Five Clams Literary Awards

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

2008-05-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Tracking the Urban Nomad: Beautiful Children by Charles Bock

2008-05-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Sorry I suck: An apology for sucking so bad

2008-05-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2008-05-08T08:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Utter Crap: The Clique by Lisi Harrison

2008-05-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2008-05-04T08:54:00.001-07:00

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.

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

2008-05-03T09:02:00.001-07:00

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.

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

2008-05-02T06:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

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."

Twoness in Oneness: 26a by Diana Evans

2008-05-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2008-04-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

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.

Points for Creativity: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

2007-11-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

Oh, Hi! I think I used to have a blog here. It's been a busy month. I got hired at a new library, quit my old one, fell into a lethargic depression as a result of the weather, and also did some rather interesting binge-drinking. Of course I read too, but more slowly than usual. This book, which should probably be read in only a few sittings, took almost a week. Note the illustration to the right. I selected it for two reasons: First, we've all seen the real cover by now because "The Time Traveler's Wife" was enormously popular when it was published a few years ago and second, the real cover (think knee-socks, mary-janes, and a thermos) is too hideously cutesy to contemplate. This illustration is cutesy too, but at least we haven't seen it hundreds of times.

It's possible that I selected this book because I wanted to give something a bad review, and I was sure I'd hate it. I'm always avoiding books with titles like this (The So-and-So's Wife, or The So-and-So's Daughter) because they annoy me. Also, according to the back cover, "'The Time Traveler's Wife' is a story of fate, hope and belief, and more than that, it's about the power of love to endure beyond the bounds of time." Am I a jerk for finding that description irritating? Am I alone in this? Anyhow, it's not that bad. It's hugely imaginative, and the characters are all unique and likeable. But take away the (admittedly pretty awesome) fact that Henry is an unwilling time traveler (which, by necessity, actually gives the book a really interesting structure), and what are we left with? A saccharine story of epic and fated love which I don't really feel is enough for a book to be about. Don't get me wrong- I don't believe that writers should ever write with a particular message in mind. The best writers don't because otherwise it would feel forced, but they at least communicate something larger and compelling by accident and then fine-tune in later drafts. There's not much of anything being said here other than "Henry and Clare have a profound romantic connection that you, reader, will never in your life experience because it's completely false and ridiculous. Sorry!"

Am I being all sour grape-y? Not at all. I completely prefer love of the ugly, improvised, and uncertain variety. I want to love the hell out of the wrong person and make it work. Fate is just so boring.

The Highest Standard: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2007-10-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

Everyone had read this book but me. Friends who recently saw me with it in my hands said, "You're reading that again?" and I replied, "Nope, I'm reading it for the first time." Then they'd ask, "Didn't you have to read it in high school?" and I'd say, "No, we didn't read books with female characters" (this is mostly true, though I didn't even realize it myself until years later).

But I wish we'd read "To Kill a Mockingbird." I don't mean to suggest that I was unmoved by what we were required to read, but I was admittedly an atypical case as a total bookworm. "To Kill a Mockinbird" seems to me like the perfect book for high school students to read, and I'm glad that some are still required to. My evidence: At work I'm always getting surly-looking, uninspired teens trudging up to the reference desk asking for it. Now (as in this past week) I tell them, "You're going to love it," and they look at me like I'm approximately 85 years-old and therefore completely unqualified to comment on what they might like. I wish just one of them would come back and tell me that they loved it, because it would at least confirm my suspicion that it's exactly what we're hoping for whenever we open a book. I'm going to repeat that because it's important: I suspect that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is exactly what what we're hoping for whenever we open a book. It is the standard to which I'll now hold everything else I read.

Without going on about the plot and the characters and the themes (I'm sure it's unecessary because, like I said, everyone had read this book but me), I'll just back up my theory by saying that it's a hugely complex book about ugly realities, and it still somehow manages to be the most enjoyable entertainment. It's perfect. Obviously it goes to the top of the list. I can't believe it took me 27 years to pick it up.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Enormously influential, it stirs readers in all directions to this day: It has made the American Library Association's annual list of banned/challenged books almost every year since its publication in 1960. Again, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is exactly what we're hoping for whenever we open a book.

Silk Has a Secret: The Human Stain by Philip Roth

2007-10-10T16:29:00.000-07:00

I love Philip Roth, but don't necessarily love reading him. That is, I appreciate his intelligence. I appreciate his ability to weave together a number of incredible stories, each with its own complexity, and link them all thematically. The trouble is that I rarely feel like I'm really enjoying myself. While i'm admiring of his craft, shouldn't he be tricking me into not noticing it? There, I said it, and you can all hate me if you want to.

"The Human Stain" is a fantastic book, no question. It takes on far more than the other books I've reviewed here and handles its massively complicated subject matter wonderfully. It's a novel about political correctness, judgement, aging, race, and the American quest for individualism. Set in 1998, with president Bill Clinton's impeachment hovering in the background, and sanctimoniousness in the air, "The Human Stain" follows protoganist Coleman Silk through his success as an academic, his disgrace as an accused racist, and his bizarre death at the hands of a troubled, jealous, and very violent Vietnam War vet.

What you probably can't see on the cover up there are the words "Everyone Knows." They're scrawled on a piece of paper and tucked inside an envelope, which is seen from above. Get it? It takes a minute to understand what you're looking at. Whoever designed that cover did a great job because those are easily the most important words in the novel. "Everyone knows you're sexually exploiting an abused, illiterate woman half your age" is a message that Coleman Silk receives anonymously in the mail one day. He is, in fact, sleeping with an abused, illiterate woman half his age, but that's not really anyone's business. Everyone loves crucifying a success, and especially one who has already lost his job, wife, and good reputation because of false accusations of racism (Coleman, a respected Classics professor and former dean at a New England liberal arts college, referred to two absent students as "spooks"). But what no one knows is Coleman's biggest secret- a secret he's spent decades worrying that everyone will find out: He has spent almost his entire life passing as a tan-skinned Jew, when he is in fact a light-skinned African American from East Orange, New Jersey. For one thing, this makes his being an accused racist all the more surreal, but it also introduces another layer of complexity to the book. What appeared to be a novel about political correctness and sexual morality in Clinton-era America, is actually much bigger. It's a novel about the American impulse to shed one's skin, start over, and succeed based on one's merits, despite the fact that it's nearly impossible to do so.

While Coleman's decision to abandon his ancenstry and live as a white man is enormous and shocking, other characters are reinventing themselves: Faunia Farley, a damaged, abused, and illiterate janitor who Coleman is sleeping with; Les Farley, a deeply traumatized, unpredictably violent war vet; and Delphine Rioux, a French academic who despises Coleman and leads all charges against him for her own personal reasons.

Roth's writing is expert (Faunia, for example, has "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble") and at times infectiously frantic. The gradual unravelling of Coleman's past, narrated by Nathan Zuckerman (a recurring Roth character), is slow, detailed, and gripping. The final scene, in which Nathan Zuckerman is both threatened and a threat, is exquisitely imagined, tense as hell, and probably more visual than any other scene in the book.

Writing this is making me love the book, and I know it's the smartest book I've read so far for this award. It's without a doubt the most ambitious. I just didn't have a great experience reading it, so I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm putting it on top. Roth is risking more than every other author on this list so far, and he still comes through with a novel that I can't find a single specific complaint about. It would be crazy to put him below Natsuo Kirino, and maybe I just read it at the wrong time.

"The Human Stain" won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2000.

Whatta Guy: Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

2007-10-03T16:54:00.000-07:00

Which cover is better? I'm partial to the one on the left. The one on the right is a bit too tra-la-la for my taste, and is totally misleading in light of the book itself. The book is not, after all, about a loveable, wholesome English farmer who cycles between villages selling eggs from a basket. It is about a madman who-- and I sincerely hope I'm not the only one to have found this-- is enormously charming.

By the time we find out that Mike Engleby is a freak and a murderer, Faulks has made quite sure that we're in a position where we'll find this difficult to accept. Engleby is our narrator, after all: He's the fictional author of the fictional "autobiography" we're reading. Unreliable narrators are nothing new to the literary landscape, but this one is so confessional to begin with, so intensely likeable, that when we figure out his true nature, we're disappointed, embarrassed, and worried by the fact that we fell for him hook, line, and sinker.

By the time we find out that Mike Engleby is suffering from "schizoid personality disorder...will elements of narcissism and antisocial personality disorder", we've learned about his difficult, impoverished childhood (no self-pity, though!). We've accepted his snobbish, blasé outlook of academia ("'The Crucible'...is about a group of American Puritans called Goody this and Good that; it has self-righteousness and modern parallels. Students like it because it makes them feel enfranchised") as typically adolescent. We've accepted his shoplifting and pickpocketing to be a result of class resentment and basic need. The way he describes his drug and alcohol addiction is actually kind of hilarious and anyhow, it's the seventies, and he's an undergraduate and Cambridge. In a voice-driven book, Engleby's voice is welcome, appreciated, and enjoyed. He's unintentionally hilarious and hugely entertaining.

Gradually, things get suspicious. Engleby has only one friend, and it becomes painfully clear that they're not even that close. There's a girl, too, and Engleby describes her as being close to him, even a girlfriend, but she can't really be more than a casual acquaintance. When she disappears and is presumed to be dead, the gaps in Engleby's memory, coupled with his dillusional view of their relationship, and his occasional rages, become worrisome, but the case goes cold, and Engleby is accused of nothing. Later, as an adult, we see him settle into life as a journalist ("It's basically quite unbelievably easy"), and are distracted by his success. We're charmed again by his cleverness. Even though he's a suspicious oddball, we still want to hear his opinion about everything: Inane dinner parties, English politicians, journalism, you name it.

It isn't until close to the end of the book that we get a portrait of Engleby from another character's point of view. The dissonance is very disconcerting, perhaps partly because it's been right under our noses- albeit between the lines- the whole time.

That "Engleby" is dark goes without saying. I was reminded instantly of Ian McEwan, although to my knowledge McEwan has never written a fictional "autobiography." Who has? William Boyd, apparently, but I've never read it. "Engleby" is like nothing I've ever read before. I spilled beer all over the library's copy of this book, and will probably have to buy it, but I don't really mind.

A Woman's Work is Never Done: "Out" by Natsuo Kirino

2007-09-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'm basically in love with Natsuo Kirino. A hugely famous and well-respected literary novelist from Japan, Kirino was introduced to North America in 2003 when "Out" was translated into English. Earlier this year, I read her second novel to be translated: "Grotesque." It knocked me straight onto my (formidable) ass- I had never before met such a spiteful, unlikeable, complicated main character. Sadly, because I read it in the early summer, it's ineligible for a clammy. Picking up "Out" was, in a way, my strategy for making Natsuo Kirino eligible. Frankly, I think I like "Out" better than "Grotesque," which is an enormous compliment because both are brilliant.

"Out" begins in a bleak box-lunch factory in the suburban outskirts of Tokyo, as four women- Masako, Yayoi, Yoshie and Kuniko- work the night shift together. Simultaneously grueling and tedious, the work is awful, but all four women need to do it for their own reasons. Masako is hardly on speaking terms with her husband and son, so she's there in order to work opposite shifts from them. Yayoi, the young and pretty one, is helping her husband save money so they can move into a new apartment with their young kids. Yoshie is widowed and taking care of a teenaged daughter and invalid mother-in-law. Kuniko is fat and vain, obsessed with fashion, makeup, and imported cars, and is understandably struggling under a mountain of debt.

One night, when Yayoi's husband comes home drunk, admits that he's spent all their savings on gambling and prostitutes, and then hits her, everything changes. In a strange, surreal moment of rage and psychosis, she strangles him with his belt. Later, at the factory, she confesses to Masako who, for reasons she herself is unsure of, agrees to take care of everything. The four women cut up Yayoi's husband's body in Masako's bathroom, divide the pieces among themselves, and scatter them in dumpsters across the suburbs. What follows is a grisly, disturbing novel as the women get away with the crime, but are ultimately found out by the man who was accused of it and later released for lack of evidence.

While Yayoi, Masako, Yoshie, and Kuniko are given almost equal narrative attention, this is really Masako's story. Masako is the one woman out of the four who originally insists on not being paid for her part in cutting up and disposing of the body. What's more, through crossing this line, Masako finds that she has a predilection for sociopathic behaviour. She encounters another criminal- a thug she crossed paths with in an earlier career- and realizes that they have a lot in common. Together with Yoshie (by far the most financially desperate of the women), they start a business cutting up and disposing of bodies for a Tokyo gang, all the while being stalked and threatened by the man who has found them out.

It would be easy enough to say that "Out" is propelled by shock-value alone, but that isn't really the case. There is nothing gimmicky about Kirino's clever depiction of a bleak world where a woman's choice of husband determines her destiny. This book is as much theme-driven as it is plot-driven, being ultimately about perverse feminism, vigilante justice, and our own potential for evil. In one of the most memorable scenes in the book, Yoshie flatly says that cutting up bodies isn't so different from changing her mother-in-law's diapers or working the line at the boxed-lunch factory. It's the work no one else wants to do.

A few critics have argued that the prose is flat and wooden. It sometimes is, but I'm tempted to blame the translation. Even the Guardian's Stephen Poole, in a lukewarm review, admits that the "flat, funtional prose" is occasionally illuminated by a strange lyricism. I was particularly impressed by this line about the gradual deadening of expectations and hope in the women's suburban lives:

"When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth undernearth; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. there was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world."

"Out" won Japan's top mystery award when it was published in its original language in 1997.

Life Imitates Art: The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier

2007-09-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

Look at this slender, handsome thing! The cover effortlessly beats the hell out of that pastel embarrassment that encloses "Prep." Recommended to me six months ago by a friend, "The Mystery Guest" was devoured today over the course of two subway rides and a half-hour dinner break. Book covers are important. They ARE. One must feel confident reading a book in public, and I'm not ashamed to say that I felt great reading "The Mystery Guest" on the subway today. Commuters were peeking at my book left and right, and I felt like I knew an important little secret. I felt sorry for my peers for not being in on it.

Breakups are bullshit- humiliating and devastating for the dumped because, really, when it comes down to it, being abandonned by a loved one teaches us that we're "a less exemplary person than [we had] thought." The first few pages floored me- I can't recall having read such a true description of the emotional wreckage that follows such a blow:

"I was home in the middle of the afternoon, and it was cold out, and I'd gone to sleep in all my clothes, wrapped up in a blanket, the way I generally did when I was home by myself. Cold and oblivion were all I was looking for at the time, but this didn't worry me. Sooner or later, I knew, I'd rejoin the world of the living. Just not yet. I felt I had seen enough. Beings, things, landscapes...I had enough to last me for the next two hundred years and saw no reason to go hunting for new material. I didn't want any trouble."

The above, by the way, is five years after the nameless Gregoire has been left, wordlessly, by his girlfriend. If he doesn't want any trouble, he gets it anyway, as the phone rings and it's the heartbreaker herself, calling suddenly after five years, not to offer any explanations or to ask to see him (or even to acknowledge their past at all), but rather to invite him to a birthday party--for a woman he's never met--where he is to play the role of "the mystery guest". What follows (as Gregoire prepares for the party and spends his rent money on a vintage bottle of wine that no one will, in fact, ever drink) is a frantic, Woody Allen-esque internal monologue bursting with hope, imagined reconciliations, speculation, faux significance, and, most importantly, fiction-like logic:

"For once I wasn't cooking the data. Not this time. Appearances never deceive (I told myself), they are their own meanings and there's nothing to look for behind them, and I rejoiced, and the reasons for her call rose up more and more vividly and gloriously into view. And the thing was, the reasons had nothing to do with her! Because it wasn't as if SHE had decided to call late in the afternoon on a Sunday and send me a coded message. No one was that roundabout, I told myself. At least not that pointlessly roundabout. So there had to be something else--call it a force--a force seeking some means of self-expression, struggling to give me a sign, and unbeknownst to her this something had told her to pick up the phone and dial my number at that moment, of all moments, the meaning of which apparent coincidence only I could discern. Yes, I was convinced that this had to be the explanation: for reasons unknown to me, but which might have had something to do with the death of Michel Leiris, something in her clicked and, taking advantage of her need to find a 'mystery guest,' the force stole this chance to slip her hand into mine, to wave a handkerchief like a prisoner locked in a tower."

Simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious, this narrative is really concerned with the consoling power of fiction, with the sometimes silly but always very real need to find symbols and portents in the everyday, to create meaning where there is little or none, and to ultimately make our messy lives feel as though they're at least heading towards some sort of satisfying, insightful, and fated ending. What's astounding is that we actually get a satisfying, insightful ending, but I won't give it away. I'll leave you instead with a hilarious bit about turtlenecks:

"Since I'd always hated turtlenecks worn as undershirts and despised the men who wore them as the lowest kind of pseudo-sportsmen with, as they say, the lamest kind of collar, I started wearing turtlenecks as undershirts the moment she left. Basically, I never took them off. No doubt this was magical thinking on my part (if I never took them off, nothing would ever take off on me); at any rate, these turtleneck-undershirts erupted in my life without my noticing until it was too late and I was under their curse. You could even say they'd INFLICTED themselves on me, so that now I hardly remembered the wind on my neck, which is the very feeling of freedom itself. But if that was the price I had to pay, I told myself, so be it. We brick ourselves up in prisons of our own devising, we spend our lives losing touch with ourselves, disappearing behind what negates us."

A Portrait of the Artist in Boarding School: Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

2007-09-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

I love the hell out of boarding school novels, and the reason for this is probably that I love the hell out of novels with child and teenaged protagonists. The boarding school bildungsroman, in particular, makes me want to tap dance all over the place because the gated and turreted school setting will doubtlessly serve to not only enclose and isolate a huge group of kids (some snobbish, some shy, all hormonal and crazed), but also serve as the perfect place for an insightful outsider to be miserable, to be observant of the rituals and mores of privileged classmates who at once intimidate, fascinate, and repel her, and to ultimately come into her own.

As a teenaged protagonist, Lee Fiora is pretty much the best we could ask for: self-conscious, ordinary, sensitive, and enormously observant. While her almost constant discomfort makes her appear by turns sullen and aloof to her classmates, Lee's interior life is rich. Her voice is strong, clear, uniquely insightful, and often heartbreaking. As a scholarship student at a school that costs $22, 000 per year in tuition and houses glamorous and wealthy students with names like Aspeth, Horton, Cross, and Tullis, she is obviously an outsider. At Ault School, Lee's once solid sense of identity is supremely challenged. Of her first bewildering weeks at Ault, she says, "I always worried that someone would notice me...and then when no one did, I felt lonely." What makes her character particularly realistic and complicated is her own role in maintaining her status as an outsider. For example, when a romantic relationship (albeit a sloppy and awkward one) begins to develop between Lee and the popular, easy-going Cross Sugarman, it is the insecure Lee who, in a misguided attempt to be accomodating, suggests that they keep it secret. She's hurt and appalled, however, when he does exactly that. The fact that her interior and exterior personalities are so different makes her a frustrating character, but it's also what makes her character so human and lovable. It's what makes all of us want, at least sometimes, to do high school all over again.

Some of the most touching parts of the book are the strangely nostalgic reminiscences offered up by the adult Lee- particularly those pertaining to her painful and disastrous relationship with Cross:

"I already recognized, even then, the sadness of another person lying on top of you. They will always leave (what's someone going to do, just lie there forever?) and that's the sad part. You can always feel the imminent loss.

It seemed to me, and it kept seeming like this for a long time, that this was what it was like to love a boy--to feel consumed. I'd awaken in the morning, without him, thinking, 'I love you so much, Cross.' Knowing that other people would not consider what went on between us to be love-- of course they wouldn't-- only made me more certain. When he arrived at night, tapping my shoulder in the dark, then the two of us walking down the hall to the day student room, then finally being in bed again, our bodies overlapping, my arms around his back-- that was one of the times when not telling him I loved him required willpower. Also when he was about to leave. I loved him so much! Later, with other guys, I'd think, 'Do I? Is this what it feels like? does love feel different with different people?' But with Cross I never wondered. There was nothing about him I didn't like. The other guys, guys in my future, were maybe too tall but as slim as girls, they listened to classical music and drank wine and liked modern art, and they seemed to me like sissies. Or we had enough to say to each other to fill an evening, we could go to a baseball game, but it never stopped being an effort. Or their fingers were--not stubby, but not long and sure. If I kissed these guys, I'd wonder if it would turn out to be an obligation, if I was moving forward into a situation from which I'd later have to extricate myself. It's not that they were unattractive, and they weren't boring either. But I never thought of what Cross wasn't. I never had to explain or defend him to myself. I didn't even care what we talked about. It was never a compromise. Or maybe for him it was. But it never was for me."

And later,

"I heard him swallow, and then--all this time, he had been holding the basketball against his right hip--he leaned down and set the ball against the floor. When he was upright again, he said, 'Lee...' and when I dared to glance at him, he was looking at me in a way that was both predatory and tender (I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that my life since then has been in pursuit of that look, and that I have yet to find it a second time in just that balance; perhaps it doesn't, after high school, exist in that balance) and it was because whatever he was about to do was exactly what I wanted while also scaring the hell out of me that I folded my arms and said, 'I'll have to take this all under advisement.' I knew immediately that I'd sounded sarcastic, and I did nothing to correct the impression."

The novel's first six or seven chapters function as fully independant short stories, which led me to believe that I was actually reading a story cycle, in the tradition of "Lives of Girls and Women" and "Funny Boy." The final chapter, though, is a sprawling, 118 page climax and denouement that doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book's structure and concludes with Lee's rather quick and predictable discovery that "the world [is] so big!" It's disappointing, partly because of it's predictability, but mainly because of it's suddeness. It feels tacked on. Also, I find it almost impossible to believe that Lee could be as poor a student as Sittenfeld describes her as being. Depressed and uninspired, sure. Overwhelmed and intimidated by the academic expectations at Ault, definitely. But surely an observant and introverted teenaged girl who (as Sittenfeld at the very least implies) is meant to become a writer would write an interesting story or be impressed by a particular novel in English class.

"Prep" was nominated for the UK's Orange Prize and was selected by the New York Times as one of The Best Books of 2005. It's a damned good novel and, while flawed, perhaps in the same league as "The Catcher in the Rye," "A Separate Peace," and Kazuo Ishiguro's recent "Never Let Me Go"-- all masterpieces of the boarding school genre. "Prep" is without a doubt one of the best books I've read in a while, and Sittenfeld's voice is an exciting new discovery. That said, I didn't feel as blown away reading it as I did reading "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" by Marisha Pessl last year, or "The Little Friend" by Donna Tartt the year before.