Thursday, May 15, 2008

From Moldy Beginnings: Tender at the Bone- Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

This is the type of book that makes me want to cook, except that I don't know how to cook and, when it comes down to it, I guess I don't actually want to lift a finger, since I remain too lazy to learn.

Okay: Ruth Reichl is the food critic at The New York Times. This memoir focuses mainly on her childhood and early adulthood in New York (with a manic depressive mother who fed her sour cream sandwiches on moldy bread- hence, the title of this post), Montreal, and eventually California. Each chapter functions as a complete short story, as in each one Ruth goes through some sort of rite of passage. But connected to each important coming-of-age experience is an introduction to a particular type of food. Ruth loves eating and cooking food, and food is connected to all of her memories. Recipes are included. This book isn't necessarily anything groundbreaking, but I had an amazing time reading it. I read it in a day, actually. It's easy, warmly funny, and charming as hell.

Ruth Reichl also wrote Garlic and Sapphires: The Life of a Critic in Disguise, which is equally good, and Comfort me with Apples, which I haven't read.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Tracking the Urban Nomad: Beautiful Children by Charles Bock

Beautiful Children centres around the disappearance of an enormously irritating and surly 12 year-old boy named Newell who, basically, is just like most 12 year-old boys except that he takes off one hot night in the desert outside of Las Vegas. As his parents try to make sense of Newell's disappearance and their own disintegrating marriage, the events leading up to the vanishing come into focus and reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected characters.

In some ways, this is a mystery novel. We’re introduced to a large cast of loosely- connected characters who were roaming around Las Vegas that night and who provide us with several paths to follow- each of which could easily lead to Newell. While I’d hesitate to call these characters suspects, especially since we don’t know until the book’s final chapter just where or with whom Newell was last seen, they're still not what you'd call wholesome. They're not the sorts of people you'd want your 12 year-old son to get involved with. The cast includes Kenny, a guy almost twice Newell's age who happens to be his only friend; Bing Beiderbixxe, a comic book artist who confesses to Columbine-style fantasies; Cheri Blossom, a stripper with a bull's eye tattooed on her crotch; Ponyboy, Cheri's horrible boyfriend who signs her up to perform in an illegal porn flick; and Daphney, a homeless runaway who is massively pregnant and addicted to heroin.

There's no way this book is going to appeal to the group of late middle-aged women I'm scheduled to try to sell it to at work tomorrow, but it's really damn good. If a novel could be X-rated, this one would be for sure. Countless pages are devoted to detailed descriptions of pornography, for example, and there's an unbelievably graphic gang-rape scene. The sections with the most impact, though, aren't the most pervy or violent, but those that focus on the young runaways like Daphney, her boyfriend Lestat, and a nameless girl with a shaved head (a "pavement virgin," as Daphney calls her) who is dabbling with street life. Readers know that Newell, as a very recent runaway (it's assumed that Newell is a runaway and is still alive), is probably being initiated into this world after his disappearance.

Newell is a difficult character. He's very realistic as a spoiled suburban 12 year-old, alternating effortlessy between being quietly sulky and loudly obnoxious. He makes us cringe, and wonder if this kid is going through a phase or is actually just a total moron. The occasional glimpse inside his head, though, helps us come close to liking him or at least understanding him. The novel creeps towards a point where Newell (confused, overwhelmed, and deeply unhappy because of a series of events beyond his control), needs to make a decision he's not yet old enough or smart enough to make. He can leave his his pampered, air-conditioned, suburban life or fling himself into the desert towards a life more ugly and difficult than it needs to be. It's very easy to see Newell becoming a future Lestat or, if he doesn't get any wiser, a Ponyboy.

Despite it's darkness, Beautiful Children actually ends on an a (sort of) optimistic note. We don't know what path Newell is following, and we don't know if he'll have the strength to escape from it, but we do see one street kid turn out kind of okay, though damaged and not particularly well-adjusted.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Sorry I suck: An apology for sucking so bad















Oh, hi. I just reread that last posting and it's really badly written. Sorry! I wrote it on the reference desk, while simultaneously saying things like, "Here's how you log on," "you are grown-ups and probably capable of sharing the Wall Street Journal," and "stop masturbating in the library" to a constantly-disappointing public. Here I am in the above photo, explaining to a 15 year-old that Middle Earth is not, in fact, a real place. He was disappointed, sure, but not as much as I was.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

There's a Monster in the Lake: The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

Here's the first sentence of Lauren Groff's debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton:

"The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the 50-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass."

So this is a book about monsters? It is, sort of. But the actual monster fished out of the lake in the novel's first chapter mostly just looms in the background for the rest of the book, giving way instead to monsters of the human variety. The actual monster becomes, by the end of the book, both a symbol of the individuals who populated the town throughout its ugly but compelling history and one of rebirth. It also prepares us for a story that is half-mythic and tinged with magic realism.

When 28 year-old Willie Upton returns to the small town of Templeton where she grew up, she is pregnant by her married archaeology professor and has just tried to run over her archaeology professor's wife with a bush plane. Things are not looking good and Willie has come home to think, to figure out her next move. Willie is sort of famous in Templeton- simultaneously resented and adored because she's last in the line of direct descendents from the town's founder, Marmaduke Temple. She got a lot of unwanted attention from teachers in high school, and classmates thought she was stuck up.

Anyhow, now Willie is a knocked-up mess hiding out in the cozy old house where she grew up with her hippy mother, Vi, who maddeningly half-shares a secret with her daughter. See, Vi had always told Willie that her father could have been one of three men who had been living with her in a commune at the time of Willie's conception. Turns out, Willie's father is actually from Templeton. He's a local, which means that Willie has probably known him her whole life. Vi also tells Willie that her father claims to also be a descendent from Marmaduke Temple, but she leaves it at that. Willie, needing to occupy herself somehow, begins her search for her father by researching her family's (and the town's) history, starting with her closest relatives and working backwards. Note to Lauren Groff: This is an unlikely and awkward way to get your main character researching (we're to believe that by withholding Willie's father's identity, Vi is deliberately setting Willie on a course of self-discovery), but it does the job. Soon Willie's ancestors are stepping forward through letters and stories, and they're authenticated by the occasional illustration and photograph. The high point of the research is surely a packet of handwritten letters, marked "Contents disturbing and painful," written by two long-dead women. The correspondence begins politely, but quickly descends into darkness as their friendship turns to animosity and the corresponding death-toll rises.

Among the most intriguing characters are a slave, an American Indian and his son, a woman who has the ability to burn down buildings with her emotions, and a red-headed and blue-eyed aristocrat who fathered countless illegitimate red-headed and blue-eyed babies.

The book is completely addictive, but it has it's problems: The writing is occasionally too romantic, as is Willie's amused finger-waving at a photograph of her monstrous great-great grandfather. What's more, Templeton could be any one of a zillion towns with gorey histories- is it really necessary that this one have it's own monster, a ghost (yep, there's also a ghost), and eerie, sinister family portraits? It's as though Groff has taken on a bit too much.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Utter Crap: The Clique by Lisi Harrison

I read this for work. It is brainless and offensive. Don't get me wrong, I really like YA fiction and that's one of the reasons why I'm a teen librarian. I'm never dismissive of popular teen series' (I'm the first to admit that I'm huge fan of the Georgia Nicholson books) and I don't think that YA novelists should be required to write books exclusively for the betterment of young people. This book is appalling, though, in the same way that Sophie Kinsella's Shopoholic series is appalling. But it's creepy in a way that the Shopoholic series is not, because the girls in this book are twelve. Twelve!

That said, I really like this line:

"She was ready to pick up the pace. She triple-tapped Brownie and he began to gallop. Massie could feel her newly sprouted A-cups bouncing along with her. She loved the constant reminder that they were there."

I like that line because I enjoy imagining the moment that Lisi Harrison wrote it, reread it, and then actually told herself that it was good.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

A Complex Pancake: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien



I want you to know that this book is awesome, but ineligible for a Clammy because Flann O'Brien died forty-two years ago. That is all.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Boring Guy Annoys Me By Writing a Surprisingly Satisfying First Novel: A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans

The good people at Shaye Areheart Books (a little-known imprint of The Crown Publishing Group) did right by first-time novelist Justin Evans when they designed this cover:

(This creepy cover illustration is the only reason I picked up the book)

Justin Evans is a Business Development and Strategy Executive in NYC and, because I'm a snob, I tend to think that's enough to make anyone a really crap novelist. I'd pretty much dismissed him as one of those douchy business-types who say things like, "I'd love to write a novel one day, but I just don't have the time right now!" as though writing fiction must be the easiest thing in the world- anyone without a really demanding day job could do it, right? Thing is, Justin Evans actually did it. And he did a good job. And that kind of pisses me off. My friend Sam used to rant about Vincent Lam, claiming that it was supremely unfair that a successful doctor should win the Giller Prize on his first try, when poor Sam was struggling just to keep his (unread) blog witty in between shifts at the bookstore where we worked. I sort of feel the same way about Justin Evans and take petty, mean-spirited comfort in the fact that, although A Good and Happy Child marks the debut of a serious talent, it hasn't really been noticed by anyone.

George is 30 years-old and he has a wife and a newborn son. Trouble is, he can't bring himself to hold his son. His wife is, quite understandably, getting seriously annoyed by this, and insists that George see a psychiatrist. The incredibly creepy and unnerving childhood memories that come back during these psychiatric sessions form the bulk of the novel. Evans has written a literary, psychological thriller about the nature of demons - real or imagined. Think Donna Tartt's The Secret History (Southern gothic without the South) crossed with The Exorcist and then crossed again with The Turn of the Screw.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Dumb Cover, Good Book: Everyone's Pretty by Lydia Millet

Lame cover, right? I felt like a simpleton reading this thing. Still, I love Lydia Millet. If you haven't read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (2005), you should get up out of that chair and haul-ass to the nearest library right now.

Anyhow, all of Lydia Millet's books are radically different from one another and, weirdly, actually read like they were written by different authors. This one, Everyone's Pretty (also published in 2005, but written long before), reads like a found manuscript by John Kennedy Toole.

Like Nicola Barker's Darkmans or a typical Robert Altman film, Everyone's Pretty follows a pretty huge and interconnected cast of characters as they each do a lot of running around and stumbling through zany misadventures. Each character is over-the-top, enormously exaggerated, and all are desperately trying to inch towards some sort of individual happy ideal. Dean Decetes, the novel's central character is a pornographer and sloppy alcoholic with messianic delusions who is constantly getting beaten up. His sister, Bucella, is trying to be as pious and moral as possible in order to endear herself not just to God, but also to her gay co-worker with whom she's deeply in love. We also have Alice, a depressed and promiscuous co-worder of Bucella's, and Ginny, a teenaged math prodigy who hates her parents and is often on the receiving end of Decetes' sexual harrassment.

Despite the fact that these characters are hugely exaggerated and their madcap adventures often border on slapstick, none of them can actually be laughed at. The novel, while often very funny, never devolves into pointless farce, even if we're constantly afraid that it's about to cross that line. Really, Lydia Millet has thrown half a dozen not-so-ridiculous characters into a society where wild, outlandish actions are mandatory just to stave off the alienation and loneliness. It's a very sad novel underneath it all, and it takes her wacky sense of humour to keep us turning the pages.

Gassy Ghost: Darkmans by Nicola Barker

My award, my rules. Darkmans might have been barely noticed when it was published late last year, while To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960, but I don't care. Darkmans moves to the top of the list, and if you've got a problem with that I'll fight you with my (small, weak) fists. Here, I proudly present you with a big, fat, smart, sassy, rude novel about a drug dealer, a Turkish immigrant with an irrational fear of lettuce, a chiropodist, an art forger, and the farting ghost of a 15th century court jester. It's also about language, and the pressing, almost suffocating weight of history. Oh, and it's hilarious.

Nicola Barker is a serious writer, for sure, whatever that means. She's also a comic genious. I'm a woman obsessed.

Check her out:
Growl! I'd marry, you, Nicola, if I weren't so damned straight!

Darkmans (apparently an old thief cant for nighttime, in addition to the title of the novel) takes place in Ashford, a bland English suburb sort of like the horrible Canadian one where I reluctantly travel to work every day. Remember that in Europe, of course, anything new has literally bulldozed over centuries of history. Enter Bede, an elderly man who works in the hospital's laundry and who tries to save the old. He once succeeded in saving the Channel Tunnel from destruction but, because of a complicated mix-up involving some stolen antique shingles, has ended up dull and embittered. Bede has a son named Kane, who sells drugs pilfered from the very hospital where his own father works. Kane finds his father hugely annoying, fancies himself the anti-Bede, and is himself "easy as a greased nipple (and pretty much as moral)".

Now, listen closely because this gets complicated: Bede is secretly in love with a chiropodist named Elen. Elen has a husband named Dory who (unbeknownst to the characters in the novel) appears to have been possessed by the spirit of John Scogin, the long-dead court jester to King Edward IV (famous for his theatrical farting, for constantly accusing the Queen of adultery, and for setting fire to a church full of beggars). Elen and Dory have a young son named Fleet who is precocious and unnerving. In addition to busying himself with building an exact replica of the Cathedral of Saint-Cecile out of matchsticks, Fleet also possesses inexplicably detailed information about the life of John Scogin. There's also Kelly. She's Kane's delightfully and endlessly profane girlfriend. She has a broken leg, is weirdly sweet despite her filthy mouth, and comes from a long line of criminals so that her entire family is despised by the residents of Ashford. Finally, there's Gaffar- a Turkish immigrant who speaks almost no English, but who has somehow ended up in the middle of this whole mess. While Dory unwittingly replays Scogin's famously malicious pranks, all the characters occasionally lose their grasp on modern English, sputtering whatever Anglo-Saxon or Latin root the word they're looking for came from. Eventually, we see that history itself is sort of the joker here, and each character has his own complicated relationship with it, reacting differently each time it bites them in the ass.

In addition to being huge and brainy (did I mention that it's 838 pages long?), Darkmans is hilarious. Kelly's obese and mean-spirited mother is "Jabba the Hut with a womb, chronic asthma, and a council-flat." Gaffar speaks brilliantly and eloquently in Turkish (represented by italicized lettering), but the only word the other characters can make out is "thermos." One of my favourite lines comes from Kane, puffing on a joint and casually informing us that "one irreducible fact is that people who climb mountains are invariably cunts".

The novel - alright, I'll say it again - is funny and smart as hell, but never, ever sloppy. It's expertly constructed and brilliant. It did NOT win the Man Booker Prize in 2007, but how could it have? Ali Smith recently said of Nicola Barker, "An extraordinary writer; we're lucky to be alive at the same time as her."

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Twoness in Oneness: 26a by Diana Evans

Pretty red cover! Umbrellas and twins! Speaking of twins, have you ever considered the emotional complexities of growing up in twinhood? Come on, admit it: there was a set of identical twins in your elementary school and they were, like, famous, and you always wondered what it would be like to have an identical you. I know that in fifth grade I definitely used to spend quite a lot of my time staring at Matt and Graham F. in the cafeteria and straining my little brain trying to think about it as realistically as possible. And wasn't it fun being one of the few people who knew how to tell the twins apart? I was all, "That's Graham. Oh, I don't know why, I just KNOW. It's no big deal."

Georgia and Bessi are twins, obviously, and the novel introduces them in childhood. The title refers to their family's address - 26 Waifer Avenue - in London, where the sisters inhabit a loft with a "spaghetti-Western saloon door" and a pair of identical beanbag chairs that smell like strawberries and are used for problem-solving. The narrative is warmly funny, but it's also fresh and clever enough to prevent an overdose of preciousness. Gradually, though, some darker details of life at 26a Waifer Avenue are revealed. The girls' father often drinks and stomps around the house like Mr. Hyde, while their mom shuts herself up in the bedroom and has lengthy imagined conversations with her own absent Nigerian mother. At one point quite early on in the book, the family sits in the living room watching Charles and Diana's wedding on television. Georgia and Bessi are hoping that the romance and theatrics of it all might rekindle something between their parents, but are disappointed when their father's eyes deliver a cruel and ordinary domestic message for their mother: "Where the fuck is my pudding?"

The girls are more than just close or even co-dependent. They're connected. When one is sad, the other physically aches. At the onset of puberty, their barely-perceptable differences trouble them and they do all they can to remain physically identical. The gap widens during a trip to Nigeria when Georgia is attacked by a gardner and keeps it secret from her still-innocent sister. Early adulthood brings a whole new set of painful challenges as the girls crave the familiar comfort of "twoness in oneness," are terrified of being apart, but simulateously need to assert their individuality. While one twin strikes out on her own, the other's mood swings urge self-destruction and both suffer enormously, wishing that they could be one person.

Georgia and Bessi's story is about loss, but it's also about that pleasantly-suffocating, addictive, and all-consuming kind of love- not just between twins, but also as it exists between friends, lovers, or parents and children. It's about how the death of a person or of a relationship sharpens our peception of life. 26a deservedly won the Orange Award for New Writers in 2005.

Hospitable Stranger: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid

This book feels like it's over in an instant. It's quick, easy, charming, and familiar- A young man named Changez arrives in New York City full of hope and ambition. He finds success, but then realizes that his new life goes against a set of values that he hadn't necessarily realized he had and, older and more self-aware, he returns home. That's the story in a nutshell, but what really makes it interesting is author Moshin Hamid's impeccably-managed framing device. Changez tells his story- politely, matter-of-factly- on the patio of a restaurant in Pakistan where he is treating an American stranger whom he has just met to dinner. Because he's addressing this single listener, Changez tells his story using second person narration, using again and again the awkward "you," and making the reader feel as though he/she is being addressed directly.

The climax of Changez's story occurs when he describes watching the twin towers collapse on television, and he admits that his reaction was to smile. The entire book pivots on this smile. It's what inspires Changez to return to his family in Pakistan, and it's what makes his situation with this nameless and already slightly uncomfortable American even more chilling. The Reluctant Fundamentalist was nominated for the 2007 Man Booker Prize, and was also named best novel of the year by Now Magazine.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Plot Schmot, Mr. Bigshot: A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker

In her 2003 review of A Box of Matches, Salon.com writer Amy Reiter nominated novelist Nicholson Baker for the title of "Grand Poo-bah of the High Art of Navel-Gazing." She meant it as a compliment, since "no one gets more out of his navel- and head and life and ever-evolving sense of time and space- than Baker. A Box of Matches is basically just a really lovely and almost plotless novel about our ordinary and short lives.

Emmett, the narrator in Baker's novel, wakes up every morning before dawn, makes coffee in the dark, builds a fire in the dark, and then sits in front of that fire and thinks. It's his "fire journal" that we're reading. What does a married medical textbook editor with two children, a cat, and a duck think about? Well, his growing children, belly button lint, and death, obviously.

Emmett on his growing children, sparked by noticing his son's ability to touch both ends of the bathtub: "I remember how proud Phoebe was to be able to touch both ends of the tub, too—‘Nice growing!’ I said to her. And I even remember how proud I was myself to touch both ends of the tub.”

Emmett on belly button lint: "While I stretched...my hand strayed under my pajama top and my middle finger found its way to my belly button where it discovered some lint. I rolled the lint into a tube, as one does, and having done so, I became curious about what such a tube would look like if burned. I tossed it into one of the spaes between the coals. It went orange for a moment, fattened, and then darkened. It is still there now but it will be lost when I stir the coals."

In Baker's hands, a passage about burning belly button lint becomes one about the unrelenting passage of time. His fires, in fact, represent not only destruction, but also the search for warmth and love, as well as for some sense of our own purpose and our desire for a lasting impact. Don't believe me? Here's Emmett history and death, being completely direct:

"The ungraspableness of history, which can seem thrilling or frightening depending on your mood, can assert itself at any moment. I just found another small bedroll of lint in my automatic lint-accumulator and I tossed it into the fire; there was an almost imperceptible flare of differently colored fire--ah! lint fire!--and it was gone. That is part of why I like looking at those burning logs: they seem like years of life to me. All the particulars are consumed and left as ash, but warm and life-giving as they burn."

There's something really comforting about this book. It's nice to take a break from the constant fear of being bland and unremarkable, and just enjoy the beauty of the ordinary.

Balls Plus Brains Equals Me, Swooning: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Hey. Huh. So. This is awkward. It's been, what, six months or something? In that time, I've read far too many books to write about in any kind of impressive detail, so I'll do a bunch of short posts about the unremarkable ones, and longer posts about the others. This torturous game of catch-up is actually fine with me, considering the reason for my long absence (new job 2 hours away) and the reason for my reappearance (the desperate need for some sort of life outside of working and travelling to and from work. This need became very clear last week when I basically lost my mind and sobbed for 2 straight days). So yes, I will blog. And no one will read my posts except for my friend Duff (hi, Duff!), but that's okay with me too.

Anyhow, I read Cloud Atlas back in November. It was my first experience with David Mitchell, and I had been unsure of what to expect. I might have even been resistant. See, people are always raving about Cloud Atlas, but every time I picked it up and read the back cover I thought to myself, "Huh. This looks a bit too much like work." Of course, this is coming from the woman who not-so-recently downloaded a copy of Eastern Promises and then let it sit, unwatched, on her desktop for something like two months before finally watching it and having her mind blown by the greatest naked knifefight in the entire history of nakedness and knives and fighting. That's sort of how I felt after finally getting around to Cloud Atlas: Why the hell did it take me so long?

Here's the thing: Cloud Atlas is not one story, but six. And by six stories, I don't mean that the book is a story cycle or a novel with five subplots. It actually takes us to six different but equally intensely imagined and detailed worlds. Six different time periods, each with its own vocabulary and literary style. In one story, Mitchell is summoning Evelyn Waugh. In another, a Grisham-like writer of thrillers. In still another, Martin Amis. The last two stories are the most frightening, and call to mind Philip K. Dick and Cormac McCarthy. We're taken to each world twice, with the exception of the sixth, as the novel follows this format: 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 4 3 2 1.

1. Adrift in the Pacific in 1850, a Yankee notary named Adam Ewing sojourns on the island of Chatham, where he surveys the impact of colonialism.

2. Robert Frobisher, a penniless cad and criminal, travels to Belgium in the 1930s to track down a reclusive, ailing composer. He succeeds, starts working on "The Cloud Atlas Sextet," and seduces the composer's wife. He also finds a book, annoyingly torn in half, called "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing."

3. A journalist named Luisa Rey uncovers a corporate nuclear scandal in 1970s California, and is at constant risk of assassination. One of the scientists who she speaks with is Rufus Sixsmith, who had been Robert Frobisher's lover in the 1930s. She also purchases a record: "The Cloud Atlas Sextet."

4. Timothy Cavendish is a vanity publisher in London in the 1980s. He has a found manuscript called "Half-Lives: the First Luisa Rey Mystery," that he thinks will get him out of debt, but ultimately ends up trapped in a retirement home.

5. Sonmi-451 is a cloned slave in some future state who has acquired intelligence and vision. She is soon to be executed, and her dying wish is to see the end of a film (films are called "Disneys" in the future) she once started to watch called "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish."

6. Zachry is a tribesman in an extremely violent postapocalyptic society on the island of Hawaii after the fall of civilization. His narrative is told in a thick dialect that is difficult to read. Somni-451 returns here as a hologram and ultimately as God for Zachry.

What connects these stories- what effectively prevents the book from being a collection of (brilliantly written) short stories or novellas- is a peculiar reappearing birthmark and, more compellingly, the unifying theme of the endurance of and our need for human communication between generations.

Cloud Atlas is hilarious and terrifying and beautiful and huge. It's also a literary experiment that would be a total slog if it were written by anyone else but the insanely gifted David Mitchell. As it stands, it's a challenging read but enormously entertaining and each story is equally engaging regardless of the reader's personal feelings about the literary genres represented. For pulling this whole thing off without resorting to gimmickry, David Mitchell gets a spot on the top five.