BOOKING AROUND

Musings on recent reads from a longtime bookworm. CONTACT

[bookingaround]

Narrow Constraints: How Far Does Art Need to Reach?

An easy way to describe, or dismiss, Ben Lerner’s novel “10:04” is to label it meta. The text is incredibly, and intentionally, self-referential, while also incorporating the work of other artists, genres and temporalities. The blend of fiction and non-fiction, cut with the lives and work of others, sounds self-indulgent when framed in this manner. But I found myself enjoying the book immensely.

The narrator, also named Ben, begins his second book seated on the High Line in New York looking north. He has just eaten a celebratory meal with his agent after learning that his proposal for a second novel has exceeded all expectations at auction and garnered a “strong six-figures.” From that precarious perch between past success and future expectations, Ben delves into the other tenets of his life.

In sum: his enduring friendship with a woman named Alex who wants him to donate his sperm to her so that she can have a baby; a budding but untenable romance with an artist; a recent discovery that he has a cardiac issue that needs to be monitored closely or it might prove fatal. Ben’s concerns are modern ones, largely unimaginable in any other era, and yet, as the story progresses it encompasses the infinity and repetition of time.

Lerner’s novel is roughly bookended by the two hurricanes that touched Manhattan in the last five years. He evokes both the non-event of the first and the immense impact of the second in language that feels exact. Lerner’s New York is evocative and tangible, but is it particularly entrancing for me because I live here? I witnessed both hurricanes and have my own stories about them, and I am familiar with the worlds of New York that Lerner frequently shuffles between. “10:04” is meant for an audience of critics, artists, editors and Brooklyners. But how would it be to read as an outsider who is not desperately trying to get in? Does it lose resonance beyond its narrow isle?

Of course, that is a question that does not need to be answered by art. At least one hopes that there are more than just the demands of the market fueling the promotion and visibility of books and their artistic brethren. In a world of million dollar book deals and Jeff Koons, it’s important to believe that an artist still has the ability to produce what he or she is compelled to by inextricable interior forces. From a place of need, not just performance. Through his descriptions of other artists’ works and his own struggle to shape this book into what he needed, not what the market demanded, Lerner’s text honors that plight. His art may not speak for everyone, but it speaks for him, and that is true.

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Exploring Truth through Fiction

American entitlement and the exoticism of the foreign are on display in Jennifer duBois’s novel “Cartwheel.” The book takes place in Buenos Aires where Lily Hayes, who is on her semester abroad from Middlebury, gets wrapped up in the murder of her roommate. Change the name and country and we have the story of Amanda Knox’s ordeal in Perugia, Italy.

The author’s intent is to recreate the sentiments of that case while exploring the landscape from a fictional perspective. There is a wide range of characters called to task in this retelling. Lily has a voice, as does her father Andrew, her boyfriend Sebastian, and the police officer investigating her case, Eduardo. All of these figures are given interesting backstories, and yet I didn’t find myself all that interested in the story.

Lily is that strange product of 21st century America, a totally average member of the elite. She is pretty enough, smart but not as smart as she thinks, privileged but still certain that the world owes her something. This is not a particularly charming combination and it does not serve her well when she confidently strides into a foreign culture. Lily behaves with the typical, self-righteous naiveté one would expect: dressing inappropriately for her environment, brashly photographing whomever she chooses, drinking to excess with her host father, and so on. While some of this can be chalked up to youth, I felt inclined to question her upbringing.

Enter Andrew. He travels to Buenos Aires immediately after Lily is arrested with his younger daughter Anna, an unknowable young woman who’s not a particular fan of her elder sister. Andrew is paralyzed by the possibility of what his daughter may have done and duBois does a fair job of portraying the confusion he experiences. Lily is his daughter, incontrovertibly innocent, but what if it turns out she’s not?

I had a hard time placing the importance of Sebastian, the neighbor boyfriend. His history is difficult to believe, orphaned at eighteen he inherited a huge amount of wealth and he sits in his mansion as it falls to ruin, watching the world go by without him. This misanthropic excess doesn’t do much to add dimension to his character or explain his connection to Lily. She treats him with the same flippant attention she shows everyone and the relationship adds little to what we already know.

Finally there is the police investigator, Eduardo. He has personal troubles of his own and turns to Lily’s case as a refuge, an opportunity to find answers and order when his life is out of control. Because Lily’s interrogation and imprisonment occurred in Argentina, I wanted to have a better sense of how the language played into the scenario. Did her Spanish trip her up? Did Eduardo use English and Spanish to different effect when confronting her? These are holes that I wish duBois had not left.

"Cartwheel" is coated in the unknowable. duBois doesn’t give us an answer to what caused a young American girl abroad to end up dead. I am content to sit with unanswered questions, but I wish I had felt more invested in the lives of the people who were a part of this mess. duBois identifies the conflicting emotions at stake in this story, but fails to anchor them in a way that feels realistic.

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Super Sad True Life Story

Gary Shteyngart has written three works of fiction, the most recent of which I enjoyed more than I expected. “Super Sad True Love Story” expertly played with the absurd nature of modern gadgetry and the world it is creating, while being incisive about the nature of love. This past year Shteyngart published his first work of non-fiction called “Little Failure.” I would have called it “Super Sad True Life Story.”

Little failure is one of the many double-edged monikers of affection bestowed on the author by his parents. Shteyngart was born to Jewish parents in Soviet Russia and the family immigrated to Queens in the late ’70s. His was not a loveless childhood, but the love that was bestowed on him had caveats and threats intertwined. He is long used as a pawn in his parents’ marriage and is continuously caught both between them and between the Russian culture they come from and the American one they are attempting to join.

Shteyngart writes about the terms of his childhood in a tone that is very, very dry. In fact the humor is almost undetectable while the suffering and melancholy is slathered liberally. He writes of his father beating him colorlessly, though the emotional damage is splattered everywhere. When his father finally stops striking him, Shteyngart wonders if he somehow loves him less, if he’s no longer worth the abuse. He has empathy of his parents and their history but he is honest about the toll they have taken on him.

Throughout his days as a schoolyard outcast and as he grows older, the author does have the constant release of writing. Shteyngart admits that he has never suffered from the dreaded writer’s block, stories have always sprung like a geyser from his brain, even when he was unsure which language he belonged to. It’s a remarkable gift that has served him well and is perhaps a palliative for his anguished existence.

This book must have been incredibly painful to write. In it I saw an artist who is both dreadfully and gloriously linked to his heritage. It is the source of his creativity and it is also the reality that plagues him, drives him deep into alcohol and later into therapy. Shteyngart is unsparing with his parents and very revealing about himself. I have to admit that I was overjoyed to put the book down. I learned a little about Russia and some about what life was like for immigrants in Queens, but mostly I learned about the pain of a boy. The story is unique, hitting very specific chords, some of which weren’t at all familiar to me. Mostly I read this memoir as an exhibition of bravery and catharsis and I can only hope that it brought the little failure who, at least in the literary world has been a big success, some well-earned peace.

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Mitchell Underlines Links Between Novels

I was introduced to David Mitchell’s novels via “Black Swan Green,” which is, inarguably, his most sedate. “The Bone Clocks,” Mitchell’s most recent tome, is his most outlandish. As readers of his work know, there are threads, both of gossamer and steel, which link his books together. “The Bone Clocks” is part of this tradition, but it was the first book I read that felt like it was tethered to something bigger, as opposed to a work that stood solidly on its own.

Holly Sykes is the protagonist of “The Bone Clocks,” even as the narrators and time frames shift. When we meet Holly she is a plucky teenager, high on the excitement of her first love and eager to defy her parents. Our first day with her holds many surprises and the plot quickly turns fantastical when she is witness to a lethal battle between two warring factions, the Horologists and the Anchorites. Holly subsequently has her memories erased after indelibly, and somewhat accidentally, embroiling herself in this battle between good and evil. It only gets more complicated.

To put it briefly there are two groups of immortals. The Horologists are reborn in new bodies, usually threading their soul into the space left by the death of a child. Most of them are centuries old, and at least one will be familiar to readers of Mitchell’s earlier works. The Anchorites, on the other hand, are immortal by choice. They have found a way decant souls in order to fuel their longevity. This usually involves the murder of innocents, and as one might imagine the practice doesn’t sit well with the Horologists. This information is unspooled for us slowly throughout the novel with psychics and radio people thrown into the mix.

Mitchell uses a host of egotistical men to narrate the majority of this novel. One is a war-addicted journalist, another a pompous author, the third a sneaking, brilliant university student named Hugo Lamb. He was my favorite because he was deliciously wicked, in the somehow delightful manner of a British cad. Unfortunately Hugo’s storyline got the shortest shrift and was the primary source of my feeling that this book needed a sequel.

Mitchell constructs the maze of his novels very carefully and there is a great amount of satisfaction in following the twists and turns to their conclusion. However the climactic battle towards the end of the novel sidestepped some exposition and the omission felt too intentional. Part of the charm of Mitchell’s oeuvre is that they aren’t an episodic series. The conditional suspense of “The Bone Clocks” ruined that to a certain degree.

Much of the pleasure of reading Mitchell’s work comes from the wide range of characters and tones that he employs. Unfortunately these shifts in perspective did not knit Holly’s character together particularly well. She seemed like a different person depending on who was describing her. Of course people do have different impressions of the same person all the time, but Holly never really cohered for me. She was more of a collage of projections.

The overarching coverage of time in this novel is impressive and Mitchell’s bleakly imagined near future feels spot-on. But even though the story clipped along with clever one-liners and exotic travels, I missed the controlled normality of “Black Swan Green” and the brilliant genre shifting and subtle incredulity of “Cloud Atlas.” I do still love the worlds he creates however, and will, of course, read whatever comes next.

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Patient Prose in Paul Yoon’s Novel

It’s difficult these days to settle into a world where the loudest noise is the waves slapping against the shore. There are a thousand things beeping and bouncing, taking us away from the present. It can be argued that fiction does the same; removes us from what is real. But stories also inform our behavior and understanding of our surroundings. Paul Yoon’s second novel, “Snow Hunters,” won the Young Lion’s Fiction Award from the New York Public Library, and it is one of those fictional worlds that manages to bring the reality you inhabit into sharper focus. 

The protagonist of “Snow Hunters” is a thoughtful young man, Yohan. His life was a quiet one before his country began its civil war and Yoon’s novel is a remarkable portrayal of both the overt and inadvertent effects of violence.

At the conclusion of the Korean War, Yohan chooses to defect. He has spent the war as a reluctant soldier and then as a prisoner. The novel returns us to scenes of his loss in small bursts. Yohan is a very private being, and our access to his interior isn’t without its limitations. Our protagonist has worked hard to protect himself from the traumas he experienced, which keeps us at a distance from them. The lens we view his past through is clouded, but even the obscurity can’t prevent the pain from sneaking in.

When Yohan chooses to leave Korea, he ends up as a refugee on the shores of Brazil. There he learns to navigate a new language, craft, and the terrain of peace. He is contemplative but not brooding, haunted but not menacing or disturbed. He is taken on as an apprentice by a Japanese tailor, Kiyoshi. The two share little beyond an obscure past, but through the routines of work and kindness, Yohan settles into his new life.

The pleasures of his life are small, but not unremarkable. Within the gentle practices of making tea and bending over a seam one note continues to resonate: Freedom. Yohan’s life is simple and quiet, no longer bonded by cruelty or darkness.

Yohan does not connect with people easily, and this can make it difficult to get to know the people around him as well. He befriends the groundskeeper at a church, and two vagrant children. And while they make recurrent appearances, edging closer into our periphery, one longs, perhaps as Yohan does, to know them better.

Yoon’s prose is concise but beautiful. He measures his words the attention Hemingway might, but with much more caution. His is a different sort of paring of words. The simplicity Yoon echoes is made robust through his obvious affection for description.

Reading “Snow Hunters” is like paging through chapters of a dream. The most mundane details pop against the quietude, like the blue umbrella that greets Yohan when he lands on the Brazilian docks. “Snow Hunters” is a small book but it’s one that requires patience. I got lost in the reverie a couple of times, but it was pleasant to have to take stock of my surroundings and reengage. Yoon writes with a meditative quality that is hard to come by. His story is about ripples, not waves. It’s a quiet tale of survival and its simplicity resonates in our clanging, unstill, modern lives.  

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Which Kind Are You?

While I was reading on the subway the other day a young man approached me. He was full-faced, maybe out of college, and he said “I don’t mean to interrupt, but how’s the book?” I was about forty pages into “Not That Kind of Girl” by Lena Dunham.

“It’s alright, so far,” I said.

“But really, isn’t she THAT kind of girl,” he asked, moving towards the door to the platform.

“I guess it depends on what you think that means.”

Dunham’s title isn’t combative but it does come across as a challenge. “I know you’ve made assumptions about me,” she seems to declare, “I am going to show you that you are wrong.” Dunham has experienced almost as much backlash as praise since her series “Girls” first aired in 2012. She is criticized for her privilege, her gender, her nudity, her youth, her weight, her race, and so on. When you enter the public sphere, some of this is to be expected, but the invective seems to have a lot to do with the fact that she is a young woman who has become successful by showing the world how she relates to it. From the beginning my feelings about Dunham and her work has been “thank god this exists.” Even if it’s not for everyone, even if it’s not really for me.

I’m not a huge fan of “Girls” and I have never seen “Tiny Furniture,” and honestly “Not That Kind of Girl” isn’t the most tremendous thing to happen to memoir since “Just Kids.” But again, I am glad it exists. Dunham is almost as observant as she is self-interested and she constructs the world around her with a keen eye for the comedic. Some of her humor is used as a shield, but sometimes she manages to pinpoint the moments of absurdity that can define our humanity.

“Not That Kind of Girl” is loosely framed as an instructive memoir. Dunham illustrates her missteps with more glee than her successes. You don’t get much insight into her creative process, but she does paint a great portrait of why platonic cuddling is a waste of everyone’s time. The first section of the book is called Love & Sex but really those subjects are at the core of this entire book of essays, as is an almost absentmindedly happy preoccupation with self. That’s Dunham’s peccadillo and she’s embracing it. She could have done more with this collection. Dunham isn’t apologetic or particularly reflective about her privilege. She’ll make snide asides but not really address her position in that world. This seems like a missed opportunity to me and one that a single strong essay could have ameliorated. Dunham is a talented writer and could have been directed to greater heights in print.

As with episodes of “Girls,” there is much that feels different but not entirely foreign from my experience in Dunham’s work. The aspect that I appreciate the most is that she thinks her stories are worth telling. And I believe they are, if only as a catalyst to other young women who find themselves awash in a sea of male narrative, or closeted narratives, or prude ones. The field of play has always been narrower for women, and Dunham’s desire and ability to talk about the range of moments that define her is an act of importance. She’s not the kind of girl who keeps her mouth shut or her body covered in deference to someone else’s tastes. And she has used her position to open up more room in the world for others. That’s the kind of girl she is. 

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Realism and Heroism in “Redeployment”

The National Book Awards just published their longlist s for fiction and non-fiction. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve only read a single book from both lists and my review of it is overdue. I heard excellent things about “Redeployment,” the first book by former marine Phil Klay, and it was the first book I got for free from Penguin as a new employee (swag!). The stories in this debut collection are remarkably affecting. I was only able to read one or two at a time before I had to put the book down and take a breather. The material is raw and the subject contentious, but the writing is tight and urgent. The experience was something like watching “Breaking Bad.” I kept cringing and looking away but I had to know what else happened.  

Klay served as a marine in Iraq and, though his collection of stories is fictional, it’s obvious that the events are drawn from first-hand experiences. His prose is clipped and military shorthand is rampant. Many, if not most, terms flew past me, but that did not detract from their weight. In fact the acronyms intensified the atmosphere of the story. Klay’s decision to plunge the reader into the narrative without any layman’s explanations works to great effect in terms of immediacy and in transporting the reader to a world that is uncomfortable and foreign. The visceral nature of the stories is exhausting.

These soldiers are men whose decision to join the military has led them to places they never imagined. The language is predictably brash, with the enemy and women at the receiving end of the derision and exploitation. But Klay manages to avoid capitalizing on these moments, instead using them to illustrate the vulnerability and fear of the speakers.

Klay’s best stories are the ones that deliver a punch without a wind-up. It’s simply a battle scene, or a confession, or a homecoming. Klay captures the voices of the soldiers who are questioning their humanity as much as their bravery, and simultaneously worrying about their chances of survival.

The book loses its momentum in the longer form stories that conclude the collection. These mostly occur on American soil and Klay falters just a touch when he works outside the controlled concision of a firefight, literal or otherwise. His characters’ more elaborate attempts to wrestle with their experiences ring somewhat hollow compared with the stinging delivery of the early stories. It seems his characters, and he, are best when they are in action, looking for cover, staging a rescue, shouting with grief.

The stories in “Redeployment” touch on the futility and bureaucracy of war without undermining the heroism of the people we ask to protect us. As the title so aptly implies, the conclusion of one war always paves the way to another. We’ve spent more than a decade in Iraq and as our soldiers begin to return home to start a new chapter in their lives it’s likely that more and more of them will want to tell their stories. If they approach the page with the same diligence, patience and perception that Klay applies to his craft, America might just stop and listen. 

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Girlhood, Friendship, Privilege, Murder

Poised to publish as students arrive in their carefully selected first outfits of the semester, “The Secret Place” takes a murderous look at friendship and privilege. In the latest addition to Tana French’s phenomenal Dublin Murder Squad series, she takes on the roiling politics of a prep school. French has a gift for capturing the intricacies of relationships, and her ear for the insidious toxicity of the elite girls’ school St. Kilda’s is pitch-perfect.

When Chris Harper was found murdered on the grounds of St. Kilda’s the event shook the foundations of the institution. What at first glance looked like an easy solve for the unseasoned Detective Antoinette Conway, turned into a cold case with no arrests, making Conway the target of increased derision in the ol’ boys club of the Murder division. When a student from St. Kilda’s brings Detective Stephen Moran a note a year later with an “I know what you did last summer” tone, he sees an opportunity to move up from Cold Cases to the Murder Squad and takes his chance.

Moran and Conway spend the day at Kilda’s trying to get the measure of the other while approaching students for information as one would a snake pit. As the narrative progresses, it is evident that their caution where these girls are concerned is justified. The targets of their inquiry are two sets of four girls; Holly Mackey (who brought Moran the note) and her friends and Joanne Heffernan and hers. There is something a little bit odd about the tightly wound loyalty of Holly’s group, while Joanne rules her friends with the age-old tyrant tactics of “Mean Girls”. The world Conway and Moran wade into is one of of innuendos, half-truths and performed innocence. Somewhere in its midst lies the murderer.

French alternates between the detective’s present day investigation and chapters from the girls’ perspective, chronologically building to the night that Chris was killed. The reader sees the friendships and rivalries developing between the girls, dynamics that are enhanced by the appearance of the boys from the neighboring school. French nails down the insecurities of the age while animating the voices of the girls at the center of the investigation. She unflinchingly addresses the double-standards that society and the male gaze demand of women as they come of age. (French has always brought a class consciousness to her novels; I was glad to see her add feminism.) Holly and her friends recognize the oppression and rebel in small ways, creating a solidarity the eventually begins to morph out of their control.

This brings me to the one aspect of the novel that I want to forget. French handles her subjects and their relationships so realistically that I was astounded when she attributed magical powers to the girls. Nothing in the novel occurred on the full-blown scale of “Matilda,” but every time French mentioned lights flickering and bits of paper levitating I tried to extricate myself from the paragraph as quickly as possible. Why interrupt the high realism of girlhood tensions with magic? These moments were hardly abundant, making me further question their inclusion. I was already convinced of the tight bond between the girls without the prospect of some witches circle setting them apart. The invention denigrated the friendships from my perspective and that was disappointing.

Aside from this strange departure, French’s new novel is one of her best. The insular, complex world of teenage girls, paired with a mystery is a deadly combination in the best sense. French’s writing is such that it leaves me ravenous for more. I may just have to return to “In the Woods” and immerse myself in her world from the beginning. 

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The Disappointing Lives of Greta Wells

When the heavy shroud of unhappiness settles, it is common to look for the juncture at which things went wrong. Perhaps if I had said this and not that she would still love me, he would still be alive, I would be whole. Andrew Sean Greer plays with our longing to find fate’s tipping point in his fanciful novel “The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells.”

The story opens on a narrow, chilly street in New York. It is 1985 and the city is filled with the dying. Greta is a woman who has lost her brother Felix to AIDS. Everyone seems to be succumbing to the plague and it is the wraiths who are more vivid to her than the living.

Greta’s preoccupation with her dying brother costs her Nathan, the man she has lived with and loved for years. Devastated by both abandonments, Greta sinks into a deep depression. Having presumably exhausted all other options, Greta turns to Dr. Cerletti who prescribes 25 administrations of ECT. The electroconvulsive therapy has shocking (haha!) results, propelling Greta from her world into others. Many of the players remain the same, but the script has been altered.

The Gretas whom she inhabits in 1918 and 1941 are also unhappy. In these worlds they have married Nathan and Felix is still alive. But the men that Greta knew and loved in her world are both imperceptibly different and too much the same. As Greta cycles through the worlds trying to correct them into some perfected version of reality she believes is just a matter of getting the formula right, she re-experiences her heartache and has to recognize the circuitous nature of the world and its inherently unmendable nature.

In addition to the reappearance of Felix, Nathan and Greta’s wicked spinster aunt Ruth, Greer is sure to underscore the presence of another recurring character: Death. AIDS is the face of this indiscriminate player in 1985, but 1918 and 1941 feature their own grim reapers. World War I has robbed thousands of lives and in 1941 World War II is poised to take more. Greta muses often on the fickle nature of memory, how humans endlessly repeat the cycle of pain, pleasure and loss. The sentiment is belabored and it is much more interesting to follow the reincarnations of Felix and watch how his homosexuality plays in different eras.

The concept of Greer’s novel is charming and pursues the possibility of parallel universes with ease, but I was largely unmoved. Greta did not captivate me in any era and while Greer provided the occasional enticing detail about life in past decades, none came to life. The cherry-picked details and anecdotes served as backdrops for Greta’s drama, as opposed to being integral to the story they accessorized. I felt as though I was flipping between period piece channels, not living in new worlds. Greer supplies a modest plot twist at the end, but not even his final orchestration of fate can save plaintive Greta from her dull fate.

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The Invention of Wings: Before Feminism

Recently, a wave of anti-feminism absurdity has crashed into the internet. The atrocious ignorance is currently lurking under the umbrella of the Women Against Feminism tumblr and hashtag. I have spent more than a little time delving into this cesspool, stranded between laughing disbelief and horror. In popular culture the definition of feminism has somehow warped into the banner for man-hating sluts (never mind the contradiction in terms), and the women who purport to be against feminism use reasons such as “I love making my man a sandwich” and “Being a stay-at-home mom is my choice.” While I’m almost more curious about the sandwich assertion (are we as feminists up in arms about cheese on bread somewhere?) it’s the latter declaration that is driving me crazy. Feminism is what made choosing to be a stay-at-home mom possible. Previously (read: barely a hundred years ago) it wasn’t a choice. It was all there was. At a moment when the rejection of feminism is being worn like a badge of honor “The Invention of Wings” by Sue Monk Kidd should be required reading for everyone.

In her new novel, Kidd fictionalizes the life of an early, groundbreaking feminist. Sarah Grimké was born in the late 18th century to a family of landowning slave holders who lived in Charleston. She was an incredibly bright child, able to keep up with her brothers in their studies, and aware at a young age that slavery was inhumane and should be treated as a heinous crime. In Kidd’s fictional recreation of Sarah’s life story, she is given a slave on her eleventh birthday, Hetty, known as Handful by most. The two are little more than a year apart in age, and while Sarah tries to reject the gift of a person, her circumstances prevent her from doing so.

What unfolds is a chronicle of the injustices suffered by both Handful and Sarah as they grow up in a world unfriendly to their sex and race. Giving Sarah and Hetty alternating chapters, Kidd illustrates the immense cruelties Handful and her mother suffer in the Grimké household, beatings and the cruel and routine separation of children from their parents. Sarah rebels by teaching Handful to read and write, and the girls form a tenuous bond that grows shakier as they age.

Sarah aspires to be a jurist and it’s crushing to witness the destruction of her hopes, but while her limitations are disheartening they pale in comparison to Handful’s.  Kidd allows the women’s struggles to speak for themselves and as Sarah and her sister gain a foothold in the abolitionist movement, they refuse to abdicate the fight for women’s rights, despite persistent pleas from men who insist that they are muddying the water of the cause. Kidd animates the voices of women who refused to resign themselves to unequal treatment, waging battles on multiple fronts.

I read “The Invention of Wings” in two days and emerged invigorated and grateful. The progress we’ve made in this country over the last two hundred years is remarkable if flawed. I think I would have done quite well as a 19th century lady, because I like handwork and gossip, but I can’t imagine how frustrated I would be if my world were limited to throwing parties and having children. It is thanks to women like Sarah Grimké that I am able to make my man a sandwich and have it too, so to speak. Kidd’s is an important fiction in this era of selective awareness about the history of women’s rights. As Handful’s sister sings, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you should know where you came from.”

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"Sacred Night" no Match for "Three Junes"

Julia Glass won me over years ago with her novel “Three Junes,” which focused on a bookstore, its owner and the mysterious and talented Malachy Burns. Glass has written other books about the incidental players in “Three Junes,” none of which quite live up to the first. With “And the Dark Sacred Night” she excavates Malachy’s early years and studies his legacy.

Kit Noonan is a father of twins and has lost his job as a professor. Weeks of unemployment turn into months and he can’t seem to face the housework or the prospect of finding a new job. His wife has had it with his listless wallowing, and confronts him in the beautifully rendered early space of the novel. In her mind, Kit’s displacement is tied to not knowing who his biological father is. She sends him packing on a journey of self-discovery, pointing him in the direction of Jasper, his first step-father. Kit’s mental state and meanderings through the house are well described and captivating, if long-winded, in the first pages of the book. I found it surprising to learn that an absent father figure must be what plagues him. The premise is not unthinkable, but the verdict felt plotted rather than applicable to Kit. I decided to trust Glass, however, and follow where she led. The next step was Vermont.

Jasper is a pleasant New England curmudgeon who had two sons before he married Kit’s mother Daphne and now prefers his solitude and his dogs. Glass has no trouble creating characters with long backstories and well-explained motives, but in this book I found her approach rather heavy-handed. One of Jasper’s sons suffers from alcoholism and every time his father thinks of him it is always with interior, negative commentary on the subject. After the first dozen lamentations my sympathy lessened for both of them. Kit’s visit to Jasper is filled with a snowstorm and a discovery and though Glass keeps the storyline active I never felt any real sense of urgency.

As the pieces surrounding Kit’s paternity begin to come together, his mother is sketched as a rigid woman who for decades has denied her son the knowledge of what occurred between her and his father. Aside from brief flashbacks to the summer she got pregnant, Daphne isn’t given a voice in the narrative. Having read Glass’s other books some time ago, I couldn’t remember if this was a woman I should already be acquainted with and thus understand; the feeling that something was being alluded to or held back nagged at me. Particularly because these books are not part of a series as such, the stilted access given to Daphne’s interior was dissatisfying.  

The third person perspective switches to other lenses twice more and while all of the characters are finely drawn, I lost interest. The answer to the paternity mystery is easy to solve from the first pages and the interconnections and complexities of the many players and families carried little friction. Glass pens the kind of paragraphs that pull you quickly through her stories, but little else kept me moving forward. Perhaps in my years of leisure I will read all of Glass’s books again in quick succession and be able to enjoy the way each book expands on the world first established in “Three Junes.” But as a single slice, “And the Dark Sacred Night” was tasty but not filling. 

[bookingaround]

"News from Heaven" is Anything But

As an appropriately aggrieved thirteen-year-old, my family drove from New Mexico to Maine and back. The trip was marked by a trip to the Mall of America and a deadly incident with a deer, but what I liked best was the hours we spent driving through Pennsylvania. Hilly expanses of green are what I remember, lined with sturdy wooden fences and dotted with sheep. Since then the state has always held an appeal for me and my interest was deepened by the dark complexity of the mining town depicted in Philip Meyer’s debut “American Rust.” I hope Jennifer Haigh’s “News From Heaven” would engross me in the same way.

The stories in “News From Heaven” focus on the families of a small Pennsylvania town called Bakerton. Once a booming mining community, the collection tracks Bakerton’s decline and maps the various family sagas that unfold with the town, or at least the memory of the town, at their center.

Haigh has written before about the residents of Bakerton and she fully imagines the strata of experience that the town contains. Her stories move through the decades, uncovering the peaks and valleys specific to their eras. In an early story, a young woman is sent to work as a maid for a Jewish family on the Upper West Side. She is hired because she speaks Polish, but knows nothing of the Kosher culture she begins to inhabit. The city’s menace rides below the surface, rubbing shoulders with the racial tensions of the ’30s. The world beyond Bakerton is precarious and often threatening in Haigh’s stories, but the town is rarely a refuge.

The furor of football is a vein of hope and aspiration in a place where boyhood quickly turns into a life spent in the mines. In “Favorite Son,” Haigh follows the meteoric rise of a young football star, the narrator observing his trajectory from a distance. The reasons for his fall back to Bakerton are startling and sobering.

Families fray and dissolve in “News from Heaven.” Haigh considers the isolation that develops between loved ones. Can memories of a happy childhood spent  together keep a family close? What happens when you revisit a world you are not sorry you left? What happens when you stay?

Missed opportunities and heartbreak are the common denominator here. Whether it’s an unfinished love story or a disappointed mother, the residents of Bakerton are rarely afforded much happiness. Haigh’s stories interlock; the fate of a previous protagonist is often discovered later on in the collection. I didn’t expend much effort trying to trace the lineage of the characters, and the stories stand on their own, but the specter of a more elaborate arc to the book was distracting. I’ve soured on books of short stories that flirt with the possibility of being a novel but don’t commit. 

This collection of sober stories largely chronicles what occurs on the outskirts of the American Dream. The company town of Bakerton shone brightly for a few decades, only to flare out as the century moved on. Quick blazes attract easy crowds, but the warmth is fleeting and when it’s gone the memory is hollow. Haigh’s writing is strong but isn’t quite able to make the dramas of the town more compelling than dismal. Her prose lacks the hard-scrabble character of Annie Proulx’s Wyoming stories and doesn’t compare to the eye-opening descriptions of “American Rust.” I was happy to leave Bakerton behind in its fictional layer of coal dust. 

[bookingaround]

Living Your Passion, Like a #GirlBoss

I could make a fairly substantial list of reasons why “#GirlBoss” is not the kind of book I would typically read. For one, I don’t plan to start my own company. For another, I tend to be overly snobby (and probably too prim) in my knee-jerk reactions and neither #GirlBoss nor NastyGal are monikers that I took to immediately. But one of the joys of working in publishing (finally!) is access to free books. And because I work adjacent to the #GirlBoss imprint I decided to lift one and check out what advice Sophia Amoruso,  30 year-old CEO of the multi-million dollar online fashion store, had to offer.

One thing I learned is that Amoruso wasn’t above five-finger discounts herself. As a rebellious teen bent on sticking it to “the man,” she spent a fair amount of time mastering the art of stealing. She got caught casually walking a shopping-cart worth of loot out of a store in Portland, Oregon. Amoruso bolted, but decided to turn herself in, fess-up and quit stealing cold-turkey.

Amoruso’s tone in her “how to be a #GIRLBOSS” manifesto is peppy and sometimes canny. She’s aware that she got lucky. She built an eBay fashion shop at the right time, a few years before the internet was more sophisticated and populated with thousands of them. While Amoruso didn’t go to college or finish high school, she had the right combination of interests for a fashion entrepreneur: a keen eye for lay-out and style, and a fierce (previously latent) work ethic that blossomed into perfectionist diligence once she found her passion. Nasty Gal grew out of her bedroom and her expert eye for thrift. By working ceaselessly on something that she loved she catapulted to success.

Amoruso is candid about her good fortune and #GIRLBOSS doesn’t purport to transform your average wayward drop-out into a millionaire. What it does do is emphasize the virtue in paying attention to your strengths and interests, and encourages you to pursue your passion relentlessly. Amoruso includes short, personal essays from a number of successful women, most of whom have carved out their own particular niche in the world. She continues to proclaim that if she could do it, so could you! Or you can at least try to get a job working for her.

Other than the positive girl-powery thrust of the book (which is pleasant but not particularly profound), the most useful aspect for young woman who are about to enter the work-force is Amoruso’s basic but essential guidelines for interviewing, writing a decent cover letter and resume, and so forth. Brain surgery it is not, but while my generation is incredibly adept at creating a successful, picture-perfect-self online, many forget that there are pitfalls on the way to actual success. The building blocks Amoruso supplies are great reminders for the newly graduated and the newly unemployed.

Overall the book is a frothy account of how one woman went from being something of an anarchist to becoming a millionaire in the fashion industry. Amoruso broke many of the rules before constructing a booming business outside of them. Now, as a wildly successful business woman, she’s learning to play by some of the rules while still honoring her renegade instincts. Amoruso just wants you to be a #GirlBoss too. Go for it.

[bookingaround]

Essay Collection is More than Just a Happy Marriage

The title “This is the Story of a Happy Marriage” for the recent collection of essays from Ann Patchett strikes me as an odd choice. While there are a few pieces that touch on Patchett’s admittedly very happy sounding union, the majority of the essays are meditations on subjects ranging from nuns to the LAPD. I imagine a broader audience could be attracted if marriage was given the boot.

Patchett builds complex and lushly imagined worlds in her fiction; both “Bel Canto” and “State of Wonder” were novels that entranced me before I had a moment to resist. The tone of her essays is more blunt but no less enticing. Patchett, it becomes clear, is a writer who creates worlds for her novels as opposed to translating her own predicaments onto the page.  Her prose in “This is the Story of a Happy Marriage” is clean-cut and direct, while still retaining the ease and elegance of her inventions.

The essays collected in this book include pieces originally published in Seventeen, Vogue, The Atlantic Monthly, and more. When she was getting started as an author over 20 years ago, Patchett took on as many assignments as she was able to get, including pieces like “How to Decorate Your Locker” etc, training herself to be the kind of writer they needed and using even the most trivial pieces to hone her craft.

Although Patchett uses a personal lens to structure her stories, they aren’t focused on her in the way that a memoir or a David Sedaris collection would be. Nevertheless, a portrait of the author is assembled through her essays on writing and divorce, RVs and friendship. There’s an honest but stern note to her collection and Patchett does not for a minute indulge the belief that writing is a casual endeavor.

The pieces vary in range and I found myself taking to the more substantial ones. Being primarily a novelist, Patchett hits her stride in the longer form. Her essay on writing, “The Getaway Car” (a sort of how-to, or perhaps, how-I-do), is an extensive and reliable template for the practice. Her talent obviously goes a long way, but it’s apparent that her work ethic is essential to her success as well.

Patchett’s dedication is further demonstrated in her essay “The Wall.” In 1992 she decided to train for the entrance exam into the Los Angeles Police Academy, one of the most competitive programs of its kind. Her father was on the force and Patchett grew up with a glowing image of the LAPD; one that was demolished by the Rodney King riots. The piece Patchett originally planned to write was never realized, but she took extensive notes.  “The Wall” written 15 year later, provides an insider’s narrative of the LAPD (and a warm portrait of her relationship with her father), while detailing the determination and focus of the author. Have you vaulted over a six-foot wall for a story recently? I haven’t.

“This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage” doesn’t have the tell-all quality of your typical narrative non-fiction collection. Patchett writes about her family and her experiences with candor but maintains her privacy as well. She walks you to her home but doesn’t ask you to come in and look around. Patchett uses anecdotes from her life as touchstones for her readers, as opposed to choosing to compose a narrative around her life. In their collected form the effect is indistinct. I learned a little about Patchett, but I never felt that I got to know her well. The most important take-away for me is that writing is hard work, and if you approach it as you might training to vault over a six-foot wall, you may have half the success Patchett has garnered in life, and, perhaps, in marriage.

[bookingaround]

In the Gut: Henderson’s Eviscerating Debut

Smith Henderson’s debut “Fourth of July Creek” is downright exceptional. The novel contains the delicious ease of a night of drinking and all the crags of a brutal hangover. The story plays out on the fringes of society and magnifies the plights of the communities who are allowed to fester there. It’s a story of family, of addictions, survival, and the blinding complications of love. Henderson fearlessly explores the overlooked social terrain of the rural poor, writing with a fierce, clear-eyed empathy and a remarkable gift for description.

“Fourth of July Creek” is set in the backwoods of Montana. Pete Snow is a young social worker who we meet breaking up a fight between an addict mother and her teenage son. The house is filthy and the complaints perennial. It’s a situation that’s going from bad to worse and Pete is sharply aware of the limits of his position. His is a Sisyphean task, which he pursues with the conviction of a man who is trying to save himself.

Soon after, Pete meets Benjamin Pearl, a dirty, feral looking boy who has wandered into town. His father Jeremiah greets Pete’s return of the child with a loaded shotgun and a refusal of the clothes and supplies he offers. Pete works to earn a modicum of trust from the duo and as he draws closer he stumbles on religious zealotry, government subversion and the machinations of a highly disturbed mind.

It’s 1980 and the world Henderson describes is one that too rarely holds our attention, a world of semi-rural poverty, alcoholism and desperation. Henderson crafts an expert plot around the anti-government Jeremiah Pearl and his family, but at its gut the novel is about the bare bones opportunities available to the have-nots, and the sucking swamp of alcoholism, prostitution and drugs that expands infinitesimally, waiting to surround you when you slip.

Pete is heroic in his attempts to salvage innocence and patch together the pieces of the families he is sent to rescue. This shining picture is in deep contrast to his personal life. Recently separated with a daughter of his own, Pete has so many demons that you wonder why he is battling everyone else’s. As Pete becomes further embroiled in the life of Jeremiah and his son, we’re shown how the world is developing for his daughter. Henderson captures the voice of a girl whose bravado far exceeds her circumstances and maturity. She is introduced with a description of her near drowning in the arms of her alcoholic father, and slowly breaks our hearts as she races toward the life that Pete tried to keep at bay with both hands. Every one of Henderson's characters is finely wrought, from Pete's violent brother, to his entrancing, damaged lover. These pages are populated with people whose lives deserve attention. 

Henderson writes with the same strong concision of Annie Proulx and the dark contortions of Daniel Woodrell. He uses language beautifully and I will forever equate the word "chevron" with the image of a flock of birds. 

“Fourth of July Creek” is as arresting as it is poetic. The paint has been stripped away and the bare grain reveals the beauty of the knots and the trenchant flaws. Henderson carves his characters from the rough and majestic woods of Montana and their edges are unfinished and snag at your conscience. His subject is raw and it is dirty, but Henderson probes its depths for grace and sometimes he finds it. 

[bookingaround]

"Damage Control" Displays Versatility of Voice, Place

There is the deathless adage that a writer should write what she knows. Shelves of books rely on continuity of place and the strength that provides. "I Want to Show You More" by Jamie Quatro was a compilation of stories that did this particularly well; I relished the southern quirks of her Lookout Mountain. In her collection "Damage Control," Amber Dermont rebels. From one story to the next it was a mystery as to where I would be taken. The changing ground was noticeable but not pronounced and the inconsistency in place and voice developed its own rhythm.

Dermont takes on the voice of a man running a manners school in the South and just as easily writes an absurdist piece about disappearing wives. She tacks to the left of normal and the stories and her observations are both provocative and controlled. While none of her stories are sorrowful exactly, many of the characters are teetering on the edge of loss or, more often, struggling to stay afloat in the aftermath. They are trying to define themselves against disappointment or failure or basic, human, uncertainty. Dermont confronts the contortions of self in the voice of children and adults, showcasing an immense versatility.

In many of her stories Dermont looks at the different guises we don in order to live through the reality of the present. In "Sorry, You Are Not a Winner" a woman works as a maid for her former friends in order to support her dying parents who have lost their wealth and status. The character’s apparent stoicism and acceptance of her changed circumstances is carefully parsed as the story progresses. It becomes clear that she is sharply conscious of the fine line she’s walking. The ease with which she slides between the two unmarked but distinct worlds, from cleaning the bedroom to lying in the bed, is a fascinating study in the class striations of New York City.

Elsewhere a woman navigates the terrain of her boyfriend’s Russian family and his mother’s insistence that a beautiful mail order bride live with the couple. In Los Angeles, a young man goes to his suddenly famous former roommate's house party and finds himself battling to prove his worth to everyone, including his own mother.

Dermont is interested in the relationships between children and their parents in a way that is not overt. She turns the tables in both directions and there is the repeated reminder that one becomes the other, and that children eventually, at one point or another, parent their parents. She worries the line between filial responsibility and filial freedom, pressing against the particularly American expectation that we, the children, are endlessly deserving of better circumstances than our parents'.

There’s a brusque tenderness to Dermont’s writing. She’s not fearful of revealing the complicated truths of her characters’ lives, but an affection is evident in the way she handles them. We should all be so lucky to have our confusions and foibles handled this tenderly.

[bookingaround]

Effortless Writing in Debut “You Are One of Them”

The unstudied workmanship of Elliott Holt’s first novel "You Are One of Them" is enviable. The story bobs and weaves through time, somehow evading the nasty snags of convenient plot twists while neatly tying off all its threads. It reads so well that I was able to finish it in a single sick day. You should make the time to do the same.

Holt begins her novel with a degree of mystery and sustains the shrouded tone through to the finish, sidestepping sensationalism and delivering a twist. "You Are One of Them" is a Cold War story and Holt captures the fearful tensions of the era in her protagonist's skittish development. Sarah Zuckerman views the world in terms of defection and every loss is a betrayal. Her sister's young death sets in motion the dissolution of her parents' marriage and her mother's subsequent obsession with nuclear doom. 

In 1982 Sarah and her best friend Jenny write letters to Yuri Andropov asking him to spare the world from nuclear war. Jenny’s letter is answered by the Russian premier and the young girl is launched to fame as the picture-perfect American face of peace keeping. She and her parents take a widely publicized tour of the USSR and Sarah is left behind wondering why Jenny's letter was chosen and not hers. The young friendship withers and shortly after, Jenny and her family die in a plane crash. Sarah spends the years of her adolescence puzzling over her loss, defecting from her present.

When Sarah receives an email in 1995 from a woman in Moscow implying that Jenny's death may not be what it seems, Sarah grasps at the alternate reality. Her attachment to her childhood friend is perplexing even as it is recognizable. Jenny and Sarah were not well-matched and the reader resists Jenny's attraction. But early attachments always carry weight and Sarah has had little else to invest in. Holt addresses the complexities of memory in her text with a light touch, playing with the tricks of hindsight and the rewrites that love demands.

There is a grey sobriety to the tone of Holt’s novel, which makes the moments of brightness sparkle with even more brilliance. Sarah is a loner but her isolation coheres with the uneasy culture of the reborn Russia. Her ventures into Moscow are mediated by expat communities or citizens with hidden agendas. Living in Moscow she continually bumps up against the presentation of the past and the faltering reality of the present, the two polishing each other's sides into a lethal edge. Sarah is a watchful narrator, as wary of deception as she is hungry for other possibilities.

Holt subtly adjusts the kilter of her novel's focus, the shift unapparent until you find yourself looking steeply downward, surprised at the ground you've covered. "You Are One of Them" is about perceived and real threat and considers the ways in which your past does and does not shape your future. It is about girlhood and friendship, but it is also about motherhood and the motherland. Holt manages these shifting perspectives with the grace of an expert cinematographer, bringing larger truths into focus while allowing Sarah to linger in Moscow in the limbo of the unknown.