Consequences

I've been thinking about getting old and what that means. My mother and I have both had significant birthdays this month, my husband's grandmother is now confined to bed, and my mother-in-law's uncle died yesterday. All of these events, tumbling together have me thinking about how the generations move on. Penelope Lively's book Consequences traces the lives of three generations of women, from pre-WWII to present day. Lorna escapes her parents' upper class life in London for the love of a young artist, great before his time. Their daughter Molly sails through an unconventional youth to become her own woman sometime in the 1960s. Her daughter Ruth struggles more than her mother and grandmother did to find her path, but each finds happiness in bits and pieces.

Lively tries to tie the women together but I didn't see much resemblence. This isn't so much a book about legacy as it is about the familial ties we create. Traditional family is absent, if not often rejected as Lorna, Molly, and Ruth forge ahead. These women all had to get on mostly on their own so there's a sense of sui generis to their successes and occasional stumbling blocks. What matters here are the characters and Lively is brilliant with these. The best lines go to Lucas, a constant friend from Lorna's early days with Matt, the love of her life. Lucas is no patriarch although he nearly outlasts them all, but his presence is everywhere. He counsels and loves Lorna, Molly, and Ruth through the years in his own haphazard ways. He's an accidental father and father figure, but never really steps up or changes who he is. In a less certain author's hands, he would have been made the gay uncle. Instead, Lively makes his presence essential without overshadowing the role of the women who are her focus.

When Molly reports she's lost her job as librarian, Lucas says, "Was it the turquoise skirt, and those earrings? I always felt you didn't dress the part."

"No, it was Lady Chatterley's Lover," Molly explained. [she'd scandalized the trustees by suggesting a lecture on banned books--remember, this is London in the early 60s and D.H. Lawrence's book had gone to trial]

Lucas sighed, "Well, I suppose you can argue that you fell on your sword for freedom of speech. An interesting entry for the curriculum vitae..."

When Molly rejects her maternal grandparents' lifestyle, she tells Lucas, "I think I have dropped out of the upper-middle class. I can't seem to fit there at all."

"I shouldn't worry," said Lucas, "It's called social mobility. Mind, it usually operates the other way--upward rather than downward."

When Molly's daughter Ruth passes the age of 43, long outliving her grandmother's final age, she reflects, Youth was gone, then, which was occasionally dismaying but a truth that could be confronted, and faced down. More provocative was the erratic process whereby you went in one direction rather than another, did this, not that, lived here, not there, found yourself with this person and not someone else quite unknown, quite inconceivable. How did this come about? Oh, you made choices but in a way that was sometimes almost subliminal, at others so confused that, in recollection, the area of choice is obscured entirely: What was it that was not chosen?

I loved reading about the different lives of these women and they did all seem to make choices, in spite of Ruth's reflections. They are all granted their happiness even if it doesn't last as long as they would have liked, or even if it is unexpected, unintended happiness. This is a great book for multi-generational discussions and between Consequences and Family Album (as well as Heat Wave from years ago), I am firmly back in Penelope Lively's fan camp.

K2 Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous MT

Today's news--or yesterday's news--is that the first woman to climb the 14 highest mountains in the world (all over 26,000 ft) completed her quest on Annapurna. Annapurna seems to be the last mountain for a lot of people in this rarefied club of completely insane climbers. Ed Viesturs, who wrote (with David Roberts) K2:Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain, almost got hung up on Annapurna. That mountain almost became his Waterloo, but when he finally summitted in 2005, he became only the 6th person in the world to join the 14 club. So now, Oh Eun Sun of South Korea is another first.

But Viestur's book focuses on K2 and there's a reason he calls it the world's most dangerous mountain. It's not a "savage" mountain, as some climber/writers have termed it. It's not some malevolent being, but the fact remains that in an era when summitting Everest becomes almost humdrum (apparently), K2 remains the province of experts, and of very few succesful summits. Usually statistics give me a headache and my eyes glaze over. I forget whether the number was 400 or 4,000 (or even 40). I'm embarrassingly useless with numbers, but this statistic stuck with me: In 2008, 290 climbers reached the top of Everest, while only 18 reached K2. More sobering are the deaths to success ratio. Only 1 died on Everest that year while 11 died on K2. If you look at the all-time successes versus deaths on the two mountains, 1 in 19 died on Everest while 1 in 4 died on K2. Not very cheery, so why do people do this?

I'm the first to admit I'm an armchair ice climber. In fact, give me Antarctica survival tales to really perk me up. Just don't ask me to set foot outside my own house if the wind is whipping up a storm of snow in the dead of winter. I do love hearing about other people's efforts, and--unlike some--I prefer a good success story to a crazy cartwheel into the void. Better yet, give me a crazy cartwheel that is arrested by a well-timed ice ax, and I'm happy. Or give me a lost, snowblind climber (like Michel Parmentier who waited in vain for his climbing partners) who is talked down K2 in a storm by another climber working from memory! Chamoux got on the radio and did a remarkable thing: he tried to talk Parmentier down, giving him the "beta" of the route from memory..."Keep right, keep right, don't veer to the left, then straight down for perhaps two, three hundred metres...over" Turning to the others in the dome tent, with the radio off, Chamoux said, "He has perhaps a fifty-fifty chance that he finds the ropes. If not..."

Viesturs has everything in this book. I thought it would get boring and/or repetitive once he stopped writing about his first-hand experience, but not once did I get bored. He covers the earliest efforts in 1902, he writes about the 1938 and 1939 expeditions and the horrible 1954 first summit that spawned a decades-old feud and lingering bitterness. He also covers the deadly summer of 2008 in which a horrible percentage of summitters--or near--summitters came to very bad and/or unknown ends. I like Viestur's tone. He oftens says he doesn't like to second-guess other climbers or air dirty laundry, as he calls it, but he subtly explains how he might have acted differently or he gently tries to rehabilitate some climbers whom he believes were treated harshly. This book is full of facts without being dry and it has reignited my interest in reading more.

My only complaint was that it was very hard to keep the characters of each expedition clear. I would have liked a nice appendix which listed dates and names and any "firsts" or interesting discoveries that came from each expedition. Still, this is a nice overview of the history of K2 and a reminder that climbing such heights is still for the skilled, the dedicated, and the (perhaps) slightly unhinged.

Here's Viestur's on The Daily Show just after he became the first American to climb all 14 8,000 Meter mountains.

Family Album

Have you always wanted a large family, fantasizing about the giddy happiness of your progeny as they play in the manicured yard? Would you love a top-rated kitchen? Do you desire to pull off gourmet meals (that said multiple children will eat sans complaining)? Okay, but what if that came with a few secrets you had to keep, a blind eye you had to turn, an aloof husband, an inscrutable au pair who's long outlasted her original purpose for hire? What if those 6 beloved children scattered as far as the earth could take them? Oh, except for your favorite child, the ne'er do well, addicted child who was never at fault for all the paths on which he was led astray.

In Family Album, Penelope Lively builds this world up and lets time tear it down. Alison doggedly insists she has created a perfect childhood for each of her grown children. She loves her home and hearth and doesn't quite understand why they don't all come home more often. We get the kids' perspectives in here as well. Most of their memories are decent--there's the usual sibling rivalry and their father's lack of attention, there's some scary-seeming cellar game that turns out fairly tame, but the children seem to have come out more or less unscathed. . They don't, however, share their mother's enthusiasm for Allersmead, the family home--or for children and cooking, for that matter--and they look a bit oddly on Alison and Charles continuing to rattle around in the old Edwardian house, not quite moving out of the 1970s and still housing their au pair, Ingrid. Why she's still around isn't really that much of a mystery, though Lively takes her time explaining her presence. This is more a book about what we take and what we leave of our happy/unhappy childhoods.

My favorite character is Charles, the patriarch, though he's more like a distant uncle who shuffles in and out of the lives of his wife, au pair, and children. He's a scholarly writer, who bypasses the usual path to scholarship (teaching is somehow beneath him). Ironically, his greatest publishing triumph is a book on adolescence and youth, though he has very little idea of his own children's lives as they grow up, not even fully aware of their ages at times. Sarcasm is learned early and applied often among the inmates of Allersmead. He's a great character because he's not evil, and not a bad father in his own way (I guess). There doesn't seem to be much room for parenting with Alison on site anyway. Any left over mothering or parenting is taken up by Ingrid. Not that Charles minds. He's too busy in his own head to pay attention to what goes on around him. He's an interesting character.

All the grown children are drawn differently enough to keep them straight and I've always loved a book that shows trajectory from youth to adulthood, I love seeing the neatness of: this is who I was and now here I am. There's nothing too neat about their lives, though, and the veil is slipping even from Alison in her dream state. She's got talent to spare in the kitchen and so she herself is never made ridiculous. I appreciate how rounded Lively developed each character. It's a good read.

Years ago, I'd read Heatwave by Penelope Lively and I loved it, loved the twist at the end, but after that I'd never found anything else by her that I could finish. Family Album has started me back into her books.

**The picture I've posted of the cover is not the cover I read from. It must be the British version, but I liked it so much better than the American version. The friendly chaos better captures life in Allersmead, both as it was (sometimes) and how Alison wanted it.

Marriage and Other Acts of Charity

Being parted by death is what happens if a marriage works, writes Kate Braestrup in her new memoir, Marriage and Other Acts of Charity. This statement is received with awe by the young Maine State Warden and his fiancee as Braestrup councils them, pre-nuptials. This is part of her job as chaplain and she knows both marriage and death, as well as what it's like to be parted from marriage by death. Her last book was the excellent and moving Here if You Need Me, a reflection on the untimely death of her state trooper husband and her subsequent path towards ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and then Maine State Warden chaplain.
Marriage is a messier collection of thoughts on marriage and love, and yes, sex (here, as delivered to middle school students). It's perhaps easy to be maudlin with death if you've never experienced true grief, but I think love is even harder to pin down--your choice is to be sappy or depressingly realistic. Braestrup strikes an admirable balance, though I suppose it helps to focus on marriage to make her points. Marriages tend to be complicated and inscrutable.

There are some great observations, written elegantly, as when Braestrup writes, I bear witness to the ways in which love resurrects itself in the face of loss. Braestrup is, after all, a chaplain so that much of her thinking about love also encompasses love of God, but she's Unitarian, so the writing and reflections are of a more spiritual nature than they are of edicts found written in Biblical stone. When she meets a part-time pilot who fears more than anything the helplessness of a plane crash, the falling through the ether untethered, she suggests he could look on the experience with curiousity rather than one of fear and hopelessness. Perhaps this seems quaint or neat or religious, but I take the same comfort the pilot did when Braestrup says, If I ever fall out of an airplane, I hope I remember to be curious. Since it's my last adventure, I hope I actually pay attention.

There's no pretty way to have a loved one back after death. No matter how much we think we wish that, it can't and shouldn't happen. Just ask Stephen King and countless others (I'm thinking of an X-Files episode). Braestrup writes, We can't have our dear dead ones back, not as they were, not as we loved them. It isn't the beloved that resurrects. It's love itself. Instead, if we are able to love again, open our hearts to love, we keep that loved one close. It's like a little legacy from a lost one.

Braestrup has her eyes wide open about the difficulties of love and marriage and she's honest and harsh with herself about her first marriage and doesn't allow Drew's death to make him perfect either. That doesn't diminish the pain of her loss, but it sets her up for a new relationship. They'll always be messy. Just ask the porcupine. Apparently, porcupines mate for life and chaplain Braestrup and a warden contemplate the sadness of roadkill porcupines when they're out working one day. We sighed and were silent for a moment, imagining a porcupine grieving in some dim, bewildered way, beside a road-killed mate. Just don't try asking a game warden how a porcupine mates. You'll get the joke answer that particular question deserves. Maybe relationships are all prickly and dangerous. We just have to stay relaxed and keep our sharp fur lying low.

Rooftops of Tehran

This novel of "forbidden love" seemed like it would be a perfect follow-up to my forced reading of Wuthering Heights, and it was, though the forbidden love wasn't quite as advertised. I got started on my Persian kick with Persepolis (books and movie) by Satrapi, and then friend Whitney suggested Dalia Sofer's Septembers of Shiraz, which I really enjoyed. Mahbod Seraji's Rooftops of Tehran is set just before the Iranian revolution, in 1973 and most of the action takes place in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood. 17-year old Pasha spends many of his days and evenings on his rooftop with his friend Ahmed, mooning over the girl next door. Beautiful Zari is betrothed to Pasha' mentor, a man known affectionately as Doctor, so Pasha is naturally conflicted by his emotions. Plus there's the whole repressive society issue.

Actually, what was so interesting about Rooftops of Tehran was the insight it gave into Iranian life. When my fourth grade son saw the cover, he was surprised to see so many buildings. He said it didn't "look like Iran". Never mind the lack of worldly knowledge I've clearly imparted to him, because he has a point. I think that here in the west, we tend to lump Iran in with other Islamist societies and we can easily forget how European Iran was, especially when the Shah was in power (no, I'm not pining for those days--I realize he was a dictator). There is a funny moment, in fact, when one of Pasha's teacher talks of how much he admires Americans for their discipline (remember, this is 1973) and I was a bit smirky about that until the teacher went on to illustrate his point by citing the fact that "everyone stops at stop signs, even when there is no car coming from the opposite direction. That's discipline for you. Discipline means respecting the rules regardless of the circumstances. We don't even stop at red lights in this country." He also mentions the well-placed trash cans on American streets. I guess if that's what he means by discipline, he has a point. I never thought about how orderly things are in this country (especially in light of the tea parties and the shouting at the president that seems prevalent today). I think of Switzerland as orderly and of Italy as chaotic. I always sort of think of us Americans as essentially lazy, but it is true that we do tend to follow rules. Pasha himself agrees silently with his teachers, at least in so far as admitting that Iranians are cheaters. Everyone in school cheats, or feels justified cheating because they themselves have been cheated. He sees it done perhaps more in the spirit of sharing, but he understands his teacher's point.

Still, Pasha, and particularly Ahmed, are chafing under the old rules of their lives, along with the rapidly changing ones enforced by the dreaded SAVAK--or secret police. Bad things happen, revolution is in the air, and people are killed or hurt. There's a sense of dread permeating this book as I worried about each character, but it wasn't nearly as harsh as Septembers of Shiraz. I was, in fact, surprised by the normalcy of the lives these characters lead. The relationships among the young and the old of the street are very interesting, particularly well done is the deep friendship between Pasha and Ahmed. It's not often that I've read such a nice, easy friendship between two young men.

I will admit that the ending was a little lame. The novel floats between Pasha in some kind of mental hospital in 1974 (don't let that discourage you, as it almost did me), and the summer of 1973, so we know something awful has happened. The fact that the characters move on from this 'event' is both good and interesting. I saw the 'event' coming from a mile away and didn't like it, but I'm not sure how else Seraji might have ended his novel. It's still greatly worth reading for the education and insight you get about Persian society.

Every Last Cuckoo

Grief is a very personal thing. I am often suspicious of authors who offer up grief as art or entertainment even while I am grateful for their efforts to frame such emotion with words. Kate Maloy's book Every Last Cuckoo offers two parts: the life 75 year old Sarah had with her husband and the life she leads after his sudden death. While there are a few examples that scream "first novel" (like her laborious explanation of why two characters don't meet in the driveway upon arriving simultaneously), Maloy writes a wonderful story of what it is to grieve and then to move on.

After Charles dies,Sarah begins to collect an assortment of characters into her life. In some writers' hands this could be too contrived to be believed. Another writer might have made these refugees who begin to fill Sarah's house "wacky", as if to jolly her out of her grief (and I had some fear this would be the case when the Israeli writer moves into a cabin on the property and proceeds to indulge in naked meditation), but Maloy keeps them all believable. First, comes Sarah's own granddaughter, sick of butting heads with her mother. Lottie adds a few of her fellow 17 year olds, adrift from their own families. Then there's a family displaced by fire, and a domestic violence case (the denouement of that particular story is a stumble on the writer's part, but it's minor enough). There are also tidbits of Sarah's own family who move in and out of the Vermont farmhouse Sarah and Charles have lived in for forty years. Oh, and about that Vermont setting: Maloy wrote this book with a grant from the Vermont Council for the Arts and thus, I assume, on location. This shows. Her depictions of Vermont, especially its nature, were wonderfully evocative. So realistic, I felt I knew the very spots of woods in which she hiked.

Friend Alyssa suggested the book to me. She had been particularly moved by how appealing Maloy makes growing old seem. In a description of their life together, Sarah says, "the grumpy Charles emerged more often than he used to, but, then, so did the grumpy Sarah, So, for that matter, did a broader spirit in each of them, a ferocious joy. There was more to being old than she had ever expected." That's a nice promise and Alyssa kept surprising herself by relating to a 75 year old woman. I love that Charles requests a catered lunch after his memorial service. My life was not haphazard, he wrote [in his will]. Haphazard is, however, precisely what Sarah's life threatens to become after his loss, but for the force of unexpected friendship. The bulk of the story is not about Sarah's loss, but about what she she is forced to make of her life after Charles is gone. Her husband expected this of her when he wrote "She will be in pain, but she is strong and a gifted alchemist. She will turn her grief into new forms of grace and courage." How sweet to have the time to write your goodbyes and your benediction. And while Charles would perhaps not recognize his reborn wife, one assumes he would approve.

I first picked up the book to see if it was something to suggest to a recently widowed friend because I was intrigued by the suggestion of a good life after the death of a loved one. Having finished it, I'm not sure whether I will recommend it or not--partly because grief is so personal--but I will recommend it to my mother who always wished (and still does wish) for a life of collected friends around the table which is how Sarah's story ends. Every Last Cuckoo is, ultimately, not a story of grief, but of love and friendship and a really nice read.