The BFG / SilverFin

Okay, yeah, so I've been reading kids books again. I had never read Roald Dahl's The BFG so I didn't mind reading it for work. I was reminded of what perfect writing for kids can be. I don't mean the story is perfect and a lot of people find Dahl's stories too gross, too dark, or even too silly for kids, but it's quite nice. Never mind that I feel like I'm swearing every time I mention the title. Dahl sets a scene up nicely:

In the silvery moonlight...the houses looked bent and crooked, like houses in a fairy-tale. Everything was pale and ghostly and milky-white. Across the road, you could see Mrs. Rance's shop where you bought buttons and wool and bits of elastic. It didn't look real. There was something dim and misty about that too.

Why you are buying "bits of elastic" is unclear, but that detail gives this book that delicious old-timey feel of a cozy childhood (even if said childhood is in an orphanage, from where you are soon to be snatched by a giant).

But the descriptive writing isn't why a kid reads this book. He probably reads it for the whizzpopping and all the talk of whether that's rude to do in public or not (yes, it's just what it sounds like) and all the made-up words. Dahl was a terrible speller but loved to play with language so you have giants with names like Maidmasher, Fleshlumpeater, Bloodbottler, and the Big Friendly Giant himself who can't speak properly but knows how to get his message across. There are lots of plays on words or meaning for adults and sophisticated readers. Thus the bad giants like to eat Turks because they taste of turkey. They avoid Greeks because, yes, they're greasy. The Welsh taste of fish (work it out for yourself) and the people of Wellington have a great boot taste. And don't think the BFG is just swizzfiggling us.

Dahl sticks up for the little guy and revenge is always swift and ugly, because so are the brutes in the real world.

Brutes are a nice segue into SilverFin, the first book in a series about "the young James Bond." It was exactly the kind of book I would have loved in middle school because I was reading the actual James Bond books at that age, which just seems weird now. I'm not sure why Charlie Higson felt compelled to create a back story for James Bond. Maybe just because he wanted a character at Eton to introduce himself to the housemaster as "Bond, James Bond." Mostly, I suspect, because he thought it would sell books to have a ready-made spy in the making for his series. It seems unnecessary because these are pretty rip-roaring adventures, though a bit anachronistic(set sometime in the 30s? but I kept forgetting that). It's more like the Hardy boys, except much more graphic and, yeah, frightening. The baddie is closer to what you'd expect from the new screen James Bond and it's a little weird to find in a kid's book. Seeing people being fed (somewhat discreetly) to ravenous eels is not something I'm going to forget soon.

I didn't learn much about why the future James Bond becomes who he is---um--today, but I did learn some really gross stuff about genetic engineering (mostly fake and unrealistic, but that's okay), and that it is possible (not once, but twice) to escape from horrific situations with a broken leg. A good read, though perhaps a little slow in places for adrenaline-rush young readers.

Miracle at St. Anna

The movie of this book was messy, awkward and occasionally downright nonsensical (though nicely filmed) so it's a bit of a wonder that I picked up the book, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm happy to report that the book is pretty good. James McBride is trying to do a lot in this book about black soldiers in Italy during WWII. He's covering Buffalo soldiers, race relations (at home and in the army), Italian regionalism, Italian partisans, art...Hmm...What else? Oh yes, religion and miracles. It's pretty messy, but I liked it well enough.

I wasn't always sure how much to trust of what McBride wrote, but it seems well-researched. In The Miracle of St Anna, four black American soldiers get separated from their unit in their attempt to save the life of a little Italian boy. They end up in a small village high in the hills and there they struggle with their role in the fighting, their clueless (and often racist) commanders in absentia, their relationship with the villagers, with one another, with the "enemy"--both known and unknown--and with the little boy who is part of the "miracle" in the title. (That's not really a spoiler).

This being a war novel, there are some fairly graphic descriptions of wounds, but this is essentially a novel of the living (not that everyone lives--yes, that's a spoiler). It's also primarily a window into the experiences of black soldiers in the newly "intergrated" American army. According to McBride, black units--or Buffalo soldiers--were sent mostly to Italy because it was considered a less important arena than the other areas of fighting. Of course, that was an underestimation and the terrain alone was often as difficult as the battles. He writes: "But in central Italy, the war was fought out of the public eye, at night, in winter, in cold, chaotic blackness, by Gurkhas, Italians, Brazilians, British, Africans, even Russian defectors, and most of all, by American Negroes, who were convinced that the white man was trying to kill them, in mountainous terran where icy winter rains and high winds lashed the trees and bushes with hurricane force, pushing aside sanity and loosing all the ghosts and goblins of Italy's past."

The contrast in the treatment, experience, and responsibilities of the black soldeiers with what they experience back home is often heartbreaking and the characters are all a bit ambivalent towards America even while they long for its comforts.

The four main characters--Train, Stamps, Hector, and Bishop--are pretty well drawn and I found them interesting in their contrasts and their relationship to one another, but McBride makes a really weird choice about who survives in the end, and the framing device is even weirder (though not as weird as in the movie). I do like that we're led to believe in various miracles throughout the book, but that most of them fall through in the end in one way or another. I wouldn't say there's a great sense of closure although McBride tries for it. I guess that's a bit like life--we want things neat and tidy and for everything to work out for everyone, to the point that we may even read miracles or signs in everything, when really, not everything connects or even makes sense.

Don't bother with the movie, but try the book.

House of Splendid Isolation

Ireland has been on my mind lately. I've been craving sheperd's pie (and eating it), listening to old Pogues, new U2 and I absolutely love Amy MacDonald's album. I don't know, maybe it's spring that brought this on: all that green. In any case, searching for a good Irish novel, I gravitated to Edna O'Brien. I guess I'd never read her and thought I should start there.
House of Splendid Isolation is two seperate stories together, but always the story is of Ireland: What is Ireland? Who is truly Irish? And what is true love of country. Because of course you can't have a novel about Ireland without The Troubles as a backdrop.

Josie is an old widow in the titular house which is abruptly invaded by an IRA terrorist nicknamed the Beast. Like so many other things in the messy war for independence, McGreevey doesn't appear to live up to this name, and Josie herself is not what she appears. Captor and Captive must somehow coexist while forces--both physical and figurative--converge on them.

At first, Josie tries to get him to leave. "You see, it's not very nice at my time of life...It's not very convenient." She said, and wished that she had not said "my time of life." He apologised for the inconvenience, said there weren't many safe houses around, and that surely it was big enough for two.

"Not us two," she said tartly...

"We'll survive."

But of course, that's the big question. Can they, and will they survive?

I didn't like the mixing in of Josie's younger days with the present-day action. I thought it was a distraction and didn't really explain much about who she was and whether or not she would sympathize with McGreevey. I kind of skimmed those parts. I really liked the ambiguity inherent in the acts on both sides of the battle. Some of the Guards sent to chase down the Beast are conflicted, especially those born and bred locally. They know the myths, the songs, and they love Ireland as well. But who is right? Because we also hear the painful story of a woman wounded in a bank robber (presumably done to bankroll terrorism) who recites to the doctor all the names she'd chosen for the child she is about to lose. Beast, indeed.

As the story goes on, the race between the Guards and McGreevey--both of whom have a job to do--takes on an inevitability that seems to symbolize the continuous race for the ownership of Ireland. There is also the constant threat of betrayal. I know Ireland has been stable recently (barring a few deaths), but the conflict still exists and this book--already old (1994)--is a reminder of that.
There's some nice writing here. One image that struck in my mind about the decaying grand house was "...over the light switch, like some rustic fetish, a tranche of toadstools ripening in the sun." How lovely the word "tranche", but also how gross. And McGreevey is almost electrocuted turning on said light.

Another nice image: Heaven to sit in front of the stove in the nicely varnished room [of the boat] and smoke, and watch the dark coming on, that nice queer sensation of dark coming over water, creeping over it, and the mountains gettting dark too and bulky..."

It still makes me want to visit Ireland.

The Names of the Dead

It's been awhile since I've read a Vietnam War novel and so Stewart O'Nan's The Names of the Dead felt disorienting and anachronistic at first. I was having flashbacks to the 80s when it seemed like every book was about the war, and this book, with a 1996 pub date was even a little late to the party. It had also been awhile since I'd read such a creepy book that was not billed as a thriller/mystery.

Larry Markham is minding his own business in 1982 upstate NY, failing his marriage, working a simple, dull job (Wonder Bread delivery driver! Nice 70s/80s touch), and facilitating a disabled veterans support group. The group doesn't feel too cliched, which is either a credit to O'Nan's writing or a result of my hiatus from such books. I liked that every story the members tell, is given shorthand to the reader: "It was a rat story" or "it was a tiger story," as if all war stories are the same, and these guys have heard it all, are almost making them up at this point.

One day there's a new guy, Creeley, in the group--briefly and angrily--and the next day the guy's stalking Larry with a vengeance that of course ties in to Larry's year (1968) in Vietnam. But this is no neat and tidy revenge story. The lack of true explanation for Creeley's methodical circling is a metaphor for the Vietnam War. We get Larry's stories that he never shares with group, his father, or his wife, but it barely makes us know him more. He's forever marked by his 11 months in Vietnam, but it doesn't explain him. We don't really know enough about Creeley, but we imagine the creeping fear of being hunted by him.

The intersection of Larry's year in Vietnam and glimpses of his current life doesn't work as a perfect metaphor, but I do like that as a new recruit, Larry just kind of goes along and is clearly just learning the ropes. Sure, people die, but the living are still a tight squad. Then almost suddenly, things change. About the time Larry gets back from his leave (and his mother's funeral) all hell is breaking loose. The war becomes like a mudslide for him as the deaths of his fellow soldiers come in rapid succesion until Larry is the last one standing.

At home, in 1982, Larry's just going along with his life and then the problems start to pile up. Is Creeley the root of it all? Or is that just how life goes? Sometimes problems pile up, even if your not being stalked by a psycho Vet you don't know or don't remember. (Larry's therapy group is particularly incensed by Creeley because they feel he gives them all a bad name. This is a nice touch, allowing O'Nan to write about the psycho vet without seeming cliched.)

O'Nan's writing was, as always, great. He seems simply to be capturing life in his books. This one just happens to have the drama/trauma of a messy war as its backdrop. I kind of wanted more closure at the end. Yeah, yeah, Larry goes to the newly constructed Wall in Washington, but I wanted Larry's life to be resolved. I guess that's not how the Vietnam War or a good writer works.

addendum: I'm continuing my race into the past by reading Edna O'Brien's House of Splendid Isolation, another early 90s book about troubles of the 70s/80s (Ireland, this time).

Death with Interruptions and Twilight

I'm doing a bit of a mash-up this time because, really, Jose Saramago's book, Death with Interruptions, was something of a tidy segue into Stephenie Meyer's teen vampire romance novel Twilight.

Saramago, a Nobel prize-winning novelist, seems to write books with as few paragraph breaks as possible, little capitalization (unless it's to further confuse the reader), and no dialogue indicators. I had already abandoned his novel Blindness because of this style, but I was really intrigued by the premise of Death with Interruptions. On the first day of the year, at the stroke of midnight, in an unnamed country, people simply stop dying. Unfortunately, good health does not necessarily follow immortality and instead there continue to be people on the very brink of death--some horribly mangled, some merely comatose, and most somewhere in-between. They simply fail to progress to the next logical step in human existence.

The book is split into two parts. In the first, the populace and the government, as well as the institutions that had hitherto been involved with the "commerce" of death deal with both the promise and the threat of immortality. As Saramago writes, they are "a society torn between the hope of living forever and the fear of never dying." I liked that the down-sides of immortality were addressed. People don't want to be perpetually dying without actually succeeding at it, so they start smuggling themselves or their relatives over the border where death continues to ply its trade. Professional smugglers make a fortune and funeral homes and insurance companies adapt in their own creative ways to the drying up of business. The goverment and the old folks homes seem under the most threat from future overburden and the book bogs down a bit on details.

In the second section of Death with Interruptions, death (with an assertive lower-case d) gets creative, and tries to remedy her mistake of offering immortality by promising to send letters ahead of time so you get a heads up about the date (although not the exact circs.) of your demise. This was kind of funny, I thought, as I pictured newly-powerful Posties (because, of course, she used the Postal Service) chasing unwilling recipients through the streets, brandishing the violet-colored letter that no one can refuse.

Ah, except that one letter is refused. This was the most confusing part of the book, though I think I was kind of giving up by the time I got this far. It's incredibly exhausting to sort through unmarked dialogue, besides which, Saramago never met minutiae he didn't want to dissect. In any case, one of the letters is never delivered and death sets off on a quest to discover why. I never did quite figure out why, except that there are hints that the target was already immortal for some reason.

Which brings us to Twilight where immortality is seen as romantic with none of the awkward what-will-we-do-with-old-people business from Saramago. Vampires mythology reassuringly assures eternal youth (well, depending how old you are when you cross over) as well as eternal life. Um, except that should really be eternal death.

I didn't have a problem with the mythology in this book. Sure, vampires are sexy, don't actually turn to a pile of ashes in sunlight (instead they glow--kind of cool), are incredibly fast and strong, great drivers...etc. Apparently they're attracted by smell (not blood) the way some people prefer chocolate ice cream to strawberry (one of the strangest analogies made in this book). I'm okay with all that, and, as promised by friends Alyssa and Denise (not teens, mind you), Twilight rips right along. A seventeen year old of Adonis perfection as both boyfriend and saviour, a human in peril from rival scary vampires, hints of a werewolf clan--All great.What I hated was the writing, and the thought that all this could unfold around THE PROM. Okay, I know it's a teen book so I'm not too harsh on this, but there's no excuse for lazy dialogue. Please, make me believe kids are talking. Vampire dialogue, I'll give more of a pass on because some of them are over 300 years old in this book. They can have strange turns of phrases if they want.

I thought the scenes of Edward and Bella trying to hold themselves back (too much intimacy could cause Edward to literally rip off Bella's head. Ooo! Awkward!) worked really well in a Jane Austen kind of way, while also echoing the X-Men character Rogue who can never touch anyone without killing him. The enforced chastity for Rogue is just depressing, but in the case of Bella and Edward, it's incredibly romantic. Yep, I get it.

Still, I guess Bella is a seventeen year old, smitten by her first boyfriend, who happens to be a vampire, and she sees nothing wrong with wanting to become immortal to ensure a "life" with him. Yikes! really? Barring that in her future, I see a sad little echo of Eos asking Zeus to grant Tithonus eternal life, but forgetting to ask for eternal youth, thereby cursing her handsome lover to eventual crickethood. That's a myth that always freaked me out as a kid.

I'm probably not going to read the rest of the books in the Twilight series, but I kind of like the idea of a 38 year old Bella still trying to hang onto her 17 year old vampire boytoy (who has only just succeeded in kissing her without killing her).

I'm also done with Saramago (ow! my brain hurts), but I'll probably watch the Twilight movie as well as Blindness (a nod to Saramago). The dialogue will probably be worse or just as bad in Twilight, but in Blindness at least I'll know who's talking.

Honorable Bandit.A walk across Corsica

The GR20 route that more or less crosses the Mediterranean island of Corsica is apparently the toughest long-distance hike in Europe, but you wouldn't know it from Brian Bouldrey's diverting account of his attempt. While he doesn't make it seem like a walk in the park, he makes it seem like a person in decent shape could wander along at leisure. He doesn't exactly advocate this, but admits that he himself has often "happened upon" some of his toughest extreme trail hikes, like the one in the Dolomites that he more accurately translates as "the Way of the Rusty Ladders Precariously Nailed into Sheer Cliff Walls Half a Century Ago and in Great Need of Repair." The GR20 also has its share of affixed ladders, but the guide book recommends a snorkel and a compass as neccessities (which he ignores) so Bouldrey doesn't worry too much about the mention of ladders. Until he is chased down the ladders by "extreme sport" types. Oh, and a friendly labrador. Oh yes, and the perverse guy going South to North instead of the usual route. In fact, it's quite crowded on the trail, inversely related to the difficulty of the particular passage.

Like the Appalachian Trail in the States, you can leave parts of the GR20, and occasionally Bouldrey can hear traffic from the roads, but having experienced Corsican roads (and, more specifically, Corsican drivers), I'm sure it's safer on the trail-- sheer cliff laddered walks and wild pigs be damned. But the proximity to the occasional road and the appeal of the wild scenery brings all sorts of people to the hike.

The "types" Bouldrey meets, or his descriptions of them, make up a lot of this book. He says trails offer all sorts of Dickensian characters. There are, of course, the extreme sport guys who seemingly can't function with shirts on and leave each campsite before daybreak, eschewing fortifying coffee in favor of coffee-flavored goo sucked out of a packet. There are the teen girls who are in waaaaayyyy over there heads. The day-trippers, joyfully under-equipped, and sliding down scree in an effortless way. The foreigners (though not many Americans), very few Corsicans hike themselves, though Bouldrey meets them running the gites along the way, the chatters, the taciturn, the bickering couples. I suppose it's like any travel destination--just more physical work.

The hike through Corsica is merely a vehicle for Bouldrey to talk about why he walks and some of this was interesting and some of it wasn't. I think he went on a bit too much about his past and his relationships, but when he stays in the present, it's quite entertaining. He has amusing repartee with his German walking partner and he makes fun of her, himself, and various other events or fellow-hikers, but never in a mean-spirited way. Mostly, it's about himself, so he talks, for instance of failing to live up to most hikers/writers who claim to do their best thinking while walking. He mentions Rousseau, Rimbaud, Kierkegaard as examples. Bouldrey is more of the obssessive bad thought walker or, if he's lucky, he merely thinks inane thoughts, like "Where is a water source?/God I'm thirsty./ Where is a water source?/That guy has one of those high-tech canteens./ Did I mention I was thirsty?/...Why does that Belgian need two walking stick and why is he making all that clicking noise with them?/Why that annoying clicking?/The clicking!/ That damnable clicking!/ Now I must kill somebody!" If he's not lucky, he's stuck singing "I know an Old Lady that Swallowed a Fly" ad nauseum. In fact, this song becomes short hand throughout the book for bad hiking moments.

My father-in-law, who is planning his first trip to Corsica this May (to visit my relatives) was disappointed that Honorable Bandit didn't give him enough sense of the culture, but I thought there was quite a bit. You get the landscape, of course, which is so amazing that it is hard to describe. As one of his friends remarked on a photo Bouldrey showed later, "This looks like the place where you made an appointment to see the Devil." That sort of sums it up on some days. Bouldrey also remarks on the chronic Independence movement in Corsica. He attempts to explain his love of Polyphonie, the peculiar Corsican musical style, and of course, the food and the beer! My mouth watered from the mention of brocciu cheese and lonzu smoked ham. Even Pietra beer gave me a case of nostalgia, and I'm not much of a beer person. He does get some of the French wrong which always bugs me in books, though I don't blame the authors. I just wonder what editors are for if they can't get languages right.

I'm sure I'll never walk the GR20, though perhaps I'll be a day-tripper someday. Bouldrey gave me that much confidence, at least. I'll be sure to wear the right shoes--the debate is open in this book--, bring my snorkel, and be prepared to micro-analyze just why that old lady swallowed so many animals.

America America

The setting for this great novel by Ethan Canin is so idyllic that it feels more like the 50s than it does the early 70s. Corey Sifter is a working class teen who is befriended by the benevolent patriarch of the upstate NY town in which he lives. Bit by bit he becomes drawn into the seemingly enchanted world of the entire Metarey family until the line blurs between Corey's real family and that of his benefactor. Okay, yes, disaster strikes later (it is the 70s, after all), but I just wanted to cozy up with this book and live out my happy little life in Saline.

Normally, I hate a book that starts with the death of the main character and then works backwards. but in this one, the important character is old and you know you won't regret the story. The story is this: As part of the Metarey circle, Corey ends up running errands for a presidential campaign and occasionally driving the somewhat dubious senator who is running against Nixon (aiming for 1974, though we know how that went). Then all things go to hell (as do the 70s, really).

Senator Bonwiller is the "great liberal hope." It's hard to read about this character without immediately thinking of Senator Ted Kennedy. Bonwiller is a large man of many, um, appetites, just like the Teddy of old, and he's a champion of the "working man" and the undertrodden, much as Kennedy is viewed these days. Even the scandal (or one of them) that envelops Corey and the entire Metarey family and eventually begins the implosion of Bonwiller's campaign evokes Chappaquiddick, though it's not as messy.

And here's where the narration becomes interesting. Or maybe annoying. The story is told in flashbacks by a fiftysomething Corey in present day. We get his reminiscence as well as his explanations of the events unfolding around his job for Senator Bonwiller (he's talking about it to his intern--his protege--at the paper he publishes). But we occasionally also get flashbacks that jump back and forth by a few months or years. That's a little weird. Sometimes he's 17 and a few pages later he's in college at Haverford. Pages later it's back to Corey and his intern, than whoops! he's 17 again and in thrall of the Metarey girls.

Corey is also a somewhat unreliable narrator. I mean, he's believable, and certainly likeable enough. He doesn't seem false, but if the reader is hoping for some sort of resolution to the big mystery/accident that begins the end of the Bonwiller campaign as well as the Metarey family, well, the author is stingy. I never did quite figure out if Corey was lying to himself about what he knew when or if he simply, honestly wasn't sure and wanted to keep a reporter's open mind. Most likely, Corey does not want to wreck the pedestal upon which he has set Liam Metarey by digging too deeply into what his benefactor may or may not have done. And who can blame him? Liam Metarey is a perfect, novelistic creation. He's the one you believe should be running for president except that he's too busy being unassumingly perfect.

Author Canin's slipping back and forth in time makes us patient as readers and the payoff is worth it in the details. As I've said, we begin with the death of Senator Bonwiller, but the identity of the one weeping man comes to us slowly, as does the identity of Corey's wife, though I had my suspicions early on that one. He calls her "my wife" too often for us to not figure out that using her name would spoil the slow discovery. These identities, like the purpose of the bathrobe Liam Metarey gives Corey as a parting gift, come casually and slowly, but it's a fun little puzzle to work everything out.

The book does read a bit like a time of innocence dashed by human greed and corruption. People and the cozy town are wrecked--either literally or figuratively-- and then replaced by better (or the same) and life moves on gently.