - australian politics, to an audience that, in america at least, is going to be utterly perplexed. (quick: american teens - you have twenty seconds to tell me where east timor is)
for all of it, i recommend her to you. but particularly for what she does best - the long fuse, the slow burn, and then not one big firecracker at the end, but a string of small explosions in the heart that eventually wear you down into a teary-eyed blob of emotional helplessness. bitch.
donald harington has ruined so many books for me simply by being a better writer than other writers. so when i read something like this, i am forced t...moredonald harington has ruined so many books for me simply by being a better writer than other writers. so when i read something like this, i am forced to obsess over the many ways this could have been better if his gentle hands were still with us...
occasionally, when i was reading this one, i was thinking of when angels rest, which is the closest harington ever came to writing a "war novel." in that one, WWII is brought close to home as the children of stay more, already engaging in "war games" in their various peer groups, come into contact with actual soldiers as their town becomes occupied and sides are drawn. harington touches upon universal truths and horrifying realities with the deft touch for which he is known, and that books sings. and then has a bit of a rough ending.
there is none of that deft touch at all in this book.
some of it reads as though it was actually written by someone living in a cult - separated from the rest of humanity with only a vague understanding of the world outside, like a memory of some sitcom-from-the-80's stock footage of a gay male character from which to try to sensitively portray a gentleman that way inclined. really really bad. and that was only one millisecond of this book.
first of all - the layout. cutesie little icons denote from which perspective each portion of the book will be shown; little irritating bursts of narrative voiced by a crow, a television set, plutonians (um, why?),a six-year-old preoccupied with her own sex appeal, (yuk. but she is occasionally entertaining. but, yes, yuk), etc. i love novels in which there is a scattershot voice, but too much of this was just whimsy for the sake of whimsy.
the rest of it is a soapbox jamboree - a blend of extreme left wing and extreme right wing philosophy coming together when the captain of a free maine militia befriends the head of a commune and hijinks arise.
but there is an agenda here, and i am just not on board. not because i am anti- or pro- anything these characters stand for, but because loud speeches and political proselytizing are grating to me when it sneaks into my littrature. or my subway car.
if you're gonna do it, do it gracefully, don't shriek it at me from cartoony characters with little map icons.
it's just some boring polygamous hippies surrounding a supposedly charismatic leader who keeps turning the other cheek while his flock nervously looks around at the changes a-comin'. it tries to tackle too many of society's perceived ills at once and just becomes a mess of bitter and unsubtle metaphor.
and as far as maine secession, go ahead and secede - i have read a bunch of stephen king and y'all are creepy. plus, i know jasmine...
(ahhhhh don't shoot!!!)
no, i am still going to read the beans of egypt, maine, because that is the one jessica actually suggested to me in RA group. but this one i did not like. i have higher hopes for those beans.(less)
wait, is it?? i'm not entirely sure what kind of book this is...
it opens with some bloody vomit at the breakfast table an...morethis is one of those books...
wait, is it?? i'm not entirely sure what kind of book this is...
it opens with some bloody vomit at the breakfast table and ends on an awkward comic relief rimshot of a line.
and in between. well, there's ghosts and zombie-ish types and a really endearingly stupid dog and good old fashioned teenaged helpless desperation and rage. and if that sounds like a jumbly mess to you, remember that this is the same author who brought you bible camp bloodbath, and if anyone's going to know how to make those disparate elements combine into good fun times, it's him.
this book is almost perfect. it has such a great sense of pacing and wackiness, but it is a wackiness that does not lack taste or a sense of control. this is someone who knows how to edit their imagination before it strays too far into the surreal, wandering just far enough before it becomes a hazard. me, i cannot tolerate weird for weird's sake, and i think this little nightmare of a book captures a tone that is moody and tense, while retaining a purpose to the storytelling that is not all gloss and shock.
the most reductive synopsis is: a girl falls in love with her best friend while both of their lives are falling into chaos and the obstacles to their love turn out to be supernatural in nature. but it's more than that. it is also about putting all your trust in something that seems permanent and immutable only to have it ripped away, piece by piece, leaving only bewilderment and fury. and that feeling - panting in the wake of the places and people you thought you could count on as they recede... i mean, who wouldn't throw a rock through a car window??
let's just say i can relate to this impulse.
there is a weird wonky hiccup about 2/3 of the way through that threw me a little and made this somewhat-less-than-perfect in my eyes. but otherwise, some really gorgeous writing here, and a truly fun book that has a sharp-toothed undercarriage.
i am recommending this book to you. it is so meta and insane, you are sure to love it.
for the rest of you, i don't know what t...moreCARIS CARIS CARIS CARIS
i am recommending this book to you. it is so meta and insane, you are sure to love it.
for the rest of you, i don't know what to say. it starts out telling the story of a boy named idaho winter, hated by all. people can't even help themselves when he is around, they need to hurt him both physically and emotionally. his parents make him eat the carcass of a raccoon the dog dragged home, his schoolmates beat him up before school to try to prevent him ever making it there, the crossing guard tries to time idaho's crossing to best coincide with a speedily approaching car. poor idaho. (view spoiler)[this is like the story of greg's childhood. it is not actually a spoiler, but it is something secret and mean to say - ha! (hide spoiler)]
but there is one girl.
and then.
well, idaho takes over the book, surprising the author and drawing him into a world he thought he had created only to find it changed and under new management. it gets... wild. the chapter titles change, the narrative loops back on itself, things get a little surreal and... well, i don't know. you decide.
i read this whole thing sitting on a bench waiting for connor and when i looked up, the whole world seemed changed somehow. i began to be suspicious of every person walking by. and then connor came over and ate a cookie and the feeling passed. but it was an affecting read. and mostly fun. but also eerie and thought-provoking.
let's see if i still remember how to write a decent book review...
of the five of my goodreads.com friends and "friends" who have read this, all of th...morelet's see if i still remember how to write a decent book review...
of the five of my goodreads.com friends and "friends" who have read this, all of them have given it five stars, but not one of them has bothered to write a review.so i guess this makes it my responsibility, but i apologize for the timing of this, because i have been in a real rut lately, when it comes to writing reviews. i have been boring even myself over here. but i will try to do this one justice, because it was a fantastic read.
this was recommended in the RA group as a good literary horror novel. so as i was reading it, i had certain expectations, and every time something eventful would happen, i would be on the edge of my seat, waiting for the horror.
it is not a horror novel.
it is a novel in which horrible things happen, but don't expect any supernatural ghoulies or anything. it is just a really well-written west virginia crime story in which creepy, potentially supernatural things circle the text, but never actually enter it. this is just kill or be killed backwoods violence; what lee k.abbott calls "writing from the sharp and serious end of the stick" (and i wonder if he is sad his name is misspelled on the back cover)
it is a third-person, multi-character novel - we are perched above the action, watching it all unfold underneath us, helplessly swept away as cause leads to effect leads to massive and spectacular ending.
not too shabby for a first novel.
this falls under the eloquent-yet-terse category of these kinds of stories. benedict is not afraid to use his words, and there are some lovely poetic descriptions in here, but just as many things that are only hinted at and left to the imagination. it is a perfect balance of lovely and revolting. definitely my kind of book.
if i could say more without giving too much away, i would. if i ever get my review-mojo back, maybe i will return and do a better job on this one. or maybe mike reynolds could take care of this - we count on you, you know...
and because i love lists:
scary dogs anchorite crazy cult sexy lady marijuana broken bones dead bodies secret caves gravestone snuggle kabooms (less)
don't make your books look like chick lit if you want people to read 'em.
more free advice from me.
but it's true - not all of us have a sarah montambo...moredon't make your books look like chick lit if you want people to read 'em.
more free advice from me.
but it's true - not all of us have a sarah montambo in our lives to tell us, "no, this is really very good." because it is. and this is not just me groping all the canadian books in the corner of the dancefloor, this book is a sparkly little gem.
at the beginning, it reminded me a lot of weetzie bat. it is a similarly glossy-slick storytelling style, but this one is about a girl with a loving junkie single dad who treats her like a peer (and since he is only 15 years older than her, he's not far off) and they breeze from apartment to apartment in montreal in a daze where there are no consequences and everything will be okay, even if they have no money and there are dangers on the streets and foster homes.
but it doesn't stay rosy.
this one is not teen fiction, but she captures the young teenage character so well, in both thoughts and actions. even though baby is exposed to so much that is unsavory, she is still a little kid with a kid's energy, freaking out pimps with her sudden dancing and yelling, trashing a house and not stealing the jewelry (because of her own kid-logic) but stealing a cute turtle knickknack, avoiding bathing...it's like what greg is always saying when he talks about lolita; that lo is totally gross, the way a little kid is, playing with her gum and being dirty and smelly, and it's not like in the movie at all, or in most may-december films. kids are rarely sexually precocious, even when they are imitating behaviors they have seen or been taught. the gross will always out. and i loved that about this book; the moments of kid-grossery that would pop out unexpectedly.
in the back of the book, where harpercollins slaps all those readers' guides and interviews, there is this wonderful passage in her "making of" feature:
the inability to properly identify danger exists throughout the book. whereas children can be terrified by a puppet of a crocodile or a photograph of a shark in a national geographic magazine, they are unable to get it through their heads to look both ways when they cross the street or that there are strangers that you cannot talk to....
when i was eleven, i used to have a friend whose older brother was a junkie. he and his friends were the coolest kids in the neighborhood. some high points in my childhood were when drug addicts would flip out and come out of their apartments in their underwear with cats on their heads. we kids would dance around them, shouting and laughing with our hands up in the air. i wanted to capture this nonjudgmental attitude a lot of lower-class kids have to drugs. i also wanted to portray the relationships these same kids have with seedy adults. children believe the lies that adults tell them and are dutifully impressed. lowlifes are fantastical creatures who animate the world of children, and, in turn, lowlifes love children who are their most captive and adoring audience.
that's what i was trying to say, about the things i liked about this book. but she is a writer, so she said it much much better.
this book was written five years ago. i am ready for a follow-up, please!!(less)
so i finished this book today and rather than start the new book i brought for the subway ride home, i just started this thing all over again.
it's really good.
that's why it astounds me that there are so many one- and two-star reviews on here. this is good stuff, guys! i was talking to tom fuller about it today, telling him how many people called this book "confusing" or "boring" or saying that they just didn't get it. and tom fuller, bless him, said "what the fuck's there not to get??"
which may be a little disingenuous.
because kathryn davis does not write like nicholas sparks, and people accustomed to reading incredibly basic and paint-by-the-numbers fiction may not be able to follow a book that doesn't read itself to you, holding your hand all the way.
pay attention. this here's literary.
it is not difficult, but i do suggest that you pay attention when you read, which is advice you may feel free to apply to any book you read. it is respectful to the author, after all. this is not a casual beach read, but it shouldn't intimidate anyone.
she is a gorgeous writer.
they were so young: he'd just finished his junior year at princeton; if all went well she was going to begin cooper union in the fall. afterward he told her he was majoring in economics and planning to do graduate work at the wharton school. he didn't tell her he'd almost flunked out of princeton, because he knew he was destined for success and the information would be misleading. she told him she'd gotten the only perfect score in the history of cooper union on the entrance test where you guessed how many blocks of a variety of sizes went into making a variety of structures of which you could see, say, only part of a side.she didn't tell him about her mental condition, figuring he'd either deduce it for himself (from the information about the blocks) or else didn't care about such things. in this way they set the tone for all subsequent pillow talk: suppression disguised as candor.
oh, that's good...
her mental condition is schizophrenia, and her character is a brilliant, larger-than-life artist whose daughter (probably unreliably, considering genetics) narrates this story which splits into many facets and tells the story of a walking tour gone wrong; relying upon court testimony, a diary, and memory, which necessarily will be full of gaps and deliberate omissions.
this is the third book i have read from her, and i love the way she blends realism with fantasy and keeps the reader guessing. she is masterful, and this book is so much better than the ratings on here would suggest.
for anyone else, this would probably be a four- or five-star book, and looking through my friends list, it seems to in...more i don't know what my problem is.
for anyone else, this would probably be a four- or five-star book, and looking through my friends list, it seems to indeed be the case. and i am thrilled, because i love liz jensen and she gets very little play in this country - most of her books are out of print, and the last two didn't even come out in paperback here, so i am holding onto these two sad hardcover copies in the hopes that someone will happen upon them and buy them.
there is so much good in this book, but it was just missing something. "what was it missing, karen?? where is your book?? YOU THINK YOU CAN DO BETTER??"
no, i most certainly cannot.
i am no writer, but i am a pretty decent reader. and liz jensen is a fine writer, who usually has this indefinable spark to her writing. a low-level thrum in the underwriting. she is dangerous and funny and unexpected. and there is some of that here, but a lot of this reads like a well-constructed thriller, the kind that they make into a "redefining the genre" movie like The Silence of the Lambs or Primal Fear.it is very good, but it didn't make me dance.
but i don't want to diminish this - she manages some pretty tricky things in this novel. when i was reading/reviewing Ship Breaker, i made a point of mentioning that the global-warming stuff was very nearly off-putting, but he didn't push the button hard enough to make me completely queasy. now liz jensen, she throws her whole body on that button and gyrates around, but for some reason, it didn't bother me,. it was like watching my body on an operating table: i was thinking "this should be bothering me, but it isn't."
she has a skill, this one.
and the ending is simply perfect. i will in no way spoil it by saying that there was an easy way out, and a "satisfying" way out, and a "reasonable" way out. and liz jensen took the most complicated choice,the one that was probably the most difficult to write, and wrote it very well. my hat is off to her. she leaves the reader feeling uneasy, which is the best thing she could have done.
i do recommend this book, because it is very good, but in the spectrum of "liz jensen books i have loved," this one is just lower than most.(less)
well, if elizabeth won't drunkenly review this for me, i guess i will have to do it myself. sober. because it is 8:30 in the morning and i am not mick...morewell, if elizabeth won't drunkenly review this for me, i guess i will have to do it myself. sober. because it is 8:30 in the morning and i am not mickey rourke.
i got this tiny book at the last gasp of border's sale because it was four dollars and is super tiny and sounded great. i then ordered in most of this series for a display to excite people who are excited by tiny books. it is part of the prestigious open door series, originally designed for adult literacy in ireland and i love literate adults! they are my favorite kind!
can you tell i am stalling because i don't have a lot to say about this book, but my personal hangup about reading books and not reviewing them is poking my brain right now and bellowing "doooooo it???"
walace weiss is a writer of fantasy novels who was once very successful but got a bad case of writer's block that turned into a bad case of meth addiction. this is a sad little book, as walace struggles through his day in a haze of confusion and memories and longing for a time other than his own. he has become childlike rather than aggressive in his addiction, except when he is responding to online criticism of his works:
dear "fans"
jackrabbits are not male rabbits. jackrabbits are actually hares, not rabbits. hares are larger than rabbits, and they have taller hind legs and longer ears. jackrabbits were named for their ears, which is why people first called them "jackass rabbits." does your mother refer to you, too, as a jackass rabbit? she ought to.
sincerely, WW
this is actually much nicer than some reader/author interactions i have witnessed.
this is just a "day in the life" kind of piece, where we witness walace stumble through it all, visiting his editor, who still believes in him even though he has failed her time and time again, causing a scene in the library and disappointing one of his former students/fans, getting swindled because of his own innate kindness and drug-addledness, all the time being narrated on by a kindly voice that gives him, and us, hope, with plenty of elvish swirls thrown in. there is a lot of beautiful writing in here, and even if overall i don't have a lot to say about it, i liked its style, and i know i want to read something more substantial from this author.(less)
i love the words of myla goldberg. and i love stories about childhood mysteries. this is a quick one, but well worth it.
when i went to the "RIP, borders...morei love the words of myla goldberg. and i love stories about childhood mysteries. this is a quick one, but well worth it.
when i went to the "RIP, borders" sale, this was the only book in my head on my "look for it" list. and i saw it and squealed, and it helped to dispel the black cloud of gloom over the staff and other shoppers.
it did.
the basics: celia, at eleven, was best friends with a girl named djuna, with whom she had a volatile and competitive relationship. their gang was completed by three other girls who were clearly only satellites, "additions", background girls.
one day, djuna goes missing in the woods and celia tells everyone she saw her get into a stranger's car. twenty years later, she realizes "shit, i totally made that up! i saw her fall in a hole and vanish"
so, feeling intensely guilty, she returns home to confess to her parents, track down the other three girls, and come to terms with her memories, her lies, and her current troubles with her boyfriend.
but no one believes her. it's complicated. and she learns/remembers some things about her past that were better forgotten.
this is the second book i have read recently in which a central female character is blissfully unaware of what a bully she is/was. at least in this book, twenty years have passed in between and so it is more realistic that she would completely blank out her own behavior, but it makes me wonder and worry. was i a bully?? would i even know it if i was?? i mean, i know i am a little bit of a bossy bear now, but i don't think i am particularly bullyish. but it is food for thought. because kids are little monsters, and i was one of them. she puts it well:
the unadult mind is immune to logic or foresight, unschooled by consequence, and endowed with a biblical sense of justice.
yep. little emotional reactors turning every moment into the most important moment of all time and taking names...
but this has positive consequences, too:
what struck celia most about young children was the intensity of their passions, life too new to be modulated, perspective a possession not yet acquired. at that age friendship was a continuous present based on proximity and the shared fact of being alive. heartbreak and betrayal were commonplace, authentic and ardent each time, forgotten within moments.
she describes childhood very well. she also describes the return to the nest well.
celia was seduced by the simplicity of her relationship to her meal. it was too much food, really, a plate filled according to a mother's concern and not a daughter's appetite.
having just returned from a weekend "home," i am quite familiar with the parent/adult child dynamic. i am quite nostalgic as a result.
this was not ultimately the most convincing psychological study, but there was so much to enjoy in this book, i would recommend it. so i am.(less)
when i was thirteen, i had a journal. and i would lie on my tummy and kick my feet in the air and record my tiny thoughts.
when i was fifteen, i had a journal. and i would smoke a joint and lie on my tummy and record my huge earthshattering thoughts.
when i was nineteen, i had a journal. and - well, let's save something for the biopic, shall we?
i don't have a journal anymore. and you know why?
because i write huge purple monsters of sentences and only end up making myself small and shy when i come across them years later.
this book suffers from many of these sentences.
i should have known from the first page:
I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my terror to face the moment I most desire.
ugh. i can feel raymond carver hurling an empty bottle of booze at this sentence in disgust, and for once, i am with him.
there is a way to be evocative and complicated and beautiful all at once, "the smile on your face was the deadest thing alive enough to have the strength to die," anyone??
this?? this ain't that. and as an opening sentence it just stuck in my craw and tainted the rest of the book.
i like crisp prose, clean lines, smart phrasings. this seemed too self-indulgent - too emotionally bloated.too much "why use one word when you can use ten and still say nothing??" going on.
Not God, but bats and a spider who is weaving my guilt, keep the rendezvous with me, and shame copulates with every September housefly. My room echoes with the screams she never uttered, and under my floor the vines of remorse get ready to push up through the damp. The cricket drips remembrance unceasingly into my ear, lest I mislay any items of cruelty's fiendish inventory.
oh, yeah?? is that what shame does?? it copulates with houseflies, does it?? gosh, i hope the maggot gets shame's eyes...i have no patience for this sort of thing.
Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour.
i say no thank you.
brigid brophy's introduction is excellent. i read it last, of course, and it made me appreciate the book so much more in retrospect, and it also reminded me of the several parts i did enjoy. but i have to give it two stars, because i really didn't enjoy reading it. there were moments of great beauty, but too many parts where i was just gagging on her prose. i am all for pain and howling emotions,but isn't it the responsibility of the writer to marry the vulnerable raw nerves with craft?? it is true there were many moments where i was totally on-board with her writing, but when it was bad, it was very very bad.
and, oh, what's this?? someone has come to interrupt my ravings...it's me - a week later!
okay, so i have been really sad for a couple of days now. and i have reread great swathes of this book under the influence of my own ragged emotions.and i am ashamed to admit that i like it more now. i have to keep the two-stars for that is how i felt when i really read it, but might i suggest reading this when you are in the throes of some sort of emotional tidal wave?? it was not meant for happy eyes. although there still isn't any shame copulating with any houseflies here at my place.
this book took me by surprise. this is another mcnally jackson find, and one which a certain tomato tried to talk me out of adding to my already-too-b...morethis book took me by surprise. this is another mcnally jackson find, and one which a certain tomato tried to talk me out of adding to my already-too-big stack, but i assured her it was only $8.95, and that is practically free! and i am really glad i bought it, because i can't order it into the store, and it was a sweet and simple story that may or may not have made my eyes leak a little.
but i may have just had tired eyes from all the annotating i had to do.
nah, i will own up. i cried ONE native-american-confronting-litterbugs tear. i did. it is such a small book, there isn't much room for a ton of content, but the characters, their relationship, the puzzle-piece way their quirks fit together - it is very affecting.
i myself am a maker of lists. i have at least seven different notebooks whose purposes blur together, but each one has a different mood, and causes distinctly differently-toned lists to emerge. crazy?? a little. i am not as listy as johns is in this book (that is not a typo), but i do feel better if i can look at a list: of groceries, of books to get, of things to do, of people to email... it makes my manic life more manageable. this is something of a cautionary tale for me, but it also has that "independent movie starring joseph-gordon levitt" feel to it which is cheeky and sweet and quite moving.
i love this book. i always ask people to recommend me some good horror books because i just c...more
like deliverance...with monsters!
CZP is three for three!!
i love this book. i always ask people to recommend me some good horror books because i just can't get scared by books, and i want to feel that lovely shivery feeling of "what's that noise!!??" "what is that shadow doing?? ahhhhhh!!" and while it's true i slept fine after reading this - i wasn't cowering in my bed with the blankets pulled up over my face for protection, there were several scenes where i felt my skin crawling, and i actually leaned forward into the book, the way you would if you were psyching yourself up to poke a sleeping lion with a broomstick.
this man knows how to write creepy and atmospheric scenes. they are great.this is a very literary horror novel, but it still fulfills its role of being effective in its horror-mode, i would not call it cerebral horror, like in a henry james manner, which is intense and foreboding; he is in-the-head-intense, whereas this is the good primeval gut-fear i crave.
it is hard to talk about the plot of this one - i was telling dana about how much i was enjoying it on the subway home last week and i was getting more and more animated, with my hands flailing and saying "and then this and then that and oh! then this and but then" and her eyes just sort of glazed over while she thought about college basketball and M/M fiction... and that's fine - this is definitely not the book for her, and i probably overcomplicated the plot in my excitement. but if you like a narrative that unspools slowly and has great characterization and creepy undertones and then explodes into a scene of ensemble horror in a very traditional or classic way... does this make sense?? because the ending, or the climax anyway, seems like a callback to really great traditional horror or sci-fi films of a certain era. so it is familiar in a way, but not exhausted. it is like the way i can watch certain twilight zone or x-files episodes a million times and still get excited by them.
this begins as a historical piece: 1911; a black doctor experiences a lynching attempt by the KKK during which something very odd and spooky occurs. meanwhile, a young boy outlives everyone in his town, seemingly immune to the plague that has killed everyone else.
dun dun dun....
but then it spirals out to include a million different things: eugenics (hence the clever title), an amazing collection of hill-people, some really gross breeding and birthing situations... i just loved it.
this was his first book with CZP:
i love this cover and even though i have never read it because i still feel like i am not a fan of short stories even with the written review-proof that i frequently am, i always have it on the table at work because it is eye-catching and for some reason customers like to hold it up over their face as if it was a mask. and they always think they are being very original, like when they, separated from their friends or mate, yell "marco!!" sigh.
but - great story about this book that was told to me by brett, the co-publisher from CZP: apparently, a friend of his was reading it at LAX, and so many people complained to airport security that the cover was "disturbing them", that they made him put it away. hahhaah love it!! book cover - you are a winner!! this book and snow globes are not allowed onboard!!
i feel i have strayed from the matter at hand.
this book = very good.
it will be out in may. write it down so you don't forget.(less)
i should have known i was in trouble right from the get-go. this is the first story, in its entirety:
the charmer
i say nothing, i think nothing, dr. pi...morei should have known i was in trouble right from the get-go. this is the first story, in its entirety:
the charmer
i say nothing, i think nothing, dr. pi repeated to himself, without moving his lips, as he crossed the street. a blue deer and a helicopter briefly drew his attention. he took out his umbrella and said finally in a very low voice: "it was necessary." a woman, plump and middle-aged, warned him: "careful, your shoelaces have come undone." pi thanked her for the warning and tied his shoes. then he walked confidently toward the snake charmer. she held out her arms to him and abandoned her stand at the fairgrounds. "only for a few moments," said the charmer. "there is nothing but moments. a few small moments," said pi.
yeah, i hate that story. i hate it. maybe to some people, this broad surrealism warms all their cockles, but i am left utterly cold. i love this cover, and i ordered it into the store after seeing it at mcnally jackson, thinking it would be better to use my discount rather than paying full price for such a short book. today, realizing i didn't have enough book left to get me home on the subway, i thought it was so short that it would be best to not pay for it at all, and it would be best to read the entire thing on my lunch break. ugh. i am so glad i didn't shell any money out for this one. this book is most emphatically not for me. and i wonder if it is translation's fault. because i am reading the afterword, and it goes on about "bayley's dexterous handling of language, and its materiality" and how he was "engaged foremost by language's potency and plasticity"...that he is full of "linguistic quirks and eloquence" and i am not getting anything like that from the book i have just read.
surely i am missing something.
but i can't complain too much, because i actually managed to finish it in 45 minutes, and return to the floor early enough to catch michael k. williams in the store and help him get a copy of steppenwolf, although i am deeply disappointed in myself because i always said if he ever came in i would totally dry hump his leg, and i didn't. i just got him his book, gazed at him hungrily, and said "thank you". it was all so unexpected! i was in a bad-book daze.
okay, so it is much more of the latter than the former, but how often do i get to make x-files r...morethis book is a little bit of this:
and a lot of this:
okay, so it is much more of the latter than the former, but how often do i get to make x-files references in book reports?? not very often. this basically is a novel version of the events covered in the documentary, minus one brother. three brothers, closer than most and of feral intelligence and an array of undiagnosed conditions both mental and physical. they basically live like beasts - crowded into one bed at night, urinating where they please - scraping together an existence primarily of survival, covered in manure - oblivious to the reactions of others to their aroma/behavior. they live a life whittled down to basic concerns like food, avoiding doctors and townsfolk until one of them dies in the night, and the authorities descend to meddle where they are neither wanted nor understood.
the best thing about this book is the contrast. sure, in cormac mccarthyland, there are plenty of these characters, but the difference is, in his books, the characters are all varying degrees of these characters. in this book, we have their sister, who managed to get an education and leave the smothering family home to raise a family and have a career. but she is never ashamed of her brothers - there is a lovely scene of them attending her son's high school play after riding into town on their tractor, and trying to pay for the tickets with manure-encrusted cash. they are accepted as eccentrics without being patronized or attacked. they are just left alone, the way they want it. until the death.
i like books like these because there is refreshingly little self-awareness. these characters do not spend any time whining about their petty problems and setbacks. this will never be an indulgent mumblecore independent movie where white people have problems and talk about them forever. these men are like early man grunting but they love their family they handle their shit with their own two hands. and make creepy folk art.
this is one of my favorite passages that i advise dana to skip, but it tells about what happens when the oldest brother, vernon, suffers a farming accident where an old rusty spike from an antiquated piece of farm equipment shoots off and goes through his calf while his younger, possibly autistic, brother watches.
vernon had himself propped up on that harrow with his leg on the crossbar and he had a piece of angle iron in his one hand. he began to beat on that spike in his leg and audie was howling and he wouldn't let up. he beat on it and i hollered at him not to but he kept on, with audie on his knees and shaking and howling all the while. six or seven good blows and he drove that spike clear out the other side and it just fell down in the dirt and bounced once and laid there. audie kept shaking and howling and he wouldn't stop even though the spike was out and vernon was limping toward the stall. the leg of his pants was red and there was blood on his boot and blood on the floor soaking into the dirt and into the straw wherever he stepped. i told him he had to let a doctor see it but he said no. vernon'd never do anything you told him he had to do. that'd been his way since he was a boy. he shook out a feed bag and tore a strip off it and got him some baling twine and he rolled up that pant leg and wrapped the rag around where the spike had gone through and tied it off. a black hole on both sides, pumping. that's going to bleed, i told him, that's going to keep bleeding and you won't stop it like that. you ought to at least put it up in the air, i said, but there were chores to be done and he shut his ears to me.
my dad's side of the family is very DIY. hmm, this house doesn't have a deck? i will build one. you want a gazebo?? here you go! my dad has a million stories about his grandfather making magic out of nothing but some spare lumber. this trait did not pass itself down to me, but i have a certain amount of appreciation for people like this - who can just whip up something out of nothing - i am a huge fan of capable self-sufficiency.and i understand the need to do the chores that need to be done before tending to any personal physical discomfort. i nearly paralyzed myself when i decided that a back injury was not serious and allowed it to make me walk bent-over and unable to sit down for six months because i couldn't miss work. because i'm a heart surgeon, right?? because my job is sooooo important in the grand scheme of things. no one has ever taken a retail job more seriously than me, to my detriment. but i'm right there with you, vernon - you are my hero.
even though the things they make are more functional than aesthetic - these are people with no need for a gazebo - and everything is described as being a shamble-mess, i still admire native ingenuity.
this story is very fast paced, because it is told in alternating voices, skipping around in time with some chapters being only half a page long. there is much left implicit; the stories do not lock up perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle, but it doesn't really matter, the story is stronger for the omissions.
stuart ross wrote a full-length book!! he is all grown up now!! no more short stories and poems for him, he is officially a novelist!
although, shhhh,...morestuart ross wrote a full-length book!! he is all grown up now!! no more short stories and poems for him, he is officially a novelist!
although, shhhh, the book is comprised of shortish vignettes that work together like doozers to tell a larger story, mostly. so this might be some kind of "tween" stage of his writing career; a segmented novel.
but it is good, whatever it is...
the chapters connect in an almost random stream-of-consciousness flow, where a word mentioned at the end of one chapter will frequently serve as the springboard to the next chapter, like an older person telling yarns or a depressed man lying on a couch, avoiding the ringing of the phone and just letting his mind drift. the chronology is distorted, there are dreamlike episodes following chapters of stark realism, many situations are hinted at only, there are tantalizing omissions and some really sweet little-kid moments.
also, the word "boner" is used a lot.
it's pretty short, so i shouldn't say too much about it - the synopsis up top gives a pretty good idea of the scope of the story; everything else is just entertaining words and scenes. i like it when stuart ross writes words.
greg bear could take a lesson here in how to be romantic towards a lady:
"if she would only cancel her trip, stay right here in toronto, i would build her a house out of egg rolls...i would build her a two-storey house out of egg rolls. with an egg-roll verandah and an egg-roll patio."
trust me, that would work better than saying you "burn" for a woman...
i had never thought much of this book. sure, i had seen it around, the way you see things,but short stories about the love lives of women?? barf city....morei had never thought much of this book. sure, i had seen it around, the way you see things,but short stories about the love lives of women?? barf city. i don't read chick lit because i don't find it particularly interesting: shopping, looking for a husband, planning a family- none of these things are "me." but when i went to the adam levin reading with oriana, jami attenberg was also reading. she read a portion of the first short story in this collection, and everything i am made of responded with joy.this is nowhere near chick lit!! i told her as much at the bar after the reading and i made her promise to come to my store and sign stock that i would order in quantity and keep permanently on my table. since then, they have sold very well, and a co-worker of mine read this book, and is halfway through her full-length novel.
she has taken over union square, ms attenberg has.
the first story is still my favorite.it uses a deceptively breezy and conversational tone, chatty like any teenage girl:
"tonight she's going on a date, that's why all the makupping. she's going out with a boy named christian who is nineteen and who likes the smiths and the cure and new order. holly is seventeen and likes new order and echo and the bunnymen and joy division. she knows she should like the smiths but morrissey seems like such a whiny turd. holly has lied to christian about this because he worships morrissey. morrissey changed his life forever, that's what christian says. he's a vegetarian now and everything. meat is murder, he says."
christian sounds like every guy i dated when i was fourteen; so earnest and aimless and doomed, so doomed: ... "and he has shaved the sides of his head and left the hair on top long so that it spills over his narrow face in an awkward way and makes him look vaguely like a celery stick"
in other words, he looks like this:
wheee!
but rarrrr - this story is a tightly compressed block of experiential data that will kick your ass. it is everything that makes up teen love and betrayal. it is all of the teenaged feelings of insecurity and wanting to belong while paradoxically simultaneously feeling superior to everyone else in your peer group.
it was so familiar and perfectly captured - feelings that were so strong turning so abruptly, engaging in relationships as scientific or anthropological studies:
"and then he says 'are you turned on?' he asks her questions like this and she has to answer yes even if she feels stupid saying it because if she doesn't he will stop with the experimenting."
oh, god, the things we teenaged girls put up with...
the rest of the stories follow the same three characters through various stages in their lives. its structure is like a somewhat less experimental goon squad in that some of the stories are halfway over before the connection to the previous characters is even revealed.
it covers every nook and cranny of "relationships": nostalgic longings for the one that got away, embittered endings,self-destructive one-night-stands, opportunistic flirtations, unsuitable first (and second) dates...
"my love life since i moved to new york from chicago has been like a desert. i've had tiny little interactions of love, like finding shallow pools of water to drink from, and then i've moved on, hoping that i've stored enough love and affection and excitement to get me to the next place.
i've been stuck with a string of unsuccessful two-month relationships, the deaths of which have burned out almost all my romantic instinct and desire. i was in love with alan, but i wasn't ready for it yet. i'm probably still not ready. but being who i am - not that i particularly know who i am, i just know who i'm not - i felt i should keep trying for love. i mixed up the real dates with the one-night-stands just enough to keep myself satiated. on the dates you did not fuck, in the bars you did. those late nights at the bars, i recognize now, were just as much work as the dates: the talking, the drinking, the questioning, the laughing so hard at jokes that weren't that funny. they just never were funny. it's not funny, none of it, i know"
it is a whole spectrum of short stories - loosely gathered. it reads like calling an old friend after a three-year absence and witnessing where they are now vs where you had left them. i really enjoyed the structure of this thing. unlike a novel, not all of the details are spelled out - there is much lost in silence, many scenes are allusions only.in the real world, even friends, even lovers, have these knowledge gaps. this structure gives off a strong sense of realism precisely because of these omissions.
this collection could quite easily have gone the cynical route. why are all relationships doomed, why are all men assholes blah blah blah. but these characters, although occasionally bitter or vengeful, keep on trying to make their connections. just because one fails, doesn't mean there isn't the right one that will be the right one. there is an optimism to all of these characters, even at their lowest, that the perfect match is possible.and it is bittersweet and endearing.
"sarah lee falls in love every time she takes the subway, so she's started taking the bus instead. the l train from williamsburg to the east village is killing her, with all these cute young boys, with their lovely young skin and doe eyes and mussed-up hair, mussed up just so and their vintage-store winter coats, some military style, stiff and serious-looking, some more textured and glamorous, as if they should be walking the streets of london circa 1932; and all kinds of crazy kicks on their feet, expensive tennis shoes of vibrant colors, sturdy walking boots, and lately, cowboy boots with heels, but those are worn by the gay boys, so she just admires their feet and ignores the rest. and they are all reading books, worn paperbacks mainly, she imagines they've borrowed from roommates or girlfriends, or listening to their ipods on shuffle. some of them are checking out the girls - their glamour-puss counterparts, equally casually yet strictly attired - looking at their asses or their hair or their new shoes, wondering what those shoes would look like wedged between the bed and wall of their crappy, crumbly apartment, their naked bodies splayed out in some uncomfortable, pornographic position. they are wondering what it would be like to fuck them, sarah lee firmly believes. and while she doesn't want that, want them to only want to fuck her, she wishes, still, that they might glance at her. but they don't. they look anywhere but at her, in the old winter coat she bought at the ninety-nine-cents-a-pound salvation army outlet in seattle, fading pink wool with childlike bejeweled buttons she sewed on herself, not as tough as it used to be, sometimes coats just die, she needs to admit that to herself one of these days; and even if they looked beyond the coat she knows she is too old and not cool enough for them, and sometimes she still speaks with a stutter when she meets new people (though it is much better now) so that even if they could see something in her once she opened her mouth they might move on to the next person, pretend like she didn't exist, until suddenly, she simply didn't. and there is nothing worse than not existing.so she takes the bus to the city instead..."
first of all - greg- i lied to you. i told you that the conch shell story (the city of shells) was my favorite because i felt put on the spot and dist...morefirst of all - greg- i lied to you. i told you that the conch shell story (the city of shells) was my favorite because i felt put on the spot and distracted, and that was the first one i thought of. but my real favorite story is the one on the boated retirement community (out to sea). god - i felt that one in my dessicated old heart-sac.
i really enjoyed this collection. the stories all contain wavery bits of the surreal - her style reminds me more of kelly link than george saunders, which comparison greggers made. there is always something prickly about george saunders - something almost aggressive and mocking. these are more dreamy and even the unpleasant parts feel safe, like waking up could make the problems go away for the characters.
the only story i was not crazy about was the one with the minotaur (from children's reminiscences of the westward migration). in fact, i mentioned this to greg, and he said "man, i am so sick of minotaurs". so - authors take note. greg is over the minotaur.
russell is a very confident writer. she doesn't take the easy way out, but she also doesn't go for the "unexpected" scenes that arrive unsupported by the rest of the story. and she sure does like the word "limn!"
the collection is teasingly connected, like millhauser's enchanted night: all the stories take place in the same island community in the florida everglades, where marvelous and magical things happen: girls take ghost lovers, or have werewolf parents, boys spy on secret adult rituals at the ice skating rink (complete with skating baboons), or have vivid dreams of atrocities of the past. characters will occasionally pop up in other stories, but only in whispers or offhand remarks, just to see if you are paying attention.
she has a real delicacy to her prose, and even when her stories are unresolved, frustratingly so, i don't feel it is because she didn't know how to end it, but that she chose her ambiguity with a shrug and a wink.
i am glad she is the current darling of the young literary scene; i wish her the best and am very excited to see how her new full-length piece compares to this. thumbs up, karen russell, and great name!!(less)
elizabeth, this book reminds me of virginia woolf, both in structure and prose. i think. it has been a long time since i have read ms. woolf, and my f...moreelizabeth, this book reminds me of virginia woolf, both in structure and prose. i think. it has been a long time since i have read ms. woolf, and my fear is that since i recommended this to you, you will one day read this and tell me what a nincompoop i am. but until that day comes, i will be 96% confident that this is pretty darn woolf-y!!
it begins at the ending, where a woman buys an isolated house of edenic simplicity to sort through her grief and make sense of what is left of her life. and after that, the plot meanders through the past and the present; through the lives of various characters and how they affect and enrich each other, interspersed with bedtime stories which try to keep the melancholy realities at bay.
My house is as close to the sea as a house can get before becoming a boat. As close to the sea as a boat is when it fails as a boat - by which I mean, when it is stranded. At times I command the landscape from my house. At times I see nothing at all. In my inner life, this inside of the outside, I exist only as something intangible.
this book is a perfect example of the heights women's fiction can reach. and not just "books by women", but women's fiction as such.all of the relationships of women are explored: mothers and sisters and lovers and daughters and deepening friendships and echoing solitude. the sorrowful motherhood, a life full of moments - the way women involve themselves in each other's lives, the blurring of boundaries; the richness of these strands woven into this effortlessly looping and knotted storyline...
My God, how long a birth takes, thinks Nuccia, who prefers to remain standing, pacing up and down, crouching sometimes but refusing to sit down, leaning against the wall with all her strength, shouldering Teresa away, pressing her forehead against the wall, hitting her head against the wall, trying to bite it. Gisele groans from the bottom of her throat, eyelids shut between contractions, escaping to a place known only to her, a place of repair; every time the contractions resume, her eyes open abruptly with a look of alarm, helplessness, supplication, like the disbelieving look of a child who doesn't understand why she is being punished. Suzanne counts the seconds, her eyes riveted on her watch; the obstetrician can't get over it - really, what self-control; Suzanne latches on to the seconds, thinking, This can't last forever, it just can't, latching on to the watch hand swinging like a compass in the middle of the desert, like a buoy in the middle of a shipwreck, like a syringe in the middle of going cold turkey. Aurore sings, she sings with all her might, her volatile, rambling song, her deformed, haunted, abdominal song that frightens the midwife, who nonetheless encourages her to sing louder, to squeeze the cushions against her chest, to submerse herself in warm water. The pain of one is the pain of the other, a borderless pain making unthinkable the wars prosecuted by men against the labour of women, unthinkable the blasphemy of murder when compared with the belly that incubates, with the belly that separates. Women give birth, and everywhere, always, their pain eludes the many designations of familiar pains but belongs to the root of all pains, the raving litany of mammals, the blood of people contributing, a birth at a time, to the slow destiny of all. The great commotion of limbs couples up to the train of generations, the train of survival running along a chasm into which it is in constant danger of plunging, and women, everywhere, always, whisper inaudible words to themselves, grasping presences, women call out to the other woman, the one who survived at all costs and come what may, they call out to the female of everywhere and always, the one they are in the process of becoming through capsizing into each other, through pushing new bodies into the world. Bite the wall, count the seconds, sing their heads off. Nestle against the vertigo of an improbable sky.
and i think that is lovely, although it may be too close to purple for our elizabeth. this scene, this montage of births, is the only scene in which all the women come together, on the page; it is their one shared experience amidst the scattered episodes of their lives.
yes, elizabeth, this is a fairly sad book about strength and sacrifice and the deep dark pain of motherhood but i swear it is not all bleakness.
also, i will buy it for you, if we can ever get it into the store - i've been trying for a week now.
i am giving this five stars, even though there were one or two stories there that i didn't think were the best, because the ones t...moreholy freaking crap!!
i am giving this five stars, even though there were one or two stories there that i didn't think were the best, because the ones that were great were GREAT as in "i want you guys to all read this book-great."
first - a word. barnes and noble has this publisher shelved in sci-fi/fantasy which is so frustrating to me because the world being the way it is, fewer people browse genre-sections than browse general fiction-literature because the assumption is that sci-fi/fantasy is going to be all planets and wizards and shit. but none of the CZP books are like that, really. they are like canada-does-bizarro, but with more delicacy and fewer ass-raping goblins. they are more dark magical realism than fantasy, and it irritates me that the two i have read from this publisher have both been excellent (view spoiler)[this one!(hide spoiler)] and really make me want to read the other 7-10 of their books that i have already bought, but would probably never have come across if i wasn't in the trenches and responsible for all-things-nonfiction.i just doubt a fan of mercedes lackey or kim stanley robinson would find what they are looking for in these books. bad match, barnes and noble!
these stories are everything i love and hate about short stories. the best of them are like my favorite morrissey song: evocative without giving every detail of the story so you are left with those shivers of "more, please." these stories are haunting in the best possible way, especially growing things, the blog at the end of the world and it's against the law to feed the ducks - so gentle of a touch, so much restraint and it kills me because i need to know more!!i hated leaving these characters behind!! SHORT STORIES, WHY ARE YOU SO SHORT???
for example: headstones in your pocket?? fuck you, awesome writing! why are you over?? i was just getting attached to you!
and do you see the blurbs?? kevin brockmeier, helen oyeyemi, and brian evenson!! i have read all three of these authors and they are all crazy-good. the back of this book says there are more books by this author, and you had better believe i am going to get mr. bill thompson on this for me because i may have a new favorite author.
do you see the purple eighties sweatshirt glitter on the cover?? it is just glorious!
even the stories i didn't really latch onto were never bad, just not my thing. this man is a gift, and you need to read him.
(i love how my dad, who is the best dad ever and loves me unconditionally and so has an inflated sense of my "talent", thinks i should review for the new york times. i would seriously love to see what they would do with a review like this: "fuck, fuck, fuck, enthusiasm, glee, invoking the name of someone you may or may not know, fuck, glitter, shit.")
TAKE THAT, KAKUTANI!!! MY DADDY SAYS I REVIEW GOOD!!! (less)
done quixote!!! pun quixote!! fun quixote?? none quixote...
and that's not entirely true; there are some rollicking good times in here, but the first part...moredone quixote!!! pun quixote!! fun quixote?? none quixote...
and that's not entirely true; there are some rollicking good times in here, but the first part is so much endlessly episodic violence, and while the second half becomes calmer and more focused, it never got my imagination engaged nor my blood flowing.
in fact, although i know he really does love it, i can't help but feel that brian's recommending this to me is similar to the duke and duchess having their fun with don q. i feel like brian is pulling a prank on me - that he does not want me to meet my reading goal and is laughingly crowing, "no, karen, you will not read 150 books this year!! i am preventing you!!"
i will show you. despite the amount of time i was stalled on this one, i will come right back in the game.
but this, i did not love this. and a lot of it is just context. i can appreciate it as an artifact and as a foundation for western literature, but it suffers from the fate of any work that was not edited professionally.
tastes change over time. just in the same way that marilyn monroe would have probably had to drop fifteen pounds to rock our modern-day underfed runway ideal, so this book could lose a similar amount of text. stop frothing, bri, seriously if this turned up in some slush pile somewhere, there would be allll kinds of criticism, and it might even get passed around the office (lgm) a few times to the giggles of the editorial assistants: "this guy can't even keep the supporting character's wife's name straight!!", "this is inconsistent!!"," "this is repetitive!""what is this interlude that has nothing to do with anything else doing in here??" "this is flat-out stolen from another source!!!"
an editor would go to town on this puppy.
but we have the luxury of reading this 500 years after it was written and marveling at how fresh and modern it still sounds. and part of it is very modern. but grossman's frequent "cervantes probably meant ____here" or "this is the wrong reference" would not play in a modern novel. if jonathan safran foer had done this, there would be a crown of pretentious classics majors drawling, "i can't believe he said "perseus" when he meant "theseus"... " guffaw guffaw.
but 500 years down the road, we can afford to be more forgiving. vanity press authors take heart!
and i am aware i am being nitpicky, i am more just interested in pointing out how a lot of people who love this book would be very indignant to read something produced today that had so many obvious flaws.
but i do admire longevity.
i just couldn't get into it, overall. there are a lot of great moments here: the burning of the books (nooo!), the puppet show, don q. in a cage, and great non-action sequences in the discussions of the value of drama as a medium and the difficulty of translation and many other minor occurrences.
the first half is just episode after episode of this delusional thug with some kind of 'roid-rage, meth-aggression attacking people and innocent lions, unprovoked, and his sidekick who is a grasping fiend who would sell you out for even the promise of a sandwich. and it all reads like marx brothers slapsticky stuff. i mean, how do you break someone's nose with a loaf of bread??
with the second half, it is better and becomes more self-reflexive and much sadder, but a lot of it still remains tedious. the second half, written ten years after the first part, frequently references the unauthorized sequel to don q that some guy wrote and pissed cervantes off. it is like a mean girl passing notes to the cool kids, "did you hear what he said??? that's my man he's messing with!!" etc etc.
and i am not a lazy reader, even though my tastes tend toward a faster pace than this, but i have read plenty of slow-paced, dense prose that didn't make me take out my mental red pen and slash away at what i felt was extraneous or repetitious.
i can appreciate the message about art and its impact and its potential and its place in the world, but i did not have fun reading this book.
and i make no apologies.
and for jasmine - who doesn't think there is anything complicated or pretentious in the spanish language - this qualifies, i think. it gets all meta in the second act. for its time, it was seriously mind-bending stuff.(less)
if i voted for your review of this book before today, i had not fucking read it. oops, sorry! (upon quickfast, sherlockian investi...more here's a confession:
if i voted for your review of this book before today, i had not fucking read it. oops, sorry! (upon quickfast, sherlockian investigation, i now know that only means two of you - and i read the first half of both of them before, i swear, and have now read them in their entireties) but i didn't want anything spoilt for me. i didn't want to know if the book was triumphant or devastating or funny or tragic or philosophical or melodramatic. i wanted the tone to be surprising, i wanted to avoid preconceived notions.
and hurrah - i got what i wanted.
now i am considering your feelings. do i think you (collective, anonymous) would benefit from a similar experience? do i dare presume?
i do, but...
but i will discuss it in what i hope will be an oblique way. if you don't know the plot of this book by now, after all the hype and acclaim, you have yourself probably been living in an 11x11 room held captive by a bad man. despite its being told entirely in the voice of an extremely sheltered five-year-old boy, it is more a meditation on motherhood and necessity and where the separation occurs between mother and child; what is the act that cleaves mother from child and allows each to lead their own individual lives? and where is the line between protection and deprivation? and what can be done with unwanted eggshells?
this book is excellent.
but i don't want to get too caught up in possible rooners. i myself want you to be like nell, all pure and speaking your own bizarre stroke-language, not knowing anything about the greater world, where this book exists. in this scenario, i am the baaaad man.
this is not a great mystery novel, but it is a good read. there are actually a couple of mysteries contained within this small novel, but it is really...morethis is not a great mystery novel, but it is a good read. there are actually a couple of mysteries contained within this small novel, but it is really the story of a man who loves books. the author is himself a bookhound, so naturally he knows his stuff and has an excellent vantage point from which to write this character. people who love books are going to love this book, because his excitement in both reading and hunting them is contagious.mystery novel fans may feel a bit underwhelmed.
the strongest parts are definitely the passages about the book trade. when he is talking about his early years in the book business - the drive he had, his methods for obtaining and assessing books, right down to the mechanics of building the shelving units for maximum saleability and display space, and also when he later talks about appraising collections of books - there is a passion that comes through in the writing that is absent from other scenes.
i would love this author to write a book-memoir, like larry mcmurtry has done about his years in the book trade, because these are the kinds of stories that excite me - more than murder, more than brutality, i like to know about where to find good used books!
the rest of the book has its awkward moments - rants on the flaws of then modern age, annoyingly unsophisticated philosophical arguments that remind me of stoned friends in undergrad, details that are given as afterthoughts when they should probably be given more emphasis, weak transitions. but when he is writing about books, this story shines; the parts that are good are very very good:
"it was here he had first understood the true smell of books. the peculiar odor of a few pages held open to his nose was already a perfume he had savored. here, it was the sum of the scent of a million books which once flowed and ebbed on the tide of human inquiry - the aroma mixed with the smell of polished wood, cooled and condensed against the marble floors, arising again around the electric glow of milky orbs in brass bowls, drifting about the green-shaded lights at the tables, and stirred by the brush of wool on the arms of readers lost in a greed for words."
the secondary mystery is the stronger of the two; the main mystery is fairly pedestrian and any of the character development that involves family or love instead of the passion for books is oddly stilted and not very interesting. but it is definitely worth a read for the booky bits, and the resolution of the secondary mystery. (less)
all pure and speaking your own bizarre stroke-language, not knowing anything about the greater world, where this book exists. in this scenario, i am the baaaad man.
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