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June 07
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Justin McFarr
gave
 
to:
Out Stealing Horses: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Per Petterson
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Justin McFarr
gave
to:
Last Night at the Lobster (Hardcover)
by Stewart O'Nan
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Justin said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
There is a lot to like in this book, especially O’Nan’s rapid-fire delivery of character quirks and the realistic snap of his dialogue. Told in present-tense, there is an immediacy to every moment, unfolding in its undetermined way, hinting that anything can happen during this snow-covered day at the New England Red Lobster located across from the big shopping mall.
The problem, however, with this kind of a “concept” novel is that once the characters have been established and the ever-changing ticking-clock scenario is set in motion, there is really nothing left to compel the reader to finish the book. Yes, the Manny character has complexities, but they’re just not interesting enough to sustain even 146 pages. By a third of the way into the novel, the reader gets that Manny is devoted to the restaurant while simultaneously feeling betrayed by the company that employs him; that EVERY old person who comes into the place reminds Manny of his dead abuelita; that he has a baby on the way, but not with the woman he obsessively desires; that some of the employees will stay until the end of their shift, while others will leave before the night is over; and that the night will end and The Olive Garden will be Manny’s new professional home. So, knowing all of this early on, it becomes difficult to become very invested in the rest of the novel, particularly when all it really does is repeat these same dramatic and emotional beats over and over until the last page.
O'Nan's details of how a restaurant runs, from the back of the walk-in freezer to the front of the house, are amazingly accurate and real. If you’ve ever spent any time in food service, there are moments that will definitely resonate. Whether it’s the waitresses dealing with overbearing, oblivious customers, or the bartender lifting top shelf booze bottles and stashing them by the dumpsters when the manager isn’t looking, those of us who have worked in restaurants will recognize these people, these attitudes and these stories instantly. Perhaps the recognition will even be accompanied by the same bit of nostalgia that Manny displays for a job that kind of sucks, a support staff that is less than supportive, and a corporate boss who is only looking at its bottom line. Those warm fuzzy feelings are of course patently false, psychotic and illogical, yet are unmistakable and unavoidable, if you’ve ever set up your own station or had to yell, “Order up!” Whatever its faults (and there are more than a few), this book captures that twisted reality, in all its grease, grime and gratuities. ...less
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May 18
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Justin McFarr
added a quote:
"I guess there are never enough books."
— John Steinbeck
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May 08
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Justin McFarr
gave
to:
In Our Time (Paperback)
by Ernest Hemingway
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Justin said:
"Fishing. Talking baseball. Riding the horses. Betting on the horses. Getting gored by bulls. Drinking to get drunk. All forms of masculinity expressed through the narrative eye and distinctive voice of Ernest Hemingway, as evidenced by the many...more
Fishing. Talking baseball. Riding the horses. Betting on the horses. Getting gored by bulls. Drinking to get drunk. All forms of masculinity expressed through the narrative eye and distinctive voice of Ernest Hemingway, as evidenced by the many short tales of his story collection, IN OUR TIME. Whether alone with their own thoughts, among other men, or fumbling through encounters with the opposite sex, Hemingway’s men struggle to understand themselves and their individual roles in the world. Emotion is present in their thoughts and actions, yet only the boys seem to be allowed to express their feelings openly, in its rawest form. The men who are no longer children must contain their desires, their demons, their fears and their pain. Action replaces emotion, with empty talk replacing confession and truth.
Hemingway’s men show their masculinity in many ways: sometimes consciously, but more often lacking any clear awareness of their manliness. They are just men, strong and stoic, skilled and commanding, without much thought or purpose expended to define their manly characteristics. When they encounter emotion, it is either with great restraint, simmering anger, or a deep sadness that they refuse to fully acknowledge. His characters do battle in wars that harden hearts, allowing them to witness death and destruction without losing their sanity. Drink deadens emotional heartbreak and sports talk switches the focus to an all-American, all-male pasttime that has no place in its nine innings for women or their entanglements. Masculinity, in Hemingway’s hands, is rugged and soft, brutal and tender, strong and weak; opposite forces existing simultaneously, revealing the ultimate truth that emotion is an inescapable component of the gender.
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Justin McFarr
gave
to:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Hardcover)
by Junot Díaz
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in April, 2008
Justin said:
"Oscar Wao, the main character in author Junot Diaz’ Pulitzer Prize winning novel, is a comic-book/sci-fi/role-playing gamer nerd of the nth degree. Add to that adolescent dysfunction the misery of being grossly overweight, “blacker” than the r...more
Oscar Wao, the main character in author Junot Diaz’ Pulitzer Prize winning novel, is a comic-book/sci-fi/role-playing gamer nerd of the nth degree. Add to that adolescent dysfunction the misery of being grossly overweight, “blacker” than the rest of his Dominican family and neighbors, and raised in Paterson, New Jersey during the 70s and 80s, and you’ve got one poor pathetic little muchacho. His search for reciprocated love runs up against more roadblocks and hostility than even the lesser-heroes of the Marvel Universe face on a monthly basis. He is an idealist, a dreamer, a boy in love with love who can’t escape himself no matter how much those around him encourage a normative change for the better.
Although Oscar’s story holds the main thrust of the narrative, both his sister Lola and mother Hypatia Belicia Cabral also have their stories told. Yunior, an outsider who gains a vantage point to the Dominican family by way of mysterious-to-the-end circumstances, narrates Oscar and Belicia’s histories with a profane, pop-hip, heavily Spanish-laden style. Himself a geek god, Yunior is a foil of sorts to Oscar; he is as intimate with the worlds of The Watchmen and Doctor Who as his gordo subject, yet has gained his street cred by stepping up as a major playa with the ladies of the neighborhood. He stands as Oscar’s personal ideal, hatched from a socially awkward mind full of ideal women to love, epic novels to write, and heroic lives to live. Yunior, in effect, gets Oscar, understands that if God hadn’t given him the looks or the mad game with the women, he could easily have become the boy of this story.
The other narrator is Lola, who tells her story early on in first-person, filling in gaps of detail that Yunior doesn’t have the resources to shed full light on. The beautiful and rebellious sister of Oscar bridges the distance between NJ and the DR, spending a vast amount of her time growing up in Santo Domingo and experiencing the heritage she would rather ignore. The style is an abrupt yet welcome change from the footnote-heavy, politically charged, comic-book jargon of Yunior’s narrative pulse. With Lola, the language is grounded, more deeply felt and personal.
Overall, the novel crisscrosses these three distinct-but-connected narratives quite well, peppering in more than a bit of historical background on dictator Trujillo’s decades-long reign of terror on the people of the Dominican Republic. The intimate details and colorful descriptions of the characters (Oscar’s madre, as a violent-tempered youth in DR, “Threw her drink, her glass, and then her purse at him – if there had been a baby nearby she would have thrown that too.”) mesh nicely with the political overview of the small island-state.
There are, however, missteps in the telling, which mostly revolve around its tendency to over-tell, to over-explain a given scene or historical event. Conversely, Diaz doesn’t tell enough when heaping mounds of Spanish language into the narration without benefit of a translation or even a proper context to aid the reader in deciphering it on our own. Frankly, it removed me from the flow of the story, made me think that I was deliberately being left out of some vital information because I didn’t know the language. Now, I can see how this could actually serve as an effective narrative tool (making the reading audience feel the confusion or isolation of the characters by placing us in a parallel position of exclusion), but Diaz doesn’t seem conscious of using the non-translated language as a device, and instead appears to add it merely as another ingredient there to enhance the flavor of the novel. In fairness, Hemingway did the same thing (see THE SUN ALSO RISES and FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS for egregious uses of this offense), so there is clearly a precedent. And, since Diaz admits to naming the book after the title of Hemingway's famous work, THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER, then this storytelling transgression may simply be an affect of imitation.
The ending is very thrilling, managing to wrap things up not only with an exciting climax, but with an unexpected breadth of emotion. It ends sweetly, but not sentimentally, and does so in a way that complements all that has come before. It even manages to enhance everything to a palpable degree, with a poignancy and resonance that kept the novel as a whole in my mind long after I finished it.
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Justin McFarr
gave
to:
Paint It Black (Hardcover)
by Janet Fitch
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Justin said:
"Janet Fitch, the author of WHITE OLEANDER, is a mistress of poetic prose and conductor of the wrenching, heartfelt emotional toil that she flourishes on her female characters. Her dialogue is so believable, rich and staggeringly real that it is hard...more
Janet Fitch, the author of WHITE OLEANDER, is a mistress of poetic prose and conductor of the wrenching, heartfelt emotional toil that she flourishes on her female characters. Her dialogue is so believable, rich and staggeringly real that it is hard to imagine that these characters exist only on the page and not out in the world. The Los Angeles she envisions in her novels is bruised and dented; a new model car with the paint already chipped and the interior gutted, but the radio is still intact and it’s playing nothing but memories.
Her second novel takes place in this L.A., shortly after the tragic killing of John Lennon in the New York of 1980. Josie Tyrell is a punker, a transplant from Bakersfield with a level of self-loathing that rivals any of Carl Jung’s most debased patients. A part-time nude model and occasional student-film actress, Josie lives the life of a free spirit, a young woman tied down by nothing other than her own limitations. When her boyfriend kills himself in a Twentynine Palms motel room, the fragility and aimlessness of her life is exposed, leading to a journey of self-examination and eventual transformation.
Her underground world of clubs and unabashed excess collides with the world of piano recitals and cultured restraint when she meets Michael Faraday, a painter with a complicated past. That past he shrouds in misdirection and half-answers, exposing an intimate yet ultimately falsified version of himself to his bunkmate, Josie. It is only upon his death, and after his depressed, suffering girlfriend enmeshes herself into the lives of Michael’s family, that new versions replace the old. Secrets are revealed, lies are unmasked, half-truths are shoved under the hot white glare of full exposure.
The most intriguing aspect of the novel is the complicated, oftentimes nasty and violent relationship between the two most grief-stricken survivors Michael leaves behind. From the venomous phone call Michael’s mother, Meredith, has with Josie shortly after the young man’s suicide, to the co-dependent relationship they cultivate as short-term roommates, every interaction between the two women is heady and filled with danger.
Meredith Loewy, concert pianist and possible psychopath, is one of the richest, most compelling and intriguing antagonists I’ve read since John Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames in EAST OF EDEN. She is at once sympathetic and completely despicable, a woman with more pain to bear than she is capable of carrying on her own. Josie becomes her crutch, as well as a substitute child, there to simultaneously remind Meredith of the son she once had and the son she no longer possesses. This description of her, from halfway through the novel, illustrates the majesty of her beauty, as well as the crushing magnitude of her affliction:
“The green eyes, their huge startled expression, the length and curl of the lashes, the slow flick of wide eyelid. The ache of loss, profound as if someone had gone into her bones and scooped out the marrow.”
The novel is filled with this same amazing detail and language, rhythm and mood. The overall tone is a tad bleak -- which is unavoidable when dealing with suicide and its effects on those left behind as its subject -- and at times I found it difficult to emerge from the haze of depression and disillusionment that permeates the novel. That said, it was very much an experiential read for me, sucking me straight into the inner torment of Josie and her struggles to make sense of Michael’s death and her own, out of control, life.
“She had to stay in the icy place, the numb place, and their warmth threatened to melt her just when she needed the cold” is a perfect example of this depth of sorrow and feeling that drives Fitch’s novel. At times, Josie’s suffering is almost unbearable to the reader. But I think that may just be the point. It forces you to engage, rather then look away, challenges you to walk four hundred pages in the combat boots of a girl most people would normally ignore on the street. Josie is a force to be reckoned with, and one to be compassionate towards, to find empathy for. It was often difficult to spend long stretches of this novel feeling uncomfortable and out-of-sorts, but I found it ultimately rewarding and uplifting once the journey of Josie came to its end…which was, in effect, its true beginning.
In this particular passage, a favorite of mine, there are echoes of Virginia Woolf’s TO THE LIGHTHOUSE:
“Nobody knew anyone else’s private world. In the end, they were all alone as inmates on death row, side by side. Sometimes you could get a look at one another with a little pocket mirror, cell to cell, but that was all.”
What Fitch manages to do in this novel is give us a look into the private worlds of Josie Tyrell and Meredith Loewy (and even, to some degree, Michael Faraday) with a tool much more powerful than a mere pocket mirror. She illuminates their interiors with a klieg light, offering us an effulgent gaze into their very essence, while being mindful to pull back a little – just a little – in order to allow the characters to remain at their heightened level of verisimilitude. Leaving their realism intact. And their resonance alive.
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